The Global and the Local: Understanding the Dialectics of Business Systems (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780199278909)

The rhetoric of internationalization and globalization often suggests an inexorable move away from domestic cultural and institutional differences. Yet the development of internationalization within individual nations has been shaped by those very domestic institutions and cultures, as 'best practice' or other kinds of international learning have been translated into established practice and knowledge.
In this important study, Arndt Sorge presents a sociological theory of the development of human societies to explain how business systems evolve and change, and how internationalization works to specify and change societal identities within nations. Examining changes in work, organization, corporate governance, and human resources, Sorge shows how this interaction is a pattern that has been followed over centuries. Indeed, amongst the cases Sorge presents, he concentrates on the example of Germany, a supposedly highly homogeneous and closed society, as evidence for the universality of shifting borders, expanding horizons, local adoption and adaptation of global practices, and the hybridization of systems and standards, as the normal course of social evolution.
Arndt Sorge's analysis of globalization combines rigorous theoretical reasoning with empirically-grounded analysis, and deliberately adopts a general social science approach, drawing on research from Business and Management Studies, Sociology, Political Science, and History.

Author: Arndt Sorge
ISBN-10: 0199278903
ISBN-13: 9780199278909
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Language: English
Published: 06/02/2005
Pages: 316
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.38lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.75d