Disaster has become big business. Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein trav els across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, the United States, Britain, Greece, and Australia to witness the reality of disaster capitalism. He discovers how companies cash in on or ganized misery in a hidden world of privatized detention centers, militarized private security, aid profiteering, and destructive mining. What emerges through Loewenstein's re porting is a dark history of multinational corpo rations that, with the aid of media and political elites, have grown more powerful than national governments. In the twenty-first century, the vulnerable have become the world's most valu able commodity.

BUILD YOUR COMPANY INTO A GLOBAL GIANT--THE LENOVO WAYA powerful book that shows the step-by-step evolutionof a new kind of global technology powerhouse, TheLenovo Way is indispensable reading for leaders andmanagers who deal with strategy, innovation, branding, and HR at any kind of company. It also tells the remarkable story of how two women from very different backgrounds rose to become leaders in Lenovo's journey to the top. The Lenovo Way shows business leaders how to gainmarket share and develop new business models. The strategies driving Lenovo's ascent to the leading positionin the PC industry have been in motion for years, and this book shows how Lenovo, with roots in both East and West, did it. Based on unprecedented access to former and present CEOs and other top managers, The Lenovo Way tells the fascinating story of the rise of this remarkable global brand. It also provides invaluable business lessons for how to use Lenovo's success strategies to advance your own company's success. Building for a decade on its history-making acquisitionof IBM's PC business in 2005, today Lenovo is #1 inglobal PC sales, and it is rapidly gaining in sales of tablets and smartphones. Lenovo is challenging the world'sbiggest and most powerful brands through innovations and new acquisitions to become an even bigger force insmartphones, servers, and cloud computing, and its CEOhas been listed as one of the best in the world. Using thestory of Lenovo as a case study illustrating best globalpractices, The Lenovo Way explains how to: Gain market share by protecting core strengths while seizing new opportunitiesCreate a diverse and effective culture that transcends all bordersLead your company successfully through the chaos of changeMake innovation part of your organizational DNA Providing key insights into the topics most critical toleaders of global businesses, the authors explore all the major turning points: from building an iconic brand tostreamlining supply chains, while making the transitionfrom a core business of PCs to a new business model. In order to excel in today's marketplace, managers need to create a blueprint for a whole new level of globalization. You must position your company to continue doing what it does best, yet be poised not just to navigate but also to capitalize on change and take advantage of turmoil. Look to the company that has been able to turn a diverse workforce into a global business phenomenon. This is your time to learn how to do it The Lenovo Way. PRAISE FOR THE LENOVO WAY:"In this book, the authors pull back the covers and give incredible insights into this fascinating organization of the future, sharing a blueprint that others can adapt in order to be a truly global organization." -- DAVE ULRICH, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan; author of HR Transformation and The Why of Work "If you want to grow your business and turn global opportunity into reality, read The Lenovo Way. From the new generation of female leadership, this book sharesimportant business lessons for a global world." -- CAROL EVANS, President, Working Mother Media "Through groundbreaking and innovative leadership, Lenovo has proven that 'soft' values can lead to huge profits. The Lenovo Way shows how they did it--and how you can too." -- MARSHALL GOLDSMITH, author of the New York Times bestseller What Got You Here Won't Get You There "In The Lenovo Way, authors Gina Qiao and Yolanda Conyers have mapped a course to success for future global leaders." -- DEBORAH GILLIS, President and CEO, Catalyst "The Lenovo Way is a must read for leaders who are seeking to apply global leadership attributes in a dynamic global marketplace. Read it!" -- RONALD C. PARKER, President and CEO, the Executive LeadershipCouncil & Foundation; former SVP of HR and Chief Global Diversity Officer, PepsiCo "Through vivid storytelling and filled with practical takeaways, The Lenovo Way shows, step by step, how this nimble company has become such a global player--and how their innovative team is on the cutting edge of best business practices." -- DAVE DUFFIELD, Co-founder and Chairman of the Board, Workday "The Lenovo Way shows leaders and managers of any kind of business how prioritizing diversity truly leads to growth and success." -- JOHN HALEY, CEO, Towers Watson

The increasing economic, social and political importance of trade in the modern era spawned a phenomenon called the multinational organization. These organizations, beginning with the Dutch East India Company, are capable of exercising extreme power not only in individual countries but globally. Countries, and often sub-national regions, compete vigorously against one another for the establishment of facilities for a multinational organization for they bring revenue, employment and economic activity. The only significant problem is that these organizations have a national home to where profits ultimately will have to come. In trying to bring the maximum amount of profit home, multinational organizations often engage in practices, particularly in relation to internal pricing, that frequently enrage either their host or home countries. These internal pricing activities, known more commonly as transfer pricing, have provoked reactions from national jurisdictions to monitor and modify the internal pricing activities of multinational organizations in ways that protect their revenue streams. This discord is so intense at times that it has caused managers to take their eye off the reason they are in business in the first place. Transfer pricing is not simply about maximizing revenue. It is a much more important management issue that treated unwisely or with ignorance, is likely to lead to an incongruity in the added value of products and services as well as the crucial return on capital employed. This book seeks to remind managers of those important issues and how easy it is to create friction between the interested parties if the pricing process is not properly thought out. It goes on to provide an insight into how such conflicts can be assuaged or avoided altogether and explains how transfer pricing may become a managerial tool by establishing a common language that may be used as one driver for creating added value throughout the organization.

In 2008, 12 percent of all federal revenues came from corporate income taxes. About half was paid by multinational corporations reporting income from foreign countries. How the federal government taxes U.S. multinational corporations has consequences for the U.S. economy overall as well as for the federal budget. Tax policies influence businesses' choices about how and where to invest, particularly as corporations assess whether it is more profitable to locate business operations in the United States or abroad. The tax laws also can create opportunities for tax avoidance by allowing multinational corporations to use accounting or other legal strategies to report income and expenses for their U.S. and foreign operations in ways that reduce their overall tax liability. This book examines policy options addressing particular concerns about the current system of taxation, with a focus on multinational corporations' investment strategies and reporting of income as well as U.S. revenues from corporate income taxes.

This book is about Australia's businesses internationalization in China. The audience for the book includes executives, administrators; people interested in international business in China, as well as MBA students and academics who wish to study and learn business internationalization to China. China maintains rapid economic growth and is currently the second largest economy in the world. Australia's recent economic growth is tightly related to Chinese economic growth and China has been Australia's number one trading partner since 2006. The book is based on research conducted by the authors who recently interviewed 40 business executives from organizations, which range from large multinational mining and banking organizations to SMEs, including a range of industries, and utilizing various entry modes. The book offers insights from these Australian businesses. The book takes the reader through the preparations that need to be made for doing business in China. It focuses on opportunities that are available in the Chinese market and presents the obstacles that organizations can face, supported by data of real businesses internationalizing to China. The book examines the following key areas: the foreign direct investment and trade framework, Chinese culture, business in China, the political and legal frameworks, intellectual property, market entry strategy and human resource management issues. The reader will benefit from the knowledge developed in this book, and especially from the experience that the business executives interviewed for this book have to share.

Despite widespread criticism of multinational companies, they have made an unparalleled contribution to the development of Eastern Europe over the last two decades. They have brought opportunities to the young, improved working conditions, saved communities from destitution, rehabilitated corrupt banking systems and laid a modern telecommunications network. Their exports have driven economic growth; their presence has boosted civil society. The impact has not always been positive, but their power and dynamism, if effectively harnessed, can help defeat poverty elsewhere too.

The phenomenon of globalisation came to the forefront of public interest in the 1990s and continues to exert a growing, powerful, and uneven effect upon the business, governments and societies of the world. Yet its very conceptualisation as espoused in the research literature remains unclear; its effects hotly debated. This book explores globalisation as something much more than an interconnectedness of economies, people and processes, taking it into the realm of a total transcendence in the power of nation-states and the emergence and growth of 'transnational' actors, and flows of capital, products, people and information unprecedented in history. This is especially the case within the Asia-Oceania region where globalisation is rapidly changing ways of doing business. Nations and their businesses must be increasingly competitive within, and beyond, the Asia-Oceania region. Harnessing the potential benefits of globalisation is more important now than ever before. This book presents a response to the need for businesses and organisations to understand their context of operations, learn and change so that they, and the various populations across the region, may fully benefit and prosper from the opportunities of globalisation. In 23 chapters, distinguished contributors examine key issues facing business in countries including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand across the major discipline areas of management, economics, finance, accounting and marketing.

This pioneering work discusses the role of Japan in the economic development of Singapore since 1965 by looking at the nature and extent of the value-added activities of Japanese multi-national corporations in the manufacturing, construction, and retailing sectors. Japan's economic presence and influence have been very strong in Singapore in the past few decades. Currently, the city state is one of the major recipients of Japanese foreign direct investment in Asia, and is also a very important overseas customer for Japanese manufacturing and construction firms. Nevertheless, there is no major academic work on Japanese economic activities in the city state, even though there are large numbers of works on the economic development of Singapore.Based on primary and secondary sources in English and Japanese, Hiroshi Shimizu examines the nature and extent of the value-added activities of Japanese multi-national corporations in the manufacturing, construction and retail sectors, drawing on case studies of leading companies such as Minebea, the Pokka Corporation, Kikkoman, Bridgestone, and Isetan. The author uses this information to analyze Japanese Foreign Direct Investment in Singapore as part of an Asian or global strategy, and to explore competition and co-operation between Japanese MNCs and local firms. He also evaluates various factors involved in the decline of Japan and the rise of China in the economic and other areas in Singapore, especially since the late 1990s.

This book expands the business network view on managerial issues in multinational corporations. Specifically, it scrutinises the importance of a subsidiary's external and internal business network for its strategic and organizational role within the corporation. The internationalisation of firms in terms of management issues and headquarters control, the influence of subsidiaries on decisions and learning processes within multinational corporations are examined in detail. It is argued that to understand these issues, it is necessary to analyse the context of the multinational corporation in terms of the subsidiaries' external and internal business networks. The authors also explore the extent to which subsidiaries are embedded in close relationships with other business partners and the ability of headquarters to retain control if their subsidiaries are given the opportunity to influence decisions concerning strategic investments. The theoretical elements of the book are underpinned by illustrative cases from an extensive database of 20 multinational corporations. Grounding its analyses and conclusions on unique and extensive data on specific business relationships at the subsidiary level in multinational corporations, this book will be invaluable to students, researchers and lecturers focusing on management and international business.

Contributors include Rawi Abdelal, David J. Arnold, David Bell, Ernst R. Berndt, Pankaj Ghemawat, Stephen A. Greyser, Morten T. Hansen, Douglas B. Holt, Rajiv Lal, Daniel Litvin, Yu Liu, Arthur McCaffrey, Nitin Nohria, John A. Quelch, Ananth Raman, V. Kasturi Rangan, Walter Salmon, Nick Scheele, Hans-Willi Schroiff, Alvin J. Silk, Martin Sorrell, Hirotaka Takeuchi, Earl L. Taylor, Richard S. Tedlow, Luc Wathieu, Noel Watson, and Gerald Zaltman

Praise for "The Global Market"

"The papers in this book capture some of the latest creative thinking on how to tackle the design and implementation of global marketing strategies."
--Raoul Pinnell, vice president, global brands and communications, Shell International

"A thoughtful examination of some of the critical issues faced by both practitioners and academics concerned with global marketing. The papers take a fresh look at questions such as the impact of regionalization, pressures to integrate and/or fragment strategy, managing global firms, and marketing in poor countries."
--Stephen J. Kobrin, W illiam Wurster Professor of Multinational Management the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

"The challenges affecting global marketers today are more complex and more important than ever. This book provides intelligent guidance on all the major issues."
--L. J. Kim, vice president, international marketing and sales development, Yahoo! Inc.

"Two key challenges facing marketers are how to balance globalization and localization, and how to balance corporate branding versus product branding around the world. This book provides intelligent guidance on both."
--Anil Menon, vice president, corporate brandstrategy and worldwide market intelligence, IBM

The present work in 4 volumes contains all the major terms pertaining to business management. Encyclopaedic in nature, this will prove highly informative and useful to all.

Foreword by Ralph Nader. In Corporation Nation Derber addresses the unchecked power of today’s corporations to shape the way we work, earn, buy, sell, and think—the very way we live. Huge, far-reaching mergers are now commonplace, downsizing is rampant, and our lines of communication, news and entertainment media, jobs, and savings are increasingly controlled by a handful of global—and unaccountable—conglomerates. We are, in effect, losing our financial and emotional security, depending more than ever on the whim of these corporations. But it doesn’t have to be this way, as this book makes clear. Just as the original Populist movement of the nineteenth century helped dethrone the robber barons, Derber contends that a new, positive populism can help the U.S. workforce regain its self-control.

Drawing on core sociological concepts and demonstrating the power of the sociological imagination, he calls for revisions in our corporate system, changes designed to keep corporations healthy while also making them answerable to the people. From rewriting corporate charters to altering consumer habits, Derber offers new aims for businesses and empowering strategies by which we all can make a difference.

It may not surprise you to learn that seventy percent of cross-border joint ventures fail within the first three years. But did you know that the reason most commonly cited by transnational executives for this phenomenal failure rate isn’t geopolitics, global competition, or economic volatility, but culture clash? As one frustrated transnational manager quipped, "How are you supposed to get all your ducks in a row when half of them think they’re turtles?"

Why, despite the vast sums spent each year on cross-cultural executive training, do so many well-laid business plans continue to fall apart under the strain of cultural differences? Author Sheida Hodge finds the answer in the training itself, which typically focuses on "the ten percent of the iceberg above the surface—how to bow or shake hands, whether to cross your legs, what gestures to use." Much more dangerous is "the ninety percent of the iceberg that is under water"—the deep-seated cultural values on which unsuspecting executives routinely founder.

In this book, as in her world-renowned training courses and seminars, Hodge departs from the common practice of drilling readers in the do’s and don’ts of doing business in various cultures. She concentrates instead on helping you build cross-cultural competence by acquainting you with the basic values, beliefs, and biases that inform the business styles in most Asian, Latin American, and European cultures. Rather than simply offering tips on how to eat and what colors to wear—which do appear, in abundance, throughout the book—she coaches you in a proven set of strategies and skills that will enable you to successfully navigate the people dimension of doing business virtually anywhere in the world.

For Hodge, learning to see past one’s own cultural hobbyhorses—while avoiding getting trampled by everyone else’s—is the first big step toward succeeding in global business. Thus, most of her discussions of specific cultural differences start by exploring values and business practices that seem "natural" to North Americans, and go on to show how they differ from values and practices in other cultures. To better illustrate her points, she has included anecdotes throughout told by managers from North America and around the world that provide vivid, sometimes hilarious, object lessons in how minor cultural frictions and misunderstandings can mushroom into major business disasters.

A complete guide to building solid cross-border business relationships, Global Smarts is must reading for all managers and entrepreneurs in today’s global business world.

Proven strategies for breaking down cultural barriers and building prosperous business relationships anywhere in the world

American executives need to know how to communicate effectively with their associates around the world to remain competitive. In Global Smarts, Sheida Hodge, a successful international entrepreneur and one of the most sought-after cross-cultural business trainers, shares her proven strategies for successfully dealing with such issues as language barriers, culture shock, international negotiation tactics, and how to establish trust on a cross-cultural basis.

Unlike other authors who merely list the various do’s and don’ts of doing business in specific regions, Hodge helps you to develop a high degree of cross-cultural competency that translates into an unbeatable competitive edge, virtually anywhere in the world. Packed with practical insider tips and eye-opening anecdotes from cross-cultural managers from the United States and other countries, this thoroughly engaging guide is an indispensable resource for anyone doing business in today’s global business world.

Culture may not be the only factor to affect organizational structure. Size, strategic location, the industrial climate, the complexity of the task in hand and the kind of technology used all exert an influence and profoundly affect the relations between members of an organization. Managers therefore have to contend with weighing culture against other variables when trying to implement organizational structure.If culture is but one among a range of factors, then why are cross-cultural management skills so important? Mead crisply answers this question at the outset and his views may be summarized as follows. Today's business world is global and therefore firms are forced to establish branches and subsidiaries outside their national boundaries. Managers have to deal with people from other cultures, and it is imperative that they develop the ability to interact with individuals who have different cultural priorities. Effective cross-cultural management increasingly means working with people from different cultures and learning to tolerate differences when devising shared priorities.In today's economic climate, market forces appear to have an increasingly anthropological dimension. The ethnocentric manager, for example, who is unable or unwilling to deal with members of other cultures has fewer career opportunities. To accommodate these changes management schools are giving increasing priority to teaching cross-cultural management skills. International Management combines theory and practice, and includes a variety of exercises to enable students to apply general concepts to specific situations.Mead acknowledges the difficulty in providing a single definition of culture, but does not duckthe issue. Instead he provides a succinct account of the sociological and anthropological positions before moving on to the management literature. This publication deserves a warm welcome because it acknowledges the contribution made by anthropologists to the understanding of culture. As Richard Mead demonstrates, there is clearly a great deal of scope for making more use of anthropological insights in clarifying the role of culture in international management. The book is aimed at students and has been written with admirable clarity, and should be of value to anyone involved in teaching applied social sciences.

Globalization is unravelling and reassembling the fabric of labour relations in ways that are more affected by local conditions and business requirements than by international standards. Drawing together a group of concerned delegates, a special International Conference in Leuven, Belgium, on 2-3 May 1999, was sponsored by the Euro-Japan Institute for Law and Business. The participants included prominent members of the international legal, business and academic communities, as well as representatives of the International Labour Organisation, the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation (including its Trade Union Advisory Committee), the European Union, and the International Employers' Association. This book is the record of this conference. It publishes the reports presented by the various delegates, and also includes the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (1998) and its follow-up. As an additional feature, it publishes codes of conduct for several multinational enterprises. The text investigates four channels that are available for monitoring social change and promoting social progress in today's world: labour conventions legally binding on signatory states, international guidelines and statements of social policy imposing voluntary standards on multinational enterprises, international declarations of rights recommending agendas for legislatures, and internal corporate codes of conduct. The reports evaluate the effectiveness of these channels, how they operate in practice, their impact on day-to-day reality, and the extent of coherence and consistency they manifest as instruments of social change.

Fortune called Asea Brown Boveri, the giant multinational corporation created in 1987, "the most successful cross-border merger since Royal Dutch linked up with Britain's Shell in 1907." The coming together of two longtime national champions in the electrotechnical industry, Sweden's ASEA and Switzerland's Brown Boveri, marked the birth of a company with truly global aspirations, one whose apparent genius for combining strong central planning with local autonomy for its plants has made it a trendsetter.

An international team of reseachers assesses the dynamic interplay of the forces of convergence and diversity present in ABB. Together they examine the actual workings of this multinational in order to learn to what degree the corporate strategies are achieved in its plants. Based on a multilevel organizational study, their book compares seven plants in six countries on three continents.

Throughout the world, languages differ, but the business questions are the same. In French and Japanese, Hebrew and English, executives are asking, "How can I survive and thrive in the borderless, global marketplace?"

For answers, the authors of Global Literacies went straight to the leaders themselves -- the CEOs of thousands of corporations around the globe.

Two lessons emerged. First, there are leadership universals that every executive and manager needs to practice in order to be world-class at home and abroad. The second defied conventional wisdom: in the borderless economy, culture doesn't matter less, it matters more.

Around the world, business leaders apply their own experiences -- personal, professional, and cultural -- to an ever-expanding world of Dutch colleagues, Brazilian suppliers, Taiwanese manufacturers, and Chinese competitors. These leaders are trying to become globally literate...and Global Literacies is for, and about, them.

No one knows this better than CEOs of successful global companies such as Japan's Canon, Sweden's Ericsson, Taiwan's Acer Computers, the U.K.'s British Telecommunications, and U.S.-based Coca-Cola.

In Global Literacies, a team of researchers led by Robert Rosen, Ph.D., of Healthy Companies International, and Watson Wyatt Worldwide have produced the first model of international business success based on a wide-ranging landmark study of global leaders and their world-class companies. Global Literacies documents the exclusive results of a worldwide survey of over one thousand senior executives and in-depth interviews with CEOs of seventy-eight companies -- companies representing 3.5 million employees in more than 200 countries, and with more than $725 billion in annual sales.

Global Literacies offers compelling new insights and business tools:

The Global Leadership Universals

Learn the new literacies of business:

* Personal Literacy -- understanding and valuing yourself
* Social Literacy -- engaging and challenging people
* Business Literacy -- focusing and mobilizing your business
* Cultural Literacy -- valuing and leveraging cultural difference

The Global Success Quotient

Learn which are the most globally active, financially successful companies -- and countries -- in the world, understand how they got there, and apply those learnings to your own organization.

The Cultures of Twenty-first-Century Business

Develop ways to see global challenges and opportunities, think with an international mindset, act with fresh global-centric leadership behaviors, and mobilize world-class companies -- whether you're a multinational giant, a domestic manufacturer, or a local community organization.

National Profiles

With sophisticated profiles of thirty countries, and survey data from eighteen national cultures -- from the Tolerant Traders of the Netherlands to China's Ancient Modernizers and the Optimistic Entrepreneurs of the United States, Global Literacies is a groundbreaking and fascinating work on the most important issues in the world of business today.