Exploring the issue of foreign ownership of corporate America, a leading economist and the president of the steel producer, Esmark, revisit the sale of that company to a Russian firm. Is it a good idea to allow foreigners to purchase critical and strategic American assets? No, say authors James Koch and Craig Bouchard. In America for Sale: How the Foreign Pack Circled and Devoured Esmark, Koch and Bouchard use the sale of Esmark-a transaction that put over 50 percent of American steel production into foreign hands-to make the case that this trend presents a clear and present danger to the economic future of United States of America. America for Sale recaps the amazing, sometimes incredible events leading up to the sale of Esmark, including intense pressure from the United Steelworkers and the company's major public shareholder to make a decision not in the best interest of all shareholders. It also analyzes the efforts by the Esmark board of directors to observe its fiduciary duty, details the company's "poison pill" effort to raise its sales price, and describes the actions of Leo Gerard and Ron Bloom of the United Steelworkers Union-which led to some surprising alliances. The authors-one Esmark's president and vice chairman of the board, the other an Esmark director, preeminent American economist, and former university president-then provide their own assessment of the Esmark story. They offer legislative and policy prescriptions aimed at making sure U.S. business doesn't devolve into one big garage sale to foreigners seeking to take advantage of the coming decline of the U.S. dollar. Previously unseen documents relating to the hostile reverse tender merger of Esmark, a historic first in unseating the board of directors of a publicly traded company in the United States A chronology of the "America for Sale" phenomenon and of key events in the American steel industry, from the 1970s to 2009 Approximately 25 tables and one dozen graphs that make it easy for readers to interpret data related to the Esmark sale and the overall foreign stake in American companies Text boxes that focus on human interest stories and the amazing quirks attached to the sale of Esmark-for example, one of the Russian bidders also was interested in acquiring the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team and preventing its star Russian hockey player from leaping from a team in the remote Ural mountains to the NHL; that star subsequently led the NHL in scoring in the 2009 NHL season

Manufacturing Possibilities examines adjustment dynamics in the steel, automobile and machinery industries in Germany, the U.S., and Japan since World War II. As national industrial actors in each sector try to compete in global markets, the book argues that they recompose firm and industry boundaries, stakeholder identities and interests and governance mechanisms at all levels of their political economies. Micro level study of industrial transformation in this way provides a significant window on macro level processes of political economic change in the three societies.
Theoretically, the book marks a departure from both neoliberal economic and historical institutionalist perspectives on change in advanced political economies. It characterizes industrial change as a creative, bottom up process driven by reflective social actors. This alternative view consists of two distinctive claims. The first is that action is social, reflective, and ultimately creative. When their interactive habits are disrupted, industrial actors seek to repair their relations by reconceiving them. Such imaginative interaction redefines interest and causes unforeseen possibilities for action to emerge, enabling actors to trump existing rules and constraints. Second, industrial change driven by creative action is recompositional. In the social process of reflection, actors rearrange, modify, reconceive, and reposition inherited organizational forms and governance mechanisms as they experiment with solutions to the challenges that they face. Continuity in relations is interwoven with continuous reform and change. Most remarkably, creativity in the recomposition process makes the introduction of entirely new practices and relations possible.
Ultimately, the message of Manufacturing Possibilities is that social study of change in advanced political economies should devote itself to the discovery of possibility. Preoccupation with constraint and failure to appreciate the capaciousness of reflective social action has led much of contemporary debate to misrecognize the dynamics of change. As a result, discussion of the range of adjustment possibilities in advanced political economies has been unnecessarily limited.

Several years have passed since the 'store wars' over barriers to foreign products at Japanese distribution firms. Yet among English-speaking readers, how these firms operate remains a puzzle. In this book, the best Japanese scholars in their fields attempt to unravel that puzzle. Avoiding culture-based explanations, they employ a systematic and rigorous economic logic---yet, since they also avoid mathematical notation, the argument remains accessible to generalist readers.

The Future of Chinese Manufacturing: Employment and Labour Challenges gives context and analysis on employment and labor issues in contemporary China, specifically relating to manufacturing industries. With one fifth of the world's workforce, China has taken advantage of its cheap labor to serve as the world's factory, achieving stunning growth for two decades. This book covers the appreciation of RMB, constant increases in minimum wage, shortages of skilled workers in China's labor-intensive manufacturing sector, and the fact that many large multinational corporations (MNCs) must cut costs, and are thus shifting their main production bases to other developing countries. Under such a tough situation, and coupled with the global economic slowdown, manufacturing employment in China confronts severe labor-related challenges, such as high turnover rates, recruitment difficulties for workers, and a series of high profile labor strikes and publicity concerning working conditions.

The international paper trade discusses the whole spectrum of the pulp and paper industry and is designed for busy readers in the industry and its allied trades who need a thorough understanding of the trade.
The international paper trade provides a comprehensive
guide to the: Fundamentals of the paper businessDrivers of change and their effectsChanging nature of the businessThe book begins with a brief outline of the history and technology of the industry and goes on to show the production, consumption, import and export levels in the major regions for the last 15-20 years. Tom Bolton then examines the factors that are driving the industry today, including forestry issues, the principal raw materials used in pulp and paper manufacture, and environmental issues. Finally, the book looks to the future and what the next decade holds for the industry.

An exploration of fashion through the ages that asks what our clothing reveals about ourselves and our society.

Dress codes are as old as clothing itself. For centuries, clothing has been a wearable status symbol; fashion, a weapon in struggles for social change; and dress codes, a way to maintain political control. Merchants dressing like princes and butchers’ wives wearing gem-encrusted crowns were public enemies in medieval societies structured by social hierarchy and defined by spectacle. In Tudor England, silk, velvet, and fur were reserved for the nobility, and ballooning pants called “trunk hose” could be considered a menace to good order. The Renaissance-era Florentine patriarch Cosimo de Medici captured the power of fashion and dress codes when he remarked, “One can make a gentleman from two yards of red cloth.” Dress codes evolved along with the social and political ideals of the day, but they always reflected struggles for power and status. In the 1700s, South Carolina’s “Negro Act” made it illegal for Black people to dress “above their condition.” In the 1920s, the bobbed hair and form-fitting dresses worn by free-spirited flappers were banned in workplaces throughout the United States, and in the 1940s, the baggy zoot suits favored by Black and Latino men caused riots in cities from coast to coast.

Even in today’s more informal world, dress codes still determine what we wear, when we wear it—and what our clothing means. People lose their jobs for wearing braided hair, long fingernails, large earrings, beards, and tattoos or refusing to wear a suit and tie or make-up and high heels. In some cities, wearing sagging pants is a crime. And even when there are no written rules, implicit dress codes still influence opportunities and social mobility. Silicon Valley CEOs wear t-shirts and flip-flops, setting the tone for an entire industry: women wearing fashionable dresses or high heels face ridicule in the tech world, and some venture capitalists refuse to invest in any company run by someone wearing a suit.

In Dress Codes, law professor and cultural critic Richard Thompson Ford presents a “deeply informative and entertaining” (The New York Times Book Review) history of the laws of fashion from the middle ages to the present day, a walk down history’s red carpet to uncover and examine the canons, mores, and customs of clothing—rules that we often take for granted. After reading Dress Codes, you’ll never think of fashion as superficial again—and getting dressed will never be the same.

This book presents a number of efficient techniques for solving large-scale production scheduling and planning problems in process industries. The main content is supplemented by a wealth of illustrations, while case studies on large-scale industrial applications, ranging from continuous to semicontinuous and batch processes, round out the coverage. The book examines a variety of complex, real-world problems, and demonstrates solutions that are applicable to scenarios and countries around the world. Specifically, these case studies include: • the production planning of the bottling stage of a major brewery at the Cervecería     Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma (Heineken Int) in Mexico;• the production scheduling for multi-stage semicontinuous processes at an ice-cream   production facility of Unilever in the Netherlands;• the resource-constrained production planning for the yogurt production line at the KRI KRI dairy production facility in Greece; and• the production scheduling for large-scale, multi-stage batch processes at a pharmaceutical batch plant   in Germany. In addition, the book includes industrial-inspired case studies of: • the simultaneous planning of production and logistics operations considering multi-site  facilities for semicontinuous processes; and• the integrated planning of production and utility systems in process industries under uncertainty. Solving Large-scale Production Scheduling and Planning in the Process Industries offers a valuable reference guide for researchers and decision-makers alike, as it shows readers how to evaluate and improve existing installations, and how to design new ones. It is also well suited as a textbook for advanced courses on production scheduling and planning in industry, as it addresses the optimization of production and logistics operations in real-world process industries.

This book includes every aspect of the cotton trade, starting with the history and background, its growth and production patterns. It goes on to examine the international trade itself, the key players, recent trends, and a look at cotton prices, forecasting, and the factors that affect the cotton price. The author looks at end uses for cotton by analyzing the garment industry as a whole and the competition for cotton. This is related to cotton consumption and the global economics of this commodity. The final chapter looks to the future and attempts to forecast trends for the industry over the coming years.

Overall, this first volume in the series should render business research in manufacturing a good deal easier by bringing together insightful industry histories and detailed critical bibliographies. This series has much to recommend it. Future volumes will be eagerly awaited. Reference Books Bulletin This historical and bibliographical reference work is the first volume of Greenwood Press's Handbook of American Business History, a series intended to supplement current bibliographic materials pertaining to business history. Devoted to manufacturing, this work uses the Enterprise Standard Industrial Classification (ESIC) to divide the subject into distinct segments, from which contributors have developed histories and bibliographies of the different types of manufacturing. Though authors were given sets of guidelines to follow, they were also allowed the flexibility to work in a format that best suited the material. Each contribution in this volume contains three important elements: a concise history of the manufacturing sector, a bibliographic essay, and a bibliography. Some contributions appear in three distinct parts, while others are combined into one or two segments; all build on currently available material for students and scholars doing research on business and industry. The contributors, who include business, economic, and social historians, as well as engineers and lawyers, have covered such topics as bakery products, industrial chemicals and synthetics, engines and turbines, and household appliances. Also included are an introductory essay that covers general works and a comprehensive index. This book should be a useful tool for courses in business and industry, and a valuable resource for college, university, and public libraries.

In the face of today's environmental and economic challenges, doomsayers preach that the only way to stave off disaster is for humans to reverse course: to de-industrialize, re-localize, ban the use of modern energy sources, and forswear prosperity. But in this provocative and optimistic rebuke to the catastrophists, Robert Bryce shows how innovation and the inexorable human desire to make things Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper is providing consumers with Cheaper and more abundant energy, Faster computing, Lighter vehicles, and myriad other goods. That same desire is fostering unprecedented prosperity, greater liberty, and yes, better environmental protection.Utilizing on-the-ground reporting from Ottawa to Panama City and Pittsburgh to Bakersfield, Bryce shows how we have, for centuries, been pushing for Smaller Faster solutions to our problems. From the vacuum tube, mass-produced fertilizer, and the printing press to mobile phones, nanotech, and advanced drill rigs, Bryce demonstrates how cutting-edge companies and breakthrough technologies have created a world in which people are living longer, freer, healthier, lives than at any time in human history.The push toward Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper is happening across multiple sectors. Bryce profiles innovative individuals and companies, from long-established ones like Ford and Intel to upstarts like Aquion Energy and Khan Academy. And he zeroes in on the energy industry, proving that the future belongs to the high power density sources that can provide the enormous quantities of energy the world demands.The tools we need to save the planet aren't to be found in the technologies or lifestyles of the past. Nor must we sacrifice prosperity and human progress to ensure our survival. The catastrophists have been wrong since the days of Thomas Malthus. This is the time to embrace the innovators and businesses all over the world who are making things Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper.