When a country strikes oil or discovers mineral deposits, politicians and citizens are often euphoric. But many economists and political scientists despair. They believe that some types of natural resources promote a “resource curse,” characterized by weak governments, dictatorships, and civil war. Even so, there are lots of exceptions to the resource curse. This article contends that the political effects of resource wealth depend on if exporters are part of a country’s ruling coalition, or if they are excluded from political power.
Bridging Cultural Divides: Doing Business in China
Q&A with Steven P. Feldman
In today’s global economy, multinational companies must do business in China. In his recent interview with The World Financial Review, Steven P. Feldman, author of Trouble in the Middle: American-Chinese Business Relations, Culture, Conflict, and Ethics, discusses the challenges of corruption, the role of the middleman, the importance of ethical norms and the realities of business in China.
China and Latin America: Connected and Competing
By Kayla Chen & Xiangming Chen
The Global Rise of China
The rise of China has stolen more headlines than any other global issue these days, stirring up questions about what China’s growing prominence really means, and how – more than why – it affects the world. While the rise of previous global powers took decades, if not centuries, China’s rise has been spectacularly fast and furious, considering the tremendous economic prowess it has gained over a relatively short period of time. Accounting for approximately 2 percent of the world’s total GDP around 1980, China holds almost 15 percent of world GDP in purchasing power parity today. From a longer historical perspective, however, China has yet to regain its dominant status in the world economy back in 1840 when it accounted for about a third of world GDP – the largest among all countries at the time – before its protracted economic decline in the aftermath of the two Opium Wars.
Open Heartbleed Surgery – Securing Against Further Vulnerabilities
David Sandin, product manager at Clavister looks at the implications of the Heartbleed bug and the use of open-source code libraries in vendors’ security solutions.
Vignettes from the Modern Workplace
By David Weil
Working conditions are transforming as a result of a fundamental restructuring of employment in many parts of the economy. Below, David Weil considers the impacts of the fissured workplace.
The Case for Africa – The Real Estate Angle – Knowledge is King
By Nick Lambert
Many companies are being attracted to Africa by relatively low labour costs, burgeoning economies, growing populations and untapped markets. Below, Nick Lambert, Senior Director in CBRE’s Global Corporate Services Division suggests that with the barriers to entry continuing to erode and a positive economic outlook, the growth of corporate occupiers expanding into Africa is likely to continue.
Everybody’s Business: What’s Wrong with Today’s Business Schools
By Ian I. Mitroff, Ellen S. O’Connor & Can M. Alpaslan
Business schools are one of America’s greatest inventions. They are vital to the education and training of future managers and leaders. Sadly, the invention is in serious trouble. Business schools accelerate and reinforce intellectual fragmentation, focus on the wrong units of reality, and use simplistic frameworks to understand human motivation. They compartmentalize knowledge in a narrow body of disciplines that have no explicit connection to one another and no incentives to make connections. As a result, they do not serve students, business, and society well.
Business Analytics and Decision-Making: The Years Ahead
It is readily apparent that business analytics is an emerging and fast-growing field. Universities and colleges are developing programs in this area, and companies are developing relationships with universities (such as IBM and Ohio State University forming the IBM Client Centre for Advanced Analytics as part of the College of Business at Ohio State) in order to meet the future needs for analytics talent. Combined with the onslaught of “Big Data,” the field of analytics is a promising area for most sectors, such as healthcare, finance, emergency management, marketing, cybersecurity, and others.
EDITOR'S PICK OF THE WEEK
The Performance and Transformation Orchestrator: The CFO’s New Mandate in the Age of AI
By Terence Tse
CFOs are evolving into AI-driven transformation orchestrators, balancing finance, technology, and strategy while upskilling teams, managing risks, and driving measurable business value.
A key insight from this year’s AI for CFOs event, organized...
