International Business

Every nation likes to believe myths about itself. Americans' belief in the superiority of their managerial know-how seemed to be among those most solidly based in reality. Yet, the author argues, despite its universal claims, American managerialism has never been more than a cultural peculiarity, one moreover whose claims to superiority had not been proved but assumed, on the premise that the best economy must have the best management. That premise, moreover, has not served American managerialism particularly well, for in the 1970s a gap opened up between the mystique of American management and the reality of a mediocre American managerial performance. The ‘mystique’ collapsed and those looking for best practice began to look elsewhere. The author provides a thorough examination of alternative forms of management that grew up in West Germany and Japan during the past decades. He argues that these alternative management forms have done a better job managing capitalist economies since the 1970s than has American managerialism. In fact, he asserts that American managerialism has become so dysfunctional that it threatens to undermine the prosperity of the American people, and America's role in the future world order. In the final chapter the author suggests ways that American management can follow in order to fulfil its original promise. Looking forward, he urges American management to unlearn much of the received wisdom and learn from the successes of others in order for the nation to enter the 21st century with a management equal to the social and economic challenges.

During the 1880s, the tobacco manufacturing industries of Britain and America were revolutionized by the introduction of mechanized cigarette production. The development of this novel, image-laden product constituted a triumph for the methods of mass production and mass distribution in this most traditional of consumer goods industries. This book charts the way in which these innovations in manufacturing and marketing methods led to the formation in 1902 of the British American Tobacco Co. as an Anglo-American multinational joint venture designed to promote cigarettes in international markets. Based on archive materials from a wide variety of sources, including the company's own internal records, this book provides the first authoritative account of BAT's evolution and growth up until the Second World War. In particular, it shows the way in which the company developed a vast array of international operating subsidiaries, explores how it managed these enterprises in different political and cultural contexts — notably in China and India — and analyses the way in which the company, as a mature multinational enterprise, coped with the severe international economic dislocations of the 1930s. In the era of globalization, this account of the operational and organizational arrangements of a prefigurative ‘global’ company will shed light on current debates on alliances, joint ventures, and international business.

Since the end of the eighteenth century, the insurance industry has cast a safety net around the world, first in the British Isles and then further afield, irrespective of cultural, political, and ideological divides. This book focuses on the creation of networks across borders from the end of the eighteenth century to the present day. The chapters draw upon examples from twenty countries across the continents to demonstrate how what was called the ‘British system’ of risk management spread out in waves, and describes the forces that made this possible — first among them migration from Europe and international trade. The book explores the economic, political, religious, and cultural obstacles that blocked the path of this European invention — not only religious law and traditional practices, but above all protectionism, inflation, and political ideologies. It examines the process of transformation through which modern insurance supplanted traditional forms of protection against perils and risks and was able to keep on offering new ways of dealing with the risks of modern life. As well as discussing primary insurance, it also considers the role played by reinsurance, without which the losses arising out of today's natural and man-made disasters would be immeasurably greater. Finally, taking modern-day disaster scenarios as examples, the book shows just what the limits of insurability are and what risks worldwide networks entail.