Japanese industry has shown its superiority in a range of traded goods sectors. It was thought that this competitive advantage arose from the use of electronics-based flexible automation technologies, but it is now clear that the major source of this industrial strength is in the development and diffusion of new management techniques such as just-in-time production and total quality management.A number of Western firms have begun to introduce these management techniques and have beg...

Long before the pandemic, economies across the world were in trouble, with growth slowing across the board. This downturn coincided with growing inequality and social exclusion. Rising political dissatisfaction with ruling elites fuelled the rise of populism. Add to this the alarming environmental emergency and few can deny we live in a time of multiple sustainability crises.While this conclusion can lead to despair, in this broad-ranging book Raphael Kaplinsky, a leading developme...

Globalization is characterised by persistent poverty and growing inequality. Conventional wisdom has it that this global poverty is residual – as globalization deepens, the poor will be lifted out of destitution. The policies of the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO echo this belief and push developing countries ever deeper into the global economy.Globalization, Poverty and Inequality provides an alternative viewpoint. It argues that for many – particularly for those living in Latin ...

As a Chinese proverb says 'The fish rots from the head' and so it is with businesses and other organisations - the buck starts and stops in the boardroom. This third edition of Bob Garratt's bestselling book that highlights the importance of effective corporate governance has been extensively updated following the corporate scandals of the early 2000s - Enron, WorldCom, Tyco - and the abysmal boardroom standards that the credit crunch and ensuing global financial crisis brought to light.

"A true master class in the art of making the impossible possible." —Paul PolmanOne of the most vexing human rights issues of our time has been how to protect the rights of individuals and communities worldwide in an age of globalization and multinational business. Indeed, from Indonesian sweatshops to oil-based violence in Nigeria, the challenges of regulating harmful corporate practices in some of the world’s most difficult regions long seemed insurmountable. Hum...

The neo-liberalism that dominated economic thinking since the advent of Thatcher and Reagan is now seen to have serious flaws. Progressive Capitalism seeks to replace it with a new Progressive political economy, based on an analysis of why the growth rates of countries differ, and what firms have to do to achieve competitive advantage in today's global economy. The cornerstone of the political economy of Progressive Capitalism is a belief in capitalism. But it also incorporates the three d...

Regulation by public and private organizations can be hijacked by special interests or small groups of powerful firms, and nowhere is this easier than at the global level. In whose interest is the global economy being regulated? Under what conditions can global regulation be made to serve broader interests? This is the first book to examine systematically how and why such hijacking or "regulatory capture" happens, and how it can be averted.Walter Mattli and Ngaire Woods bring toget...

The rapid growth, diversity and strategic importance of the emerging Chinese and Indian economies have fired the world's imagination with both hopes and fears for the future. Wendy Dobson's perceptive analysis of changing institutions, demographics, and politics paints a thoughtful and surprising picture of India and China as economic powerhouses in the year 2030. Examining past events and current trends, Gravity Shift offers bold predictions of the changes we can expect in key ec...

The spread of capitalism worldwide has made people wealthier than ever before. But capitalism’s future is far from assured. The global financial meltdown of 2008 nearly produced a great depression. Economies in Europe are still teetering. Income inequality, resource depletion, mass migrations from poor to rich countries, religious fundamentalism-these are just a few of the threats to continuing prosperity.How can capitalism be sustained? And who should spearhead the effort? Critics...

"Expertly synthesizes economic theory and contemporary cases to both explain the structure of the contemporary media industry and shed insight on the significant challenges and controversies confronting the sector."- Lucy Küng, Oxford University and Jonkoping University"A wide-ranging, accessible introduction to media economics and their application to a broad range of media topics from advertising and business models to copyright, audience demand a...

Outsourcing Economics has a double meaning. First, it is a book about the economics of outsourcing. Second, it examines the way that economists have understood globalization as a pure market phenomenon, and as a result have 'outsourced' the explanation of world economic forces to other disciplines. Markets are embedded in a set of institutions - labor, government, corporate, civil society, and household - that mold the power asymmetries that influence the distribution of the gains from glo...

For the past thirty years or more, the global economy has been run based on three big assumptions: globalisation will continue to increase; trade is the route to growth and development; and economic power is moving from West to East. But what if all these are wrong?From Global to Local shows how the world trading structure has already begun to shift, with irrevocable consequences for the global economy. Volatile oil prices, the pressures of sustainability and the availabil...