This case study sketches the trans-professional and transnational careers of two upwardly mobile and cosmopolitan actors in the incoming "Century of the Genoese." These examples of biography in history are analytically framed within the stream of research on social mobility in medieval and early modern Italy, and then compared with the organizational and institutional behavior of some Atlantic entrepreneurs of the sixteenth century. This framework also takes into account the dualism and transactional focus of the Genoese polity with the aim of reassessing the historical reasoning on entrepreneurship proposed by business historians who responded to the "Schumpeter's plea" in this regard.

Soviet Management and Labor Relations (1988) examines the official model of Soviet labor relations and the operational reality. It outlines the main characteristics of labor relations during Russia’s three major historical industrialisation drives, and the attitude toward work, entrepreneurs and the state bureaucracy displayed by workers with peasant origins and culture. It then deals with the main aspects of the official model of labor relations and legislation; Soviet management practices and labor relations, industrial relations, strategic behaviour and collective actions.

This book is a methodologically self-conscious and intellectually ambitious effort to advance the social science debate on postcommunist transformation beyond the limitations of its first decade. Offering theoretically innovative and empirically current analyses of fundamental economic, cultural, and political problems of systemic change and reform in central and Eastern Europe, the authors broaden and deepen the research agenda by developing a set of interrelated approaches that are cross-disciplinary, sociologically informed, historically comparative, and global. The bookOs major substantive themes revolve around problems of postcommunist socioeconomic transformations. Specifically, the book explores postcommunist systemic change, the role of religion and collective identity, the significance of trust and economic culture, patterns of state-economy interactions in enterprise restructuring, the context of EU expansion, the strengths and weaknesses of economic theory and neoliberal doctrine, and the history of ideas in the postcommunist transformation debate. Bringing together leading experts in the field to illustrate the fruitfulness of multidisciplinary analysis in understanding socioeconomic transitions, this work will be valuable for economists, sociologists, and political scientists alike.

This book is a methodologically self-conscious and intellectually ambitious effort to advance the social science debate on postcommunist transformation beyond the limitations of its first decade. Offering theoretically innovative and empirically current analyses of fundamental economic, cultural, and political problems of systemic change and reform in central and Eastern Europe, the authors broaden and deepen the research agenda by developing a set of interrelated approaches that are cross-disciplinary, sociologically informed, historically comparative, and global. The book s major substantive themes revolve around problems of postcommunist socioeconomic transformations. Specifically, the book explores postcommunist systemic change, the role of religion and collective identity, the significance of trust and economic culture, patterns of state-economy interactions in enterprise restructuring, the context of EU expansion, the strengths and weaknesses of economic theory and neoliberal doctrine, and the history of ideas in the postcommunist transformation debate. Bringing together leading experts in the field to illustrate the fruitfulness of multidisciplinary analysis in understanding socioeconomic transitions, this work will be valuable for economists, sociologists, and political scientists alike."

Analyzes the processes of privatization and entrepreneurial formation by countries and subjects, and points out the different features they acquire in various post-socialist countries through an interdisciplinary and historico-comparative approach.