This book, first published in 2007, offers a comparative analysis of the performance of the chemical industry in the age of the petrochemical revolution.
Business Chemistry: How to Build and Sustain Thriving Businesses in the Chemical Industry is a concise text aimed at chemists, other natural scientists, and engineers who want to develop essential management skills. Written in an accessible style with the needs of managers in mind, this book provides an introduction to essential management theory, models, and practical tools relevant to the chemical industry and associated branches such as pharmaceuticals and consumer goods. Drawing on first-hand management experience and in-depth research projects, the authors of this book outline the key topics to build and sustain businesses in the chemical industry. The book addresses important topics such as strategy and new business development, describes global trends that shape chemical companies, and looks at recent issues such as business model innovation. Features of this practitioner-oriented book include: Eight chapters covering all the management topics relevant to chemists, other natural scientists and engineers. Chapters co-authored by experienced practitioners from companies such as Altana, A.T. Kearney, and Evonik Industries. Featured examples and cases from the chemical industry and associated branches throughout chapters to illustrate the practical relevance of the topics covered. Contemporary issues such as business model design, customer and supplier integration, and business co-operation.
The U.S. government, military, and industry once saw ocean incineration as the safest and most efficient way to dispose of hazardous chemical waste. Beginning in the late 1960s, toxic chemicals such as PCBs and other harmful industrial byproducts were taken out to sea to be destroyed in specially designed ships equipped with high-temperature combustion chambers and smokestacks. But public outcry arose after the environmental and health risks of ocean incineration were exposed, and the practice was banned in the early 1990s. Smoke on the Water traces the rise and fall of ocean incineration, showing how a transnational environmental movement tested the limits of U.S. political and economic power. Dario Fazzi examines the anti-ocean-incineration movement that emerged on both sides of the Atlantic, arguing that it succeeded by merging local advocacy with international mobilization. He emphasizes the role played at the grassroots level by women, migrant workers, and other underrepresented groups who were at greatest risk. Environmental groups, for their part, gathered and shared evidence about the harms of at-sea incineration, building scientific consensus and influencing international debates. Smoke on the Water tells the compelling story of a campaign against environmental degradation in which people from marginalized communities took on the might of the U.S. military-industrial complex. It offers new insights into the transnational dimensions of environmental regulation, the significance of nonstate actors in international history, and the making of environmental justice movements.
This book provides a holistic picture of the digital age as it emerges in the 2010s. On the background of business analysis concepts from firm to megatrends and all business sectors of the World, the digital age of information systems and digital drivers are thoroughly laid out.
In the 2010s, new technological and business trends threaten, or promise, to disrupt multiple industries to such a degree that we might be moving into a new and fourth industrial revolution. The background and content of these new developments are laid out in the book from a holistic perspective. Based on an outline of the nature and developments of the market economy, business, global business industries and IT, the new technological and business trends are thoroughly dealt with, including issues such as internet, mobile, cloud, big data, internet of things, 3D-printing, the sharing economy, social media, gamification, and the way they transform industries and businesses
This book offers a discussion about the dramatic development of healthcare business around the world during the twentieth century. Through a broad range of cases in Asia, Europe and the US, it shows how health was transformed into a fast-growing and diversified industry. Health and medicine have developed as one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy around the world during the twentieth century. However, very little is known about the conditions of their transformation in a big, globalized business. This book discusses the development of health industries, tackling the various activities in manufacturing (drugs, biotechnology, medical devices, etc.), infrastructure (hospital design and construction) and services (nursing care, insurances, hospital management, etc.) in relation to healthcare. The business history of health carried out in this book offers a systemic perspective that includes the producers (companies), practitioners (medical doctors) and users (patients and hospitals) of medical technology, as well as the providers of capital and the bodies responsible for regulating the health system (government). The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Business History.
A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Modern Age covers the period from 1914 to the present. The impact of chemistry and the chemical industry on science, war, society, and the economy has made this era the “Chemical Age”. Having prospered in the West, chemical science spread across the globe and slowly became more diversified in terms of its ethnic and gendered mix. After flourishing for sixty years, the chemical industry was impacted by the Oil Crisis of the 1970s and became almost invisible in the West. While the industry has clearly delivered many benefits to society-such as new materials and better drugs-it has been excoriated by critics for its impact on the environment. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Chemistry presents the first comprehensive history from the Bronze Age to today, covering all forms and aspects of chemistry and its ever-changing social context. The themes covered in each volume are theory and concepts; practice and experiment; laboratories and technology; culture and science; society and environment; trade and industry; learning and institutions; art and representation. Peter J. T. Morris is Honorary Research Associate at the Science Museum, London, and at University College London, UK Volume 6 in the Cultural History of Chemistry set. General Editors: Peter J. T. Morris, University College London, UK, and Alan Rocke, Case Western Reserve University, USA.
This is the remarkable story of an entrepreneurial firm that helped to create the petrochemical industry as we know it today. The author also highlights the important role chemical engineers played in developing and commercializing new technologies based on the conversion of hydrocarbons into petrochemicals, which also led to the transfer of technological dominance from Germany to the United States. These developments are illustrated by the participants’ personal histories, in the form of interviews and recorded oral histories. In addition, the book presents a highly relevant case study for engineers and managers in the chemical industry.
Prior to 1914, Germany dominated the worldwide production of synthetic organic dyes and pharmaceuticals like aspirin. When World War I disrupted the supply of German chemicals to the United States, American entrepreneurs responded to the shortages and high prices by trying to manufacture chemicals domestically. Learning the complex science and industry, however, posed a serious challenge. This book explains how the United States built a synthetic organic chemicals industry in World War I and the 1920s. Kathryn Steen argues that Americans' intense anti-German sentiment in World War I helped to forge a concentrated effort among firms, the federal government, and universities to make the United States independent of "foreign chemicals." Besides mobilization efforts to make high explosives and war gases, federal policies included protective tariffs, gathering and publishing market information, and, most dramatically, confiscation of German-owned chemical subsidiaries and patents. Meanwhile, firms and universities worked hard to develop scientific and manufacturing expertise. Against a backdrop of hostilities and intrigue, Steen shows how chemicals were deeply entwined with national and international politics and policy during the war and subsequent isolationism of the turbulent early twentieth century.