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This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Socio-Economic Review following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Ferner, A.M. (2008) Global games and general claims: locating the contribution of Kristensen and Zeitlin. Socio-Economic Review, 6 (2) pp. 379-384. is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1093/ser/mwn002

This chapter considers the balance between central control and subsidiary autonomy in HR policy and practice. US multinationals have been shown to centralize control of international HR policy compared with multinationals of other nationalities. This chapter examines the organizational processes whereby particular patterns of centralization or autonomy are maintained, and how such patterns evolve over time. In explaining the mechanisms that drive changes in the centralization-autonomy balance, the chapter highlights the ability of actors at different levels of the multinational to influence policy choices through the deployment of a variety of power resources; the latter includes the leverage that local managers derive from their expert knowledge of the distinctive constraints and possibilities of their host business system. The factors that explain differences in the balance of centralization and autonomy between different multinationals are also explored.

Major multi-authored research-based monograph, includes two chapters on which Almond is lead author, and a further chapter on which he is a co-author

Special edition of MIR on Contemporary Issues in Multinational Structure and Strategy, edited by Julian Birkinshaw and David Brock.

Over his philosophical career, David Wiggins has produced a body of work that, though varied and wide-ranging, stands as a coherent and carefully integrated whole. Its parts cannot be studied in isolation, and a central aim of this thesis is to examine how three vital elements of his systematic metaphysics interconnect: his conceptualist-realism, his sortal theory ‘D’, and his account of personal identity – his human being theory. Yet critics murder to dissect, and Wiggins’ project is often unfairly decomposed into its parts. Thus, this study aims both to introduce his thoughts without neglecting the relations between them, and to rectify the various misinterpretations of them by – among others – Paul Snowdon, Eric Olson and Lynne Rudder Baker. In clarifying and exploring these connections another sunken, yet central, vein is revealed. It is argued that Wiggins’ metaphysics bears on, and is borne upon, by various discussions in the philosophy of biology. This is a connection that he himself adverts to, but which commentators have rarely investigated. Attending to it, one finds in his analyses of natural substances a novel form of biological anti-reductionism, which stands as a productive alternative to emergentism. Closer attention to his construal of substances – specifically organisms – also reveals a worry. At the core of Wiggins’ account of personal identity is the consilience he sees between the concept of a person and the concept of a natural substance (a human being). It is argued below that organ transplantation disturbs the Aristotelian distinction between natural substance and biological artefact, and thus tests the heart-string of his human being theory.