Face the global challenges of the future with this accessible introduction to communication across boundaries Communication between cultures can be challenging in a number of ways, but it also carries immense potential rewards. In an increasingly connected world, it has never been more important to communicate across a range of differences created by history and circumstance. Contributing to global communities and rising to meet crucial shared challenges—human rights disputes, refugee crises, international climate crisis—depends, in the first instance, on a sound communicative foundation. Intercultural Communication for Everyday Life provides a thorough introduction to this vital subject for students encountering it for the first time. Built around a robust and multifaceted definition of culture, which goes far beyond simple delineation of national boundaries, it offers an understanding of its subject that transcends US-centricity. The result, updated to reflect dramatic ongoing changes to the interconnected world, is essential for students of cross-cultural communication and exchange. Readers of the second edition of Intercultural Communication for Everyday Life readers will also find: Accessible definitions of core concepts Revised and updated chapters reflecting the COVID-19 crisis, climate change challenges, and more An all-new chapter on social media as a tool for intercultural communication Intercultural Communication for Everyday Life is essential for students and other readers seeking a foundational overview of this subject.

"Redefining Culture: Perspectives Across the Disciplines "argues that culture is one of the most important factors we need to know when we interact as well as in our discussions of social problems and their solutions. This book picks up the dialogue where Kroeber and Kluckhohn left off in their classic 1952 collection and analysis of definitions of culture. As a resource for personal and academic libraries, this volume provides an updated listing of over 300 definitions of culture from a wide array of disciplines. Chapters examine how the definition of culture has changed historically, consider themes that cut across the definitions, and provide models for organizing approaches to defining culture. To round out this multi-disciplinary perspective, Renato Rosaldo provides a foreword, and prominent authors from six disciplines write about how they conceptualize culture and use it in their research and practice.
This resource is an indispensable reference for scholars studying or integrating culture into their work. It will appeal to anyone interested in culture, particularly students and scholars in anthropology, intercultural and international communication, cultural studies, cultural and social psychology, linguistics, sociology, family studies, political science, intergroup relations, cultural geography, and multicultural education.

"Redefining Culture: Perspectives Across the Disciplines "argues that culture is one of the most important factors we need to know when we interact as well as in our discussions of social problems and their solutions. This book picks up the dialogue where Kroeber and Kluckhohn left off in their classic 1952 collection and analysis of definitions of culture. As a resource for personal and academic libraries, this volume provides an updated listing of over 300 definitions of culture from a wide array of disciplines. Chapters examine how the definition of culture has changed historically, consider themes that cut across the definitions, and provide models for organizing approaches to defining culture. To round out this multi-disciplinary perspective, Renato Rosaldo provides a foreword, and prominent authors from six disciplines write about how they conceptualize culture and use it in their research and practice.

This resource is an indispensable reference for scholars studying or integrating culture into their work. It will appeal to anyone interested in culture, particularly students and scholars in anthropology, intercultural and international communication, cultural studies, cultural and social psychology, linguistics, sociology, family studies, political science, intergroup relations, cultural geography, and multicultural education.

Exploring the scope, breadth and depth of innovation in small firms, the authors of this book employ a rich array of survey data to analyze the operating characteristics of dynamic small-firm populations. They investigate the strategies and activities that small firms pursue at different stages in their lifecycles and in different competitive environments, as well as which business skills are associated with survival, innovation, growth and high performance. John Baldwin and Guy Gellatly find that the strategic decisions young firms make play a critical role in determining their odds for survival and growth. New small firms survive by developing a core set of business skills - skills related inter alia to management, human resources, marketing and financing. Advanced innovation capabilities related to R&D and technology set high-performance firms apart from other businesses. Industry-level differences in product lifecycle, production activity, competitive intensity and the science base all influence the nature of small-firm innovation. Unique features of this volume include: * comprehensive strategic profiles representative of small-firm populations * information from business surveys and administrative data sources for a better understanding of how strategies and activities relate to firm performance * an exploration of how small-firm strategies and activities vary across a diverse range of operating environments - from manufacturing to services to science-based environments. Researchers and students interested in small firms and entrepreneurship will benefit from the wealth of new data that investigates relationships between business strategies, innovation and performance. Those interested in industrial organization, innovation and firm turnover will appreciate the new data on how small-firm strategies vary in different competitive environments and at different stages of the entry and exit process.

This study of innovation - its intensity, the sources used for knowledge creation, and its impacts - is based on a comprehensive survey of innovation of Canadian manufacturing firms. Attention is paid to the different actors in the system, who both compete with and complement one another. The study investigates how innovation regimes differ across size of firm and across industries. Owing to the high degree of foreign investment in Canada, special attention is paid to the performance of foreign-owned firms. The innovation regime of Canadian innovators is compared with results of studies of other industrialized countries. The picture of a typical innovator is a firm that combines internal resources and external contacts to develop a set of complementary strategies. The study finds that innovating firms depend not only on R&D, but also on ideas and technology from various other sources, both internal and external to the firm.

The Dynamics of Industrial Competition describes the internal dynamics of industries using new and unique longitudinal data that make it possible to track firms over time. It provides a comprehensive picture of a number of aspects of firm turnover in North America that arise from the competitive process - the entry and the exit of firms, the growth and the decline of incumbent firms, and the merger process. Instantaneous and cumulative measures of market dynamics are provided. Since the forces contributing to competition are varied and industries are affected by heterogeneous forces, different aspects of firm turnover are considered in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the competitive process. Entry is divided into that portion coming from the creation of new plants and that portion arising from the acquisition of existing firms. Differences are drawn between the effects of related and unrelated acquisitions and between the effects of take-overs made by domestic and foreign firms. Differences between large- and small-firm activity are also investigated. The effects of turnover on productivity, efficiency, wage rates, and profitability are extensively model led. Using various measures of firm turnover to proxy the amount of competition, the study examines and contextualizes the relationship between industry performance and the intensity of the competitive process.

The book analyzes how manufacturing firms bring new and improved products and production processes to the market. It examines sources of innovative ideas and technologies; the role of R&D activity; the use of patent protection and other government policies; and the effect of innovation on employment and various performance indicators such as profitability and export performance. It reveals how these processes differ between small and large firms; domestic and multinationals, and across industries. Although the primary focus is on Canadian manufacturing firms, the results are adjusted to reflect recent empirical studies from other industrialized countries.

The Dynamics of Industrial Competition provides the first extensive quantitative examination of the processes associated with competition: entry and exit, mergers, growth and decline of incumbent firms. It uses a unique data base to investigate phenomena that have rarely been measured and even more rarely set side by side so as to provide a comprehensive picture of the intensity of competition and its effects on productivity, efficiency and profitability. It will be of interest to all social scientists who are concerned with the workings of markets--economists, political scientists, government specialists, as well as antitrust lawyers.

Song & Social Change in Latin America offers seven essays from a diverse group of scholars on the topic of music as a reflection of the many social-political upheavals throughout Latin America from the 20th century to the present. Topics covered include: the Tropicalia movement in Brazil, the Nueva Cancion in Central America, Rock in Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Peru, the Vallenato in Colombia, Trova in Cuba, and urban music of Puerto Rico in the mid-20th century. The collection also includes five interviews from prominent and up-and-coming musicians -Ruben Blades, Roy Brown, Habana Abierta, Ana Tijoux, and Mare- representing a variety of musical genres and political issues in Central America, the Caribbean, South America, and Mexico.

Song & Social Change in Latin America offers seven essays from a diverse group of scholars on the topic of music as a reflection of the many social-political upheavals throughout Latin America from the 20th century to the present. Topics covered include: the Tropicalia movement in Brazil, the Nueva Cancion in Central America, Rock in Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Peru, the Vallenato in Colombia, Trova in Cuba, and urban music of Puerto Rico in the mid-20th century. The collection also includes five interviews from prominent and up-and-coming musicians -Ruben Blades, Roy Brown, Habana Abierta, Ana Tijoux, and Mare- representing a variety of musical genres and political issues in Central America, the Caribbean, South America, and Mexico.

Regulatory Failure and Renewal develops a framework to understand the choice of regulatory instrument used in Canada for natural monopolies such as telephone companies, water utilities, streetcars, hydroelectricity, and railways from the 1880s to the 1930s. Using the transaction-cost literature pioneered by Oliver Williamson, John Baldwin examines the nature of contractual failure in Canada in natural monopoly cases, asking why initial forms of contracts between the state and private enterprise failed and why this failure so often resulted in the use of public enterprise. Baldwin outlines early attempts to deal with natural monopolies - from the use of a franchise contract to regulatory tribunals and finally to public enterprise - and compares Canadian experiences to US approaches, which turned more frequently to regulatory tribunals. This difference is due to Canada's more limited constraints on the state's ability to exercise coercive power, which sometimes leads to contractual failure that results in replacing franchise and regulatory frameworks with public enterprise. Regulatory Failure and Renewal demonstrates that public enterprise arose not so much as part of a purposive choice but because of reoccurring failures in the contractual process between the Canadian state and private enterprise.