International Business and the Dilemmas of Development: Case Studies in South Africa, Madagascar, Pakistan, South Korea, Mexico and Columbia - Hardcover

To an ever greater extent international businesses are operating in developing countries. They create jobs, add tax revenues, and help these countries industrialize. As they operate, they face a wide range of challenges and difficulties that are often not easily resolved. They are called upon to find feasible and effective responses to diverse dilemmas, such as those associated with operating in relation to quite different cultural expectations, managing employees not accustomed to working in organized manufacturing plants, as well as finding equitable ways to hire and remunerate diverse workforces. Typically, they face in addition other dilemmas connected with managing security problems, interacting with local communities and national governments, and responding to situations that seems to call for off-budgeted gifts, facilitation fees, gratuities, and payments. This book examines what managers, scholars, public officials, and other interested parties can learn from reviewing the experiences of how selected international businesses have responded to characteristic challenges associated with development in South Africa, Madagascar, South Korea, Pakistan, Mexico, and Colombia.

FREDERICK BIRD holds the Concordia University (Montreal) Research Chair in Comparative Ethics. He is the co-editor of International Businesses and the Challenges of Poverty in the Developing World), the author of The Muted Conscience: Moral Silence and the Practice of Ethics in Business and co-author of Good Management: Business Ethics in Practice. He has also written a number of articles. He is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School, and the Graduate Theological Union.

EMMANUEL RAUFFLET is assistant professor in Management at HEC (Hautes Études Commerciales) Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His research concerns the changing relations between organizations and their social and natural environment. He has conducted research on forest management in Mexico (Cambio Institucional en el Manejo de los Bosques de Tlalmanalco, Mexico, Plaza y Valdes-UAM Editores: Mexico, 2004). A French and Canadian national, he has lived in Spain, Brazil, and Mexico. He is currently involved in social innovation projects for Canadian non governmental organizations active in international development.

JOSEPH SMUCKER is Adjunct Professor and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. His research has been in the areas of industrialization, labour markets, international comparisons of labour market policies and their effects and, more recently, models of economic development. His publications include two books, Industrialization in Canada and The Sociology of Labour Markets and numerous articles in professional journals. His more recent publications have been co-authored works appearing in Work, Employment and Society, Work and Occupations, Relations Industrielle/Industrial Relations and The Canadian Journal of Sociology.