A corporate history of the innovative Benetton Holding Company, Edizione follows the early days of the family-owned brand, through governance and structure changes, mass distribution, infrastructure and network growth, to wider views for the future. In the late 1980s, as a world-class, multi-national and family-run business, the Benetton brand was considered a symbol of Italian entrepreneurial creativity. While at the height of its success, the Benetton family set in motion a process of diversifying its core business, developing its interests in large-scale distribution, infrastructure and the real estate sector. This strategy was made possible by the creation of an independent family-management system: Edizione Srl, today one of Europe's major holding companies. Edizione Srl has investments in many sectors, ranging from motorway and airport catering, infrastructure and mobility, to real estate and agricultural services. 'A shining example of solid, innovative business.' - Ferruccio de Bortoli
In this new textbook, Andrea Colli gives a historical and comparative perspective on family business, examining through time the different relationships within family businesses and among family enterprises, inside different political and institutional contexts. He compares the performance of family businesses with that of other economic organizations, and looks at how these enterprises have contributed to the evolution of contemporary industrial capitalism. Central to his discussion are the reasons for both the decline and persistence of family business, how it evolved historically, the different forms it has taken over time, and how it has contributed to the growth of single economies. The book summarises previous research into family business, and situates many aspects of family business - such as their strategies, contribution, failure and decline - in an economic, social, political and institutional context. It will be of key interest to students of economic history and business studies.
The Dynamics of International Business offers a comparative, chronological overview of the strategic and structural evolution of international firms. Organized around eras of global economic development, the text synthesizes research on the internationalization of firms, highlighting crucial turning points in the evolution of the international economy. A particular emphasis is placed on the relationship between historical evidence and the theoretical frameworks available for its interpretation. Each period is illustrated by a selection of short case studies from a variety of industry sectors, including the Levant Company, Nestlé, Singer, Saint Gobain and NEC. An essential textbook for courses in business and economic history, this book will also be a valuable resource for scholars and students of international business more generally.
Globalization: A Key Idea for Business and Society analyzes today’s process of global integration. Globalization is seen as a complex phenomenon, the drivers of which are of a technological, institutional, cultural and, not least, political nature. The book includes a historical analysis of the rise, and fall, of the “first globalization” wave which took place between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the Great War. The chapters focus on the measurement of the global integration process, on the in-depth analysis of the above mentioned “drivers”, and on some of the actors playing a relevant role in the process itself – multinational companies and governments as owners of global companies. The conclusion of the book provides a perspective on the current “globalization backlash”, its determinants and possible future alternative scenarios. This book is an ideal resource for students and practitioners interested in past, present and future globalization.
The Italian phrase Mai due senza tre–“never two without three”–forms the basis of Andrea Lee’s spellbinding novel of betrayal. Sophisticated and richly told, Lost Hearts in Italy reveals a trio caught in the grip of desire, deception, and remorse. When Mira Ward, an American, relocates to Rome with her husband, Nick, she looks forward to a time of exploration and awakening. Young, beautiful, and in love, Mira is on the verge of a writing career, and giddy with the prospect of living abroad. On the trip over, Mira meets Zenin, an older Italian billionaire, who intrigues Mira with his coolness and worldly mystique. A few weeks later, feeling idle and adrift in her new life, Mira agrees to a seemingly innocent lunch with Zenin and is soon catapulted into an intense affair, which moves beyond her control more quickly than she intends. Her job as a travel writer allows clandestine trysts and opulent getaways with Zenin to Paris, Monte Carlo, London, and Venice, and over the next few years, now the mother of a baby daughter, she struggles between resisting and relenting to this man who has such a hold on her. As her marriage erodes, so too does Mira’s sense of self, until she no longer resembles the free spirit she was on her arrival in the on her arrival in the Eternal City. Years later, Mira and Nick, now divorced and remarried to others, look back in an attempt to understand their history, while a detached Zenin assesses his own life and his role in the unlikely love triangle. Each recounts the past, aided by those witness to their failure and fallout. An elegant, raw, and emotionally charged read, Lost Hearts in Italy is a classic coming-of-age story in which cultures collide, innocence dissolves, and those we know most intimately remain foreign to us.
The world’s history is a history of global events. Events which shaped the making of the present. If you want to understand the present, you need to study history and to study it in depth, sorry. This book is about the making of today. It is a compelling narrative of the origins of all what worries our present: instability, disequilibrium, fear, and uncertainty. It is the narrative of the fragility, but also of the strength of modern civilization, so great and so scary, so fascinating and so repulsive.
A journey through linguistic time and space, from Aristotle through the twentieth century's “era of syntax,” in search of a dangerous verb and its significance. Beginning with the early works of Aristotle, the interpretation of the verb to be runs through Western linguistic thought like Ariadne's thread. As it unravels, it becomes intertwined with philosophy, metaphysics, logic, and even with mathematics—so much so that Bertrand Russell showed no hesitation in proclaiming that the verb to be was a disgrace to the human race. With the conviction that this verb penetrates modern linguistic thinking, creating scandal in its wake and, like a Trojan horse of linguistics, introducing disruptive elements that lead us to rethink radically the most basic structure of human language—the sentence—Andrea Moro reconstructs this history. From classical Greece to the dueling masters of medieval logic through the revolutionary geniuses from the seventeenth century to the Enlightenment, and finally to the twentieth century—when linguistics became a driving force and model for neuroscience—the plot unfolds like a detective story, culminating in the discovery of a formula that solves the problem even as it raises new questions—about language, evolution, and the nature and structure of the human mind. While Moro never resorts to easy shortcuts, A Brief History of the Verb To Be isn't burdened with inaccessible formulas and always refers to the broader picture of mind and language. In this way it serves as an engaging introduction to a new field of cutting-edge research.
Mathematical and numerical modelling of the human cardiovascular system has attracted remarkable research interest due to its intrinsic mathematical difficulty and the increasing impact of cardiovascular diseases worldwide. This book addresses the two principal components of the cardiovascular system: arterial circulation and heart function. It systematically describes all aspects of the problem, stating the basic physical principles, analysing the associated mathematical models that comprise PDE and ODE systems, reviewing sound and efficient numerical methods for their approximation, and simulating both benchmark problems and clinically inspired problems. Mathematical modelling itself imposes tremendous challenges, due to the amazing complexity of the cardiovascular system and the need for computational methods that are stable, reliable and efficient. The final part is devoted to control and inverse problems, including parameter estimation, uncertainty quantification and the development of reduced-order models that are important when solving problems with high complexity, which would otherwise be out of reach.
Italy is a country of recent decline and long-standing idiosyncratic traits. A rich society served by an advanced manufacturing economy, where the rule of law is weak and political accountability low, it has long been in downward spiral alimented by corruption and clientelism. From this spiral has emerged an equilibrium as consistent as it is inefficient, that raises serious obstacles to economic and democratic development. The Political Economy of Italy's Decline explains the causes of Italy's downward trajectory, and explains how the country can shift to a fairer and more efficient system. Analysing both political economic literature and the history of Italy from 1861 onwards, The Political Economy of Italy's Decline argues that the deeper roots of the decline lie in the political economy of growth. It places emphasis on the country's convergence to the productivity frontier and the evolution of its social order and institutions to illuminate the origins and evolution of the current constraints to growth, using institutional economics and Schumpeterian growth theory to support its findings. It analyses two alternative reactions to the insufficient provision of public goods: an opportunistic one – employing tax evasion, corruption, or clientelism as means to appropriate private goods –- and one based on enforcing political accountability. From the perspective of ordinary citizens and firms such social dilemmas can typically be modelled as coordination games, which have multiple equilibria. Self-interested rationality can thus lead to a spiral, in which several mutually reinforcing vicious circles lead society onto an inefficient equilibrium characterized by low political accountability and weak rule of law. The Political Economy of Italy's Decline follows the gradual setting in of this spiral as it identifys the deeper causes of Italy's decline.
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