Against the backdrop of Enron and the other high-profile cases of corporate malfeasance, it is easy to paint today's executives as villains and blame big business, and corporations generally, for a wide array of social ills. Is the criticism warranted? Not quite, says Evan Osborne, as he traces the history of anti-corporate sentiment and assesses the fever-pitch hatred, by some, of all things corporate. While not perfect angels, Osborne argues, corporations confer many more benefits to society than ills. Moreover, they are an essential engine of human progress, and longstanding legal principles are more than adequate to address their flaws. And that makes the rising tide of anti-corporate sentiment dangerous. Why? Look at the facts: Large corporations inspire both awe and fear. On the one hand, they create jobs, introduce scientific and technological breakthroughs, open up borders through trade, and provide indispensable products and services that make life easier. On the other hand, many think they undermine the will of the people, encourage bribery and corruption, finance oppressive regimes, ruin values and culture, befoul the environment, and encourage economic inequality. It was no accident that the terrorists of September 11 targeted the World Trade Center, an iconic symbol of American financial power. In this provocative book, Evan Osborne pulls back the curtain to illuminate how corporations have evolved as an essential element of society, and how opposition to them has developed out of proportion--a fire fanned by anti-business activists, the media, and other groups. He sets the record straight, explaining how corporations work, how they have evolved in the context of otherinstitutions, the net benefits they provide--and how to deal with their undeniable imperfections. At the same time, he shows how anti-business claims have become more strident and where these arguments fail to stand up to scrutiny. Osborne also investigates: *Corporate influence over politics and the government. *Corporate influence in the media. *Corporate influence through marketing. *The pros and cons of globalization. *The extent to which business has responded to public demands for social responsibility, and the extent to which free commerce improves society even without such pressure. The result is a fascinating, provocative commentary on our love-hate relationship with business.

In recent years there has been an enormous amount of research into the way companies raise finance from stock markets. There are many reasons for this interest in 'initial public offerings' (IPOs). "Going Public" is the first book to investigate the issues in a non-technical manner, drawing upon international evidence from private sector companies and privatizations. Building on the success of the first edition, this second edition of "Going Public" has been comprehensively revised and updated throughout.

This eighth volume in the Research in Social Issues in Management series explores a variety of social relations to expand our thinking about organizational justice, which is fundamentally based on relationships between organizational authorities and the employees of the organizations. These relationships also emphasize the roles of various actors and suggest fairness perspectives other than that of subordinates' perceptions of the treatment received from their superiors. The 10 chapters of the volume are divided into two major sections plus a conclusion. The first section presents five chapters that bring new theoretical perspectives to bear on justice considerations. Topics treated throughout this section include conflicting perspectives on justice, psychological distance, greed, and punishment. The second section placesemphasis on leaders' or managers' perspectives of justice, going back to some of the initial proactive roots of justice rather than on what has become the more traditional focus, that of subordinate perceptions or reactive justice. In the contributions comprising this section, leaders' personalities, their motives, and their position as both superiors of some employees and subordinates of their own superiors are examined to provide new perspectives on the leadership role in justice matters. The concluding chapter, by Brockner and Carter, comments on the collection of chapters and proposes extensions and alternative perspectives for consideration. This commentary chapter suggests that the volume surfs a fifth wave in the history of justice research as these chapters all examine justice as a dependent variable influenced by numerous factors.

In the last two decades, multinational companies (MNCs) and global union federations (GUFs) have started to negotiate so-called global framework agreements (GFAs) which define minimum standards for labor conditions across their locations. This book focuses on the question why companies conclude GFAs, and identifies four groups of incentives: reduction and privatization of conflicts; public relations; promotion of equal competitive conditions; exogenous requirements and avoidance of public regulation. Based on an in-depth analysis of incentives considered to play a dominant role in the decision of companies to conclude GFAs, the book attempts to predict under which conditions GFAs can be expected to proliferate in the future.

This book explores current thinking on corporate governance by way of an empirical examination of the governance practices of fourteen Japanese companies. The analysis is structured around four principal themes, namely the role of shareholders, the role of the main bank, the role of employees, and the role of senior management in the governance of these companies. The book suggests that a system of reciprocal responsibilities, obligations, and trust within and between companies acts as an important means by which most Japanese companies are governed.

"Start Your Own Screen-Printing Business" provides the mentorship for both beginning and experienced entrepreneurs to obtain a solid step-by-step education on how to silk screen, sell the finished products, utilize available resources, and purchase the best equipment.

In conjunction with their family's company, Joan and Anthony Mongiello have relied on their more than twenty years of experience to help more than six thousand people launch and successfully operate their own T-shirt print shops. Together, the Mongiellos show you how much fun and easy it is to print T-shirts and make money doing it. The Mongiellos leave no stone unturned as their professional guidance teaches: Profit expectations from immediate to long-range Sales and marketing techniques specifically tailored for a silk-screening business Basic materials needed The ins and outs of the printing process Procedures on burning a silk screen and obtaining artwork Uses of the leading types of inks

Silk-screening has quickly become a multi-billion-dollar industry in the past few years. Potential business owners will appreciate the expert leadership provided by the Mongiellos as they gain extensive knowledge about the silk-screening business and the lucrative opportunities it offers

This book seeks to examine the relationship between corporate law rules and economic performance. Contributors examine the design of the two main systems of corporate governance to ascertain which bundle of rules is likely to support the emergence of a strong system of governance. They seek to show that the performance of companies is linked to different patterns of shareholding, legal rules, and non-legal relationships.

This book employs an interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral lens to explore the collaborative dynamics that are currently disrupting, re-creating and transforming the production and consumption of tourism. House swapping, ridesharing, voluntourism, couchsurfing, dinner hosting, social enterprise and similar phenomena are among these collective innovations in tourism that are shaking the very bedrock of an industrial system that has been traditionally sustained along commercial value chains. To date there has been very little investigation of these trends, which have been inspired by, amongst other things, de-industrialization processes and post-capitalist forms of production and consumption, postmaterialism, the rise of the third sector and collaborative governance. Addressing that gap, this book explores the character, depth and breadth of these disruptions, the creative opportunities for tourism that are emerging from them, and how governments are responding to these new challenges. In doing so, the book provides both theoretical and practical insights into the future of tourism in a world that is, paradoxically, becoming both increasingly collaborative and individualized.

Recent years have seen a lively debate over the role of tacit knowledge and interactive learning in privileging the local over the global. Yet, our continuing inability to answer questions such as 'when and why is the local important in production and innovation processes?' indicates that our understanding of the firm and the forces that shape its managers' choices remains weak. Such a theory ought to be able to answer fundamental questions like: why do firms in particular places adopt particular production and innovation practices, and not others? What forces determine what a firm 'knows' and when it is able to act upon this knowledge? How easy is it to transfer this knowledge between places? This book presents a new conception of industrial practice and firm behaviour. It explains how the cultures that shape the practices of firms and the trajectories of regional and national economies are actually produced. The analysis shows how the internal and inter-firm organization of production, use of technologies, and the industrial knowledge underpinning these practices are strongly influenced by their social and institutional context. Routine forms of behaviour are not simply inherited from past practice. Instead, they are shaped and constrained - though not wholly determined - by a set of institutions that govern how work is organized, workers are deployed, and technology is implemented. Because of the slowly evolving nature of these institutions, distinctive national 'models' are not converging around a single global norm.

As long as commodity and securities markets have been in operation, market manipulation has been a serious concern. Now that many electricity and natural gas markets have been opened to competition, manipulation threatens to destroy the value of these markets as well. Yet market manipulation itself remains ill-defined, with uncertain legal and economic principles operating on both sides of regulatory proceedings. Andrew N. Kleit's Modern Energy Market Manipulation offers an in-depth exploration of this crucial gray area. It presents a coherent definition of market manipulation, and drawing upon the substantial available legal evidence, it examines two categories of manipulation cases: those in which the allegations clearly fit the definition of manipulation but in which the facts of the case are unclear, and conversely, those in which the facts of the case are clear but in which it is uncertain whether they actually constitute manipulation. Throughout his discussions, Professor Kleit casts a critical eye not only on energy companies but also on the legal decisions and processes at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which acts as both prosecutor and judge in manipulation matters, and which has consistently sided with its own staff and against defendants. As this book deftly shows, both defendants and prosecutors alike have benefitted from the ambiguities at the heart of existing definitions of market manipulation. Modern Energy Market Manipulation is essential reading for regulators, jurists, litigants, and business managers, and it is of interest to anyone who wants to learn about the enforcement mechanisms of federal regulators.

This volume of the International Symposia in Economic Theory and Econometrics explores the latest economic and financial developments in Asia. Chapters cover a range of topics such as the online market's impact on Indonesia's social welfare system, the influence of organizational culture on the triple bottom line performance of large manufacturing companies in the Philippines, and the impact of economic policy uncertainty on foreign direct investment inflows in India. These peer-reviewed papers touch on a variety of timely, interdisciplinary subjects such as sustainability and the effects of public policy. Recent Developments in Asian Economics also includes empirical studies in financial economics and public governance. For example, one chapter considers the consumption and satisfaction of Chinese rural residents, while another empirically studies the effects of sharia disclosure and sharia supervisory boards on Islamic banks' soundness. The papers in this volume have been compiled from four conferences in Asia and Australia, including the SIBR 2020 Sydney Conference on Interdisciplinary Business and Economic Research, which was held in Sydney, Australia; the 5th Indonesian Finance Association (IFA) Conference held in Manado, Indonesia in 2019; the 1st International Doctoral Colloquium on Business and Economics in Surakarta, Indonesia; and the 5th Sebelas Maret International Conference on Business, Economics and Social Sciences held in 2018 in Bali, Indonesia. Together, ISETE 28 is a crucial resource of current, cutting-edge research for any scholar of international finance and economics.

In May 2014, the French research laboratory ISEOR (Socio?Economic Institute for Firms and Organizations) and the University of St. Thomas co?sponsored a second conference on the application of the Socio?Economic Approach to Management (SEAM) paradigm and methodology in the United States. SEAM is a scientific approach to consultancy that focuses on uncovering the dysfunctions and hidden costs that exist in organizations, "hidden" in the sense that they are not captured by traditional accounting methodsand financial analyses. Through intervention that encompasses the entire organization - what the ISEOR team refers to as the HORIVERT approach (combining horizontal and vertical intervention) - the underlying goal is to enhance organizational performance by attacking the "TFW virus," a vestige of the early work by Frederick Taylor, Henri Fayol, and Max Weber that has sufficiently infiltrated our thinking about management and organization to the point where are falling well short of our own potential. The resultant dysfunctions this virus unleashes creates hidden costs that readily destroy a firm's value?added possibilities. The volume captures the ideas, applications, and exchanges of that meeting, attempting to bring the reader into the conference itself. Chapters include the contributors' presentations ("Chapter Prologue: Conference Remarks"), revised conference papers, and the question and answer dialogue for the session.

This comprehensive guide to all the essential legal and business considerations in financing the business activities of the modern corporation. Readers are provided with a clear and concise introduction to the legal and contractual framework that governs the major capital raising transactions in which a firm might be involved, with a particular emphasis upon the federal and state securities laws. An indispensable resource for consummating any private investment transaction, public offering, or commerical loan transaction, as well as dealing with disclosure requirements, the structuring of underwriting arrangements, and complying with public company responsibilities. Intended for entrepreneurs and managers at firms of all sizes.

This monograph provides theoretical and practical perspectives on competency management as a key resource for producing competitive products. The authors develop and substantiate a law of dependence between competencies and emergence of new markets, and describe the practical aspects of developing competencies in high-tech companies. Further, they develop economic and mathematical models for managing the competitive advantages of a company based on competencies. Using these models, they present a method for evaluating and ranking core competencies, as well as for multi-criteria ratings of human potential efficiency. The book also discusses the mechanisms of competitiveness management based on a conceptual model of a competence center network.

This volume offers a collection of studies on problem of organization's efficiency, criteria for evaluating the efficiency, tools and methods for measuring the efficiency. The articles included present an interdisciplinary look at efficiency, its essence and the principles of its measurement. The contributions also identify a broad spectrum of conditions for achieving efficiency in various types of organizations and systems (e.g. public institution, non-profit organizations), representing various industries. The book collects selected papers presented at the 7th International Conference "Efficiency as a Source of the Wealth of Nations", held in Wroclaw, Poland, in May 2017.

A circular economy perspective embraces a notion that we design everything to be reused for as long as possible, and then recaptured and repurposed when reuse is no longer possible. Designing for a circular economy ecosystem requires a more holistic, integrative viewpoint, spanning all aspects of design and development and considering many supply chain actors, far beyond that of traditional supply chains. Circular Economy Supply Chains highlights the need for cross-industry flows and the need for different actors (beyond producers and consumers) in circular value cycles. While biomimicry provides the structure for organizing the book, individual chapters build on other theoretical lenses and concepts, such as stakeholder theory. This book intends to move beyond a buyer-supplier view, embracing a holistic network or ecosystem view, to consider a cross-industry system perspective, where there is a diversity of actors needed for a working ecosystem. This edited book offers a comprehensive overview of system components and actors, including how the circular economy adds value, the role of producers and consumers, the spectrum of recovery possibilities to return products back to the consumption supply chain, and the essential role of information management.

This book offers a case-study approach to stakeholder theory that moves beyond theoretical analysis to the applied. As stakeholder theory has moved into the mainstream of management thinking in business ethics and a number of the management disciplines, there is an increasing need to explore the subtleties of stakeholder engagement via examples from practice. The case studies in this volume explore a number of aspects of the idea of stakeholder engagement, via the method of clinical case studies. Edited by leading scholars in the field of business ethics and stakeholder theory, this text affords a solid grounding in theory, brought to new levels of applied understanding of stakeholder engagement.

Open Innovation describes an emergent model of innovation in which firms draw on research and development that may lie outside their own boundaries. In some cases, such as open source software, this research and development can take place in a non-proprietary manner. Henry Chesbrough and his collaborators investigate this phenomenon, linking the practice of innovation to the established body of innovation research, showing what's new and what's familiar in the process. Offering theoretical explanations for the use (and limits) of open innovation, the book examines the applicability of the concept, implications for the boundaries of firms, the potential of open innovation to prove successful, and implications for intellectual property policies and practices. The book will be key reading for academics, researchers, and graduate students of innovation and technology management.

This book describes various methods of analysis for ascertaining the effects of agglomeration economies, which are important for formulating regional economic policies. Specifically, it describes new analytical approaches using productivity and productive efficiency analyses as methods for understanding agglomeration economies. Additionally, the book provides application results for Japanese regions and proposes desirable regional policies. According to the new analytical methods advocated in this book, agglomeration economies are larger in major metropolitan areas than in local regions, and in the manufacturing sector than in the non-manufacturing sector. These results are consistent with general knowledge. Moreover, the majority of productivity growth pertaining to regional economies is explainable by improvements to accessibility. Improving accessibility for regions reduces transportation costs between them and strengthens agglomeration economies, which, in turn, enable the sustainable development of regional economies. Therefore, this book highlights the need not only to reinforce existing agglomeration areas, but also to form a network between these agglomerations and to strengthen it, so as to realize regional economic growth despite a decreasing population.

The two-volume book studies the economic and industrial development of Japan and China in modern times and draws distinctions between the different paths of industrialization and economic modernization taken in the two countries, based on statistical materials, quantitative analysis and multivariate statistical analysis. The first volume analyses the relationship between technological innovation and economic development in Japan before World War II and sheds light on technological innovation in the Japanese context with particular emphasis on the importance of the patent system. The second volume studies the basic conditions and overall economic development of industrial development, chiefly during the period of the Republic of China (1912-1949), taking a comparative perspective and bringing the case of modern Japan into the discussion. The book will appeal to academics and general readers interested in economic development and the modern economic history of East Asia, development economics, as well as industrial and technological history.

This book places knowledge, learning and innovation at the heart of cross-sector collaborations. Collaboration for innovation is a topic that has attracted widespread interest from academics, business strategists and government officials. To date the collaborations have focused on the performance management process and more specifically on how to encourage collaboration. However, businesses across the world are realizing that for cross-sector collaboration to be successful, it is necessary for firms to share knowledge and innovation through a process of learning. The book contributes to this by providing fresh insights into ways to stimulate cross-sector collaboration. It presents diverse methods and approaches to unify the dimensions of knowledge, learning and innovation and discusses how collaboration can be created, sustained, and expanded.