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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Institutions & organizations
This work provides an up-to-date and comprehensive directory and guide to over 1700 international and regional organizations around the world.
Provides a comprehensive directory and guide to over 1700 international and regional organizations around the world. Extensively researched, it covers a wide spectrum of organizations from the UN and NATO to the League of Arab States. Contents include: an introductory essay on the developing role of international organizations and the international community in the 21st century; texts of significant international documents; a chronology charting the historical development of international organizations; and a who's who of the leading officials of international organizations together with addresses and contact details.
This reference provides detailed facts and figures on the bodies that encourage international peace and security, and greater cooperation in economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian areas. Details are provided on the history and legislative framework of international organizations, helping to provide the necessary background information to aid your understanding of international cooperation. The Europa Directory International Organizations contains a thorough and informative introductory essay on the developing role of international organizations and the challenges facing the international community in the 21 century. This source also contains texts of significant international charters, treaties, and documents; biographical information on the leading officials of international organizations; an extensive list of UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions; a Calendar of Observances; and a comprehensive index.
Economics Confronts the Economy is a challenging and unorthodox look at contemporary economic analysis. Philip Klein presents a highly reasoned and yet personal view of the state of economics today. While his views may be contentious to some, it is an accessible book that will provoke discussion and debate to a wide readership. Professor Klein begins with the assumption that the basic function of economic theory is to provide a sound guide for public policy in assisting society in defining what it means by 'economic progress'. In the words of Thorstein Veblen it involves economic activity as explicit steps to be taken at any given time to enable the economy to play its most effective role in 'enhancing human life'. The book argues that modern mainstream economics is failing in this task in terms of what it teaches young economists, what it contributes to public policy debates and what it has done to the field of economics. This book will have a wide audience throughout the many and varied fields of economics including heterodox economics, micro- and macroeconomics, history of economic thought and economic policy.
The motivation behind this book is the desire to integrate complexity theory into economic models of technological evolution. By means of developing an evolutionary model of complex technological systems, the book contributes to the neo-Schumpetarian literature on innovation, diffusion and technological paradigms. Recent advances in complexity theory provide a new understanding of technological innovation and complex problem-solving. This book offers an approach based on Stuart Kauffman's NK-model of complex systems to better understand and analyse search strategies that firms apply to develop new technologies. The models deal with a range of topics including bounded rationality, myopia, decomposability, modularity and the emergence of technological paradigms. Empirical applications include the evolution of early 18th century steam engine technology, 20th century aircraft and helicopter designs and recent innovations in personal computers. Innovation, Evolution and Complexity Theory makes excellent use of complexity theory and large datasets on technologies with which to complement the analysis. The book will be of great interest to evolutionary and innovation economists and academics as well as scholars in the interdisciplinary field of complexity theory and industrial organisation.
This book reconsiders and analyses the different approaches historically proposed in the literature on growth and distribution. The contributors have achieved, through a comprehensive and cohesive analysis of the approaches of different schools of thought, a wide-ranging interpretation of a variety of important economic phenomena. The book identifies elements characterising each approach and tries to derive from them a range of insights into the complexity of the growth process.Classical, Neoclassical and Keynesian Views on Growth and Distribution is an original, insightful and thought-provoking book which, it is intended, will generate further research in the area of growth and income distribution. The book will appeal to scholars and researchers at many different levels of academe, and in many different schools of thought, interested in the theory of economic growth and in the analysis of the complexity of growth processes.
This book provides evolutionary and institutional perspectives on the reform of infrastructure industries, tracing the development of this process in a number of sectors and countries.The contributors contend that infrastructure based industries such as telecommunications, public transport, water management and energy have been increasingly exposed to the dynamism of the market since becoming privatized, and have therefore been stimulated into short-term efficiency and long-term innovation. Drawing on institutional economic theory backed up with case studies such as the California energy crisis, the Dutch gas industry, oil and electricity companies in Spain and the privatization of Schipol airport in Amsterdam, the book focuses on process, driving forces, and actors' roles to explain how new balances are established between competing institutions. The degree to which the processes of institutional change are predictable and the effects of deliberate strategic interventions of governments or private actors are explored. Specific technical and sector aspects and their influence on institutional change in various infrastructures are also discussed. This book will strongly appeal to academics and practitioners in politics or industry with an interest in industrial, evolutionary institutional or public sector economics.
International Institutions (IIs), International NGOs (INGOs) and Transnational Hybrid Organizations (THOs) play a hugely important role in the modern world economy. Despite having been studied by scholars from a range of disciplines, these organizations have never before been approached from a management perspective. This ambitious book analyzes the management challenges associated with international cooperation and sheds light on how these organizations have evolved as the political, economic and business environments have changed around them. Covering an admirably broad canvas, the authors pursue two main objectives. Firstly, they explore the main management frameworks developed in the context of the corporate and national public/non-profit organizations and adapt them to the specificity of IIs and INGOs. This leads to the identification of a "tailored" approach to IO management based on their institutional and operational settings, stakeholder groups, core business, staff profile, and financial arrangements. Secondly, they "bring theory into practice" by linking frameworks to several case studies and best practices of organizations currently experimenting with management systems and tools, with case studies including the World Bank and the Gates Foundation. This comprehensive textbook is a must-own resource for students and academics involved with studying and working with international organizations.
Marianna Klochko and Peter Ordeshook address an under-studied issue from rational choice theory - the common assumption that individual time preferences are exogenous and fixed. They then present empirical evidence to suggest that this is not the case, exploring a computer simulation model that allows for the evolutionary change of time preferences. This is done, moreover, in the context of social networks that are themselves endogenously determined. Beginning with the observation that individual time preferences are endogenous to social context, the authors develop a computer simulation of endogenous time preferences in social networks, the structure of which are themselves allowed to be endogenous. The core conclusion offered, aside from demonstrating the inter-relationship between time preference and network structure, is to show how social complexity can arise from even simple linear structures - a degree of complexity unlikely to be describable with close form analytic models. This volume, moreover, is an application of evolutionary game theory to our understanding of dynamic social processes. Economists concerned with networks, information, behavioral processes and evolutionary games, political scientists and sociologists interested in social networks, and students in all of these disciplines will find this illuminating book a welcome addition to their libraries.
An extensive and unequalled one-volume guide covering some 1,900
international and regional entities, this title provides detailed
and accurate information on a wide spectrum of international
organizations from the World Health Organization to OPEC. Features include:
'The region' has been used to understand and propose solutions to phenomena and problems outside the dominant spatial scale of the twentieth century - the nation state. Its influence can be seen in multiple social science disciplines and in public policy across the globe. But how was this knowledge organised and how were its concepts transmuted into public policy? This book charts the development of the academic field of Regional Studies and the application of its concepts in public policy through its learned society, the Regional Studies Association. In their modern form, learned societies often play a complementary role to universities, offering networks that operate in the spaces between and beyond universities, connecting specialised academics and knowledge and making it possible for them to have impact outside the academy. In contrast to the geographically tangible and popularly understood role of the university, contemporary learned societies are nebulous networks that transcend barriers and whose contribution is difficult to discern. However, the production and dissemination of knowledge would be stunted were it not for the learned society connecting scholars through a network of publications and events. This book traces the intellectual history of regional studies and regional science from the 1960s into the 2000s and the impact of the regional concept in public policy through the changing priorities of government in the UK and Europe. By approaching the history through the Regional Studies Association, it interrogates the role and function of the 'learned society' model of organisation in contemporary academia and importance as a knowledge exchange vehicle for public policy influence.
This book analyses the recent emergence of transnational forms of environmental regulation within the larger conceptual context of global governance research and institutional theory. Increasingly, private policies at the transnational level complement, and in some cases even replace, public interventions. The author takes a deep and broad look at the phenomenon to account for both the emergence and the influence of private institutions in global governance and sustainability. Focusing on the empirical arenas of sustainable forestry and corporate environmental reporting and management, Philipp Pattberg examines why and how private forms of policy-making emerge at the transnational level and how their impacts can be analysed. The study makes a threefold contribution to current debates; firstly, it provides a novel theoretical perspective on the phenomenon of private governance in global sustainability politics. Secondly, it offers a fresh conceptualisation of global governance as a meta-theory in the social sciences. And finally, it provides detailed insights into the empirical landscape of private governance in the areas of global forestry and corporate environmental reporting. This book bridges disciplinary boundaries by providing a detailed account of recent developments in global business regulation as an important aspect of the current sustainability debate. As such it will appeal to a wide audience of both academics and researchers in the fields of environmental policy, public sector economics, international relations and global environmental and sustainability politics in particular. It will also be of interest to practitioners involved in private rule-making and sustainable development.
Change manifests itself in all facets of the economy. This important collection of previously published essays illustrates how the evolutionary approach can reveal not only where change comes from, and how it happens, but also where it will lead. The Evolving Economy covers a broad spectrum of issues ranging from the biological foundations of economic behavior to the co-evolution of firms, markets, and institutions. Ulrich Witt's individualistic approach synthesizes elements familiar from the writings of Veblen and Schumpeter on economic evolution. A conceptual debate on what the notion of evolution means in the economic context is as much emphasized as is the discussion of concrete hypotheses explaining why and how evolutionary economic change comes about. Offering an outline of a paradigm focusing on endogenous economic change, this book will be of great interest to economists and economic historians. Sociologists, philosophers and anthropologists will also find this work invaluable as it presents an encompassing assessment of the role of Darwinian thought for understanding human behavior and societal evolutio
After more than two decades of widespread hardship for most nations, what are the different paths available for them to resume steady growth and welfare? Will they actually succeed in building new growth models that meet the challenges of the present phase of internationalisation? This book attempts to answer these questions by analysing different perspectives and discussing the conditions for new national growth trajectories to emerge. The book provides conceptual tools for characterising alternative growth regimes by analysing their institutional backgrounds and political context. Unlike standard convergence theories, the authors argue that the diversity of capitalism is likely to persist as national economies adapt to the forces of globalisation. Still these national paths remain strongly conditioned by the kind of governance set up at both regional and fully international levels. The Hardship of Nations will be of great interest to undergraduates and graduates in the social sciences - economics, political sciences, sociology, geography and management - who require an overview of the debates on growth of national economies in the present stage of globalisation.
The value of the book lies in its reassessment of the distinctive features of the Chicago School, of its contributions in the theoretical and methodological fields and of its influence on the growth of sociology throughout the world and in America in particular. The book pays particularly close attention to the eclectic nature of the research methods used by the Chicago sociologists as they sought to integrate subjective and objective aspects of human life. It demonstrates that this eclecticism formed an integral part of their theories but also emphasises that empirical observation, too, was important, although not as an end in itself. While, for example, they were working on the concepts of organization, marginality and interaction, they did not consider these as ends in themselves but as additions to the development of a more general theoretical approach. Often in the past, and wrongly, Chicago’s theoretical contribution has been restricted to the urban sector. The book clearly and unequivocally reveals how the tendency to see the Chicago School as a 'theoretical' is the result of misinterpretation and of a failure to realize that, for the sociologists of the period, understanding the social dynamics of the city of Chicago was tantamount to interpreting the central tendencies of modern society itself. The book analyzes how empirical observation was important but not an end in itself. The Chicago School developed a profusion of sociological theories in many areas of inquiry and never opted for any one particular approach. The various essays in the book also make it clear that the School decisively contributed to the development of qualitative and quantitative techniques.
"The Europa Directory of International Organizations 2002" is an
extensive and unequalled one-volume research guide to international
organizations around the world. Offering truly international
coverage, it brings together contact details, further data and
definitions on over 1,700 international and regional organizations
world wide. It is extensively researched, covering a wide spectrum
of organizations from the UN and its specialized agencies to the
League of Arab States and Black Sea Economic Cooperation.
Presenting new material and a fresh perspective, Technology, Trade and Growth in OECD Countries, provides a unifying framework for the exploration of the role played by specialisation in economic growth and international competitiveness.
In the early 1970s, fuzzy systems and fuzzy control theories added a new dimension to control systems engineering. From its beginnings as mostly heuristic and somewhat ad hoc, more recent and rigorous approaches to fuzzy control theory have helped make it an integral part of modern control theory and produced many exciting results. Yesterday's "art" of building a working fuzzy controller has turned into today's "science" of systematic design.
This book offers a new insight into one of the most interesting and long-lived institutions known to historians of science, the Chinese imperial Astronomical Bureau, which for two millennia observed, recorded, interpreted and predicted the movements of the celestial bodies. Utilising archival material, such as the resumes written for imperial audiences and personnel administration records, the book traces the rise and fall of more than thirty hereditary families serving at the Astronomical Bureau from the late Ming period to the end of the Qing dynasty. The book also presents an in-depth view into the organisation and function of the Bureau and succinctly charts the impacts of historical developments during the Ming and Qing periods, including the Regency of Prince Dorgon, the influence of the Jesuits, the relationship between the Kangxi and Yongzheng emperors and the He family and the failure of the bureau to predict correctly the solar eclipse of 1730. Presenting a social history of the Qing Astronomical Bureau from the perspective of hereditary astronomer families, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of Chinese Imperial history, the history of science and Asian history.
With an ever increasing number of relationships between different companies, overseeing a portfolio of strategic alliances has become one of the most challenging tasks for managers. Indeed, the network, rather than the individual firm, has become the most relevant and effective form of organization in the economy. By integrating the most recent academic literature with practical new insights, this book develops a framework that will help both managers and academics to understand the intricate workings of the network economy. The author explores critical issues such as network strategy, network structures, partner selection, network management, and competition in and between networks. By studying the fundamentals of the managerial process, he is able to create a comprehensive and logical overview of successful management in the network economy. He highlights the fact that companies now need to manage whole networks, not just individual alliances, and that the days when firms operated in isolation are over. He also provides a unique and intriguing look at network tactics, demonstrating the tricks and ploys firms use in a network scenario. Throughout the book, interesting case studies are used to illustrate examples of effective network management in leading companies such as Cisco, Glaxo, Microsoft, Nokia and Toyota. This is the first volume to translate theoretical ideas on network management into practical guidelines. It will become an invaluable aid to business people at all levels including CEOs, alliance and strategy managers, and R&D managers. It will also be of immense value to academics interested in networks, innovation management and organisation, and policymakers involved with technology and anti-trust policy.
Making Institutions Work places institutions, the processes and structures of institutionalisation at the centre of constitutional democracy, state and society. By doing so, it recognises that (a) institutions are the pillows of a constitutional democracy, (b) institutions evolve through the action of persons (agency); (c) institutions as organisations form structures of dynamic shared social patterns of behaviour through the implementation of a system of rule of law. The book offers an interdisciplinary critical commentary by scholars, analysts and experts regarding strategic thinking, form, structural and functional impediments and facilitators to institutions and institutionalisation.
The growth and development of the Lincoln Record Society in its first hundred years highlights the contribution of such organisations to historical life. In 2010 the Lincoln Record Society celebrates its centenary with the publication of the hundredth volume in its distinguished series. Local record societies, financed almost entirely from the subscriptions of their members, have made an important contribution to the study of English history by making accessible in printed form some of the key archival materials relating to their areas. The story of the Lincoln society illustrates the struggles and triumphsof such an enterprise. Founded by Charles Wilmer Foster, a local clergyman of remarkable enthusiasm, the LRS set new standards of meticulous scholarship in the editing of its volumes. Its growing reputation is traced here througha rich archive of correspondence with eminent historians, among them Alexander Hamilton Thompson and Frank Stenton. The difficulties with which Kathleen Major, Canon Foster's successor, contended to keep the Society alive duringthe dark days of the Second World War are vividly described. The range of volumes published has continued to expand, from the staple cartularies and episcopal registers to more unusual sources, Quaker minutes, records ofCourts of Sewers and seventeenth-century port books. While many of the best-known publications have dealt with the medieval period, notably the magnificent Registrum Antiquissimum of Lincoln Cathedral, there have also beeneditions of eighteenth-century correspondence, twentieth-century diaries, and pioneering railway photographs of the late Victorian era. This story shows the Lincoln Record Society to be in good heart and ready to begin its secondcentury with confidence. Nicholas Bennett is currently Vice-Chancellor and Librarian of Lincoln Cathedral.
This book is about a single image - the frontispiece to Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal-Society of London (1667). Designed by John Evelyn, and etched by Wenceslaus Hollar, it is arguably the best-known representation of seventeenth-century English science. The use of such plates to celebrate and legitimise the 'new' science of the period falls into a tradition that was well-established both in Britain and in Europe more generally, and which has increasingly attract attention from historians. Nevertheless, there are many questions to be asked about it and how it came into being. Was it an original composition by Evelyn, or is it based on earlier exemplars? Can all the scientific instruments, books and other objects that appear in it be identified, and what significance should be attached to their inclusion? Above all, how did the plate come to be designed in the first place, and what is its true relationship with Sprat's book? In order to assess such issues, this study provides a full analysis of Evelyn's image in its Royal Society setting and the wider world of early-modern science. The book first considers the overall iconography of the image and its message concerning Evelyn's conception of the society's role, before moving on to examine the myriad of details included in the plate and their significance. It concludes by considering the print's history after publication, including the extent to which Evelyn used copies to exemplify the combination of technological and artistic accomplishment to which he believed the society should aspire.
American political scientist Robert Putnam wasn't the first person to recognize that social capital - the relationships between people that allow communities to function well - is the grease that oils the wheels of society. But by publishing Bowling Alone, he moved the debate from one primarily concerned with family and individual relationships one that studied the social capital generated by people's engagement with the civic life. Putnam drew heavily on the critical thinking skill of interpretation in shaping his work. He took fresh looks at the meaning of evidence that other scholars had made too many assumptions about, and was scrupulous in clarifying what his evidence was really saying. He found that strong social capital has the power to boost health, lower unemployment, and improve life in major ways. As such, any decrease in civic engagement could create serious consequences for society. Putnam's interpretation of these issues led him to the understanding that if America is to thrive, its citizens must connect.
iLowerSecondary Global Citizenship Workbooks provide structured, yet flexible, support for schools teaching Global Citizenship in the Lower Secondary Years. Written specifically to work alongside iLowerSecondary, the Workbooks additionally provide an effective standalone resource for any school or student wanting to explore this fascinating subject. Key features: * An introduction to the week's teaching which explains what students will be learning, plus objectives and key vocabulary * An activity for every day of the week, designed for students to practise and reinforce their skills and knowledge * Written and developed by subject experts * Aligned to the iLowerSecondary Global Citizenship curriculum and progression, the Workbooks provide explicit progression towards Pearson Edexcel International GCSE Global Citizenship |
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