The book introduces a unique and innovative perspective for the study of international business networking. In contrast to the standard construction of models for optimal strategic decision-making, the essays in this book emphasise interpretation, learning by doing, trust and co-operation in the international business community. The editors focus upon business relationships within and between firms as well as the importance of middle management in the international arena.

Although the area of International Manufacturing Network (IMN) and International Operations Network (ION) has received considerable attention in the literature, most of studies appear multifaceted and interdisciplinary, and thereby require thorough investigation from both academic and practical perspectives, in order to deepen our related understanding. The book seeks advanced contributions that will combine theoretical insights and empirical experience by offering a detailed examination of IMN and, further, ION from various perspectives. This book can be used as a reference material for scholar-practitioners, business executives, and university researchers who need to deepen their understanding on the importance and influence of IMN and ION as well as their development. The book is important because there are few reference/resource materials available related to IMN and ION.

The phenomenon of globalization has increased in recent decades due to the opening of borders in Eastern Europe and the sudden emergence of other countries in the global trade economy. Yet, the process of becoming global to get access to growing markets or to achieve quality, service, and/or cost advantages from the reconfigured Value Chains is one

In recent decades, the international economy has witnessed fundamental changes in the way manufacturing is organised: products are no longer manufactured in their entirety in a single location. Instead, the production process is often split across a number of stages located in countries that are frequently far apart from each other. By spreading out their manufacturing and supply chain activities globally through international investment and intra-firm trade, Multinational enterprises (MNEs) play a focal role in this reorganisation of production. Our ability to understand the global economy, therefore, requires an understanding of the interdependencies between the entities involved in such fragmented production. Traditional methods and statistical approaches are insufficient to address this challenge. Instead, an approach is required that allows us to account for these interdependencies. The most promising approach so far is network analysis. ‘Networks of International Trade and Investment’ makes a case for the use of network analysis alongside existing techniques in order to investigate pressing issues in international business and economics. The authors put forward a range of well-informed studies that examine compelling topics such as the role of emerging economies in global trade and the evolution of world trade patterns. They look at how network analysis, as both an approach and a methodology, can explain international business and economics phenomena, in particular, in relation to international trade and investment. Providing a comprehensive but accessible explanation of the applications of network analysis and some of the most recent methodological advances in its field, this edited volume is an important contribution to research in international trade and investment.

One of the most well-known of all network optimization problems is the shortest path problem, where a shortest connection between two locations in a road network is to be found. This problem is the basis of route planners in vehicles and on the Internet. Networks are very common structures; they consist primarily of a ?nite number of locations (points, nodes), together with a number of links (edges, arcs, connections) between the locations. Very often a certain number is attached to the links, expressing the distance or the cost between the end points of that connection. Networks occur in an extremely wide range of applications, among them are: road networks; cable networks; human relations networks; project scheduling networks; production networks; distribution networks; neural networks; networks of atoms in molecules. In all these cases there are “objects” and “relations” between the objects. A n- work optimization problem is actually nothing else than the problem of ?nding a subset of the objects and the relations, such that a certain optimization objective is satis?ed.

This book addresses the changing nature of high-tech industries in Asia, particularly in the electronics sector. Its up-to-date findings will be invaluable to those involved in management, production networks and corporate strategy.

This contributed volume focuses on diasporans, their characteristics, networks, resources and activities in relation to international business and entrepreneurship. It presents an overview of diaspora concepts from an economic perspective, and analyzes the global-economic and societal effects and mechanisms, revealing both positive and negative aspects of diaspora activities. Providing insights into the socio-cultural influences, it discusses diaspora entrepreneurship and international business, the respective organisational models, investments and business types. Lastly it offers an assessment of managing diaspora resources and policymaking. This book was created by an interdisciplinary team of editors, co-authors and reviewers including historians, sociologists, psychologists, linguists and ethnologists, as well as experts in public policy, international business, marketing and entrepreneurship. This unique team (many of the authors are themselves diasporans with an extensive understanding of their topic) provides the first global academic platform on the subject, combining the latest empirical evidence from developing, emerging, transitional and developed countries with various combinations of diaspora flows that to date have received little attention.

The Routledge Companion to the Makers of Global Business draws together a wide array of state-of-the-art research on multinational enterprises. The volume aims to deepen our historical understanding of how firms and entrepreneurs contributed to transformative processes of globalization. This book explores how global business facilitated the mechanisms of cross-border interactions that affected individuals, organizations, industries, national economies and international relations. The 37 chapters span the Middle Ages to the present day, analyzing the emergence of institutions and actors alongside key contextual factors for global business development. Contributors examine business as a central actor in globalization, covering myriad entrepreneurs, organizational forms and key industrial sectors. Taking a historical view, the chapters highlight the intertwined and evolving nature of economic, political, social, technological and environmental patterns and relationships. They explore dynamic change as well as lasting continuities, both of which often only become visible – and can only be fully understood – when analyzed in the long run. With dedicated chapters on challenges such as political risk, sustainability and economic growth, this prestigious collection provides a one-stop shop for a key business discipline. Chapter 31 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This handbook aims to highlight fundamental, methodological and computational aspects of networks of queues to provide insights and to unify results that can be applied in a more general manner. The handbook is organized into five parts: Part 1 considers exact analytical results such as of product form type. Topics include characterization of product forms by physical balance concepts and simple traffic flow equations, classes of service and queue disciplines that allow a product form, a unified description of product forms for discrete time queueing networks, insights for insensitivity, and aggregation and decomposition results that allow sub networks to be aggregated into single nodes to reduce computational burden. Part 2 looks at monotonicity and comparison results such as for computational simplification by either of two approaches: stochastic monotonicity and ordering results based on the ordering of the process generators, and comparison results and explicit error bounds based on an underlying Markov reward structure leading to ordering of expectations of performance measures. Part 3 presents diffusion and fluid results. It specifically looks at the fluid regime and the diffusion regime. Both of these are illustrated through fluid limits for the analysis of system stability, diffusion approximations for multi-server systems, and a system fed by Gaussian traffic. Part 4 illustrates computational and approximate results through the classical MVA (mean value analysis) and QNA (queueing network analyzer) for computing mean and variance of performance measures such as queue lengths and sojourn times; numerical approximation of response time distributions; and approximate decomposition results for large open queueing networks. spanPart 5 enlightens selected applications as spanloss networks originating from circuit switched telecommunications applications, capacity sharing originating from packet switching in data networks, and a hospital application that is of growing present day interest. spanThe book shows that spanthe intertwined progress of theory and practicespan will remain to be most intriguing and will continue to be the basis of further developments in queueing networks.

The book outlines and develops an integrated and pragmatic socio-economic approach towards undertaking effective MNC strategy in emerging country markets. This, labelled the 'institutional network approach' (INA), applies a new strategic perspective to international business operations and emphasises the continuous interplay between institutions and networks in designing and executing global strategies. The INA integrates the shareholder and stakeholder viewpointinto a comparative holistic perspective of international business strategy based on a broader societal approach.