This original new book offers a comprehensive and engaging perspective on the theory of vertical differentiation. It enables the reader to grasp the key concepts and effects that product quality has both on firms' behaviour and market structure, and the ways in which this relationship has evolved. With contributions from prominent figures in the field, the book investigates a number of important topics, such as the choice of the optimal product range, profit sharing, the existence of equilibrium in duopoly games, positional effects attached to status goods, international trade, collusion, advertising and the dynamics of capital accumulation for quality improvement and product innovation. Using both static and dynamic approaches, these aspects are assessed in relation to the manifold issues of regulation, competition policy and trade policy. Product differentiation and its influence on consumer behaviour and the performance of firms is a core topic in the existing literature in the fields of industrial organization, international trade and economic growth. This book will be an essential read for researchers, students and professional scholars working in these areas, especially those with an interest in antitrust regulation.

What role do transitional justice processes play in determining the gender outcomes of transitions from conflict and authoritarianism? What is the impact of transitional justice processes on the human rights of women in states emerging from political violence? Gender Politics in Transitional Justice argues that human rights outcomes for women are determined in the space between international law and local gender politics. The book draws on feminist political science to reveal the key gender dynamics that shape the strategies of local women's movements in their engagement with transitional justice, and the ultimate success of those strategies, termed 'the local fit'. Also drawing on feminist doctrinal scholarship in international law, 'the international frame' examines the role of international law in defining harms against women in transitional justice and in determining the 'from' and 'to' of transitions from conflict and authoritarianism. This book locates evolving state practice in gender and transitional justice over the past two decades within the context of the enhanced protection of women's human rights under international law. Relying on original empirical and legal research in Chile, Northern Ireland and Colombia, the book speaks more broadly to the study of gender politics and international law in transitional justice.

First published in 1891, this seminal work examines the primary causes of poverty during the industrial age. Through considering how poverty is measured, the growth of urbanisation and the supply of low-skilled labour in the workforce, Hobson arrives at possible solutions to the problem of poverty and explores the ethical issues surrounding it.

In this new edition, stemming from the work of the International Bar Association Committee on Business Organizations, leading international practitioners address the increasingly complex issues surrounding due diligence, disclosures and protection of the buyer and seller in corporate acquisitions practice. The book also addresses the structure of acquisition agreements, including warranties and the effect of different controlling laws. Environmental due diligence is also included in considering current international commercial practice. Based on a major IBA conference held in June 1991, the work (in this updated and revised form) covers the USA, Canada, Germany, England and Wales, the Netherlands, Italy, France, and Japan. As in the previous edition, the material is presented systematically for ease of reference and comparison. The book aims to serve as a valuable handbook for practitioners.

Presenting a thorough, comprehensive theory of spiritual capital based on solid academic research, 'Spiritual Capital' serves to reinforce and amplify the notion of a moral economic core that is beginning to feature in contemporary economic arguments. In this rare major work wholly dedicated to the subject of spiritual capital, Sam Rima explains the desperate need for revolutionary and transformational thinking in the area of economic policy and practice and makes the case for a new moral foundation to business and economics that directly addresses today's financial and business crisis. Writing in an accessible style, and drawing on examples from several continents, Rima explains spiritual capital theory in terms of the resources needed for its creation, how it is formed, how it can be invested and what the return on investment can be. The book provides practical tools for measuring a personal or organizational store of spiritual capital, along with clear guidelines on how to engage in spiritual capital formation. These will benefit business leaders interested in developing viable and sustainable enterprises capable of avoiding the disconnection between economic policy and social reality. There are also recommendations here for policy makers regarding the macro application of spiritual capital theory. This important contribution to Gower's Transformation and Innovation Series will appeal to business leaders and policy makers, academicians and students in the fields of sociology, theology, and economics, and anyone interested in social and economic justice issues, social innovation, and corporate social responsibility.

Imperfections and Behavior in Economic Organizations analyzes the organization of economic decision making in a contemporary setting. The contributors focus on two important aspects of this analysis. First, they address the issue of imperfect or incomplete information and communication in economic organizations and consider imperfections arising from the interaction of the market organization with its environment. Second, the issue of cooperation in a competitive environment is thoroughly analyzed and alternative social trade organizations are designed to dissipate the allocation problems that arise in these situations.

Issues relating to the size of firms in manufacturing are central to the discussion of development strategies. This book offers an interpretation of growth trajectories in selected Asian economies in terms of the size-structure of enterprises in the manufacturing sector of these economies. The book presents a comparative survey of distribution of enterprises by size across Asia, including India, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Bangladesh and Vietnam. A broad survey of official data on the size structure of manufacturing helps to identify three distinct patterns of manufacturing sector development and makes the connection between enterprise development and the overall impact on the economy. The book goes on to investigate the problem of the peculiar dual size structure of manufacturing in India, with its two modes at the low and high end of the size distribution and conspicuous 'missing middle', and the effect that this has on the economy. This pattern is contrasted with the 'East Asian, model with a more even size distribution, and the more recent experience of the newly developing countries of Asia with size distribution skewed to the right. It is an important contribution to studies on Asian Economics and Manufacturing Industries.

Based on extensive archival research, Beyond Market and Hierarchy reconstructs how Fan waged modern China's war of salts. Led by his Jiuda Salt Industries, the nascent refined salt industry battled revenue farmers who, as a group, monopolized the production and distribution of evaporated salt.

Shipping and port systems are vital to societies and lifestyles around the world. In the late twentieth century, however, assumptions concerning the robustness of these systems were severely shaken by economic shocks triggered by oil crises. This volume explores how many of the consequent uncertainties have been resolved, and how adapted systems have been shaped to meet the challenges of the new millennium. To explore these issues, contributors focus on issues such as: * economic integration of emerging economies - in particular China * sectors as diverse as the high-speed ferry and offshore oil industries * pollution problems generated by shipping Contributors' investigations, such as those into the homogenisation of the container industry and the port cluster concept and 'model' vessels for the offshore oil industry, make for a rewarding book that will be of interest to academics working in many fields including transport studies, marine and coastal studies and economic geography. Professional organizations and policy-makers will also appreciate the book.

Research in Health Economics has developed into a separate discipline during the last 25 years. All this intense research activity has come about through the teaching of courses on health economics, mostly at graduate level. However, the Industrial Organization aspects of the health care market do not occupy a central place in those courses. We propose a textbook of health economics whose distinguishing feature is the analysis of the health care market from an Industrial Organization perspective. This textbook will provide teachers and students with a reference to study the market structure aspects of the health care sector.

The book is structured in three parts. The first part will present the basic principles of economics. It will bring all readers to the required level of knowledge to follow subsequent parts. Part II will review the main concepts of health economics. The third part will contain the core of the book. It will present the industrial organization analysis of the health care market, based on our own research.

The book arose from a multi-disciplinary study which looked at the development of global-local manufacturing clusters in the context of a developing, Asian economy. The study demonstrates the connection amongst theoretical perspectives such as international business, development studies, economic geography, organizational learning clusters/production networks through an in-depth case study of the Indonesian automotive cluster. The book gives a detailed account of two automotive clusters (Toyota and Honda) and their contribution to regional economic development in emerging economies in Asian region. The book builds on several literature to develop a theoretical framework to shed light on the empirical findings of the study.

The book discusses practical implications for both the business community and policy makers. The discussion on global-local networks in an Asian context supplements existing literature and case studies in the field. This is one of the very few books which explicitly links regional clusters to global networks. The book offers a refreshingly international (Asian) perspective to the literature on clusters and economic geography for emerging economies.

Entrepreneurs often struggle with many aspects of business: planning and financing company growth, creating a company vision, recruiting, leading, and managing people, as well as personal costs. In Lessons from the Edge, more than 50 business owners and entrepreneurs offer a wealth of real-life stories--in their own words--that provide rare insights about keeping a company healthy and growing.

Here is a unique collection of first-person accounts by entrepreneurs who describe their mistakes in business and the lessons they have learned as a result. The stories cover a wide range of experiences from the trials and tribulations of partnerships, to the loss of key customers, theft, finding and retaining employees, and the personal cost of living on the edge. The authors have drawn on interviews with more than 50 entrepreneurs, all of whom are under 45 years of age and are founders or presidents of companies with revenues over $1 million and growing rapidly. They volunteered to share their stories, describing why they lost or almost lost their companies, what they did wrong, and the lessons they have learned. Their narratives are full of mistakes, failure, courage, moments of realization, and timely moves that saved the day. Every company owner will find these accounts insightful, compelling, and occasionally gut wrenching, especially because most face similar challenges and live with the reality that they too could fall off the edge.

This instructive and inspiring book brims with lessons for all business owners about courage, persistence, and survival. Lessons from the Edge is an essential read for both established and prospective entrepreneurs.

First published in 1927, Hobson's treatise on industrial conflict analyses the nature and causes of industrial disputes with the aim of finding an equitable means of settling them. Assessing the notion of a fair wage within the context of the pool of wealth, Hobson sets about creating a peace policy for industry. Set against the backdrop of economic downturn and struggle in the interwar years, in the years preceding the great depression, this is work of social, historical and economic interest.

This book is a collection of teaching cases on two Chinese companies, UFIDA and Founder. The cases describe the management practices of typical Chinese companies. UFIDA is a well-known company providing management software while Founder is a long-established high-tech company.

The book aims at providing readers with original, first-hand materials, based on a theoretical framework, and broadening readers? vision regarding China's business niche in terms of culture, strategy, corporate governance, business environment, organizational dynamics, marketing, human resource, finance and the potential business partnerships with Chinese enterprises and the Chinese people. The cases are comprehensive and descriptive.

This book appeals to top executives and leaders of multinational companies with ambitions to expand or already vested business interest in China. It is also of valuable use to companies specializing in international trade. The book helps shed insight into the great business opportunities in the development of China.

This book is about how Chinese entrepreneurs deal with China's most important institution--the government in their struggle to survive and even prosper in China's transitional economy. It takes an "inside look" at several private firms in China and provides a firsthand account, as well as the underlying rationale and decision considerations, of their corporate political strategy. The book is based firmly on solid academic research but actually written with both practitioners and scholars in mind. It offers candid and insightful quotes and observations from the owners and executives of China's private firms with regards to their dealing with the government.

This book advances a typology of corporate political strategies based on the respective motivations of the business (the entrepreneurs and their firms) and the government (the government institutions and individual officials) as well as the modes of their interactions. Eight different types of political strategies by China's private firms are identified and illustrated with real-life examples, ranging from one-night-stand, situational shopper, good-ole-friend, patronage seeker, model volunteer, institutional improviser, direct participator, to red hat insider. The book also dissects a living case and traces the development of one particular private firm, from its humble start-up to present day glory, which fittingly illustrates the evolution and dynamics of the various types of political strategies the firm employed at different stages of its growth.

For anyone who wants to understand China's private firms and the Chinese government, thus be able to deal with them more effectively, this book is a must-read.

This book is an introductory text on building measurement and estimating for simple buildings in Hong Kong, based on the Hong Kong Standard Method of Measurement of Building Works 4th Edition Revised 2018 (HKSMM4 Rev 2018). It provides a toolkit for students and surveying technicians who are new to the subject. This second edition updates the contents in line with the HKSMM4 Rev 2018 and incorporates the latest industry developments such as BIM. The main text is divided into five parts following the development of a typical project. Part 1, Building the project team, introduces the team setup for a typical project. Part 2, Deciding the procurement strategy, explains the various procurement decisions to be made by an employer before any cost estimating and measurement work takes place. Part 3, Preparing for tender, covers the tendering methods, tender documentation and approximate estimating techniques used by Quantity Surveyors. Part 4, Measuring quantities, introduces measurement principles and HKSMM4 Rev 2018, followed by a detailed review of the measurement methods for each major trade, with worked examples. Part 5, Estimating unit rates, explores the basic techniques for unit rate preparation. The book contains worked examples from real Hong Kong building projects, self-assessment questions, reminders and points of note. It is essential reading for Hong Kong construction and surveying students, international Quantity Surveyors working in the local area and those wanting international examples of Quantity Surveryors practice.

First published in 1985, this book is about Imperial Chemical Industriesa (TM) response to the changing social, political, business and economic environment over the past twenty years. Using personal interviews and archival material, Andrew Pettigrew examines the evolution of business strategy, organisation structure and culture, technology and union-management relations within this corporate giant over an extended period of time. It is a compelling account, told from the inside, by one of the worlda (TM)s leading management and organisation theorists. The Awakening Giant has made a major practical and theoretical contribution to the study of corporate strategy, organisational analysis and change, and business history. Anyone with an interest in managing change in a large corporation will find this reissue rewarding reading.

The book conducts a comparative study on the form of enterprise, focusing on broadly defined cooperative firms in comparison with conventional capitalist firms. It explores the essential advantages and disadvantages of the different types of firms and attempts to answer why capitalist firms are so prevalent in our economy.

The book attempts to explain these questions from the viewpoint of "market failure" in the framework of standard microeconomic theory. In this analytical framework, it proposes an alternative system of business organization based upon consumer cooperatives and the market for their memberships, which can coexist consistently with the system of capitalist firms and the stock market within a single market economy.

The existing studies of the cooperative sector have been rather ideological. The analytical framework that is presented in this book helps promote scientific exploration of cooperative and other types of firms, which are indispensable and potentially promising constituents of our society.

This is the first book to explain the expansion of multinational enterprises (MNEs) into a transition economy from a technology accumulation perspective. The author provides a theoretical alternative to accepted wisdom regarding technology transfer, and discusses the policy implications of this new approach for economic development.

The recent financial and economic crisis has spurred a lot of interest among scholars and public audience. Strangely enough, the impact of the crisis on innovation has been largely underestimated. This books can be regarded as a complementary reading for those interested in the effect of the crisis with a particular focus on Europe.

Japan's economy is invariably seen as a prime example of a capitalist system, and a consideration of the elements upon which the Japanese economy is founded seems to lead inexorably to the conclusion that Japan is an established member of the group of highly developed capitalist nations. Yet a country's internal mechanisms can differ markedly from the system as perceived externally. Although not yet widely recognized, a new kind of economic system has developed in Japan, a system that differs greatly from traditional capitalism. The author of this book has observed Japanese industry from the inside. He provides detailed explanations of the unique features of the new corporate system and how it differs from the system of orthodox capitalistic corporations.

"Chinese Big Business and the Wealth of Asian Nations" examines the crucial contribution of Chinese business groups to the rapid growth of South-East Asia. This study examines major Chinese firms and their increasingly important networks in this era of regional interdependence and internationalization of production processes. It draws upon unprecedented empirical detail relating to Chinese firms, their growth patterns, joint ventures with foreign capital, and responses to technological change and competition and contributes to debates on economic networks, the economics of trus, and relations between business and the state in the global economy.

In recent decades, there have been significant changes in the way corporate innovation activities are performed. They include changes in the innovation process, flexibility to outsource certain innovation activities, and by far, the most important one, wider choice in the location of innovation. What caught the most attention of is the trend towards globalization of research and development (R&D) and thereby performance of innovation activities away from the home countries. The main concerns relate to the two new trends: First, the multinational corporations (MNCs) locating strategic innovation activities in some countries outside the industrialized world, which can be referred to as 'emerging economies'; and Second, since 2000, some companies from the emerging economies have started entering the global markets with innovative products and services, developed through their own R&D. Both these new developments have managerial implications for companies and policy implications for the host countries (where such R&D is performed), as well as for the home countries of the companies. Further, innovative products and services resulting from R&D activities in emerging economies seem to better address the needs of consumers at the bottom-of-the-pyramid in other developing countries. This book explores and analyzes these issues. This research presented in Global Innovation in Emerging Economies is applicable to both the industrialized and developing worlds, although from different perspectives - the former would like to prevent relocation of R&D from their countries, and the latter want more of R&D-related investments.

This book focuses on the importance of geography and space in explaining knowledge flows, entrepreneurship and innovation. During the last few decades spatial perspectives have enjoyed a growing attention outside the specific discipline of geography both in academic economics and among practitioners of policy and planning. This book constitutes a selection of empirical contributions based on data from Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The studies address issues of the characteristics of intra- vs. interregional knowledge flows (Weterings and Ponds), the restructural process when a large pharmaceutical (Pharmacia) closes activities (Dahlgren and Valentin), the different structure of university-industry relationships in three countries with differential types of universities (Brostr?m, McKelvey and Sandstr?m), the locational organization of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) in a metropolitan region (Shearmur and Doloreux), the background of individuals in KIBS start-ups (Andersson and Hellerstedt) and give a critical scrutiny of attempts to create Regional Innovation Systems (Nuur, Gustavsson and Laestadius).
The contributions thus address relevant contemporary issues regarding the structure of the service economy, the role of academia, and renewal of industries. They provide valuable information, useful to policy-makers, planners and academics.

This engaging book reveals how and why family relations influence the dynamics of family owned businesses. The author examines the relevance of role and identity to the strategic development and the succession process of family businesses. She explores the individual and organizational implications of these roles and identities at different stages in the family and business life cycles. Annika Hall highlights that family businesses have inherent dynamics, rooted in family relations, that might advantage business development assuming that the family is able to meet the inherent challenges of role transition. The book connects micro, socio-psychological aspects to more macro business outcomes, with the purpose of elaborating how and why these connections are made. Expertly integrating a detailed case study and by concluding with concrete advice, the closeness to practice is explicit and therefore strongly appealing to practitioners. By also integrating the practice with theory, the book will prove essential for academics and students of interpretive methodology and/or family business.