This book is the product of the alliance between the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and INSEAD, a prestigious
business school outside Paris, with a campus in Singapore. INSEAD’s Web site explains the book’s parentage: "The INSEAD-Wharton Alliance, announced in May 2001, combines INSEAD’s resources with those of Wharton’s campuses in Philadelphia and San Francisco, to deliver business education and research across a global learning network." This book, featuring essays by members of both faculties from a variety of business disciplines, makes the alliance tangible to the rest of us. It examines the issues driving business to globalize and the challenges confronting the managers of
globalizing businesses. getAbstract.com acknowledges this book as a milestone in the unified
academic treatment of global business. Business scholars and corporate trainers may find the collaboration compelling, and readers seeking academic discussion of management theory will certainly find the essays stimulating. Yet, as can happen with academic anthologies, the filtration is spotty: Here, the irrelevant or oblique appears side by side with the new and applicable, and many essays are dryly academic in style, tone and content. As one wag said of novelist Henry James, the problem is not that they bite off more than they can chew, but rather that they chew more than they can bite off.