Entrepreneur in an Age of Upheaval Carl Friedrich von Siemens was one of the significant business figures in an era filled with crises and turmoil. He became “Head of the House of Siemens” after World War I and managed the company throughout the German Great Inflation and the Great Depression, as well as during the Third Reich and into the early years of World War II. This biography provides the first comprehensive portrait of the personality and diverse accomplishments of a man who reorganized the Siemens companies, headed the Reichsbahn national railroad for ten years, and served politically as a delegate from a democracy-supporting party. The study shows how he increasingly turned away from party politics, and how his position evolved yet again during the Third Reich, from compliance with the regime to a growing personal alienation.

Jürgen Kocka is one of the foremost historians of Germany whose work has been devoted to the integration of different genres of the social and economic history of Europe during the period of industrialization. This collection of essays gives a representative sample of his effort to develop, by reference to Marx and Weber, new and powerful analytical tools for understanding the dynamics of modern industrial societies.

Introduction : rethinking European kinship : transregional and transnational families / David Warren Sabean and Simon Teuscher -- The historical emergence and massification of international families in Europe and its diaspora / Jose C. Moya -- The medieval and early modern experience -- Mamluk and Ottoman political households : an alternative model of "kinship" and 'family' / Gabriel Piterberg -- From local signori to European high nobility : the Gonzaga family networks in the fifteenth century / Christina Antenhofer -- Property regimes and migration of patrician families in western Europe around 1500 / Simon Teuscher -- Trans-dynasticism at the dawn of the modern era : kinship dynamics among ruling families / Michaela Hohkamp -- Marriage, commercial capital, and business agency : transregional Sephardic (and Armenian) families in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Mediterranean / Francesca Trivellato -- Those in between : princely families on the margins of the great powers : the Franco-German frontier, 1477-1830 / Jonathan Spangler -- Spiritual kinship : the Moravians as an international fellowship of brothers and sisters (1730s-1830s) / Gisele Mettele -- Modernity -- Families of empires and nations : Phanariot Hanedans from the Ottoman Empire to the world around it (1669-1856) / Christine Philliou -- Into the world : kinship and nation-building in France, 1750-1885 / Christopher H. Johnson -- German international families in the nineteenth century : the Siemens -- Family as a thought experiment / David Warren Sabean -- The culture of Caribbean migration to Britain in the 1950s / Mary -- Chamberlain -- Exile, familial ideology, and gender roles in Palestinian camps in Jordan since 1948 / Stephanie Latte Abdallah -- Mirror image of family relations : social links between patel migrants in Britain and India / Mario Rutten and Pravin J. Patel.

Siemens combined his engineering brilliance with entrepreneurial skills to develop a business whose activities at an early stage nearly spanned the globe. Siemens held a multinational vision almost from the start. The Siemens firms were unique in that, rather than starting small then slowly growing and branching out, they were from their inception international organizations. The story of Siemens is a vital part of the history of industrialization in Europe. It will make fascinating reading for scholars and students of German history, business history, and the history of technology.

When The Knowledge-Creating Company (OUP; nearly 40,000 copies sold) appeared, it was hailed as a landmark work in the field of knowledge management. Now, Enabling Knowledge Creation ventures even further into this all-important territory, showing how firms can generate and nurture ideas by using the concepts introduced in the first book. Weaving together lessons from such international leaders as Siemens, Unilever, Skandia, and Sony, along with their own first-hand consulting experiences, the authors introduce knowledge enabling--the overall set of organizational activities that promote knowledge creation--and demonstrate its power to transform an organization's knowledge into value-creating actions. They describe the five key "knowledge enablers" and outline what it takes to instill a knowledge vision, manage conversations, mobilize knowledge activists, create the right context for knowledge creation, and globalize local knowledge. The authors stress that knowledge creation must be more than the exclusive purview of one individual--or designated "knowledge" officer. Indeed, it demands new roles and responsibilities for everyone in the organization--from the elite in the executive suite to the frontline workers on the shop floor. Whether an activist, a caring expert, or a corporate epistemologist who focuses on the theory of knowledge itself, everyone in an organization has a vital role to play in making "care" an integral part of the everyday experience; in supporting, nurturing, and encouraging microcommunities of innovation and fun; and in creating a shared space where knowledge is created, exchanged, and used for sustained, competitive advantage. This much-anticipated sequel puts practical tools into the hands of managers and executives who are struggling to unleash the power of knowledge in their organization.

Rudolf Steiner gave this complex sequence of dense, subtle, multileveled lectures and seminars to students of economics in Dornach, Switzerland, during the summer of 1922. The course reflects a lifetime of thinking on the subject and marks the conclusion of his intense five-year period of activism in the service of social, political, and economic issues. During this time, which began as World War I was ending in 1917, he worked tirelessly to promote the cause of what he called “threefolding” (Dreigliederung), by which he meant rethinking the social order on the basis of clear separation and independence of the three fundamental spheres of activity that make up a society. He proposed three independent systems: (1) an autonomous rights sphere (limited to judicial and political matters), (2) an autonomous economic sphere (cooperative or associative by nature), and (3) an autonomous spiritual-cultural sphere. The autonomy of these three spheres, he believed, would make possible a free, healthy, productive society and open the possibility of a lasting peace. Rethinking Economics is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the true nature of an economy and how it works. Steiner presents the basic elements of what it would take to create a just, socially responsible, and ecologically aware economy today.

Lincoln's war, the North's attack on the South, took the life of 622,000 citizens and altered the government's structure. Marx and Engels watched the war from afar and applauded his efforts. The media and our government-controlled schools have presented a deceptive view of every historical event and have whitewashed the most scandalous political leaders and vilified leaders who have worked in the best interests of the people. Following Lincoln's precedent-setting war, we have been repeatedly lied into wars. Currently, our young men and women shed their blood in foreign lands while well-connected corporations make massive profits rebuilding the infrastructure that other corporations have demolished. Meanwhile, our politicians, possessing inside knowledge, grow richer through their investments and the bribes they accept from deep-pocketed lobbyists. They have not listened to their constituents for decades. CIA thugs, in behalf of the corporations, commit terrorist acts in other countries which the U.S. government and media blame on the so-called insurgents. In 2010, the Pentagon paid the following to the top five out of 100 (1) Lockheed Martin Corp. $16,700,588,328; (2) Northrop Grumman Corp. $11,145,533,497; (3) Boeing Co. $10,462,626,196; (4) Raytheon Co. $6,727,232,555; (5) Science Applications International Corp. $5,474,482,583. Yet, throughout the country, vital infrastructure is crumbling and politicians are selling taxpayer-funded public properties to private interests as a profitable venture. The new owners exploit the public by raising service rates while diminishing the services.

What explains the national economic success of the United States, Britain, Germany, and Japan? What can be learned from the long-term championship performances of leading business firms in each country? How important were specific innovations by individual entrepreneurs? And in the end, what is the true nature of capitalist development?The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Thomas K. McCraw and his coauthors present penetrating answers to these questions. Creating Modern Capitalism is the first book to explain for a broad audience the interconnections among technological innovation, management science, the power of entrepreneurship, and national economic growth. The authors approach each question from a comparative framework and with a unique triple focus on national economic systems, particular companies, and individual business leaders.Above all, the book focuses on how specific entrepreneurs influenced the economic success of their countries: Josiah Wedgwood and Henry Royce in Britain; August Thyssen and Georg von Siemens in Germany; Henry Ford, Alfred Sloan, and the two Thomas J. Watsons in the United States; Sakichi Toyoda, Masatoshi Ito, and Toshifumi Suzuki in Japan.The product of a three-year collaborative effort at the Harvard Business School, the book combines cutting-edge scholarship with a finely tuned sense of the art of management. It will engage general readers as well as those with a special interest in entrepreneurship and the evolution of national business systems.

Despite increasingly open markets and a pervasive move toward international production methods, national governments continue to pursue remarkably distinctive policies for promoting innovation in industry. J. Nicholas Ziegler analyzes this apparent paradox by comparing government efforts to promote technological advance in Germany and France. His findings reveal a great deal about the roots and limits of public strategies for economic growth. Through close comparison of three technologies— digital telephone exchanges, computer-controlled machine tools, and semiconductors—Ziegler shows how each country displays predictable strengths and weaknesses in promoting innovation. These distinctive capacities depend more upon the links among different skill- and knowledge-bearing elites than on the structure of the state or the industrial sector in question. As business outcomes hinge less on economies of scale and more on knowledge-based competition, the politics of contending interest groups steadily gives way to a competition for status and jurisdiction among more specialized professional groups. As a result, Germany's strengths stem directly from what Ziegler calls an ethos of competence whereas France's strengths stem from an order of state-created elites. More generally, Ziegler contends, neo-institutional approaches to public policy need to pay far more attention to the professional identities of different occupational groups.