Get an insightful, expert look at the inner workings of China's business world, highlighting the country's attempts to develop the scientific and technological base for a greener economic model. Business and Technology in China offers a perceptive look at China's economic wonder and the science/business partnership that is pointing the way to its future. In a series of narrative chapters, the book marks China's astonishing transformation into a global manufacturing powerhouse, with specific coverage of the devastating human and environmental impact of that growth, the effects of the 2008 global financial crisis, and China's new Initiatives for creating a more sustainable economic model. Business and Technology in China shows why China's renewed focus on scientific and technological innovation as an economic driver is so important. Drawing on extensive research, author Jing Luo makes the case that China's new model can still produce significant growth, even as it sets the stage for improved living standards and smarter environmental stewardship. Charts and tables provide the most recent statistics on China's economy from a variety of authoritative sources Provides a list of online resources for further exploration of China and its economy

This timely volume offers a comprehensive assessment of the dynamics of firms' behaviour and organization, providing an essential outline of the ways in which our understanding of firms and markets is evolving. Key topics, such as the interplay between labour and capital, the choice of the optimal product range and the dynamics of capital accumulation and innovation are investigated. All of these aspects of the evolution of a market are evaluated in connection with the manifold issue of information, be that related to demand uncertainty, accountancy data, the diffusion of technological knowledge, or the nature of strategic interaction among firms in market games. Technology, Information and Market Dynamics is an extensive and detailed book, offering useful indicators for both theoretical and applied research. It will appeal to economists and researchers of industrial organization and innovation.

This book explains how and why the state-socialist regime in Hungary used technology and propaganda to foster industrialization and the conservation of natural resources simultaneously. Further, this book explains why this process was ultimately a failure. By exploring the environmental pre-history of communist Hungary before analyzing the economic development of the Kadar regime, Pal investigates how economic and environmental policies and technology transfer were negotiated between the official communist ideology and the global economic reality of capitalist markets. Pal argues that the modernization project of the Kadar regime (1956-1990) facilitated ecological consciousness - at both an individual and societal level - which provoked great social unrest when positive environmental impact was not achieved. Today, global issues of climate change, urban pollution, resource depletion, and overpopulation transcend political systems, but economic and environmental discourses varied greatly in the twentieth century. This volume is important reading for all those interested in economic and environmental history, as well as political science.

It is beyond any doubt that East-Central European countries such as Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia has dramatically changed its shape through its radical transition from centrally planned to the market economies in last 7 years. Many economists divide the process of economic transformation into areas of Stabilization, Liberalization, and Privatization/Restructuring. The traditional view is that stabilization and liberalization can be achieved rather quickly-by balancing budgets, balance of payments, tightening money supply, freeing prices and liberalizing trade-but that the area of privatization is one that could be moved to the future and will require much more time. Until 1991, none of the post-communist nations except former East Germany (which had a large decree of support from West Germany) had succeeded in privatizing large numbers of enterprises, even though more than two years had passed since the changes in government in these nations. The privatization has been, however, seen as an extremely important part of reform package together with stabilization and liberalization especially in the Czech Republic from the very beginning. The Czechs originally as a part of the Czechoslovak Federal Republic embarked on an unprecedented path that should have lead not only to stabilization and liberalization, but also to very rapid, mass privatization of its sector of large enterprises that have dominated its economy to an extreme extent.

An Oprah.com "Must-Read Book"
In "Hidden America," award-winning journalist Jeanne Marie Laskas dives deep into her subjects and emerges with character-driven stories about the people who make our lives run every day--and yet we barely think of them.
Take the men of Hopedale Mining company in Cadiz, Ohio. Laskas spent several weeks with them, both below and above ground, and by the end, you will know not only about their work, but about Pap and his dying mom, Smitty and the mail-order bride who stood him up at the airport, and Scotty and his thwarted dreams of becoming a boxing champion.
That is only one hidden world. Others that she explores: an Alaskan oil rig, a migrant labor camp in Maine, the air traffic control center at LaGuardia Airport in New York, a beef ranch in Texas, a landfill in California, a long-haul trucker in Iowa, a gun shop in Arizona, and the Cincinnati Ben-Gals cheerleaders, mere footnotes in the moneymaking spectacle that is professional football.

This book attempts to link some of the recent advances in crowdsourcing with advances in innovation and management. It contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it provides a global definition, insights and examples of this managerial perspective resulting in a theoretical framework. Second, it explores the relationship between crowdsourcing and technological innovation, the development of social networks and new behaviors of Internet users. Third, it explores different crowdsourcing applications in various sectors such as medicine, tourism, information and communication technology (ICT), and marketing. Fourth, it observes the ways in which crowdsourcing can improve production, finance, management and overall managerial performance. Crowdsourcing, also known as "massive outsourcing" or "voluntary outsourcing," is the act of taking a job or a specific task usually performed by an employee of a company or contractors, and outsourcing it to a large group of people or a community (crowd or mass) via the Internet, through an open call. The term was coined by Jeff Howe in a 2006 issue of Wired magazine. It is being developed in different sciences (i.e., medicine, engineering, ICT, management) and is used in the most successful companies of the modern era (i.e., Apple, Facebook, Inditex, Starbucks). The developments in crowdsourcing has theoretical and practical implications, which will be explored in this book. Including contributions from international academics, scholars and professionals within the field, this book provides a global, multidimensional perspective on crowdsourcing.

This book illustrates the decline of the state-encouraged revival and legitimization of private enterprises in 1980s China. Chen argues that the rapid growth of private enterprises strengthened the fiscal power of the state, leading the Chinese government to take an increasingly interventionist stance.

The goal of this book is to assess the efficacy of India's financial deregulation programme by analyzing the developments in cost efficiency and total factor productivity growth across different ownership types and size classes in the banking sector over the post-deregulation years. The work also gauges the impact of inclusion or exclusion of a proxy for non-traditional activities on the cost efficiency estimates for Indian banks, and ranking of distinct ownership groups. It also investigates the hitherto neglected aspect of the nature of returns-to-scale in the Indian banking industry. In addition, the work explores the key bank-specific factors that explain the inter-bank variations in efficiency and productivity growth. Overall, the empirical results of this work allow us to ascertain whether the gradualist approach to reforming the banking system in a developing economy like India has yielded the most significant policy goal of achieving efficiency and productivity gains. The authors believe that the findings of this book could give useful policy directions and suggestions to other developing economies that have embarked on a deregulation path or are contemplating doing so.

This book systematically describes and evaluates the impact of energy cooperatives as a key driving force in the German energy transition toward a sustainability-oriented energy sector. Based on a comprehensive survey and three case studies, it provides an instructive overview of the overall dimensions and scope of energy cooperatives in Germany, and of their history, structure and current investment projects. The book not only contributes to the energy policy discourse in Germany, but also highlights the role of energy cooperatives to enable an international readership to explore their potential in other countries. Further, it makes a theoretical contribution toward substantially supplementing actor research in general, and enterprise research in particular, in the field of sustainability transitions science.

Acclaim for previous editions: 'The International Yearbook of Industrial Statistics 2011 provides comprehensive statistical data on world manufacturing. . . The Yearbook represents a massive effort in data collection, data harmonization, and tabular presentation - well beyond the constraints of time and resources available to the average researcher or investigator. Therefore, the Yearbook presents a vast amount of information in a convenient form.' - William C. Struning, American Reference Books Annual 2012 'The UNIDO International Yearbook of Industrial Statistics is now a classic reference. . . The different editions of the Yearbook provide a unique statistical tool for analyzing the world industry.' - Revue d Economie Industrielle / Industrial Economics Review A unique and comprehensive source of information, this book is the only international publication providing economists, planners, policymakers and business people with worldwide statistics on current performance and trends in the manufacturing sector. The Yearbook is designed to facilitate international comparisons relating to manufacturing activity and industrial development and performance. It provides data which can be used to analyse patterns of growth and related long term trends, structural change and industrial performance in individual industries. Statistics on employment patterns, wages, consumption and gross output and other key indicators are also presented.

The Growth of Chinese Electronics Firms outlines the way firms grow in China at an organizational level. Kimura uses China's electronics industry as a case study for measuring technology-fuelled growth and provides a way to understand diversified the growth process systematically.

This book provides an assessment of the evolution and dynamics of regional innovation systems (RISs) and the economic and social impact of resulting knowledge spillovers, presenting comparative case studies on the regions of several Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania and Estonia). It analyses RISs on the basis of several dimensions, such as absorption capacity and intellectual capital, and using several methods such as data envelopment analysis, patent network analysis, and weighted sum approach. Further, by looking at the economic and social impact of knowledge spillovers in RISs and networking, it identifies key distinguishing factors, including foreign direct investments, still prevalent centralized decision-making, EU-driven innovation policies and public financing of innovations. Sectoral case studies, e.g. from the automobile, chemical and other hi-tech manufacturing industries, are presented to help readers understand the different types of knowledge spillovers in CEE countries and the evolution and dynamics of RISs, and provide a multifaceted overview of the CEE regions.

The international fragmentation of economic activities - from research and design to production and marketing - described through the lens of the global value chain (GVC) approach impacts the structure and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) agglomerated in economic clusters. The consolidation of GVCs ruled by global lead firms and the recession of 2008-09 exacerbated the pressures on cluster actors that based their competitive advantage on local systems, spurring an increasing heterogeneity, both across and within clusters, that is still overlooked in the literature. Drawing on detailed studies of different industries and countries, Local Clusters in Global Value Chains shows the co-evolutionary trajectories of clusters and GVCs, and the role of firms and their strategies in organizing manufacturing and innovation activities in the context of ongoing technological shifts. The book explores the tension between place-based variables and global drivers of change, and the possibility for territories containing such clusters to prosper in the new global scenario. By adopting insights from the GVC framework and management studies, the book discusses how the internationalization strategies of firms create opportunities as well as constraints for adaptive upgrading in clusters. This book is of interest to both researchers and policy-makers who are interested in the dynamic sources of competitive advantage in the global economy.

This book analyses essential concepts of competition law and industrial policy, and shows where the two areas clash with and complement each other, respectively. The discussion takes place in the context of developing countries, taking into consideration their realities and specific needs. South Africa serves as a real-world example for competition law that goes beyond the notion of consumer welfare. An in-depth analysis of the enforcement of South African law illustrates how the law is used both to combat the negative effects of past industrial policy, and to accommodate current economic and social needs.The book is intended for all readers with an interest in the enforcement of competition law in developing countries. It will particularly benefit those who want to learn about unorthodox approaches that integrate the concept of "public interest" and social imperatives into the application of competition law.

This book explores the core themes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) highlighting the digital transformation that has been occurring in society and business. Representing an interface between technologies in the physical, digital and biological disciplines the book explores emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing. The findings of collaborative research studies on the potential impact of the 4IR on the labour markets, occupations, future workforce competencies and skills associated with eight industry sectors in Australia are reported. The sectors are: agriculture and mining; manufacturing and logistics; health, medical and nursing; education; retail; financial services; government services and tourism.

After the Second World War, the economics of the western capitalist countries were based on a production system called fordism, but in the mid 1970s this system began to break down, and it has been in crisis since. But does resolving this crisis imply a complete break with the past, notably with the principles of Taylor and Ford?;Based on an analysis of the transformations currently taking place in several international companies, this book reveals the complexities and subtleties of today's transitions.

The globalization of business has ended corporate colonialism in international commerce, and out of this has emerged what the author calls the global corporation. Differing in many important ways from the now obsolete multinational corporation it is replacing, the global corporation is actually a network of independent entrepreneurs, liberated from the control of headquarters, and thus able to implement a new vision of the overall enterprise, its competitive strategies, and how it coordinates and communicates within itself. The author carefully delineates the subtle distinctions among concepts that are often taken, mistakenly, as synonyms for globalization, such as multinationalization, and elicits the implications these distinctions have for the management of international business.

Nurtured in the post-GATT era, and especially in the last twenty years, the model of the global corporation describes an international business organization in which the parent company treats each national market as a part of a single, integrated regional or global market, setting up autonomous divisions or forming alliances and partnerships to handle each product and business line for the entire region or entire world market. In this network organization, the parent company plays the role of support office for the individual divisions, which are treated as equals. The structure consists of the support level, which handles company-wide concerns, and unit level, which handles unit-specific concerns. The two-level management is supported and re-enforced by a corporate vision and by efficient and effective communication and incentive structures.

Originally published between 1956 and 1997, the volume in this set take the automobile industry experience as a basis for a wider view of industrial relations, trends and developments from the 1950s to the 1990s. They also analyse the emergence of new institutions and systems of labour-management relationships, examine the effects of automotion and technical change, the impact of fluctuations in the market for cars and wage trends. They discuss the car and its role in social, geographical and political change. The volumes provide: detailed surveys of some of the biggest post-war disputes and especially of trade union organization. the experience of individual firms, such as Austin, Ford and Fiat. comparative surveys of labour relationships in major car manufacturing countries such as the UK, USA, Germany and Japan. And include: material about the technology, design and production of cars and the ancillary fields of oil production, refining and road building.

This book provides comprehensive coverage on the key issues of Chinese investment in the Australian minerals industry. It offers unique insights into the entry process, the management of Chinese investments, and their success factors and lessons learnt as being impacted upon by the entangling of political, economic, social and competitive forces.

German industry in particular is a central focus for studying technical and organizational changes in industry due to its pivotal position in international markets, its technological sophistication and its well-established training systems. Originally published in 1992, this study brings together contributions which contain both theoretical approaches and extensive empirical studies, on the manufacturing industry in Germany, including comparisons to other european countries. It looks at the developments of new technology, identifying trends in rationalization and the influences they have on organizational behaviour. As it discusses the relationships between technology and the work-force it includes discussion on flexible specialization, labour processes, union relations, small and large firms and training processes.

This is an exceptional new work on family business, showing how to maintain a balanced relationship between the family and the company, and ensure satisfactory business results. This roadmap helps the reader to build better managed and more stable family firms.

Alkhafaji presents the fundamental concepts of corporate governance and suggests a new approach to the subject that focuses on the stakeholder. As Alkhafaji demonstrates, corporate governance has moved far from traditional concerns with purely business issues like growth and profitability and now includes public issues such as pollution, equal employment opportunities, insider trading, and criminal conduct. Using data from his own empirical studies, Alkhafaji argues that the conventional board model no longer functions as originally intended. He analyzes potential management reaction to alternative forms of governance bodies and concludes that the data suggest a stakeholder board would be best suited to current American conditions.

Organized into five parts, each of which builds upon concepts discussed in the preceding chapters, the volume begins by discussing the concept of the company and the changing environment in which it operates. In the second section, Alkhafaji addresses corporate governance in specific terms and includes survey data showing management's reaction to traditional and nontraditional forms of corporate governance. Part three looks at corporate governance in the context of social responsibility, ethics, and business-government relations, while the following chapters discuss the ongoing restructuring of American business and its relation to corporate governance. The final section examines the role played by corporate governance in strategic management. Numerous tables, figures, and models support points made in the text.

The recent crisis in financial markets has seen a gradual erosion of the boundaries of asset classes previously regarded as risk-free. We have gone from a world mostly free of default risk to one where credit risk is largely reflected in equity prices. Traditional valuation methods now need to be integrated to take into account a scenario in which expectations of growth are considerably reduced, and credit risk is increased to levels previously unheard of. But as the majority of private companies are sub-investment grade, Valuing Private Companies: How Credit Risk Reshaped Equity Markets and Corporate Finance Valuation Tools sets out an innovative new method for estimating private companies' cost of equity based on a Fixed Income Approach (FIA). In addition to the book's theoretical insights, illustrating in great detail the relationship between default risk and equity risk premium, readers will benefit from the practical experience the author has accumulated as a risk manager within major banking groups such as UniCredit Group, Capitalia SpA, and Banca di Roma SpA.

This volume examines the experiences of well-managed firms that attempt to improve quality, productivity, innovation, technology, and human resources. The editors have brought together papers by the best known authorities on effective policies and practical guidelines for enhancing productivity and quality, combining them with those by leaders of America's high performance companies that describe their actual experiences with productivity and quality. The resulting synthesis of experience and concepts will be of significant value not only to executives and managers attempting to implement productivity-enhancing programs within their own firms but also to business and management programs charged with training America's future corporate leaders. In addition to describing policies and programs, the volume provides a framework for implementation including creating awareness, measuring inputs and outputs, designing and initiating programs, and maintaining follow-up procedures. The contributors also examine public policy changes aimed at encouraging R&D and capital investment, eliminating government constraints in the global marketplace, and improving education and training.

Divided into four parts, the volume begins with an introductory chapter by the editors which explores the critical relationships among productivity, quality, and competitive advantage. The second section contains specific policy recommendations from such renowned experts as W. Edwards Deming, Joseph M. Juran, Thomas J. Peters, Armand W. Feigenbaum, Jackson Grayson, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter. In Part III, corporate leaders from Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Texas Instruments, Ford, 3M, Nucor, and others detail their experiences with productivity and quality programs. Contributions from two winners of the Baldrige National Quality Awards (Globe Metallurgical and Xerox) as well as from Florida Power & Light, the first company outside Japan to win the coveted Deming Prize, are included in this section. Throughout, the contributors stress the need to be customer-driven; the importance of nurturing a cohesive corporate culture to support the demands for innovation, flexibility, and ever-increasing levels of productivity and quality; and the critical role of manufacturing strategy in enhancing productivity and quality. The final section presents managerial guidelines for competitive success.