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A senior manager in a U.S. manufacturing firm must make a recommendation about whether to move 57 labor-intensive jobs from the existing California plant to a new facility in a Mexican maquiladora. The Mexican opportunity would require deciding the mode of entry (subcontracting, shelter operator, or wholly owned subsidiary) and location (border or interior).

AIG is an American insurance company. A trade dispute between the United States and the European Union threatens to block the accession of China to the World Trade Organization, and AIG plays a role as the only foreign firm to own fully controlled subsidiaries in China. The disagreement is about the future of these existing subsidiaries, as well as potential new ones that AIG might seek to establish in China. What are the issues from each stakeholder's perspective, and what options are available to resolve this dispute?

Comprising networked organizations that span advanced and developing countries, the athletic footwear sector is at the cutting edge of globalization. An important dimension of corporate responsibility is setting and maintaining labor standards for contractors' employees in countries where workers have little or no legal protection against exploitation. This article examines how adidas, the industry's No. 2 firm, has utilized a code of labor practice to regulate the labor standards of its main manufacturing suppliers. A comparative analysis of a matched sample of two contractors in China shows that although the code requirements were met in both cases, relationships with adidas not only differed but also made a difference. Compared with compliance-type relationships, collaborative global firm-contractor ties encourage higher workplace performance and better employment relations in contractor factories.

Explores the origins and workings of the World Trade Organization (WTO), focusing particular attention on the special challenges of trade liberalization at the dawn of the 21st century.

Summarizes five major trade disputes before the World Trade Organization (WTO): (1) the Brazil-Canada aircraft dispute, (2) the European Union/United States foreign sales corporation dispute, (3) the Asian/United States shrimp and sea turtle dispute, (4) the United States/European Union beef hormones dispute, and (5) the U.S. steel tariff dispute.

In 2002, Environmental Power Corp. (EPC), a small company developing renewable energy projects, was attempting to commercialize its "digester," a facility that extracted methane from manure, reduced manure's environmental impact, and generated electricity. The company addressed two promising convergent markets: the farm waste management market and the renewable energy market. One of the main challenges was to put together a financial scheme that satisfied the conflicting interests of four groups of stakeholders: the farmers who lacked cash, the investors who distrusted the electricity trading business after the Enron scandal, the utilities who resisted long-term commitments to buy electricity, and the government who was reconsidering its agricultural and energy policies. The primary challenge is to provide a process that reduces animal waste pollution and at the same time provides a positive renewable energy source.

In Egypt, Genzyme's humanitarian commitment to treat all sufferers of the rare Gaucher disease worldwide first confronts its commercial imperative to recoup the huge investment required to bring the drug Cerezyme to market. Here Tomye Tierney must decide how to balance the demands of the sales organization that faces saturating developed markets, but major growth opportunities in developing economies. They believe that as long as the Gaucher Initiative-Genzyme's partnership with Project Hope-is providing free Cerezyme, they will be unable to convince the Egyptian government to authorize reimbursement, which can run from $200,000 to $300,000 per patient annually. CEO Henri Termeer believes Genzyme can hold firm to both the humanitarian commitment and its strong patient-focused commercial objectives. But it is Tierney who is on the front line and negotiates the delicate agreement between Genzyme sales, Project Hope, and Egyptian authorities.

In the fall of 1999, Mike Moore, director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), anticipated that the WTO's talks in Seattle in December 1999 would focus on improving living standards around the world, bettering the environment, providing more resources for health and education, strengthening the global economy, and reducing the risk of future instability and crisis. He characterized the WTO as seeking to advance a new approach to international cooperation based on rules, not power-rules, to help manage the powerful forces of globalization to everyone's benefit, the weak as well as the strong. Instead, the Seattle meeting was sidelined by waves of protests as widely disparate groups voiced strong opposition to the WTO and, more generally, to free trade. Protests focused on the perceived impact of trade on the environment, jobs, human rights, and the balance of power between large economic powers and developing countries. Additionally, the dispute resolution policies of the WTO were placed in the spotlight. The protests gained very widespread exposure and put the WTO representatives on the defensive. As the protests intensified, President Clinton objected to the violent methods used by some protestors but expressed sympathy with their desire to have more openness and accountability for the WTO. After two days of protests, vandalism, and police enforced curfews, the meetings were suspended. This case describes the history of the WTO, the protests at the Seattle talks, the role of the Internet in mobilizing protesters, the WTO's dispute resolution processes, and the implications of the failed talks for the WTO and its opponents.

By stimulating commerce and development at the bottom of the economic pyramid, multinationals could radically improve the lives of billions of people and help create a more stable, less dangerous world. Achieving this goal does not require MNCs to spearhead global social-development initiatives for charitable purposes. They need only act in their own self-interest. How? The authors lay out the business case for entering the world's poorest markets. Fully, 65% of the world's population earns less than $2,000 per year--that's 4 billion people. But despite the vastness of this market, it remains largely untapped. The reluctance to invest is easy to understand, but it is, by and large, based on outdated assumptions of the developing world. Although individual incomes may be low, the aggregate buying power of poor communities is actually quite large, representing a substantial market in many countries for what some might consider luxury goods like satellite television and phone services. Because these markets are in the earliest stages of economic development, revenue growth for multinationals entering them can be extremely rapid. Business leaders must confront their own preconceptions--particularly about the value of high-volume, low-margin businesses--for companies to master the challenges or reap the rewards of these developing markets.

One of the most frustrating parts of trading bonds in Asia today is that prior to placing a trade, buyers and sellers must spend hours phoning dealers to get quotes and aggregating market research. In July 2000, HSBC, Deustche Bank, and Citigroup joined forces with Bridge e-Markets to form BondsinAsia (BIA), which aimed at facilitating the trading of Asian fixed-income securities. Officially launched in January 2002, BIA rolled out an electronic trading system in Hong Kong and Singapore. The system replaced paper and telephone information gathering by giving access to online price and research information to market participants on an instantaneous, 24/7 basis. As BIA was preparing to expand its portal to other markets, a number of questions remained on many industry players' minds. How would the legal, regulatory, and technical issues affect BIA's cross-market franchise model?

Supplements the (A) case.

Supplements the case.

Describes how major pharmaceutical firms changed their strategy and pricing policies in the years 2000 to 2002 to respond to the growing AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Considers the situation facing Alberto Fujimori as he takes office in 1990. Pays particular attention to Peru's long history of international borrowing, default, and renegotiation. This history suggests that the costs imposed by foreigners on Peru when it failed to meet its contracts with foreign lenders have been relatively mild. Discusses the administration of Alan Garcia, who limited payments on Peru's international debt while also leading his country into an inflationary spiral. Also discusses some of the challenges posed by a bloody insurgency group named Sendero Luminoso.

Supplements the (A) case.

Much of the landscape in which today's media companies find themselves as they contend with the impact of digitization of content and the convergence of means of distribution was shaped by regulatory forces. Three government rulings in particular were influential: the Consent Decree of 1948 (often referred to as the "Paramount Case"), the Financial Interest and Syndication ruling (also called the "FinSyn" ruling of 1970 of the United States Federal Communications Commission), and the United States Supreme Court ruling in Universal City Studios et al. (including Disney) vs. Sony Corp. (also known as the Betamax case of 1984). These regulatory forces broke up tight vertical integration between content production and distribution (Paramount case and FinSyn ruling) or helped to pave the road for the introduction of new technologies for distribution (Betamax case).

Describes the evolution of WorldSpace, the world's first major provider of digital radio service to the developing world. The brainchild of Noah Samara, an African-born, American-trained lawyer, WorldSpace has a dual commercial and social mission. Samara wants to address the problem of development by bringing "information affluence" to the people of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Specifically, he wants to provide high-quality news, entertainment, and education content transmitted through a low-cost digital radio system. In less than a decade, Samara has achieved a great deal: He has raised over $1 billion for the project, acquired the rights to a vast swath of the world's digital radio spectrum, and launched two proprietary satellites. The question now is, Can he combine his social objectives with a for-profit mission? And will the people of Africa, Asia, and Latin America want what WorldSpace is selling?

The Netherlands suffered economic crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s, despite (or perhaps because of) its access to North Sea gas. In response to mounting inflation and unemployment, a tripartite agreement between employers, unions, and government was reached in 1982. This agreement laid the basis for macroeconomic stabilization in the 1980s. At the same time, a variety of structural reforms were introduced--centered on improving the flexibility of the labor market by increasing part-time work. The results appeared impressive: by the mid-1990s, the Netherlands was enjoying strong economic growth and unemployment rates of below 3%, much lower than its large continental European neighbors. However, many observers doubted the sustainability of this so-called "polder model." Low unemployment had been achieved in part by reducing participation rates. Some doubted whether a declining working population could sustain the Dutch standard of living. At the same time, the Netherlands was not a leader in technological development, and others were concerned whether it could compete effectively in the new global information economy.

GDP per person in northern Italy caught up with average incomes in Britain, France, and Germany in the 1970s, but incomes in southern Italy (the Mezzogiorno) fell further behind. This was partly due to cultural and societal differences that dated to the Renaissance, but even more obviously to northern dominance of the new nation in 1860 and Mafia dominance of much of the south. This case focuses on 50 years of efforts to correct this problem. Italy, with its north-south income divergence, is a good metaphor for the global economy with its divergence between First World and Third World incomes. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

In 1992, a corruption investigation and two assassinations created a crisis that prompted the Italian government to dispatch 7,000 troops to Sicily to "retake the island" from the Mafia. This case examines the crisis and the efforts of both the Italian state and the city of Palermo to deal with it. Also explicitly contrasts two development theories in an attempt to explain the economic problems of the South: one cultural (proposed by Robert Putnam); the other political (contained in the writings of Samuel Huntington, Sidney Tarrow, and Simona Piattoni). A rewritten version of an earlier case.