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Countries adopt policies that attract foreign multinationals, stimulate industrial clustering and foster innovation. This book links these topical issues, examining activities of multinational enterprises alongside the efficiency, appropriateness and sufficiency of such policies. With new empirical evidence, it makes practical proposals throughout.

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Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to show how workflow management can be applied in the context of business networking. Design/methodology/approach - The paper looks at workflow management systems (WfMSs) as an enterprise integration tool and, as such, it shows that WfMS require an appropriate integration infrastructure. The paper then describes how a WfMS that supports business networking can be built. Findings - It is found that business networking requires a decentralized, peer-to-peer (P2P) integration infrastructure. On the other hand, it is found that it is possible to develop a generic and reusable workflow engine. Both components are then integrated in order to come up with a solution that supports business networking. Research limitations/implications - Issues concerning information and document management are not addressed. Neither mechanisms of storage and retrieval of exchanged documents, nor the format/structure of those documents are specified. Practical implications - The paper assumes that enterprises will be willing to build up a P2P network where they will conduct their business-to-business (B2B) exchanges. Then, the proposed solution would allow their business processes to be linked without requiring tight coupling between their information systems. Originality/value - The paper is useful to IT strategists and researchers dealing with WfMS, B2B integration architectures and applications of P2P technology. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

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This paper discusses some of the challenges presently found both in supply chain and in extended enterprise management. It also presents details of a Distributed Business Process Coordination Infrastructure that was used as a platform in the development of a software-based management system for a global supply chain in the garment sector. The pilot implementation that was undertaken allowed not only the validation of the proposed concepts but the testing of the integrated technological platform as well.