This book brings together the leading academics in the fields of innovation and technology. It describes and analyzes current processes of technological globalization, the behavior of transnational corporations, and what governments can do to enhance their economy's innovative performance and competitive advantage. It reports the latest research and discusses in an accessible way the policy implications for government and others. The book contains newly-reported empirical work relating to Europe, North America, Japan and developing countries.

Published with the support of the Academy for Social Sciences, this volume provides an illuminating look at topics of concern to everyone at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Leading social scientists tackle complex questions such as immigration, unemployment, climate change, war, banks in trouble, and an ageing population.

During prolonged economic recessions when the normal cyclical expansion of output fails to materialize, the topic of the 'cyclical behaviour of wages' has emerged as an area of debate. In 1985, the British Treasury claimed that academic studies into the cyclical behaviour of wages demonstrated that a cut in wages would increase employment. Wages in the Business Cycle contests this argument by presenting the results of original, empirical work which illustrates the absence of any systematic empirical regularity to wage movements over the business cycle. Jonathan Michie argues that the re-emergence of this debate must be seen within the context of the theory of the 'labour demand function', representing an attempt to challenge the Keynesian theoretical assumptions implicit in the bulk of applied macro economic work up to the late 1970s.

Innovation Policy in a Global Economy concludes the successful sequence of books on Globalisation and Technology edited by Daniele Archibugi and Jonathan Michie, following Technology, Globalisation and Economic Performance (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and Trade, Growth and Technical Change (Cambridge University Press, 1998). This final volume argues that the opportunities offered by globalisation will only be fully realised by organisations which have developed institutions that allow for the transfer, absorption, and use of knowledge. Innovation Policy in a Global Economy is relevant for graduate and undergraduate courses in management and business, economics, geography, international political economy, and innovation and technology studies. Presenting original theoretical and empirical research by leading international experts in an accessible style, Innovation Policy will be vital reading for researchers and students and of use to public policy professionals.

This book is the culmination of several years work by a group of academics, policy-makers and other professionals looking to understand how alternative economic thinking - and indeed thinking from quite different social-scientific disciplines - could enhance the mainstream economic approach to environmental and natural-resource problems. Of the editors, Dietz comes from the mainstream economics tradition, while Michie and Oughton draw explicitly on institutional and evolutionary economics. The various authors represent a range of disciplinary backgrounds and approaches. This book draws on the strengths of each and all of these approaches to analyse environmental issues and what can be done to tackle these through corporate and public policy. This book makes the case for an inter-disciplinary approach. Two themes which emerge repeatedly throughout the book are the need for an interdisciplinary theory of technological change, and the need for a similarly interdisciplinary approach to the study of human behaviour and how it influences both production and consumption choices. The two themes are of course related. Resolving environmental questions requires an understanding of their nature, of their causes and, to the extent that they are anthropogenic, of how to change human behaviour. These fundamental issues are the focus of the four chapters that form Part 1 of this volume. The remainder of the volume develops them in more detail. .

This examination of changes taking place in the world of football focuses on its growing commercialization. It covers such topics as fans being becoming shareholders, with a say in the running of the clubs, and the setting-up of a government-sponsored scheme to support shareholder trusts.

This comprehensive book brings together research published during 2021 analysing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy - on output and employment, on inequality, and on public policy responses. The Covid-19 pandemic has been the greatest public health crisis for a century - since the 'Spanish Flu' pandemic of 1919. The economic impact has been equally seismic. While it is too early to measure the full economic cost - since much of this will continue to accumulate for some time to come - it will certainly be one of the greatest global economic shocks of the past century. Some chapters in this edited volume report on specific countries, while some take a comparative look between countries, and others analyse the impact upon the global economy. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, there had been calls for a 'great reset' in face of the climate crisis, the increased income and wealth inequality, and the need to avoid further global financial crisis. With the devastating Covid-19 pandemic - a harbinger for further such pandemics - there is an even greater need for a reset, and for the reset to be that much greater. The chapters in this book were originally published as special issues in the journal International Review of Applied Economics.

Apartheid South Africa was often thought to run in the interests of the business elite. Yet 27 years after apartheid, those business interests remain largely entrenched. Why? Did the South African business community play a role in engineering this outcome – perhaps recognising the apartheid era was over, and jumping ship in time? Conversely, the mission of the ANC was widely perceived to be to shift wealth and power into the hands of the whole community. Yet despite ‘black empowerment’ measures, corporate ownership remains largely in white hands – and certainly in the hands of an elite few, even though no longer restricted to whites. This picture is replicated across the global south, where corporate ownership tends to be concentrated in the hands of an elite, rather than being more democratically spread. Why have alternative corporate forms not been pursued more vigorously, with ownership in the hands of customers, employees, and local communities? In the case of South Africa, where the majority of customers and employees are black, this could have delivered on the ANC’s mission to replace the apartheid era with a democratic one – in terms of wealth, incomes and power, as well as in terms of voting and civic rights. This edited volume explores all these questions and looks at ways to align corporate forms with economic and social goals. The chapters in this book were originally published as special issues of International Review of Applied Economics.

New Trade theory, New Growth theory, and the developing literature on National Systems of Innovation have combined to produce an explosion of interest over the past two decades around issues of trade, growth and technical change. A similar focus has dominated public policy debates. This book examines the interconnections among technology, economic growth and international trade. Market forces alone are seen to be far from adequate for the efficient generation, transfer, and diffusion of innovation, while public policy is identified as playing a key role for a truly innovative economy.

The four decades of neoliberalism, globalisation and financialisation have produced crises - financial and pandemic - and rising inequality. The climate emergency threatens the future of the planet. This book explores many dimensions of the background to these crises. There is the development of policy agendas to address the climate emergency. The rise in inequality is studied in terms of impacts of financialisation and the relationships between growth and inequality. The record of the neoliberal experiment in the USA is critically examined. The roles of financial institutions including public banks and micro-finance are explored, as is the need for improved financial oversight in the Economic and Monetary Union. The growth of global value chains has been a major aspect of globalisation, and the question is examined of whether such chains provide a ladder for development. Globalisation has also featured trade imbalances and large capital flows, and their causes and effects are examined with respect to China and South Africa respectively. This volume will be of great value to students, scholars and professionals interested in political economy, economic thought, climate change, sustainability and business studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, International Review of Applied Economics.

In recent years we have seen the predictions of our forebears that leisure time would increase as the years pass utterly confounded. It is a fact of life that in major cities across the world, transport systems are full to bursting with people on their way to and from work. As people have come to accept longer working hours as a way of life, a number of new issues have come into play.
These include labour market regulation, contract work and outsourcing, wages and increased attempts at better organisation. The impressive array of expert contributors, including Mark Harvey, Jane Humphries and Frank Wilkinson, have compiled a comprehensive and interesting book.

This examination of changes taking place in the world of football focuses on its growing commercialization. It covers such topics as fans becoming shareholders, with a say in the running of the clubs, and the setting-up of a government-sponsored scheme to support shareholder trusts.

The Political Economy of Competitiveness offers an original perspective on the relationship between economic theory and policy. It places the issues within an accessible political economy perspective.
Rejecting the narrowness of mainstream economics the authors deploy an interdisciplinary approach to the problem of economic growth, placing it in its historical and political context. Issues covered include:
* trade theory and policy
* industrial decline and policy
* markets, competition and innovation
* globalisation, unemployment and government policy.
The book provides a valuable guide to the major economic policy issues for both economists and business students.

This volume examines the problems besetting the world economy in the era of globalization and outlines possible solutions. The contributors reject the current orthodoxy in mainstream economics, challenging the fatalistic belief that the new globalized economy resists any change of course. The contributors demonstrate how contemporary forms of instability, from speculative capital movements to debt crises, can be offset by a more effective global financial regime. Issues covered include: international economic institutions and contemporary problems; the Asian crises of 1997-8 and their implications; and the economic consequences of globalization. "Global Instability" collects the reflections of leading economic thinkers, including Philip Arestis, Gerald Epstein, Ilene Grabel, Malcolm Sawyer, Ajit Singh and John Smithin.

The 25 years leading up to the international financial crisis have been depicted as 'capitalism unleashed', containing deregulation, privatisation, demutualisation and financialisation. Yet remarkably, given this economic and political context, co-operatives and mutuals appear to have been gaining ground in many countries, albeit modestly, even before the international financial crisis and the resulting global recession, from which the global economy is still only slowly recovering. The 2007-2008 international financial crisis called into question how appropriate the shareholder-owned model is, certainly if it is allowed to dominate the financial services sector. However the International Co-operative Alliance is determined to make the mutual and co-operative sector of the economy a dynamic, sustainable and increasingly important sector of the global economy. This book looks at the contribution of co-operative, mutual and employee-owned firms to the Asia Pacific economy - both currently and prospectively - and the challenges the standard 'Western' model faces regarding employment and output. It also looks at the role of Governments, the nature of co-operatives in China and the role of the state, and the future prospects for cross-border growth of co-operative and mutual business within Asia Pacific, and more widely. This book was originally published as a Special Issue of Asia Pacific Business Review.

The volume of secondary material now available to students is often overwhelming. The "Reader's Guide to the Social Sciences" offers students, teachers, researchers, and librarians help and advice on how to find what they want. The "Reader's Guide" is a guide to reading--it provides expert guidance to and critical analysis of the vast number of books available in hundred of specific topics.
This 2-volume work includes approximately 1,200 entries in A-Z order, critically reviewing the literature on specific topics from abortion to world systems theory. In addition, nine major entries cover each of the major disciplines (political economy; management and business; human geography; politics; sociology; law; psychology; organizational behavior) and the history and development of the social sciences in a broader sense.
Each entry lists the key texts published on the topic (normally 6-12 books or articles), followed by an essay of 800-1000 words that discusses these texts. The essays provide the reader with advice on the quality, emphasis, range and depth of coverage, and point of view, of each book listed in the bibliography. The major survey articles act as a large scale map of the discipline, enabling readers to put the standard length entries into context, to understand the historical development of the discipline, and to review key controversies and points of departure between different schools of thought.
The entries in "Reader's Guide to the Social Sciences" are fully cross-referenced and allow the reader to access scholarship in social science topics across a diverse range of often confusing disciplines.

This book presents unique management perspectives from Thailand's Healthcare Industry. It focuses on the areas of Personal Knowledge Management, Leadership Styles and Organisational Performance. The book highlights the various business challenges that organisations face in the context of globalisation, which itself has produced new opportunities and difficulties alike. In addition, it also elaborates on how even large organisations with strong histories can no longer compete unless they are willing to adapt to changing conditions. Demonstrating how transferring and encouraging knowledge within an organisation can generate approaches that promote its continuing success, the book mainly focuses on the perspective of the Resource Based View, a broadly recognised method for maintaining the competitive advantages of an organisation. It also stresses the importance of making the most use of organisational resources. The book offers a valuable reference work, not only for practitioners and academic researchers in the fields of Business & Management but also for students taking Leadership Management, Organisational Learning and Organisational Performance Appraisal courses, serving as a sourcebook for the principles of successful management.

This book is the culmination of several years work by a group of academics, policy-makers and other professionals looking to understand how alternative economic thinking - and indeed thinking from quite different social-scientific disciplines - could enhance the mainstream economic approach to environmental and natural-resource problems. Of the editors, Dietz comes from the mainstream economics tradition, while Michie and Oughton draw explicitly on institutional and evolutionary economics. The various authors represent a range of disciplinary backgrounds and approaches. This book draws on the strengths of each and all of these approaches to analyse environmental issues and what can be done to tackle these through corporate and public policy. This book makes the case for an inter-disciplinary approach. Two themes which emerge repeatedly throughout the book are the need for an interdisciplinary theory of technological change, and the need for a similarly interdisciplinary approach to the study of human behaviour and how it influences both production and consumption choices. The two themes are of course related. Resolving environmental questions requires an understanding of their nature, of their causes and, to the extent that they are anthropogenic, of how to change human behaviour. These fundamental issues are the focus of the four chapters that form Part 1 of this volume. The remainder of the volume develops them in more detail. .

Apartheid South Africa was often thought to run in the interests of the business elite. Yet 27 years after apartheid, those business interests remain largely entrenched. Why? Did the South African business community play a role in engineering this outcome - perhaps recognising the apartheid era was over, and jumping ship in time? Conversely, the mission of the ANC was widely perceived to be to shift wealth and power into the hands of the whole community. Yet despite 'black empowerment' measures, corporate ownership remains largely in white hands - and certainly in the hands of an elite few, even though no longer restricted to whites. This picture is replicated across the global south, where corporate ownership tends to be concentrated in the hands of an elite, rather than being more democratically spread. Why have alternative corporate forms not been pursued more vigorously, with ownership in the hands of customers, employees, and local communities? In the case of South Africa, where the majority of customers and employees are black, this could have delivered on the ANC's mission to replace the apartheid era with a democratic one - in terms of wealth, incomes and power, as well as in terms of voting and civic rights. This edited volume explores all these questions and looks at ways to align corporate forms with economic and social goals. The chapters in this book were originally published as special issues of International Review of Applied Economics.

This book reassesses the links between contracts, co-operation, and economic competitiveness. It uses new theoretical research and case studies to show how the economic theory of contract is being reshaped by the role of institutions in promoting co-operation and trust. It makes an important and topical contribution to an area of interdisciplinary scholarship by drawing together the work of economists, sociologists, and lawyers.

The Oxford Handbook of Mutual, Co-Operative, and Co-Owned Business investigates all types of 'member owned' organizations, whether consumer co-operatives, agricultural and producer co-operatives, worker co-operatives, mutual building societies, friendly societies, credit unions, solidarity organizations, mutual insurance companies, or employee-owned companies. Such organizations can be owned by their consumers, the producers, or the employees - whether through single-stakeholder or multi-stakeholder ownership. This complex set of organizations is named differently across countries: from 'mutual' in the UK, to 'solidarity cooperatives' in Latin America. In some countries, such organizations are not even officially recognized and thus lack a specific denomination. For the sake of clarity, this Handbook will refer to member-owned organizations to encompass the variety of non-investor-owned organizations, and in the national case study chapters the terms used will be those most widely employed in that country. These alternative corporate forms have emerged in a variety of economic sectors in almost all advanced economies since the time of the industrial revolution and the development of capitalism, through the subsequent creation and dominance of the limited liability company. Until recently, these organizations were generally regarded as a rather marginal component of the economy. However, over the past few years, member-owned organizations have come to be seen in some countries, at least, as potentially attractive in light of their ability to tackle various economic and social concerns, and their relative resilience during the financial and economic crises of 2007-2017.

The 25 years leading up to the international financial crisis have been depicted as 'capitalism unleashed', containing deregulation, privatisation, demutualisation and financialisation. Yet remarkably, given this economic and political context, co-operatives and mutuals appear to have been gaining ground in many countries, albeit modestly, even before the international financial crisis and the resulting global recession, from which the global economy is still only slowly recovering. The 2007-2008 international financial crisis called into question how appropriate the shareholder-owned model is, certainly if it is allowed to dominate the financial services sector. However the International Co-operative Alliance is determined to make the mutual and co-operative sector of the economy a dynamic, sustainable and increasingly important sector of the global economy. This book looks at the contribution of co-operative, mutual and employee-owned firms to the Asia Pacific economy - both currently and prospectively - and the challenges the standard 'Western' model faces regarding employment and output. It also looks at the role of Governments, the nature of co-operatives in China and the role of the state, and the future prospects for cross-border growth of co-operative and mutual business within Asia Pacific, and more widely. This book was originally published as a Special Issue of Asia Pacific Business Review.

The operations of the firm lie at the heart of studying business and business economics. This volume--the first in the new Oxford Management Readers Series--brings together the classic articles analyzing the role of firms and the relations between them, focusing particularly on the increasingly widespread idea that a firm is based on a set of internal and external contracts. The book will be an invaluable tool for teachers and students of business, economics, and management. The editors' Introduction provides an accessible overview, and Nobel prizewinner Ronald Coase contributes a foreword.

The Oxford Handbook of Mutuals and Co-Owned Business investigates all types of 'member owned' organizations, whether consumer co-operatives, agricultural and producer co-operatives, worker co-operatives, mutual building societies, friendly societies, credit unions, solidarity organizations, mutual insurance companies, or employee-owned companies. Such organizations can be owned by their consumers, the producers, or the employees - whether through single-stakeholder or multi-stakeholder ownership. This complex set of organizations is named differently across countries: from 'mutual' in the UK, to 'solidarity cooperatives' in Latin America. In some countries, such organizations are not even officially recognized and thus lack a specific denomination. For the sake of clarity, this Handbook will refer to member-owned organizations to encompass the variety of non-investor-owned organizations, and in the national case study chapters the terms used will be those most widely employed in that country. These alternative corporate forms have emerged in a variety of economic sectors in almost all advanced economies since the time of the industrial revolution and the development of capitalism, through the subsequent creation and dominance of the limited liability company. Until recently, these organizations were generally regarded as a rather marginal component of the economy. However, over the past few years, member-owned organizations have come to be seen in some countries, at least, as potentially attractive in light of their ability to tackle various economic and social concerns, and their relative resilience during the financial and economic crises of 2007-2013.

This book is about the processes of innovation at the global, national, and corporate levels. It explores the contexts, complexities, and contradictions of these processes from a range of disciplinary perspectives and is divided into three main sections: Globalization and Technology; Innovation and Growth; Governance, Business Performance, and Public Policy. Interdisciplinary and international in its scope this book provides important evidence and arguments on the processes of innovation, and in so doing addresses real challenges for policy-makers, managers, and academics alike.