Informal Alliance is the first archive-based history of the secretive Bilderberg Group, the high-level transatlantic elite network founded at the height of the Cold War. Making extensive use of the recently opened Bilderberg Group archives as well as a wide range of private and official collections, it shows the significance of informal diplomacy in a fast-changing world of Cold War, decolonization, and globalization. By analyzing the global mindset of the postwar transatlantic elite and by focusing on private, transnational modes of communication and coordination, this study provides important new insights into the history of transatlantic relations, anti-Americanism, Western anti-communism, and European integration during the 1950s and 1960s. Informal Alliance also debunks the persistent myth that the Bilderberg Group was created by the CIA and repudiates widespread conspiracy theories alleging that Bilderberg was some sort of secret world government.

Throughout history, alliances have taken many different forms and they have been difficult to understand in their totality. As we now experience an unprecedented pandemic, which highlights the need for both external alliances between states and internal alliances between governments and populations, understanding alliances is more than ever critical to apprehend an open and interactive world that knows no borders and in which challenges imposed on humans are global. The book “Living Alliances, Leaving Alliances” is an interdisciplinary approach to investigating past, present and future alliances on an interpersonal, subnational, international and transnational level. It is the result of a two-year project by AreaS, a research group in area studies located at the Østfold University College in Norway.

This unique volume highlights Taiwan's ongoing efforts to mediate between competing political actors, a means to ensure domestic stability and national security without severely affecting its continuous economic growth and sovereign status in the international society. Taiwan's Politics in the 21st Century concentrates on three general areas: domestic politics, political economy, and external relations. Written by prominent scholars in the field, including John Hsieh, Shelley Rigger, Cal Clark, Alex Tan, Joseph Wong, T Y Wang, Quansheng Zhao, Guoli Liu, and Chyungly Lee. It also provides an overview of Taiwan's process of democratic consolidation, unravels dynamic interactions among various domestic and international actors in policy design and implementation, and explores future challenges to Taiwan thus leaving readers with a better understanding of the political complexity of Taiwan's attempts to strengthen its democratic governance and institutions.

This unique book provides important guidelines and examples of ways STEM (e. g., science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) faculty and administration can collaborate towards goals of recruiting, mentoring, and promoting leadership to academic women faculty. Based on the experiences of faculty across five Florida universities, including one national laboratory, each chapter highlights one aspect of a multi-institutional collaboration on an NSF ADVANCE-PAID grant dedicated to achieving these three goals.

Inter-organizational relations are increasingly important in today's organizational landscape. The management of these relations requires unique understandings and capabilities. Hence it comes as no surprise that the formation, purpose and management of inter-organizational relations are a vital part of most curricula in the fields of business, economic geography, sociology, and policy studies. Managing Inter-Organizational Relations offers both a thorough review and innovative systematization of the main theoretical debates surrounding different forms of inter-organizational relations – and of the challenges of their management. With a unique collection of cases from around the world addressing different managerial issues, it provides a pioneering and comprehensive analysis of different types of inter-organizational collaboration, including strategic alliances, joint ventures, regional clusters, global value and supply chains, and project as well as innovation networks. Key features: - Contains up-to-date empirical research. - Utilises an innovative structure of debates and cases. - Packed with a wide-ranging collection of international case studies and examples. - Offers a unique managerial perspective on inter-organizational relations across different types or forms of collaborative governance.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the factors providing the impetus for change in the North American beef industry and how the industry is responding to the challenges. The beef industry story provides lessons for other agri-food industries attempting to respond to rapidly evolving food markets. The book provides important insights into the process whereby industries respond to a rapidly changing marketplace and, in particular, industries with complex supply chains consisting of many actors. The agri-food industry provides an excellent example of a market that is evolving rapidly in ways few would have contemplated even a few years ago. The beef industry has an exceedingly complex supply chains that must co-ordinate complex resources such as genetics, extensive grazing, precision feeding strategies, high tech processing, cold chain logistics and food safety protocols. The interaction between changing demands and the beef industry's responses to an evolving marketplace provide the focus of the book. The book examines the process whereby the beef industry prior is making the transition from a supplier of commodities to a provider of differentiated products with attributes tailored to individual consumers. The book then provides a theoretical basis for the examination of evolving supply chains and a means by which the industry's response can be assessed using modern quantitative methods. Case studies are developed to dig deeper into the transition the beef industry is experiencing. Insights are drawn for other agri-food sectors facing similar challenges. Ranchers have always had a special place in the cultural heritage that defines North Americans and beef has been the premium product in the dietary hierarchy in traditional North American cuisine. As urban dwellers who are generations removed from agricultural production now overwhelmingly make up the consumer base, the image of cattle producers is buffeted by new customer priorities such as animal welfare, environmental sustainability and the ability to determine the place of origin of their food. As the proportion of food consumed at home declines and consumers seek to expand their range of culinary experiences, food from cultures where beef is not a mainstay of the diet have gained more prominence. These restaurant experiences are increasingly being reflected in the near table ready products on offer in supermarkets. Consumers are still likely to enjoy a good steak, other traditional beef products now struggle for consumers. The implications of the response of the beef industry to the changes buffeting the sector goes beyond strictly commercial concerns and will determine the place of beef and the industry's participants in the evolving North American culture.