Library: Best sellers

To outsource or not to outsource its internal IT department? That is the question that many firms have been asking themselves. Outsourcing has been around for more then 20 years in the different manufacturing areas. At first, companies decided to outsource the manufacturing of components in countries which would be bringing cost benefits by reducing the overall cost of their products. With the Internet gaining momentum as a quick and reliable source of information transmission, many manufacturing firms are now evaluating the possibility to outsource their IT functions in order to focus ...

This research paper is the culmination of three years as a Visiting Scholar at The Anderson School and reflects the author's theories based on his research, personal practical experience, principles of economics learned from the Austrian School of Economic Thought, and the writings, research and teachings of Philip Fisher, Benjamin Graham, Murray Rothbard, and Ludwig Von Mises.

This study attempts to develop a conceptual frame work to deal with operations and management in a foreign business environment. The study develops a measure for business financial performance by employing factor analysis methods to integrate three profit-related ratios, derived from Modified DuPont Model, utilizing financial performance data from 630 multinational companies ranked in Business Week's Global 1000 report between years 1994-1997. In the analysis of multinational companies cases, approximately 400 sets of financial data (Return/Assets, Return/Revenues, Return/Equity), were categ...

Since 1991, the Russian Federation has dealt with extreme political, economic, and social change. On the national level and at the local level, opponents of democratic reforms have retained their control of many important offices. This has resulted in contradictions and confusion in regards to national and local laws and policies, and has had little impact on local educational policies and practices. Added to this general crisis of Russian education reform is the inability of so-called Western education experts to comprehend the complexities and cultural differences of Russia and its educat...

Economic sanctions have been used as an instrument of American foreign policy ever since the Taft administration adopted the Dollar Diplomacy. This dissertation analyzes the trade Embargo the United States imposed upon Cuba after the Revolution from different perspectives: from the political, considering the main guidelines of American foreign policy toward Latin America, especially during the Cold War, and from the juridical, considering different perspectives of customary international law. Since the embargo was imposed only after American property had been expropriated with...

Researchers and data analysts are increasingly relying on graphical tools to assist them in modeling their data, generating their hypotheses, and gaining deeper insights on their experimentally acquired data. Recent advances in technology have made available more improved and novel modeling and analysis media that facilitate intuitive, task-driven exploratory analysis and manipulation of the displayed graphical representations. In order to utilize these emerging technologies researchers must be able to transform experimentally acquired data vectors into a visual form or secondary representat...

Several policymakers, public administrators, the media, and others have celebrated the "success" of the latest anti-poverty policy reforms. Is success a type of economic form or an assessment of the quality of one’s life? Success is often defined in some type of economic form, even though it does not always provide a true sense of the effect of policy changes. Assessing the human impact of policy change requires more. It requires knowing about the resources of beneficiaries of social services and their conditions of life from various perspectives; therefore, we must strive to understand the...

The global environmental crises motivated many companies to investigate and develop the concept of environmentally sustainable business. The objective of traditional business strategy is to maximize profit but, with real imagination and a fresh approach to business strategies, environmental sustainability can actually increase both annual profit and long term shareholder value. This article analyzes several examples of such strategies, not only for companies operating in a capitalist economy, but also for companies based in countries that retain a traditional economy. These strategies are ill...

The present study aims to illuminate the way participant learning in adventure experiences intersects with broader social, cultural and institutional contexts, and was guided by the following questions: How is participant experience constructed in a facilitated, small group adventure setting? How is the construction of the adventure experience related to the intentions and orchestrations of the trainer? How is the construction of the adventure experience related to the institutional and social context in which it occurs? This study used grounded theory methodology (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and...

In 1904-1905 Max Weber published the sociological classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this book Weber argues that religion, specifically “ascetic Protestantism” provided the essential social and cultural infrastructure that led to modern capitalism. Weber’s suggests that Protestantism has “an affinity for capitalism.” Indeed, something within Protestantism—by accident or design—creates the necessary preconditions that lead to the flowering of a just, free, and prosperous society. At the same time, Weber wonders if the economic backwardness of certain societies and...