Dragons and gazelles

"The book Dragons and Gazelles. International management and corporate social responsibility today. A subjective tale offers a subjective narrative about the interdependence of different phenomena constituting the environment for international management processes. This environment, due to its’ dynamics and volatility, creates a situation of the constituted instability, which calls for interpretations. The book addresses the need for such interpretations, offering theoretical though empirically based reflexions which form explanatory framework for the contemporary management issues.

In its’ holistic approach to the issues discussed and through the construction of the open narrative, inviting the Readers to join in the active analysis, the Authors assume that management is equally a matter of science as of art. Thus, a manager or entrepreneur achieves success through creative use of knowledge, so the more she is an “artist” capable to intellectually re-define existing conditions for operations the more she can be an effective practitioner re-shaping the surrounding reality.

The goal of the presented work is to extend the field of analysis of the social phenomena through interpretations of links between economic, social and cultural context. The book can thus be treated as a certain reference point for social sciences students but also for the researchers searching for new paths of scientific exploration or for managers taking strategic decisions.

The book is a translation of the previous version titled “Smoki i Gazele 2”, extended by the inspirational mini case studies, illustrating a complexity of the global surroundings but also its’ consequences for markets, industries and enterprises. The case studies indicating multidimensionality of phenomena occurring in the economy in the context of globalisation processes provide a pretext to undertake a broad discourse on evolution and changes occurring in clusters, industries and whole economy, which become an interesting ground for exploration as they occur under the influence of regional or national endogenous factors, but also in result of exogenous, transnational influences exerted by, among others, large enterprises. The unquestionable benefits of joining international transactions and global value chains are juxtaposed here with the paradoxes of globalisation, in which the problems of the contemporary world such as: lock-in effect, downgrading within global value chains or industry crises, are recognised"