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Presents a distributed manufacturing system concept designed to address the problem of flexibility in providing a variety of parts in small to medium batches. Discusses links with CADCAM hardware structure levels, software structure, and the human‐centred approach adopted. Surmises that the key to the distributed systems effectiveness lies in co‐ordination and co‐operation between the area and cell levels rather than information.

As the world continues to urbanise, cities face increasing pressure to become more sustainable, efficient and livable. Sustainable smart cities are emerging as a promising solution to this challenge, leveraging technology and data to improve urban systems and services while reducing environmental impact. This chapter provides an overview of the concept of sustainable smart cities and its implications for urban development. It explores the key features of sustainable smart cities, including their focus on technology, data and citizen engagement and the challenges they are facing in terms of infrastructure, data management, social equity, environmental sustainability, governance and regulations. The chapter also highlights the implications of sustainable smart cities for urban planners, policymakers and other stakeholders, emphasising the need for collaborative approaches that engage citizens and stakeholders in the design and implementation of smart city initiatives.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

Critiques of international business (IB) have long pointed to the weaknesses in the understanding of context. This has ignited debate on the understanding of institutions and how they “matter” for IB. Yet how institutions matter ultimately depends on how IB applies institutional theory. It is argued that institutional-based research is dominated by a narrow set of approaches, largely overlooking institutional perspectives that account for institutional diversity. This paper aims to forward the argument that IB research should lend greater attention to comparing the topography of institutional configurations by bringing political economy “back in” to the IB domain.

Using principal components analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis, the authors provide IB with a taxonomy of capitalist institutional diversity which defines the landscape of political economies.

The authors show institutional diversity is characterised by a range of capitalist clusters and configuration arrangements, identifying four clusters with distinct modes of capitalism as well as specifying intra-cluster differences to propose nine varieties of capitalism. This paper allows IB scholars to lend closer attention to the institutional context within which firms operate. If the configurations of institutions “matter” for IB scholarship, then clearly, a quantitative blueprint to assess institutional diversity remains central to the momentum of such “institutional turn.”

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of institutional theory, serving as a valuable resource for the application of context within international business. Further, our taxonomy allows international business scholars to utilise a robust framework to examine the diverse institutional context within which firms operate, whilst extending to support the analysis of broader socioeconomic outcomes. This taxonomy therefore allows international business scholars to utilise a robust framework to examine the institutional context within which firms operate.

This paper narrates the efforts made in Italy after the end of the Second World War to develop an economic and social model in between corporate capitalism and planned economy, on the one hand, and shareholder versus stakeholder capitalism on the other. The result was the institutional infrastructure that supported the Istituto per la Ricostruzione industriale (IRI), a state-owned public holding in charge of managing the funds of the so-called Marshall Plan. The history of IRI illustrates the importance of a pragmatic approach to dealing with institutional constraints and opportunities when faced with the need to reconstruct destroyed economies in a context of very fragmented societies such as those of post-war Italy. The result was the resistance to an acritical adoption of the corporate American model and the definition of a more balanced form of capitalism. In an era of new recovery plans, there is a lot we can learn from IRI’s history.

This chapter sheds light on how the internationalization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is jointly influenced by the ownership involvement of the state and other relational investors and by the home country’s institutional setting. It integrates international business literature and insights from the theory of corporate governance into a varieties of capitalism framework. Taking a configurational perspective, the interdependencies that link the SOE internationalization to the joint effects of particular combinations of actors and institutions are analyzed. As a result, it is argued that only a few home country–SOE governance configurations favor the expansion of SOEs abroad: (i) a configuration in which the state is a dominant owner capable of aligning the interests of any other private shareholder and the government is embedded in a proactive institutional context, so as to effectively orchestrate the internationalization process, (ii) a configuration in which, assuming the home country institutions markedly deficient in supporting interventions, relational co-owners are involved in SOE ownership and governance and have commitment, influential power, and competencies to equip the company with an effective strategy and competitive advantages to be exploited abroad. In all other configurations, the international performance of SOEs is worse, being undermined by institutional contexts that favor an inward-looking approach of the state and government, and/or by principal–principal agency problems.

This article investigates how internationalisation through labour mobility can strengthen collective bargaining in coordinated market economies. It shows how new political cleavages generated by internationalisation can foster the re-regulation of labour markets and how the alliance between trade unions and employers in sheltered sectors of the economy can increase domestic coordination to limit wage competition. These two mechanisms explain why the opening of the labour market for EU workers and services in Switzerland has been followed by a re-regulation process in which collective bargaining coordination has strengthened despite the weakness of organised labour and the resistance of export industries. Following the opening of the labour market, the coverage of collective bargaining has increased and the number of workers covered by extended collective agreements nearly tripled.

This article argues that critical realism (CR) offers an ontological position suited to understanding the dynamic relations between multinational companies (MNCs) and the complex political spaces within which they operate. After outlining the core assumptions of CR, the key arguments are elaborated through two case studies which focus on issues of staffing and expatriation. The first case concerns recent developments in the Middle East, highlighting the shifting reality of nationality-based definitions of staffing the MNC, and the second examines the internationalisation of Chinese firms, exploring the way MNCs restructure space to retain access to home-country advantages.

Introduction: As the human population grows, consumer demand for digital services tailored to their specific needs also increases. To improve the financial performance of farms and meet the need for food of a growing population, farmers and agribusinesses have started incorporating distributed ledger technology into agricultural and farm management software. These developments in the agriculture sector may lead to realising sustainable development goals.

Purpose: Several researchers have done studies to explore the features and benefits of blockchain technology in the field of agriculture. There is a need to analyse the available literature to identify the use of this technology in agriculture and the scope of further research. This chapter will mainly focus on its publication trend, journal productivity and impact, prolific studies, and coherent themes.

Methodology: For a comprehensive review, bibliometric and content analysis of 71 open-access articles collected through a structured database of Mendeley is done. These articles were published during 2017–2021.

Findings: The execution of blockchain is continuously increasing in the agriculture sector, which has resulted in automation in supply chain management, land registrations, and crop insurance. The study revolves around supply chain management, digitisation of agriculture, and sustainable economic development. This study’s conclusions can help agriculturalists improve their understanding of blockchain implementation in agriculture. The study also gives directions for future research.