This volume discusses continuous improvement strategies of Japanese convenience store operators. The study highlights the efforts of companies operating under lean management systems to identify new, dynamic, firm-specific capabilities in highly competitive markets.

Over the past fifteen years, the optimal enforcement of EU competition law has become a major concern. This book contains a unique collection of articles by lawyers and economists on current issues in the public and private enforcement of competition law. Public enforcement has been strengthened in numerous ways for example, through the introduction of a leniency programme and a substantial increase in fines for competition law violations. At the same time the EU Commission has been promoting private enforcement for example, by developing a legal framework that grants victims of EU antitrust law infringements access to compensation.

The contributions in this book address a range of topics in the area of competition law enforcement, including the role of fines and leniency programmes in public enforcement; access to evidence and the quantification of damages in private enforcement; and the interaction between public and private enforcement of competition law in Europe."

Turkey has been reforming its energy markets since the 1980s, culminating in two major bills in the early 2000s. The country has restructured electricity and natural gas markets, establishing an independent regulatory agency (EMRA) and passed legislation on renewable and nuclear energy. With these regulatory reforms, Turkey, as a candidate country for accession to the European Union (EU), has aimed to direct the energy markets to a more competitive environment in parallel with EU energy directives. This book contains an analysis of regulatory reforms in Turkish energy markets (electricity, natural gas, renewable and nuclear energy), the impact of these reforms on country's energy portfolio and role in global energy trade, especially between the EU, the Caspian, Caucasus, and Central Asia. Finally, the book concludes with recommendations for Turkish energy policy. The authors are expert scholars who have written extensively on Turkish regulatory reform and energy economics and who have broad knowledge of global energy market dynamics. The book will be a unique guide for those concerned with the different areas of the Turkish economy and international audiences interested in energy markets of Turkey and surrounding regions, making the book of interest to not only researchers in academia but also industry practitioners, regulators and policy makers as well.

Although the role of multinational corporations (MNCs) in developing countries has been the subject of intense academic interest, few studies have attempted a systematic examination of relations between small mineral-producing Third World countries and the MNCs involved in the extraction of these mineral resources. This book fills that gap by analyzing the opportunities available to a developing country with a limited mineral resource base to improve its bargaining position with the MNCs. Trinidad, a small petroleum producer whose industry has always been dominated by multinationals, is used throughout as an illustrative case study. A major contribution to the international business and international relations literature, this volume both adds an important dimension to the literature on multinational-host country relations and offers an in-depth analysis of the politics of a major Caribbean nation.

The book begins with an introductory chapter that explores the two schools of thought -- the Marxists dependency and the bargaining perspectives -- regarding the role of multinationals in small mineral producing countries. The following chapters utilize a bargaining approach to examine the relationship between the Trinidadian government and foreign investors in the oil industry during the past 30 years. Singh concludes that nationalization is not the best answer for small mineral producers like Trinidad, because he host country's size makes undue dependence on the foreign investor likely for the duration of the concession agreement. In addition, Singh points out, the ability of the host government to achieve its managerial, technical, and capital goals vis-a-vis the foreign investor depends directly upon the government's ability to manage its domestic policies. Two appendices that profile officials interviewed during the course of the study, a bibliography, and an index for easy reference complete the study.

The proliferation of the internet has often been referred to as the fourth technological revolution. This book explores the diffusion of radical new communication technologies, and the subsequent transformation not only of products, but also of the organisation of production and business methods.

The innovation economy sets new standards for global business and requires efficient innovation management to plan, execute and evaluate innovation activities, establish innovation capability and coordinate resources and capacities for innovation on an intra- and inter-organizational level. Communication has become a critical factor underpinning successful innovation. As a new communication field, innovation communication facilitates the successful launches of new products and services, the establishment of stakeholder relationships, and the strengthening of corporate reputation in the long-run. Consequently, firms today need to develop a strong portfolio of communication tools as an integral part of their strategic innovation management activities. This new edition mainly concentrates on emerging approaches and methods for integrating communication as part of strategic innovation management. A key theme is the provision of an integrated perspective to bridge the gap between innovation management and communication management at both strategic and operational levels. This book makes an important contribution to this evolving academic domain by providing multiple perspectives on the latest research on innovation communication and strategic open innovation. It also provides guidance for managers seeking to understand the diverse ways by which they can leverage communication to support successful innovation.

An inclusive treatment of political risk assessment aimed at a readership consisting of students of international business and executives of multinational firms concerned with this issue. Ting examines the sociopolitical foundations of the issue, approaches to political risk assessment found in the literature, micro-risk assessment associated with individual projects, forms of business macro-policy and exchange rates. The author also considers host-country investments, applications of risk-rating systems, and integration of political risk assessment into a risk-return calculus. Extremely clear, the book is more usable than earlier volumes. Choice Ting argues that a preoccupation with catastrophic and revolutionary changes, such as those that occurred in Iran and Nicaragua, has skewed models of risk analysis away from the most significant and likely forms of political risk--legal, regulatory, and technocratic changes in the host country--toward the much rarer dramatic and cataclysmic event. He proposes instead a model based on a micro or project-specific analysis and demonstrates how to integrate this analysis and the information it generates into actual international planning and operational decisions abroad.

This study presents new microeconomic analyses of congestion-prone services that comprise most private and public services at the final consumption stage. It accounts for two distinctive features of congestion-prone services: the discrepancy between capacity and throughput, and service quality competition. To accommodate these features, a series of new decision-making theorems for consumers and suppliers is developed. The resulting demand and cost functions incorporate service time as the variable that reflects congestion and service quality. In market equilibrium, interactions between consumers and firms endogenously determine the industrial organization type of each firm and thus allow the coexistence of multiple industrial organization types in the same market. Efficiency of resource allocation is assessed by applying two different criteria: service quality diversity throughout the market and Pareto optimality in each submarket.

This volume celebrates the first quarter century of publishing Research in Organizational Behavior. From its inception, Research in Organizational Behavior has striven to provide important theoretical integrations of major literatures in the organizational sciences, as well as timely examination and provocative analyses of pressing organizational issues and problems.
In keeping with this tradition, the current volume offers an eclectic mix of scholarly articles that address a variety of important questions in organizational theory and do so from a diverse range of disciplinary perspectives and theoretical orientations. A number of the chapters also directly engage contemporary events and dilemmas of considerable importance.

This book offers a new understanding of how firms determine their location and what kinds of regional economic policies are needed to attract factories to a country and a region in a highly globalized economic setting. The theoretical and empirical analyses examine the influence of the transfer pricing system, corporate tax rates, and a country's industrial structure on a firm's decision to locate and the impact of firms' location on regional economic activities. The theoretical analysis elucidates the importance of the above-mentioned factors in the firm's selection of possible location. The empirical analysis uses as an example the case of a supply chain in East Asia. The empirical analysis is illustrated with the regional/spatial development experiences at the country level and city level of selected countries and cities. The analysis offers a perspective for understanding the spatial patterns of a cross-border production system.

Consumers, producers, critics, and other market agents rely on socially constructed categories like 'craft' beers, houseware 'collectibles', and 'thriller' films for their understanding of products and producers in markets. Although organizational and sociological accounts often take such categories as given, researchers increasingly acknowledge that category emergence, development, and functioning represent key aspects of how markets work. Take, for example, the U.S. brewing industry, which has become segmented into mass versus specialty producers. Many beer lovers who appreciate the characteristics of a beer made by small, specialty breweries are not willing to buy an equivalent beer made by an integrated, major producer. Knowledge of what specialty beer has come to mean and represent to consumers as the product of an authentic, artisanal production process and delivery is crucial for our understanding of how this market and competitive dynamics within it have evolved. This volume focuses on how market categories shape processes of production and consumption and how these activities in turn shape category systems. This volume consists of original contributions to theory and empirical research by a diverse group of esteemed authors. Topics explored include how new categories emerge, become enacted and gain consensus, how categories are used by market agents (including as tools for interpretation, as mobilization frames, and as cognitive infrastructures for learning), and how category systems change over time. These topics are explored from a variety of perspectives: new institutional theory, organizational ecology, social movement theory, and socio-cognitive theories of markets. The breadth of perspectives in this volume attests to the importance of this topic to sociological studies of market processes.

Modern manufacturing requires information systems that integrate process design and costing data, allowing rapid assessment of 'what if' scenarios. This book details the development of such systems with a focus on the data schema and user interface design.

Asian economies have become a driving force in the world economy, so are the Asian firms, especially those from emerging markets. This book presents a collection of articles that address the strengths and strategies of the rising Asian firms in the process of internationalization and the challenges they face.

Evidence shows that organizations with both a CEO and a team involved in sourcing strategy and supplier configuration make more effective decisions. If the wrong supplier is chosen, performance can be negatively affected. Here the authors look at how companies can improve their outsourcing capabilities.

Adaptive Technologies and Business Integration: Social, Managerial and Organizational Dimensions provides an authoritative review of both intra-organizational and inter-organizational aspects in business integration, including: managerial and organizational integration, social integration, and technology integration, along with the resources to accomplish this competitive advantage. This Premier Reference Source contains the most comprehensive knowledge on business integration. It provides an all-encompassing perspective on the importance of business integration in the emerging networked, extended, and collaborative organizational models. The innovative research contained in this reference work make it an essential addition to every library.

This volume analyses employee participation in under- researched countries and whose economic institutions differ from the Anglo-American context. Part one of the volume is dedicated to China. In a context in which economic decisions made by companies are closely influenced by the political institutions and practices, the extent to which Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) have the ability to make autonomous decisions is not to be taken for granted. The volume explores whether the executive labor market and firms' executive compensation practices differ from the Western context. Evidence on the role of trade unions in Chinese companies is also analyzed. Part two of the volume includes empirical evidence from Europe, Japan, and Korea, and focuses on high-involvement work practices. The main questions that the volume addresses are the incidence and determinants of these practices and their effects on firm performance. Evidence on the incidence contributes to understanding the importance of these practices in an international context, and the analyses on the determinants and effects help understand how the main trade-offs play out in different institutional contexts.

Mass customization (MC) has been hailed as a successful operations strategy across manufacturing and service industries for the past three decades. However, the wider implications of using MC approaches in the broader industrial and economic environment are not yet clearly understood. Mass Customization: Engineering and Managing Global Operations presents emerging research on the role of MC and personalization in today's international operations context. The chapters cover MC in the context of global industrial economics and operations. Moreover, the book discusses MC topics that are relevant to the manufacturing and service sectors, such as: * product platforms; * learning curve modeling; * additive manufacturing; and * service customization. Case studies in manufacturing (e.g., apparel and transportation) and services (e.g., banking and virtual worlds) are also included. Mass Customization: Engineering and Managing Global Operations is a valuable text for mass customization researchers and practitioners. Researchers will find a selection of chapters prepared by internationally renowned authors, comprising most of their recent research in MC. Engineering professionals will be drawn by the vivid discussion of operational aspects and methods of MC, as well as by the selection of cases illustrating their practical application.

Globally, private universities enrol one in three of all higher education students. In Japan, which has the second largest higher education system in the world in terms of overall expenditure, almost 80% of all university students attend private institutions. According to some estimates up to 40% of these institutions are family businesses in the sense that members of a single family have substantive ownership or control over their operation. This book offers a detailed historical, sociological, and ethnographic analysis of this important, but largely under-studied, category of private universities as family business. It examines how such universities in Japan have negotiated a period of major demographic decline since the 1990s: their experiments in restructuring and reform, the diverse experiences of those who worked and studied within them and, above all, their unexpected resilience. It argues that this resilience derives from a number of 'inbuilt' strengths of family business which are often overlooked in conventional descriptions of higher education systems and in predictions regarding the capacity of universities to cope with dramatic changes in their operating environment. This book offers a new perspective on recent changes in the Japanese higher education sector and contributes to an emerging literature on private higher education and family business across the world.

This title presents an organisational perspective of social enterprises, which allows us to analyse issues such as their governing structure, their modes of operation and their marketing strategies, and to begin to formulate some theoretical constructs on how these entities can survive and thrive.

Competitive advantage is a key factor to the success of any business in modern society. To achieve this goal, effective strategies for process improvement must be researched and implemented into an organization. The Handbook of Research on Managerial Strategies for Achieving Optimal Performance in Industrial Processes examines optimization techniques for improved business operations and procedures in the industrial sector. Highlighting management techniques, innovative approaches, and technological tools, this publication is an essential reference source for professionals, researchers, consultants, upper-level students, and academicians interested in the advancement of knowledge in industrial communities.

"Inside the Multi-Generational Family Business" is an inside look at how familial relationships affect the success or the failure of the family business. Many family business owners encounter conflict between siblings, children, and other relatives--especially when they're all involved with the business. The author's message is simple: family businesses today are saddled with "generational stack-up," or the convergence of several generations as owners, managers, employees, and shareholders, often without even knowing it. Each generation has its own work style, biases, and approach to money and business. Through detailed analysis of the various generations and the characteristics that define them in the family business, a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of the family in the family business can move the multi-generational family business from chaos and conflict to true collaboration and improved performance.

This book analyzes rapidly-growing world-class Spanish retail banks. It argues that their success is due to excellent management, clear-headed CEOs, the presence of a cluster of like-minded executives who complement each other and create a homogenous strategy pattern, and that IT systems and the regulatory environment have contributed greatly.

This book explains how government support and institutional set up facilitated the evolution of the Indian pharmaceutical industry and provides an economic analysis of firm strategies due to recent policy changes. The book is useful for researchers interested in understanding the transition of a lifeline sector for an emerging economy like India. Students of public policy, health administrators and health economists who are interested in the functioning of the pharmaceutical sector that produces life saving drugs in developing nations will find this book useful. The book also provides good coverage on data envelopment analysis (DEA), a useful technique for understanding productivity and efficiency. It can provide guidance to the research students on the applicability of DEA technique to address various research questions for analysis. The book will be a valuable addition to libraries in colleges of pharmacy and medicine as well as to all other academic and research centers.