First published in 1983, Collapse and Survival was written as an examination of the position of industry worldwide at the time of publication. The book looks at the post-war growth of output and the policies adopted in advanced countries, socialist countries, and LDCs to bolster and shape this growth. It explores in detail the experience of firms across several of the industries at the forefront of the changes in world industry since 1945, including automobiles, steel, consumer electronics, advanced electronics, and oil refining. Particular attention is paid to the influence that the majority of countries, public agencies, lobbyists and other interests have in shaping the business environment in which firms operate. This analysis provides the basis for a description of the business strategies open to firms in each of these key industries. Collapse and Survival will appeal to those with an interest in the history of industrial and development economics, and international business and economics.
Global patterns of production and trade in manufactures have changed tremendously over the past two decades. The growth of world trade has been accompanied by a rapid increase in the number of products, suppliers and buyers involved in international markets. At the same time, the means by which manufacturers compete and collaborate have been changing. The great challenges that these developments pose for policy makers and practitioners provide the basic motive for this comprehensive assessment of the underlying forces and determinants that are reshaping the world's industrial map. Based upon an empirical approach, the analysis is closely interwoven with key elements of economic theory. the Heckscher-Ohlin model provides the framework for most of the book's interpretation, but less formal models focusing on economies of scale, product differentiation and other aspects of imperfect competition also figure prominently. The extensive research with access to UNIDO's vast body of unpublished information and contributions from specialists, has resulted in a blend of theoretical and empirical material which yields new insights into the way firms and industries compete in international markets.
In the United States, the Knights of Labour (KOL) is part of the wreckage of labor history, a nineteenth-century organization of great promise that flamed out quickly and completely. Many scholars (wrongly) see it as little more than a failed experiment that stumbled due to misplaced idealism and antiquated notions of fraternalism. In New Zealand, the KOL’s story was strikingly different, achieving tremendous success in a remarkably short time. Knights Down Under takes an in-depth look at the organization in New Zealand, and is the first thorough comparative study of the KOL in global context. It calls into question assumptions about the newness of globalism, national exceptionalism, the uniqueness of socialist movements, how social movements develop, the nature of leadership, and the possibilities and challenges of transnational organizing. The KOL was the first labour federation to envision itself as an international body that could and should expand beyond its North American birthplace. Knights Down Under sheds light on how the KOL evolved from the remnant of a failed Philadelphia tailors’ union to an international force that helped rewrite the social agenda in far-off New Zealand. Knights immersed themselves in workplace issues, but also delved into politics, got elected to Parliament, and promoted a comprehensive program of social and labour reform. They were the envy of workers in Western industrial societies, most of which would not enact similarly sweeping changes for another four decades. Among the reforms the KOL helped enact were women’s suffrage, mandatory arbitration of labour disputes, old-age pensions, early-closing hours for retail shops, land redistribution, an equitable tax code, and the creation of a department of labour. By aiding in the development of New Zealand’s first political system, the KOL also laid the groundwork for the future birth of an independent labour party.
However, the forces of law have failed to keep ahead of advancing threats. As hijacking has become more difficult, terrorists have adopted new tactics, such as sabotage bombing. Thus, while the 1960s and the 1970s were the age of aircraft hijackings, the 1980s could be said to be the age of sabotage bomb attacks in civil aviation history.
Although Robert Morris (1734-1806), "the Financier of the American Revolution," was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, a powerful committee chairman in the Continental Congress, an important figure in Pennsylvania politics, and perhaps the most prominent businessman of his day, he is today least known of the great national leaders of the Revolutionary era.This oversight is being rectified by this definitive publication project that transcribes and carefully annotates the Office of Finance diary, correspondence, and other official papers written by Morris during his administration as superintendent of finance from 1781 to 1784.
From the wealth of place names in Kentucky, Rennick has selected those of some 2,000 communities and post offices. These places are usually the largest, the best known, or the most important as well as those with unusual or inherently interesting names. Including perhaps one-fourth of all such places known in the state, the names were chosen as a representative sample among Kentucky's counties and sections. Kentucky Place Names offers a fascinating mosaic of information on families, events, politics, and local lore in the state. It will interest all Kentuckians as well as the growing number of scholars of American place names.
When Germany launched its blitzkrieg invasion of France in 1940, it forever changed the way the world waged war. Although the Wehrmacht ultimately succumbed to superior Allied firepower in a two-front war, its stunning operational achievement left a lasting impression on military commanders throughout the world, even if their own operations were rarely executed as effectively. Robert Citino analyzes military campaigns from the second half of the twentieth century to further demonstrate the difficulty of achieving decisive results at the operational level. Offering detailed operational analyses of actual campaigns, Citino describes how UN forces in Korea enjoyed technological and air superiority but found the enemy unbeatable; provides analyses of Israeli operational victories in successive wars until the Arab states finally grasped the realities of operational-level warfare in 1973; and tells how the Vietnam debacle continued to shape U.S. doctrine in surprising ways. Looking beyond major-power conflicts, he also reveals the lessons of India’s blitzkrieg-like drive into Pakistan in 1971 and of the senseless bloodletting of the Iran-Iraq War. Citino especially considers the evolution of U.S. doctrine and assesses the success of Desert Storm in dismantling an entrenched defending force with virtually no friendly casualties. He also provides one of the first scholarly analyses of Operation Iraqi Freedom, showing that its plan was curiously divorced from the realities of military history, grounded instead on nebulous theories about expected enemy behavior. Throughout Citino points to the importance of mobility--especially mobilized armor--in modern operational warfare and assesses the respective roles of firepower, training, doctrine, and command and control mechanisms. Brimming with new insights, Citino’s study shows why technical superiority is no guarantee of victory and why a thorough grounding in the history of past campaigns is essential to anyone who wishes to understand modern warfare. Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm provides that grounding as it addresses the future of operational-level warfare in the post–9/11 era.
This book serves as a basic primer on how one of the world's most mineral-rich countries was turned into one of its greatest tragedies." - Publishers Weekly Written over a century ago, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness continues to dominate our vision of the Congo, unlikely as it might seem that a late-Victorian novella could encapsulate a country roughly equal in size to the United States east of the Mississippi. Conrad's Congo is hell itself, a place where civilization won't take, where literal and metaphor darknesses converge, and where human conduct, unmoored from social (Western, in other words) norms, turns barbaric. As Robert Edgerton shows in this crisply narrated yet sweeping work of history, the Congo is still trying to awaken from the nightmare of its past, struggling to pull free from the grip of the "heart of darkness" cliche. Plundered for centuries for its natural resources (which remain Africa's most abundant), the Congo was not always a place of horror. Before the Portuguese landed on its shores at the end of the 15th century, it was a prosperous and thriving region. The Congo River, the world's second longest as well as the deepest, and one of the only routes to the continent's interior, provided indigenous populations with ample means for living and trading. What the Portuguese found first to exploit were people, and with the slave trade began a dizzying downward spiral of conquest and degradation that continued for centuries. By the 19th century the race to explore the full length of the legendary river masked a fight for territorial and moral control among the French, Arabs, British, Germans, as well as American missionaries, all of whom dreamed of possessing Africa's very heart. When King Leopold of Belgium managed to solidify control in 1885, the Congo "question" seemed solved. His reign, of course, was almost pathological in its cruelty-the true source of Conrad's "horror"-and its grim legacy endures to this day. Edgerton documents the Congo's long, sad history with a sense of empathy with and admiration for the character of the land and its inhabitants. Since independence in June 1960, the country has endured the machinations and disappointments of one dictator after another, beginning with Patrice Lumumba, and continuing through Joseph Mobutu, Laurent Kabila, and today Kabila's son, Joseph, who assumed power after his father was assassinated in January 2001. Whether called the "Congo Free State," or "Zaire," or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the country remains perilously unstable. The Troubled Heart of Africa is the only book to give a complete history of the Congo, filling in the blanks in the country's history before the advent of Henry Stanley, David Livingstone, King Leopold, and other figures, and carrying us straight into today's headlines. The Congo continues today to be the subject of intense speculation and concern, and with good reason: upon it hangs the fate of sub-Sahara Africa as a whole. Here is a book that helps us face the stark truths of the Congo's past and appreciate both the enormous potential and uncertainty of its future.
Based on four seasons of fieldwork, this book presents the results of the first systematic site survey of a region rich in material remains. From architecture to fresco painting, Cappadocia represents a previously untapped resource for the study of material culture and the settings of daily life within the Byzantine Empire.
The Lesson of Scoundrels is one of crime and punishment. The author tells the story of a number of men, some of them probably were great men, most were well educated and all had driving ambition far above that of most. The book focuses on elected scoundrels, as it is those placed in high office by the people who then betray that trust whom we most abhor. The individuals described can all be characterized by a monumental and unrealistic sense of self-worth, outrageous hubris and a mile-wide streak of pure greed so powerful that they risked all to grab the golden ring whenever it came into their reach- that the proverbial ring belonged to the people meant absolutely nothing! Greed drives the elected white collar criminal who learns to steal, lie and defraud the people he serves, believing that because he is who he is, he can act with impunity. In almost every case, the characters described in this book were not entirely bad men- each and every one of them did some good or tried to and were loyal to their friends and family. After all, even Hitler loved his dog! What exactly led them to throw it all away for money you will have to decide for yourselves. Scoundrels tells you who they were, what they did and what it eventually cost them at the bar of justice. In most cases, the law finally did catch up with them- mostly by the opposing party dropping a dime. A few have so far remained free from the clutches of the law but, with reputations so tarnished that, in most cases, they are beyond salvage. For you students of the law, give some serious thought to how these bad guys were caught, the laws they broke and how the courts dealt with them. Most of them were lawyers themselves but likely forgot their lessons in ethics. None of these mendacious rascals cared a whit about morals or ethics when they might get in the way of some easy money. All of the men in this book were and are successful politicians, outgoing, gregarious and, when in top from, bursting with a magnetic enthusiasm (charisma) that draws voters to them like flies to honey. Their powerful personalities and determined energy brought them to high office- many were state governors and all were in positions to get their sticky fingers into the people's cookie jar. The book presents only a small sampling of the vast number of crooked public servants. It's highly likely that the percentage of elected officials, in any capacity, who have not misappropriated public funds, in one way or another, is very small- I would venture to guess the percentage of truly honest politicians (oxymoron) is well under twenty percent. The only difference between the vast majority of elected public servants and those identified in this book is that the former haven't yet been caught. There is a discernible and tragic flaw in many, if not most, of those we choose to represent us. Perhaps, it is because honest, reasonable and intelligent men do not care to run for public office, preferring to retain the peace and happiness of private life. Given the unscrupulous nature of the modern media, I don't blame anyone for avoiding public office. Whatever the reasons, we, the people, are the losers.
Although Robert Morris (1734-1806), the Financier of the American Revolution, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, a powerful committee chairman in the Continental Congress, an important figure in Pennsylvania politics, and perhaps the most prominent businessman of his day, he is today least known of the great national leaders of the Revolutionary era.This oversight is being rectified by this definitive publication project that transcribes and carefully annotates the Office of Finance diary, correspondence, and other official papers written by Morris during his administration as superintendent of finance from 1781 to 1784.
This work contains primary research texts regarding two centuries of the development of corporate finance in the US and Great Britain. It is designed to help scholars, financial managers, and public policymakers to investigate the historical background of issues in contemporary corporate finance.
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