*** PETER PRUZAN: Rational, Ethical and Spiritual Perspectives on Leadership. Selected Writings. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, CH-2542 Pieterlen, Switzerland. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 - E-mail: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Frontiers of Business Ethics" series, No. 7. 2009, 322 pp., €42.20. ISBN 978-3-03911-907-3.
Nowadays, where bitter offerings are made to the “Golden Calf” of money, for money, in total disconnection from an economy at the service of those who actually keep the system ticking along, this book is like a breath of fresh air to those starved of oxygen. It retraces the intellectual and spiritual journey made by a graduate of the University of Princeton and the Harvard business School, who gradually managed to assert himself within the field of contemporary business management schools, to emerge at the head of the Management, Policy and Philosophy Department at the Copenhagen Business School during his quest for meaning that shook up his life and his vision of the world and not only that of the business world. The book is made up of extracts from scientific publications, which track the voyage he made and which, as an ensemble, make this book both untypical and engaging.
Born into a New York Jewish family, Peter Pruzan was moulded within a background and mindset that left little place for intuition and metaphysical conjecture. The road ahead was that of success, with everything fitting into place, which explains why his studies and the beginning of his career focused on the concept of “optimisation”, the aim of maximising the usefulness resulting from our decisions. Subsequently, when he retired in 2003, he confessed that he had become a very short-sighted person who looked at the world within a prism of hyper-rationality, an expert on more and more about less and less. As the head of a firm of consultants that he created, he would have been able to savour for a long time to come recognition from international organisations, such as the World Bank and companies for which he had worked. Nonetheless, doubt set in at a certain moment with regard to what optimisation in the world of human beings really meant. During a business visit to Bangladesh for the World Bank, he gradually began to temper his rationally mathematical and economic approaches with considerations more imbued with a moral sense of purpose. This ultimately led him to develop at the Copenhagen Business School a reflection on ethics in organisations and to invent, together with his colleagues, the concept of, “ethical compatibility”. His most recent turnabout is perhaps the most groundbreaking and discomposing and stems from a meeting with a, “teacher/guru/Indian spiritual leader”, Sathya Sai Baba, which led the atheist towards morality and spirituality and away from the dominant scientific paradigm that excluded questions about ourselves and which denied the existence of a science of the soul that had subsequently helped create the emergence of a sort of, “nihilism of ethics and values”.
This book certainly has a strange resonance in these times of madness where the world is falling apart before our very eyes, although some people will undoubtedly find it difficult to follow Peter Pruzan during the final stages of his personal itinerary. Nonetheless, the extracts contained in this writing deserve contemplation, given that they focus on themes that are fundamental to the current questions and angst felt with regard to morals and ethics: ethical compatibility, values and leadership, identity, responsibility and finally leadership based on spirituality. On the contrary, this book would undoubtedly be of use to those who are exercising or are aspiring to exercise leadership in any way, including the political world, so that they find out about and contemplate lessons on life different to those they have too often had to learn over recent decades…
Michel Theys
*** METTE ZOLNER: Young Business Leaders. Between Utility and Utopia. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 - email: pie@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). 2009, 237 pp. €26.90. ISBN 978-90-5201-541-5.
A graduate from the European University Institute in Florence (political and social sciences), Mette Zolner has been teaching since 2002 at the Copenhagen Business School, while pursuing a prolific career as a researcher. In this connection, this French specialist seeks to shed light on the generations of French employers, who, since 1938, have prioritised attempts to reconcile the viability of their businesses with constructive support for society's well-being as a whole. This analysis is both sociological and historical and helps heighten our awareness of ideas - unfortunately, too little-known in the business world - and proposes a philosophy of action promoted by the Centre for Young Business Leaders. It is lucid but even more than this, it is stimulating!
(MT)
*** BERTRAND BLANCHETON, HUBERT BONIN ( Editors): La croissance en économie ouverte (XVIIIe-XXIe siècles). Hommages à Jean-Charles Asselain. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang ( see address attached). “Économie et Histoire” series, No. 4. 2009, 464 pp., €53.90. ISBN 978-90-5201-498-2.
Emeritus Professor at the University of Montesquieu-Bordeaux IV, Jean-Charles Asselain has ceaselessly, throughout his career, striven to develop and defend the thesis of the “open economy”. In this “book of homage” to his pedagogical verve, his closest fellow intellectual travellers explore the different aspects of this profession of faith and analyse the complex links between economic openness and growth within a chronological perspective stemming from the 18th century to the present day. The fundamental question relating to the level of degree appropriate to the open economy is one of the main threads running through the contributions made in this book. The conviction shared by all the different writers is summarised very effectively by Professor Hubert Bonin in the introductory chapter: although it is obvious that the said openness unquestionably leads to the decline of local non-competitive “systems” , the closed economy, on the other hand, also triggers an, “ unavoidable decline in the whole country, indeed, a decline at a continental level”. Within a system of globalisation, the real “economic patriotism” therefore promotes a “war of movement” tot that of “trench warfare” within the context of protectionism.
(PBo)
*** MAARTJE DE VISSER: Network-Based Governance. The Example of EC Competition and EC Communications Law. Hart Publishing (16C Worcester Place, Oxford, OX1 2JW. Tel: (44-1865) 517530 - fax: 510710 - Email: mail@hartpub.co.uk - Internet: http://www.hartpub.co.uk ). « Modern Studies in European Law” series, No. 19. 2009, 440 pp. ISBN 978-1-84113-256-3
Since its creation, the European Community has sought to promulgate new legislation to ensure that its citizens benefit from what an integrated Europe is supposed to bring. Since the 1990s, once the body of the internal market's legislation was broadly in place, attention gradually switched towards the application of this legislation. The question was now one of how to ensure that 27 different national administrations applied the Community acquis efficiently and coherently and in a way that would appropriately benefit five hundred million Europeans. This book seeks to provide an answer to this question by examining the frameworks of the institutions set up at the beginning of this millennium to manage Community policies for competition and communications. These new procedures aimed to transfer a large part of responsibility for applying the Commission's regulations to the national authorities, so as to free up resources at the Brussels executive for more important cases. One recurring criticism of these provisions identified the risk of uniform application of laws being watered down due to the increased number of players in this field. In an effort to prevent this danger occurring, the Commission introduced a cooperation mechanism between all the national authorities involved in the two domains concerned. The author of this book initially analyses the traditional models -centralised, decentralised and through agencies - responsible for applying Community legislation. She also underlines the difficulty of allocating competences in a multi-level structure of governance, as well as the necessity for a positive interaction between these different levels. Maartje de Visser then provides a comparative study of network governance and the governance under the traditional regimes. The second part of the book provides a detailed insight into the changes introduced by way of new regulation in the domains mentioned above and illustrates the roles played by three major actors concerned in this process: the national authorities, the national courts and the Commission. The final part of the book sets out to provide a critical analysis of the network model and evaluates its level of attractiveness for companies and consumers who operate within it. The author concludes with an analysis that aims to reveal the benefits and shortcomings of this model, as well as possible ways of improving the system.
(NDu)
*** DONIKA LILOVA: Bulgaria as a Target for Foreign Direct Investment. Peter Lang (see address attached). "European University Studies" series, No. 3335. 2009, 88 pp, €18.50 ISBN 978-3-631-59361-5.
Drawing from a PhD thesis at the Wiesbaden University of Applied Sciences, this book analyses the level of Bulgaria's attractiveness for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of which this country has become a major destination. Employing a range of empirical criteria, the author explores the business environment prevailing in this country, in addition to the production conditions, the state of the market and government aid that encourages potential investors. The author also looks at some of the at-risk areas that investors might find discouraging. Donika Lilova also compares Poland and the Czech Republic, which had been top of the class in this subject, as well as Romania.
(NDu)
*** EKATERINA ROUSSEVA: Rethinking Exclusionary Abuses in EU Competition Law. Hart Publishing (see address attached). 2010, 547 pp. ISBN 978-1-84113-926-5
This book seeks to reinterpret Article 82 of the EU treaty - which now has become 102 of the treaty on the functioning of the Union, with regard to abusive eviction practices by dominant companies. The book also puts forward possible remedies for modernisation within its analysis of these abuses. This Article has unexpectedly fallen under the spotlight, given that the Commission was, in the past, generally more preoccupied by barriers to competition - covered by Article 81- than by abuses of dominant position. It was only when the modernisation of this Article began in the 1990s, that attention focused on the final element that had not been modernised in the legal and competition field - Article 82. The problem is due to the fact that the preponderant position of Article 81 “eclipsed” the one on abusive eviction practices and subsequently, information and decisions in this connection were very scarce indeed. Since 2005, DG Competition at the Commission set about modernising Article 81 and began to promote discussions in this connection in academia. Subsequently, within a few years, the number of studies on this theme impressively took off. This study contributes to the discussion and puts forward an analysis of Court's Jurisprudence on Article 82 and identifies developments and problems within this body of legislation. This study can also be used as the basis for evaluating reform of the Commission and proposing an alternative option, namely, rethinking application of the Article in a way that better serves the interests of consumers. In the first part of the book, seven chapters review the rulings on the subject and related problems. The second part seeks to assess the reform carried out and proposes alternative approaches to abusive eviction practices.
(NDu)
*** PHILIPPE FLAMME, MAURICE-ANDRE FLAMME, CLAUDE DARDENNE: Les marchés publics européens et belges. L'irrésistible européanisation du droit de la commande publique. Larcier publications (Groupe De Boeck, 39 rue des Minimes, B-1000 Brussels. Tel.: (32-2) 5480720 - fax: 5480722 - Email: editions@admin.ulb.ac.be - Internet: http://www.larcier.com ). 2009, 362 pp. €130. ISBN 978-2-8044-1827-4.
As a lecturer actor at the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management and the Polytechnic Faculty at the Free University of Brussels, Philippe Flamme took sole responsibility for this second edition of this expanded journal. This publication comprehensively examines the public procurement rules and related jurisprudence presented in Belgium on 31 July last. It goes without saying that the European provisions are omnipresent in this work. In the chapter focusing on the choices of co-contractors, the author pays particular attention to negotiated procedure. The other chapters examine the notion of the public market, ethics, ecology and employment in the public markets, as well as the qualitative selection of candidates taken on, “the pseudo-discovery of the public Private partnership”, contentious issues surrounding public orders and the domain spanning, “Europeanisation and globalisation”, with conclusions provided for all of these issues.
(PBo)
*** CONSTANT DE KONINCK, PATRICK THIEL: Les codes thématiques Larcier. Marchés publics 2009. Editions Larcier (see address attached). 2009, 622 pp. €95. ISBN 978-2-8044-1827-4.
The thematic Larcier code series systematically provide transversal selections of draft texts for specific areas of expertise, public procurement in this case. A magistrate and a lawyer specialising in this area have chosen to focus on supra-European (World Trade Organisation, as well as others), European (treaties, directives and regulations) and Belgian tax, as well as provisions on the examination, guarantees, registration and compensation for losses linked to public works, temporary and mobile areas of work etc.
(PBo)