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 researchers 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.

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 researchers 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.

International news has long been studied and understood as produced by outsiders – foreign correspondents working in exotic, international locales. This book challenges this established view by putting the spotlight on the insiders working in their own countries producing news for international audiences. Western male foreign correspondents who report from areas affected by crises and conflicts for an ‘audience back home’ have long stood in as visible metaphors of international news production. But the understanding of who produces international news is starting to shift as scholars come to take into account the often-invisible role played by locally based, non-Western news-workers who have always been part and parcel of international news production. The roles and responsibilities of these professional, specialised locals within the global flow of news have only increased as falling news industry revenues have meant reductions in non-local staff in foreign news bureaus. Available research shows that the involvement of local journalists and fixers, as well as NGOs, as sources of news and information in international news production is marked by economic, socio-cultural and practice-related tensions. To shed light on these growing yet relatively less investigated changes happening in international news-making, this book brings together the latest of studies conducted on this form of journalistic labour around the world. This book will contribute to both the breadth and depth of our future understanding of local news-work that benefits distant audiences, and also help cement the place of such journalistic work as a vital topic of analysis in its own right. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.

Academics worldwide need empirically developed, concise ideas to make their cross-cultural teams and organizations productive. This invaluable reference tool provides an essential resource for academics to develop their understanding and professional practice in working across cultural boundaries. It considers the fundamental theories and frameworks of cross-cultural management and deepens our understanding of how they can be applied to management knowledge. Managers, researchers, students, HRM practitioners, and specialists in international business and cross-cultural affairs, will find this book a valuable reference source. Chapters suggest how frameworks can be further developed and how managers and employees can put them to use so as to build cross-cultural understanding and productive cross-functional teams.

"I enthusiastically endorse the fourth edition of IHRM. The editors are to be congratulated for recruiting the top-rated authors in this field to contribute to this volume. The chapters are up to date, insightful, and sometimes even provocative. Students, including post-grads and advanced undergraduates, as well as savvy practitioners, will benefit from reading this volume." Neal M. Ashkanasy, Professor of Management, The University of Queensland Anne-Wil Harzing and Ashly Pinnington’s bestselling textbook has guided thousands of students through their International Human Resource Management studies. The fourth edition retains the critical edge, academic rigour and breadth of coverage which have established this book as the most authoritative text on the market. The new edition by our international team of experts provides an even more stimulating journey through the core curriculum, contemporary debates and emerging issues in IHRM. New for the fourth edition: Reduced number of chapters to allow for greater depth and an improved structure ensuring fundamental topics underpin your knowledge Expanded coverage of Equality and Diversity, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability and Cross-Cultural Management in line with developments in the field New Stop and Reflect feature provides an opportunity to test your understanding at regular intervals This text comes with access to a companion website containing web links, SAGE journal articles and more.

What has dictated the rate and direction of technological change? How central has it been to industrial progress? How has it related to other determinants of economic growth and development? In Technology and Industrial Progress, Dr von Tunzelmann examines theoretical views on the nature and contribution of technology, and the empirical evidence from the major industrializing countries from the 18th century to the present day. The experiences of countries regarded in their time as the leaders of industrialization - Britain in the 18th century, the United States in the 19th century and Japan in the 20th century - are critically compared by the author. The following chapters study the transfer of each of these patterns of technology and growth to later industrializers, such as continental Europe, the Soviet Union, and today's newly industrializing countries. Adopting approaches drawn from evolutionary economics, Dr von Tunzelmann links micro-level phenomena relating to individual firms and technologies to macro-level outcomes as reflected in economic growth and development. This long-awaited book is exceptional both in the range of countries surveyed and the breadth of topics analysed, encompassing changes in production processes, products and marketing, management and finance.

Contrary to the common view that globalization undermines social agency, ‘alter-globalization activists', that is, those who contest globalization in its neo-liberal form, have developed new ways to become actors in the global age. They propose alternatives to Washington Consensus policies, implement horizontal and participatory organization models and promote a nascent global public space. Rather than being anti-globalization, these activists have built a truly global movement that has gathered citizens, committed intellectuals, indigenous, farmers, dalits and NGOs against neoliberal policies in street demonstrations and Social Forums all over the world, from Bangalore to Seattle and from Porto Alegre to Nairobi. This book analyses this worldwide movement on the bases of extensive field research conducted since 1999. Alter-Globalization provides a comprehensive account of these critical global forces and their attempts to answer one of the major challenges of our time: How can citizens and civil society contribute to the building of a fairer, sustainable and more democratic co-existence of human beings in a global world?

Bioregionalism is an innovative way of thinking about place and planet from an ecological perspective. Although bioregional ideas occur regularly in ecocritical writing, until now no systematic effort has been made to outline the principles of bioregional literary criticism and to use it as a way to read, write, understand, and teach literature. The twenty-four original essays here are written by an outstanding selection of international scholars. The range of bioregions covered is global and includes such diverse places as British Columbia’s Meldrum Creek and Italy’s Po River Valley, the Arctic and the Outback. There are even forays into cyberspace and outer space. In their comprehensive introduction, the editors map the terrain of the bioregional movement, including its history and potential to inspire and invigorate place-based and environmental literary criticism. Responding to bioregional tenets, this volume is divided into four sections. The essays in the “Reinhabiting” section narrate experiments in living-in-place and restoring damaged environments. The “Rereading” essays practice bioregional literary criticism, both by examining texts with strong ties to bioregional paradigms and by opening other, less-obvious texts to bioregional analysis. In “Reimagining,” the essays push bioregionalism to evolve—by expanding its corpus of texts, coupling its perspectives with other approaches, or challenging its core constructs. Essays in the “Renewal” section address bioregional pedagogy, beginning with local habitat studies and concluding with musings about the Internet. In response to the environmental crisis, we must reimagine our relationship to the places we inhabit. This volume shows how literature and literary studies are fundamental tools to such a reimagining.