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.

Written from the perspective of a practising company lawyer, this work is principally concerned with two broad duties owed by directors of British and Australian companies: to act honestly, in good faith and for proper purposes; and to exercise care and diligence. Public attitudes towards directors have altered since the mid-1980s, and the business community has raised its expectations of directors. In response to this shift in public feeling, parliament and the judiciary are adopting a new approach to directors' duties, widening the scope of duties imposed on directors and encouraging a more rigorous approach to corporate governance. This text analyzes this new approach, with reference to English and Australian case-law, and explores the courts' attempts to deal with the myriad of competing interests found within the morass of legal rules, equitable principles and statutory enactment which comprise modern company law. In examining modern case-law and legislation, the author addresses some of the more contentious and controversial issues which directors in the 21st century will need to confront in order to properly discharge the legal, equitable and statutory requirements of their office. The subject of directors' duties is of theoretical and practical importance, from economic, political as well as social perspectives. This text should be of use to all lawyers, policymakers, academics and researchers working in this complex and rapidly changing field of the law.

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.

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.

Drawing upon evolutionary economics and resource-based approaches, the author utilises US patent data from 1930-1990 to examine the persistence of corporate technological competencies and their gradual erosion through diversifying incremental change. The book explores the changing nature of this diversification with respect to firm size, technological relatedness and technological complexity in 32 firms distributed across four broadly defined industrial sectors. The findings suggest that industry and corporate technological profiles remain strong but are becoming blurred by the pervasiveness of general-purpose technologies. Although historically, diversification is associated with an increase in firm size, the author argues that in recent times it results from technological relatedness and complexity. This book will appeal to industrial and business economists, historians of business and technology, and students and scholars of technology management.

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.

Portraying how entrepreneurs often start out conducting some or all of their trade on an 'off-the-books' basis and how many continue to do so once they become established, this book provides the first detailed account of the vast and ubiquitous hidden enterprise culture existing in the interstices of western economies. Until now, the role of the underground economy in enterprise creation, entrepreneurship and small business development has been largely ignored despite its widespread prevalence and importance. In contrast to much of the previous literature that views the underground economy as low-paid, exploitative sweatshop work that should be deterred, this book takes a fresh, more positive perspective that considers the underground economy as a hidden enterprise culture. Colin C. Williams prescribes the means by which western governments can best harness this hidden culture of enterprise. He outlines detailed policy initiatives that seek to assist business ventures in setting up on a formal footing, and aim to encourage underground enterprises and entrepreneurs to make the transition into the realm of legitimacy. This book provides a lucid guide as to how the hidden culture of enterprise can be brought into the open. As such, it will prove invaluable to a wide-ranging audience including scholars and students of business studies, entrepreneurship, management, economics and regional science.

How do business leaders think as a result of their national culture? This book provides a discussion and comparative analysis of five major cultures - American, Arab, Chinese, Japanese and Scandinavian - and how they reveal themselves in business practice. The author begins by introducing the concept of culture and why it is important, addressing issues such as values, beliefs and assumptions and the consequences of these. Bjorn Bjerke then goes on to address corporate culture and business strategy as well as some myths associated with national cultures. Looking at the five specific cultures he addresses cultural themes and presents a typified picture of the business leader in each of these. He concludes that there are five different capitalist systems governing these cultures, and that the business leader plays a different role in each. Extending this discussion, the author questions whether the culture-free business leader exists and, if so, what the characteristics of such a person might be. Business Leadership and Culture will enlighten students, scholars and business people about the consequences of culture for international business and management.

"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.

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.

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.

Much of the literature on corporate reputation examines the topic from a narrow perspective--for example, from a marketing or public relations point of view. However, reputation is really a topic that spans multiple fields of endeavor--economics, finance, management, marketing, and public relations, among others. Clearly an interdisciplinary approach is needed and is provided by this volume written by two university professors and a public relations specialist. Shaping the Corporate Image discusses how a corporate reputation is acquired, maintained, and nurtured. The authors conclude that corporate leaders possess the power to mold investor perceptions and evaluations of their firms, and the authors provide the latest information on the issues.

Central to the analysis of corporate reputation are numerous examples of drastic changes in reputation ranking as reported in Fortune magazine. Discussions of these articles combine with an academic look at past trends and commentary collected from interviews with current CEOs and public relations executives to yield a valuable review of strategies that were either spectacular successes or dismal failures. "Shaping the Corporate Image" provides the reader with valuable input for the future--for developing reputation building in the 1990s and beyond. This volume should be of particular interest to CEOs and public relations specialists concerned with defining, enhancing, and nurturing the corporate image. It is also suitable for supplemental reading in courses in advertising, public relations, business strategy, and marketing, as well as a valuable resource for academics interested in the latest theoretical and practical developments in this field.

"This volume is one of the first books to consider the impact of tripartism across the developing world. It covers 8 case studies from Afrcia, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, focusing on developments since the 1990s. These studies show that tripartism has the effect of reducing the social impact of neo-liberal economics reforms"--Provided by publisher.

This book contains a series of studies of the regulation under English law of the range of business organisational structures available to entrepreneurs. It analyses the commonest of these structures,including limited companies (public and private), groups of companies, privatised enterprises, and partnerships, as well as the more specialised forms such as industrial and provident societies, banks, building societies, insurance companies, joint ventures, franchise agreements, limited partnerships and overseas companies. Set within the context of a period of considerable actual and proposed legal change, the contributions (from recognised authorities in their respective fields) analyse the broad regulatory structure adopted for each of the above business forms, outline the changing patterns of regulation and consider likely future developments. Several broad themes run through the work, including the relationship between the economic desirability of facilitating enterprise and the need to regulate against possible abuse; stakeholder protection; pursuit of risk management strategies and the implications of European harmonisation in the business sector.

This book presents the cooperative economy as a viable alternative to the neoliberal capitalist and authoritarian socialist models currently in use around the world. The authors contend that the cooperative model is based on principles essential to building a more just and equitable society. The democratic decision making process is indispensable for advancing towards a society that can better fulfil material and spiritual needs, helping to motivate workers and promoting solidarity. It is argued that the cooperative model would not only be of great use for the economic reform currently taking place in Cuba, but would radically transform other societies as well.

This book is one of the first fully-fledged studies to examine the next world-class industrial leaders emerging from China and India; exploring the domestic and international factors that have led to their rise, and comparing their experiences with other East Asian late-comers such as Japan.

Corporate governance, namely the relationship between the ownership and control of firms, takes on new dimensions in the case of international joint ventures operating in the special context of China. The present study contributes a new examination of this relationship, firstly through its conceptual refinement, and secondly through original empirical research. It develops the concept of ownership as suited to joint ventures, in which account is taken of non-capital resourcing by foreign and Chinese partners.

This volume highlights the importance of interactive, practice-based learning as a means to promote more thorough innovation dynamics in regional and national economies. Successful experiences in Scandanavia and southern European countries are examined, with insightful policy lessons extracted from each case.

"Private Equity in Poland" focuses on the evolution of private equity in Poland. Poland represents the most developed private equity industry in Central and Eastern Europe and is one of the leaders in emerging markets worldwide. There is a growing interest in private equity in emerging markets around the world which has been fuelled by the extraordinary economic growth, attractive investment opportunities, exciting exit choices, and handsome returns; Poland is one of these markets. The development of private equity in Poland may serve as a blueprint for other emerging market countries like India and China.

This volume is the second book based on comparative and comprehensive data from the 2003 representative European Union Company survey of Operating hours, Working times and Employment (EUCOWE) in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. The EUCOWE project is the first representative and standardised European company survey which covers all categories of firm sizes and all sectors of the economy. This volume complements and builds on the first book published in 2007, in which the methodology and the descriptive national findings as well as some first comparative analytical results were presented. In this second book the EUCOWE research team presents in-depth cross-country analyses of the relationship between operating hours, working times and employment in the European Union. Six empirical chapters of this volume provide detailed comparative analyses of the determinants and consequences of the duration and flexibility of opening hours and operating times.