Kategoria BISAC: Business & Economics >> Government & Business

The economic, political, and cultural forces of globalization affect every citizen of the world--and the institutions that govern them. Against a backdrop of increasing resistance to these forces, especially in the developing world, this volume establishes a new theoretical and practical framework for analyzing the effects of globalization on nation-states, local governments, nongovernmental and international organizations, and other administrative systems. Invoking a term attributed to Darius the Great over 2,500 years ago--sound governance--editors Ali Farazmand and Rosalyn Carter set...

Few topics have inspired as much international furor and misinformation as the development and distribution of genetically altered foods. For thousands of years, farmers have bred crops for their resistance to disease, productivity, and nutritional value; and over the past century, scientists have used increasingly more sophisticated methods for modifying them at the genetic level. But only since the 1970s have advances in biotechnology (or gene-splicing to be more precise) upped the ante, with the promise of dramatically improved agricultural products--and public resistance far out of...

An oligopoly (from the Greek, few sellers) is a market that is dominated by a few large and powerful players. As Steve Hannaford documents with numerous examples, virtually every industry today--from medical equipment to airlines, toy retailing to oil--is trending in this direction, in the greatest movement toward industry consolidation since the turn of the 20th century. Charting the course of this trend around the world, Hannaford examines the motivations behind consolidation resulting from mergers, acquisitions, buyouts, and alliances; how companies exert political pressure to their...

Against the backdrop of Enron and the other high-profile cases of corporate malfeasance, it is easy to paint today's executives as villains and blame big business, and corporations generally, for a wide array of social ills. Is the criticism warranted? Not quite, says Evan Osborne, as he traces the history of anti-corporate sentiment and assesses the fever-pitch hatred, by some, of all things corporate. While not perfect angels, Osborne argues, corporations confer many more benefits to society than ills. Moreover, they are an essential engine of human progress, and longstanding legal...

One of the greatest sources of America's troubles in Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans was the inability of our government's many parts to work well together. Often called interagency operations, applying everything that official Washington can do to keep Americans safe, free, and prosperous, is no easy task. The Pentagon, State Department, Homeland Security, Treasury, FBI, CIA, and other agencies have different capabilities, budgets, cultures, operational styles, Congressional oversight committees, and even operate under different laws. Getting them all organized on battlefields, after...

In "Marx's Labor Theory of Value: A Defense, " Hayashi Hiroyoshi argues that Marx will continue to be relevant as long as capitalism continues to exist. This is simply because no one grasped the nature of capitalism on a more profound level than Marx did. Hayashi presents the most fundamental aspects...

When, how, and why did the state enterprise system of modern China take shape? The conventional argument is that China borrowed its economic system and development strategy wholesale from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. In an important new interpretation, Morris Bian shows instead that the basic institutional arrangement of state-owned enterprise--bureaucratic governance, management and incentive mechanisms, and the provision of social services and welfare--developed in China during the war years 1937-1945.

Bian offers a new theory of institutional change that explains the formation...

In recent years, consumers, professional organizations, government officials, and third-party payers have become increasingly concerned about how to assess the quality of the services provided by organizations in both the private and the public sectors. One new approach is the organizational report card, which compares the performance of organizations such as public schools, colleges, hospitals, and HMOs.

This book offers the first comprehensive study of such instruments. It discusses the circumstances under which they are desirable alternatives to other policy instruments, such as...