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After a decade of unprecedented growth, the BRIC nations' economies have unexpectedly slowed. In this innovative book, expert contributors diagnose and examine the factors that might be responsible for the economic regression in Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

Though we live in an era of rapid innovation, the United States has introduced comparatively few commercial innovations within the past decade. Innovation shortfall contributes to weaker trade performance, decreased productivity growth, lower wages and many other economic woes. This study provides insightful recommendations for developing enhanced innovation efforts that could help foster substantial, long-term economic growth. As a high-wage country, the US relies on its ability to develop innovative products and services in order to compete with low-cost countries such as China, South Korea, India and Brazil. The contributors to this book, all well-known international business scholars, offer a diversity of perspectives on how the US can leverage its capacity for innovation to retain a competitive advantage within the global economy. Topics discussed include strategic organization, corporate leadership and innovation theory, as well as specific innovation challenges facing the US today. This book will prove an invaluable resource for students and professors of international business, along with those interested in examining how countries can become more economically competitive through increased focus on innovation

It is apparent that environmental issues affect the livelihoods and well being of individuals, communities and businesses the world over. In that vein, this book examines the impact that climate change and other environmental factors have on business. The effect of climate change, while a significant factor, will influence business slowly, but inexorably. Executives should manage environmental risk at three levels: regulatory compliance, potential liability from industrial accidents, and pollutant release mitigation. Companies that are proactive in mitigating their exposure to climate-change risks will not only generate new profitable opportunities, but also gain competitive advantage over their rivals in a carbon-constrained future. Enhancing Global Competitiveness through Sustainable Environmental Stewardship provides frameworks for identifying how climate change might affect a business, and suggests strategy guidelines to manage the risks and seek opportunities.

It is a generally accepted proposition in the literature on organizations that there is a monotonic relationship among increasing environmental complexity, organizational interdependence, and increasing environmental turbulence. Moreover, this proposition also assumes that increasing environmental complexity for the organization and increasing organizational interdependencies lead to increased uncertainty for organizational growth and survival. This article challenges this latter assumption by arguing that organizational theory generally has ignored the industrial organization economics literature. This literature contradicts the increasing uncertainty assumption considered by many to be a major contribution to the literature by Emery and Trist.

PurposeA virtual organization (VO) is a set of geographically dispersed and functionally diverse organizational entities interconnected by electronic forms of communication that cooperate with one another for a common valued outcome. The objective of this article is to propose a research framework that illustrates the development of trust between VOs.Design/methodology/approachThis paper provides an overview of literature on VOs, identifies antecedents of trustworthiness in virtual environment, explores the role of boundary spanners' interpersonal trust, and relates them to inter‐VO trust formation. A research analysis is developed that depicts the proposed relationships.FindingsThe propositions shed light on the overall interorganizational trust building process in VOs. In doing so, the framework also acknowledges the role of individual boundary spanners of a trustor organization in the trust development process.Originality/valueSystematic scholarly research relating to VOs has been somewhat limited. With the emergence of VOs as important organizational forms, there is an increasing need to comprehend how interorganizational trust is developed and maintained in VOs. This study attempts to fill this gap in the extant literature by exploring how social exchange factors in a virtual context relate to factors of organizational trustworthiness of the trustee organization. In addition, this paper also investigates the key role played by the boundary spanners of both organizations in the trust formation process.

Entrainment refers to the synchronization of the tempo and/or phase of two or more activities within a system. This article utilizes entrainment theory to develop a conceptual model and related propositions describing and explaining the relationship between temporal fit, misfit, and performance at the organizational level of analysis. Essential to the development of our model is the concept of organization-environment (O-E) temporal fit, which is a state of synchronization or alignment of organization and environment activity cycles. O-E temporal fit is positioned as an important contingency element because temporal misfit implies inefficiencies, substandard performance, and the potential death of the organization over time. Overall, this article offers a theoretical perspective that fills a gap in the extant organizational research literature regarding the elusive and understudied perspective of time and posits its relationship to organizational performance.