The Global Environment of Business

The globalization of business activity: whether you love it or hate it, it affects you. What causes it, how different countries deal with it, and what the future might hold for it are all key questions which The Global Environment of Business answers. It traces the growth of big business, the comings and goings of economic globalization over two centuries, and compares the institutional environments and track records of business in a selection of countries on every continent today. It examines the role of local and regional clusters of small and medium-sized companies, and the obstacles which both oil wealth, and concentrated land ownership, pose for poor countries trying to develop. The final chapter assesses the sustainability of global business in the context of climate change and growth of regional blocs. Changing forms of business organization; changing technology; who wins and who loses; all are kept in sight throughout the book.

Frederick Guy pulls together all these various themes. Employing clear, vivid examples, narrative structures, and stories, it is not a dry textbook. Economic, political, and sociological theories are used, explained, evaluated; and employed to knit together a collection of vivid examples and cases.

Frederick Guy is a lecturer in the Department of Management at Birkbeck College, University of London. He was born in San Francisco. He received his BS in the Political Economy of Natural Resources from the University of California at Berkeley, and his PhD in Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He worked for ten years as a manager, director, and management consultant for consumer cooperatives in food retailing, wholesaling, and housing, and for two years as a researcher at Cambridge University's Centre for Business Research. He has been with the Department of Management at Birkbeck College, University of London, since 1997. He lives in London with his wife and son.