Global Business Management Foundations

Despite the flattening effects of globalization, international business demonstrates huge diversity and complexity. This book is about understanding global business contexts, threats and opportunities, the drivers and nature of globalization, multilateral organizations, and the political, economic, social, technological, and legal differences that regions and countries exhibit. This book addresses how businesses devise strategies that work internationally, in different parts of the globe, plan entry strategies for new markets, and decide on alliances, evolution and growth.

To compete globally, businesses also need to work hard at the detail of managing – designing structure and organization, devising sourcing and supply chain arrangements, establishing information systems that perform globally, and managing international human resources. In eleven chapters, this book provides a foundation to these subjects based on teaching undergraduate and masters degree courses at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and running executive programmes around the globe over many years. Specifically the book:

• Gives a research-based grounding to international business.
• Discusses cultural, ethical, and social issues for international business and policies on corporate social responsibility.
• Introduces international trade and investment, multilateral organizations, regional integration, and the global financial system.
• Details how firms develop international business and marketing and R&D strategies, enter markets and alliances, and evolve on the global stage.
• Gives insight through frameworks, studies and examples of how businesses manage organization structure and architecture, sourcing and the supply chain, information systems and human resources, globally, regionally and domestically.

About The Author

Leslie P. Willcocks has an international reputation for his work on global management, outsourcing, e-business, information management, IT evaluation, strategic IT and organizational change. He is Professor in Technology Work and Globalization at the Department of Management at London School of Economics and Political Science. He also heads the LSE’s Outsourcing Unit research centre. He holds a doctorate in information systems from the University of Cambridge, and has been for the last 22 years Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Information Technology. He is co-author of 35 books including most recently Advanced Outsourcing (2012) and has published over 200 refereed papers in journals such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, MIS Quarterly and MISQ Executive. He has delivered company executive programmes worldwide, is a regular keynote speaker at international practitioner and academic conferences, and has been retained as adviser and expert witness by major corporations and government institutions. Recent and forthcoming books include The New Outsourcing Landscape: From Innovation To Cloud Services (Palgrave, 2012), and Global Outsourcing Discourse: Exploring Modes of IT Governance (Palgrave, 2013). His research into the management of cloud business services appears as Cloud and The Future of Business: From Cost to Innovation (www.outsourcingunit.org). Email : l.p.willcocks@lse.ac.uk