Business-led approaches to accessing energy in development countries are becoming key factors to sustainable market development. Given the major challenges in this market, companies will blend commercial and donor-funded activities, while simultaneously finding innovative ways to bring renewable energy technologies beyond the energy grid. Collaborative approaches by companies and public actors focused on private sector development seem crucial at this stage to further upscale emerging business models in this market.
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This article provides an introduction to the topic of multinational management. Multinational management employs a set of principles, theories and models, forming a systematic framework for managing organizations in a global context. This introduction will provide an embarkation point so as to demystify the term "multinational management" and to show that, while there are management similarities with its domestic counterpart, significant differences and challenges exist. As a foundational step, a working definition of two key concepts will be provided: multinational management and the multinational corporation. Likewise, we'll identify the key drivers of multinational management activity and examine the location determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) choices. Specifically, we'll highlight the two principal means of FDI: Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and green-field investment. In conclusion, a close examination of the multinational strategic management process will be provided, with particular emphasis placed on environmental scanning and strategy formulation.
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The field of higher professional educational in the Netherlands is undergoing drastic structural changes. Organizational-wide mergers are commonplace and are often followed by development of new curricula. Furthermore, this is often accompanied by the implementation of a completely new educational concept as well. These structural changes in the educational system require that teachers adapt their current teaching practices, along with working on gaining new competences associated with working in a changing organization. This paper presents a short background of communities of practice in higher education, followed by a report on the first impressions from an experiment in which a bottom-up style of change management has been implemented through the use of a community of practice. A community of practice (CoP) is a powerful knowledge management tool that brings people from a similar domain together in order to solve complex problems, deal with a changing organization and build knowledge around a specific practice. Inholland decided to implement a CoP for the international faculty in order for the members to better cope with the major curricula and didactic changes currently being implemented there. Concepts such as change, organizational sense making and teacher professionalization
