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By now it is obvious that even though the blueprint of classical state socialism aimed for uniformity across countries and within societies, a variety of national hybrids actually developed in the state-socialist world. The most casual observers intuit, for instance, that Romania was not Poland, and specialists are keenly aware of the myriad ways in which the developmental paths of Czechoslovakia and Hungary diverged from one another, or from those of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, and the German Democratic Republic. Some have also explored the similarities and differences amongst the Chinese, Hungarian, and Yugoslav “reform” variants, while a smaller group has focused on the East Asian or Latin American experiences with the state-socialist blueprint. Even analysts sensitive to such differences, however, have generally grouped Hungary and Poland together as very similar pre-1989 “reformers.” This categorization, to be sure, makes a certain amount of sense. After all, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia appeared avant garde beside the Soviet Union and other more “conservative” countries. (Outside the region, only China could be considered a serious economic reformer.) But closer inspection of the prolonged internal transformations of Hungary and Poland suggests that in many ways it is precisely these two countries that represented opposing variants of state socialism. One came to resemble a laboratory for controlled economic experimentation, the other held out the ironic image of a workers' state buffeted by overt labor-state conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In New York in 1921, Man Ray made a short film of the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, then forty, shaving her pubic hair. It was shot during the short-lived period of New York Dada and it had art written all over it. Exhibited exclusively to other New York bohémiens, mainly in the Walter and Louise Arensberg circle, it was a typical product of the hothouse culture of early modernism. The luminous starkness of the woman's careworn, but strangely vibrant, body affronted not only conventional morality, but also the conventional aesthetic academicism of, say, Adolph-William Bouguereau's blushing, heavily fleshed but weightless, nudes. At that time, Bouguereau's gravity-defying females appealed particularly to prosperous bankers and business tycoons. Although Man Ray's film is about a not-very-glamorous and aging woman shaving her pubic hair, it is also, and perhaps more importantly, about defining the space between avant-garde culture and ordinary society, what Andreas Huyssens calls the Great Divide between the avant-garde and mass society. In 1921, that distance was still visible. By the end of the twentieth century, it had almost entirely disappeared. Today Dada and ordinary life have more or less converged. Just look around you. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The age of steel’ is what David Landes called the last thirty years of the nineteenth century in his standard work on the industrialisation of Western Europe. He felt that this epoch was wholly dominated by the rise of modern mass production of steel. This was also a period when Great Britain was forced to surrender her previously unchallenged position as the ‘workshop of the world’ and as the most powerful industrial nation. The USA and Germany proved better adjusted to the demands of the new steel age. Not only did they both overtake their British tutor's initial lead, but they soon established themselves at the forefront of world steel production. By the end of the eighties American steel production, and by the beginning of the nineties German steel production too, had exceeded the output of British works, which in the seventies had still dominated the world market. Although the American steel industry presented scarcely any direct competition to British steel, having unique opportunities for expansion within its enormous and protected internal market, when the production and export success of the German steelworks was compared with the relatively backward British performance, it was not long before the British industry was charged with neglecting to follow up its technological advances. Given that all the standard innovations of the new steel technology, the Bessemer, Thomas and Siemens-Martin processes, had been developed during the sixties and seventies in Great Britain – the last with French assistance – British entrepreneurs were reproached for failing to exploit to optimum advantage the opportunities which had been offered first to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers already published in Teichova, Lévy-Leboyer and Nussbaum (eds.), Multinational enterprise in historical perspective (1986), and those now gathered in this volume, are too varied, wide-ranging and rich in fact and analysis to summarise. Perhaps I might, however, be allowed to comment on three issues that strike me as not without intellectual importance. I have in mind the role of technology in the multinational enterprise, the variety of forms of doing international business, and the fact that the choice among exporting, licensing technology, forming cartels, entering contracts, joint ventures, and forming a wholly-owned foreign subsidiary is often a very close one. As Fieldhouse's useful summary reminds us (1986), we learn from Hymer that business operating away from its home base is always at a disadvantage, because of long lines of communication, operations in a culture which varies in degrees from that at home, at least slightly and perhaps very widely, and the agency problem that perhaps applies to all business and is usefully discussed by Nicholas (1986) – the difficulty at a distance of ensuring that the agent does what the principal has contracted with him to do, rather than operating in his own differing interest. To overcome these disadvantages, such a business must have a large advantage. Chandler (1986) finds this in large size, economies of scale, direct marketing rather than reliance on middlemen, and capital intensity, plus – a point bearing on technology – attention to research and development. But these advantages, it seems to me, start late rather than early in the course of foreign direct investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter 44 of the book "100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World," by Jeremy Kourdi is presented. It explores the idea of negotiation to avoid pitfalls and ensure good results. It highlights the suggestions of professor James Sebenius of Harvard Business School (HBS) on how to avoid pitfalls.

Chapter 66 of the book "100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World," by Jeremy Kourdi is presented. It explores the significance of empowering employees for maintaining work performance. It presents a list of factors affecting empowerment which include removing hindrances, implementing bureaucracy and, applying ideas into practice. It emphasizes the claims of Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School, on employee participation.