Mourdoukoutas argues that as globalization gains momentum and reengineering becomes universal, firms can no longer be sure of achieving sustainable competitive advantages through improved operating effectiveness alone. The new business strategy will focus on revenue growth and on the constructive destruction of conventional corporations, through collective entrepreneurship and its division in the product supply chain. To enhance revenues through the management of constructive destruction, companies must achieve organizational mutations and permutations, turning themselves from hierarchical managerial units into entrepreneurial networks. These entrepreneurial networks are communities that share a common fate: the risks and rewards associated with the discovery and exploitation of new businesses. Mourdoukoutas says that in some cases entrepreneurial networks can be extended outside the conventional borders of the corporation--vertically to suppliers, distributors, and customers, and horizontally to former competitors. In such networks the focus of business strategy should not be on the division of labor by task or process; rather, upon the divison of entrepreneurship and its diffusion among all of the firM's members. This is a challenging and thoughtful study and analysis for corporate management and their academic colleagues.

Will China's growing economy outstrip the economic power of Japan and the advanced industrialized democracies of the West? No. For China to continue its phenomenal growth and develop sustainable comparative advantage, it needs to sustain a huge world market for its products and the technological and organizational capacity for innovation. According to Arayama and Mourdoukoutas, because China cannot secure these economic conditions, its role in the world economy will be limited to that of a mass producer of certain types of products. China's strength is its low-cost, mass-production capacity--but the lack of an ingrained capacity to innovate constrains China to transforming foreign innovations into lower-priced imitations. Arayama and Mourdoukoutas detail their argument carefully and precisely, in a well-written analysis that will be necessary reading for business decision makers and their academic colleagues, and for others who are seriously interested in the future of world business.

Banking is now an active asset-liability risk management enterprise, attributable in large part to the globalization of commerce. The authors of this descriptive yet practical, applications-oriented book examine the sources and management of traditional and nontraditional banking risks, then the conventional on-balance sheet and the modern off-balance sheet risk management methods. Unlike other more general risk management books, however, they focus closely on the use of financial derivatives--instruments to control the core risks attributable to credit and to fluctuations in interest and foreign exchange rates. The authors cover all this and more, giving experienced and novice practitioners both an easily accessed way to understand and cope with the banking risks they are already familiar with, and the new risks just emerging. The book will also be useful as a supplemental text in college-level courses on money and banking and on the operation of financial markets in general.

The authors begin by explaining how banking has moved from a routine financial process to an active and impersonal process of risk management, from relationship banking to community banking. Even banks that have stayed with traditional lending are now assuming greater risks. The authors then focus on the details of measuring, monitoring, and controlling risks. They define risk and the different philosophical approaches to its management, then continue with a discussion of operational matters, such as risk identification and classification. They discuss the evolution of banking risk management and the banking environment of the 20th Century, with special attention to the differences in methods used during the time of fragmented and highly regulated economies and those used in the highly integrated global economies of the last quarter century. The book describes in useful detail the major financial derivative products: forwards, options, caps, collars, and swaps, and their uses as risk management devices and tools for speculation, both. The book also treats on-balance sheet risk management methods, such as credit options and credit swaps. Interest rate risk is also covered in detail, and so too the management of foreign currency risk.

The globalization of business has ended corporate colonialism in international commerce, and out of this has emerged what the author calls the global corporation. Differing in many important ways from the now obsolete multinational corporation it is replacing, the global corporation is actually a network of independent entrepreneurs, liberated from the control of headquarters, and thus able to implement a new vision of the overall enterprise, its competitive strategies, and how it coordinates and communicates within itself. The author carefully delineates the subtle distinctions among concepts that are often taken, mistakenly, as synonyms for globalization, such as multinationalization, and elicits the implications these distinctions have for the management of international business.

Nurtured in the post-GATT era, and especially in the last twenty years, the model of the global corporation describes an international business organization in which the parent company treats each national market as a part of a single, integrated regional or global market, setting up autonomous divisions or forming alliances and partnerships to handle each product and business line for the entire region or entire world market. In this network organization, the parent company plays the role of support office for the individual divisions, which are treated as equals. The structure consists of the support level, which handles company-wide concerns, and unit level, which handles unit-specific concerns. The two-level management is supported and re-enforced by a corporate vision and by efficient and effective communication and incentive structures.

This book places collective entrepreneurship at the center of business strategy to provide a comprehensive discussion of the institutions and policies that nurture entrepreneurship, not only in start-up, but also in large, established corporations (intrapreneurship). The authors show that entrepreneurship is the only economic resource that can not be easily transferred across corporate boundaries. It must be nurtured within business institutions in ways that release the imagination, ingenuity, and creativity of individuals and groups.

The authors look at the complementary roles of venture capitalists and business incubators, the importance of the Internet, job rotation and labor transfers, working teams, cash-based bonuses, ESOPs and stock options, corporate spinoffs, strategic acquisitions, corporate venturing, and strategic alliances. The book also discusses an agenda for government in an entrepreneurial economy, the creation of an entrepreneurship regime, and various related topics, including bridging start-up equity gaps. Corporate planners are provided with insights needed to develop entrepreneurial groups both in and out of their organizations. Independent entrepreneurs are given a succinct summary of things they need to know, from securing start-up capital to finding the money to grow established businesses. VCs, bankers, and other types of funders will find this a concise survey and evaluation, and a useful guide to give to their clients.

Bankers in Japan and China are masters of accounting, not risk management, and American-style rescue packages won't solve their banking crises. Cleaning up balance sheets and purging non-performing loans won't work either, say Arayama and Mourdoukoutas. The problem goes deeper. It stems from high growth environments and tight government regulation. The result has been to limit competition in Japan and eliminate it in China. And that led to the control of management behavior, which weakened incentives for Japanese and Chinese bank decision-makers to manage, hands-on, their traditional and nontraditional banking risks. Adding to the problem is rationed credit, reflecting MITI and MOF priorities in Japan and those set by the central planning authorities in China. Japanese bankers have been turned into experts on the abacus, the ancient calculator, but they have little experience with or understanding of the other more important aspects of the banking enterprise. Arayama and Mourdoukoutas lay it all out in a challenging, provocative, readable study and analysis. It is an essential resource for academicians and policymakers in business, government, and international finance and investment.

Arayama and Mourdoukoutas make it clear that Japanese and Chinese bankers must learn how to behave as for-profit institutions, where managers are accountable to the owners and other stakeholders. Second, they must be freed from government directives (in China) and guidance (in Japan) that control their day-to-day operations, and which restrict freedom to develop new products and businesses. Third, Japanese and Chinese bank managers must learn to act as true bankers. They must learn how to manage credit risk and function as public trading corporations. They must also learn how to deal with transparency and full disclosure rules and regulations, just as their Western counterparts must and do. In other words, say the authors, bank managers must escape the abacus mentality and learn how to use their brains rather than their fingers... and that may take much longer than anxious Western observers would have expected.

How can the contemplations and teachings of a man who lived in ancient Greece help you in your role leading a tech giant or a restaurant chain?

Though skills and experience may have landed you your position, they don’t make you a great leader. Instead, true leaders evolve out of those who learn to look within and question themselves before they try to lead anyone else.

In this book, aspiring leaders will explore ideas from the greatest thinkers of all time--including Aristotle, Heraclitus, Sophocles, Hesiod, and others--and learn how each of these classic teachings applies to the challenges of the modern workplace.

In The Ten Golden Rules of Leadership, teachings discussed and related to the twenty-first-century work environment include:

• Know thyself
• Do not waste energy on things you cannot change
• Nurture community
• Always embrace the truth
• Let competition reveal talent, and more

This groundbreaking text provides both theory and strategy for operating in a semiglobal economy in which international businesses must compete in highly globalized and highly localized markets at the same time. Unlike the traditional transnational and matrix corporate models, a semiglobal corporation organizes its operations according to the global/local content of its value propositions rather than according to geographical regions, products, or contribution to the parent company's performance. As an example of a semiglobal corporation, the Honda Motor Company has a global vision when it comes to highly global bundles like car engines, and a local vision when it comes to highly localized car financing and servicing. Designed as a supplementary text for courses in international business, development economics, marketing, and strategic planning, "Business Strategy in a Semiglobal Economy" raises important challenges to the conventional models of business organization and the competitive strategies that proceed from them.

This groundbreaking text provides both theory and strategy for operating in a semiglobal economy in which international businesses must compete in highly globalized and highly localized markets at the same time. Unlike the traditional transnational and matrix corporate models, a semiglobal corporation organizes its operations according to the global/local content of its value propositions rather than according to geographical regions, products, or contribution to the parent company's performance. As an example of a semiglobal corporation, the Honda Motor Company has a global vision when it comes to highly global bundles like car engines, and a local vision when it comes to highly localized car financing and servicing. Designed as a supplementary text for courses in international business, development economics, marketing, and strategic planning, "Business Strategy in a Semiglobal Economy" raises important challenges to the conventional models of business organization and the competitive strategies that proceed from them.

Why are word-of-mouth campaigns effective for some products, while failing for others? Which group of consumers should be the target of viral marketing efforts, and how can you turn word of mouth into buzz? Panos Mourdoukoutas and George J Siomkos provide the answers

The transformation of a desire for a product into an "epidemic" was, is and will always be the dream of each and every marketer. For some marketers this dream becomes reality. For others it remains simply a fantasy. "The Seven Principles of WOM and Buzz Marketing" offers the essential tools - seven simple steps - to launch an effective WOM and buzz campaign that helps products to cross the tipping point and to reach the mass market:

Begin with the consumers

Be innovative

Target the right group

Create the right message

Find the right environment