American households, businesses, and governments have always used intensive amounts of credit. The Engine of Enterprise traces the story of credit from colonial times to the present, highlighting its productive role in building national prosperity. Rowena Olegario probes enduring questions that have divided Americans: Who should have access to credit? How should creditors assess borrowers’ creditworthiness? How can people accommodate to, rather than just eliminate, the risks of a credit-dependent economy? In the 1790s Alexander Hamilton saw credit as “the invigorating principle” that would spur the growth of America’s young economy. His great rival, Thomas Jefferson, deemed it a grave risk, inviting burdens of debt that would amount to national self-enslavement. Even today, credit lies at the heart of longstanding debates about opportunity, democracy, individual responsibility, and government’s reach. Olegario goes beyond these timeless debates to explain how the institutions and legal frameworks of borrowing and lending evolved and how attitudes about credit both reflected and drove those changes. Properly managed, credit promised to be a powerful tool. Mismanaged, it augured disaster. The Engine of Enterprise demonstrates how this tension led to the creation of bankruptcy laws, credit-reporting agencies, and insurance regimes to harness the power of credit while minimizing its destabilizing effects.

Companies worldwide are rapidly adopting Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), a design methodology used to connect systems as services, and Business Process Management (BPM), the art of orchestrating these services. Media organizations from news organizations to music and media download services to movie studios are adapting to SOA-style architectures, but have run into roadblocks unique to the media and entertainment industry. These challenges include incorporating real-time data, moving large amounts of data at one time, non-linearity and flexibility for workflow, and unique metrics and data gathering. The Service-Oriented Media Enterprise details the challenges and presents solutions for media technology professionals. By addressing both the IT and media aspects, it helps individuals improve current enterprise technologies and operations.

Today's enterprises have to continuously extend their operational limits to earn profit, thrive and prosper. Over time evolution led to the development of two concepts to master this challenge: intelligence and knowledge. This work introduces a system theoretic perspective on enterprises, regarding them as natural living systems formed by evolutional forces. Intelligence and knowledge manifest in the system's behavior. 'Intelligence' is identified as the necessary framework that realizes continuous adaptation through the ongoing development and incorporation of control procedures and building blocks. The content that fills this framework is the 'Enterprise Knowledge'. The rigid framework of business processes has to be replaced by a project framework, employees have to be integrated as 'Knowledge Workers' and IT systems have to offer advanced structural and organizational properties to facilitate declarative processing. "The transition towards intelligent enterprises requires drastic organizational changes. ... With the presented work Markus Thannhuber introduces a theoretic framework and opens up new perspectives for Managerial Sciences, Organization Theory and Industrial Engineering." Hans-Jörg Bullinger, President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Munich, Germany

China has used industrial policies to try to build large corporations that can challenge those based in more advanced countries. By the late 1990s the operational mechanism of China's large firms had seen large advances. Simultaneously, a revolution has taken place in global business systems, and China's large firms are even further behind the global leaders than when they began their reforms. The WTO will require China to operate rapidly on the 'global playing field' in competition with the world's leading corporations, and this increased gap presents a deep challenge for China's business and political leaders. Peter Nolan presents here the first in-depth case studies of China's large corporations under economic reform, combined with systematic benchmarking of these firms against the world's leading corporations. The book is an unrivalled resource of information on Chinese businesses, and also leads the reader to consider the impact of China's response to its current challenges not only on China itself, but on the wider global economy.

The remarkable success of Japanese industry has frequently been attributed to the inter-corporate alliances and networks that exist in the Japanese economic system. Many commentators argue that is has been these networks that have been key to both the rapid growth and success of Japanese industry. Business Networks in Japan explores the creation of supplier-customer networks through case studies of two of Japan's largest companies: the Toshiba Corporation and the Nippon Steel Corporation. Jens Laage-Hellman examines the advantages that have been gained from cooperation with suppliers and customers in industrial markets and how they have been utilized to develop and commercialize new products. Importantly, the study reveals the differences and similarities in the networking and interacting behaviour of Japanese and Western companies, highlighting the importance of the Japanese industrial culture in fully realising the benefits of networks.

In the increasingly competitive corporate sector, businesses must examine their current practices to ensure business success. By examining their social, financial, and environmental risks, obligations, and opportunities, businesses can re-design their operations more effectively to ensure prosperity. Sustainable Business: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source that explores the best practices that promote business sustainability, including examining how economic, social, and environmental aspects are related to each other in the company’s management and performance. Highlighting a range of topics such as lean manufacturing, sustainable business model innovation, and ethical consumerism, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for entrepreneurs, business executives, business professionals, managers, and academics seeking current research on sustainable business practices.

Fundamentals of Economics for Business is an innovative text designed specifically for students in business education programs. It provides a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to the key economic issues relevant to present or future business decision-makers. Reflecting the requirements of globalization, the content is international in scope and is applicable worldwide. The material is easily adaptable to courses of different lengths and educational objectives, including a one-semester MBA course, economics courses in an undergraduate commerce or business degree, or an executive MBA program.This second edition adds significant new material on production costs, managerial economics, growth and competitiveness, and includes new case studies with applications to international business.

Process-Driven SOA: Patterns for Aligning Business and IT supplies detailed guidance on how to design and build software architectures that follow the principles of business-IT alignment. It illustrates the design process using proven patterns that address complex business/technical scenarios, where integrated concepts of service-oriented architecture (SOA), Business Process Management (BPM), and Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) are required. The book demonstrates that SOA is not limited to technical issues but instead, is a holistic challenge where aspects of SOA, EDA, and BPM must be addressed together. An ideal guide for SOA solution architects, designers, developers, managers, and students about to enter the field, the book: Provides an accessible introduction to basic and more advanced concepts in process-driven SOA Illustrates how to manage the complexities of business aligned IT architectures with detailed examples and industry cases Outlines a step-by-step design process using proven patterns to address complex business/ technical scenarios Integrates SOA, BPM, and EDA into practical patterns promoting SOA 2.0 Describing how to synchronize parallel enterprise processes, the authors explain how to cope with the architectural and design decisions you are likely to encounter when designing and implementing process-driven SOA systems. The decisions are described in the form of software patterns to provide you with a practical guideline for addressing key problems using time-tested solutions.