Книги

Japan is regarded as a world leader in the field of education and training for improved economic performance. Yet success in Japan is often achieved by going against what is regarded as ideal practice elsewhere. This book offers the most comprehensive review available in English, fully updated from the first edition, of the many facets of Japanese vocational education and training. It covers the system from primary education through to in-job training offered by companies and provides a detailed study of current practice. This gives equal emphasis to formal training in explicitly vocational courses and informal training in factories, shops and offices. The authors are also concerned to analyse the difference between substantive 'person-changing' training and mere 'ability-labelling'. They raise important issues such as: to what extent does the need to package skills to provide convenient qualifications distort the actual training given? How efficient is it to rely on professional trainers to certify the acquisition of skills, rather than run separate testing systems? In Japanese companies the authors have discovered that pride in doing the job well is often the strongest motivation, and that much company training is carried out by colleagues.

What are the most important differences among national economies? Is globalization forcing nations to converge on an Anglo-American model? What explains national differences in social and economic policy? This pathbreaking work outlines a new approach to these questions. It highlights the role of business in national economies and shows that there is more than one path to economic success.

This book comprehensively analyzes the impact of continuing European integration on industrial relations institutions and outcomes. It organizes an immensely rich body of theoretical and empirical material to sustain its core argument that the governance of industrial relations is increasingly multi-level. Cross-national influences are shown to mix with national ones and involve the European sector and company, as well as Community, levels. Competing tendencies towards 'Europeanization', 'Americanization' and 'Re-nationalization' are identified. The approach is multi-disciplinary and truly cross-national. It deals with both the theory and practice of industrial relations in contemporary Europe.

Work and Politics develops a historical and comparative sociology of workplace relations in industrial capitalist societies. Professor Sabel argues that the system of mass production using specialized machines and mostly unskilled workers was the result of the distribution of power and wealth in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Great Britain and the United States, not of an inexorable logic of technological advance. Once in place, this system created the need for workers with systematically different ideas about the acquisition of skill and the desirability of long-term employment. Professor Sabel shows how capitalists have played on naturally existing division in the workforce in order to match workers with diverse ambitions to jobs in different parts of the labor market. But he also demonstrates the limits, different from work group to work group, of these forms of collaboration.

All firms wrestle with restructuring, involving consolidation of mergers and acquisitions on the one hand, and fragmentation through outsourcing and spin-offs on the other. Through an in-depth investigation into the organizational strategies of Japanese corporate management and union leaders in Japan, Mari Sako explores the issue of 'organizational boundaries' that arises from such restructuring. Examining the strategy and structure of both businesses and trade unions, the book draws upon empirical evidence drawn from interviews conducted at Toyota and Matsushita and their respective unions. It examines their respective strategies in coping with organizational boundaries against the backdrop of changing labour markets, and, in the process, challenges widely held notions about Japanese corporate and union structures. Mari Sako goes on to explore the implications of these relationships in other advanced industrial countries for corporate restructuring, jobs, and labour market flexibility.

In this path-breaking book, the author argues that European countries' political-economic policies, practices, and discourses have changed profoundly in response to globalization and Europeanization, but they have not converged. Although national policies may now be more similar, especially where they follow from common European policies, they are not the same. National practices, although moving in the same general direction toward greater market orientation, continue to be differentiable into not just one or even two but three varieties of capitalism. And national discourses that generate and legitimate changes in policies and practices not only remain distinct, they matter. The book is a tour de force which combines sophisticated theoretical insights and innovative methods to show that European countries generally, but in particular Britain, France, and Germany (for which the book provides lengthy case studies), have had very different experiences of economic adjustment, and will continue to do so into the future.

Впервые становится достоянием российского читателя одна из наиболее известных работ крупнейшего западного экономиста. В книге Й. Шумпетер предпринял попытку непредвзятого, объективного анализа возможностей, заложенных в противостоящих социальных системах. Для студентов экономических и социологических факультетов, аспирантов.

Книга включает два из наиболее известных произведений выдающегося экономиста первой половины XX века Йозефа Алоиза Шумпетера (1883-1950) "Теория экономического развития" и "Капитализм, социализм и демократия" и переводы двух его статей, ранее недоступных отечественному читателю. Йозеф Шумпетер вошел в историю экономической науки как глубокий исследователь теоретических проблем предпринимательства и эволюции социально-экономических систем, историк и методолог экономической теории. Его широкое эволюционноевидение социально-экономических процессов до сих пор оказывает влияние на современную экономическую мысль. Для преподавателей и студентов экономических и социологических факультетов, аспирантов и исследователей в области общественных наук, а также всех интересующихся наследием классиков экономической науки.

This book presents a radical institutional approach to the analysis of capitalism. Ernesto Screpanti puts forward a number of provocative arguments that expose common ground in both neoclassical and Marxist orthodoxies. It will appeal to a broad audience of social scientists including advanced students and professionals with an interest in politics and economics.

Чем порождается дух предпринимательства, являющийся движущей силой современного капитализма? В одинаковой ли степени наделены им разные народы? Как религия влияет на экономику? Ответы на эти вопросы, ставшие вновь актуальными для России в конце XX века дает в своей книге "Буржуа" знаменитый немецкий социолог Вернер Зомбарт. Книга печатается по русскому изданию 1924 года. В монографии "Буржуа" автор приходит к выводу о выдающейся роли евреев в развитии современного капитализма, признает их родоначальниками таких спекулятивно-финансовых механизмов управления экономикой, как ценные бумаги, банки и биржи. Роли евреев в развитии экономики он посвятил специальную работу "Евреи и хозяйственная жизнь" которая в составе данного сборника переиздается впервые с 1912 года.

В издание входят работы Зомбарта, написанные в 1910-е гг.

Today the United States has one of the highest poverty rates among the world's rich industrial democracies. The Failed Welfare Revolution shows us that things might have turned out differently. During the 1960s and 1970s, policymakers in three presidential administrations tried to replace the nation's existing welfare system with a revolutionary program to guarantee Americans basic economic security. Surprisingly from today's vantage point, guaranteed income plans received broad bipartisan support in the 1960s. One proposal, President Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, nearly passed into law in the 1970s, and President Carter advanced a similar bill a few years later. The failure of these proposals marked the federal government's last direct effort to alleviate poverty among the least advantaged and, ironically, sowed the seeds of conservative welfare reform strategies under President Reagan and beyond. This episode has largely vanished from America's collective memory. Here, Brian Steensland tells the whole story for the first time--from why such an unlikely policy idea first developed to the factors that sealed its fate. His account, based on extensive original research in presidential archives, draws on mainstream social science perspectives that emphasize the influence of powerful stakeholder groups and policymaking institutions. But Steensland also shows that some of the most potent obstacles to guaranteed income plans were cultural. Most centrally, by challenging Americans' longstanding distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, the plans threatened the nation's cultural, political, and economic status quo.

Why are poor countries poor and rich countries rich? How are wealth and poverty related to changes in nutrition, health, life expectancy, education, population growth and politics? This modern, non-technical introduction to development studies explores the dynamics of socio-economic development and stagnation in developing countries. Taking a quantitative and comparative approach to contemporary debates within their broader context, Szirmai examines historical, institutional, demographic, sociological, political and cultural factors. Key chapters focus on economic growth, technological change, industrialisation, agricultural development, and consider social dimensions such as population growth, health and education. Each chapter contains comparative statistics on trends from a sample of twenty-nine developing countries. This rich statistical database allows students to strengthen their understanding of comparative development experiences. Assuming no prior knowledge of economics the book is suited for use in inter-disciplinary development studies programmes as well as economics courses, and will also interest practitioners pursuing careers in developing countries. A multidisciplinary approach drawing on a wide range of disciplines including economics, history, sociology, anthropology, demography and political science. Easily accessible for students with no prior knowledge of the field; it also exposes more advanced students to the latest state of ongoing theoretical and empirical debates on developmen. Rich statistical analysis of data from twenty-nine developing countries includes 75 tables with comparative time series on development indicators.