carla koen

The book is written by various scholars because it's an daunting task to include such broad areas in a single volume. Generally speaking, it's a textbook for international business studies. Reading this kind of book is not 'fun' to be honest. The writing of several chapters are very dry. However, there are tons of precious knowledge to learn about. All of them are useful in dealing with global business. Even for non-managers, this book offers invaluable insights to understand 'how the world works'.

There are 12 chapters in this book. Let me briefly explain the contents.

1.Introduction to the approaches in comparative international management

2.The etic approach
The exploration from a macro perspective. Such as Hofstede's cultural dimensions. 
The point is a 'general' description of something. 

3.The emic approach
The exploration from the insiders' view. Like why Dutch people think this way...

4.Institutional diversity and management
The legal and political environment.

5.Human resource management

6.Corporate governance

7.Operation (production) management
The evolution of mass production (Taylorism and Fordism), flexible production, and lean production of Japan (Toyota).

8.National innovation system
How each country innovates? Like Japanese 'reverse engineering', which copies the tech from USA or Europe and makes it perfect.

9.MNC
Why Multinational companies exist? Their roles in international business.

10Networks of clusters of economic activity
Why similar industries cluster together? For instance, why New York is the financial center of the world. And what's the purpose of this phenomenon.

11.Globalization
The globalization's impact on each country.

12. Case study: Airlines industry


These chapters don't cover every country for sure. It's impossible to list so many countries after all.But the authors did great jobs bringing the most representative examples together. Readers are introduced to each topic, and we will know how to further do research for these topics thereafter. 

The structure of the book is excellent. It provides me thorough and comprehensive theories and examples. Bravo for the authors! If you want to learn more about business worlds, this book is a nice starting point!