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Are Western Muslims integrating? Can Western Muslims integrate? Over the past 20 years, significant attention has been invested in examinations stimulated by the extensive public commentary addressing such questions. This brief review aims to demystify the examination of Western Muslims' integration in the interest of re-embedding this subject matter in the broader scholarship about immigration and settlement. Within this expanding field of study, Western Muslims can (and should) be examined at the community level, where specific ethno-cultural groups represent but case studies among hundreds of Western Muslim communities that differ in their immigration context, countries of origin, sects, and ethno-cultural backgrounds. Simultaneously, the collection of statistical data should be used to test hypotheses that are developed in studies of such communities. The dialogue between qualitative and quantitative approaches provides research openings to more rigorously push the state of knowledge in this area, and I describe some of these openings below.

Discusses the interaction of multinational corporate integration with regional economic integration within the European Economic Community. Argues that for Europe any systematic analysis of the extent and character of multinational intra-firm trade is lacking. In contrast to the United States, where a good deal of work has been done on intra-firm trade by U.S. multinationals, the only European surveys are those for Swedish multinationals. (AM)

ABSTRACTExisting research focuses on the positive returns to operational performance of firms' supply chain integration (SCI) with suppliers, buyers, and customers. We draw on differentiation‐integration duality and contingency theory to suggest that manufacturing firms should seek to achieve both integration through supply chain coordination activities and differentiation through modularity‐based manufacturing practices (MBMP). Using a sample of 261 manufacturing firms, we identify an inverse U‐shaped relationship between SCI and operational performance. Furthermore, we find support for the importance of differentiation‐integration duality as a fit between high levels of SCI and high levels of MBMP results in enhanced operational performance. We find support for a contingency perspective as fit is especially critical at higher levels of environmental uncertainty. Implications for theory, practice, and further research are suggested.

This article argues that Lockwood's piece on social and system integration was quite insightful at the time, but that it failed in correctly solving the issues it raised. More recent versions of the distinction, such as Giddens's and Archer's, are deemed not satisfactory either. Three steps are then taken in order to provide an alternative solution, which tackles the general problem of the relationship between structure and agency. The critical analysis of the notion of `emergent properties', along with those of `structure' and `mechanism', is the groundwork for a discussion of collective causality that substantiates an alternative view which defines social systems as collective subjectivities, including some methodological considerations. A broad notion of realism is upheld in the article.

"Den über 'Integrationsleitbilder' vermittelten politischen und administrativen Vorstellungen über die Integration von Zuwanderern deutscher Kommunen gilt der Beitrag der Autorinnen. Im vergangenen Jahrzehnt sind in deutschen Kommunen allenthalben Strategiepapiere entwickelt worden, die Auskunft über das Verständnis und die Ziele von Integrationspolitik formulieren. Die Autorinnen arbeiten heraus, auf welche Weise sich die verschiedenen Konzepte unterscheiden - oder auch weitreichende Ähnlichkeiten aufweisen: Diese resultieren nicht nur daraus, dass in aller Regel die Überlegungen des Soziologen Hartmut Esser grundlegend für die Definition des Gegenstandsbereichs Integration im Rahmen der 'Integrationsleitbilder' sind, vielmehr können sie auch auf die intensive Abstimmung und Zusammenarbeit der Kommunen in Integrationsfragen zurückgeführt werden." (Autorenreferat)

AbstractThis article argues that there are underlying changes in the world economy due to growing integration of the national economies which are more profound than the events in particular commodity markets, and that our national economic policies should be significantly shaped by these changes. Integration is defined in terms of the convergence of prices on international markets. It is occurring in the markets for commodities, factors and technologies. The freeing of trade multilaterally and unilaterally and the formation of regional trading arrangements have all played a part in greater global integration.Global and regional integration have changed the nature of the international markets in which we trade and require corporations to change their production and marketing strategies. Governments have an increasingly important role in negotiating international and regional agreements and in providing an environment that allows the domestic producers to compete on international markets. There is, however, no need to change the unilateral trading policies of Australia.

Oliver Williamson's work on transaction cost economics, and more generally on the factors that determine the boundaries between firms and markets, has provided key insights that have significantly expanded our understanding of the attributes of transactions and organizations that lead to vertical integration and vertical contractual relationships more broadly. Transaction cost—based theories of vertical integration focus on the implications of incomplete contracts, asset specificity, information imperfections, incentives for opportunistic behavior, and the costs and benefits of internal organization. These theories focus on efforts by firms to mitigate transaction costs and various contractual hazards that may arise with anonymous spot market transactions by choosing among alternative organizational and contractual governance arrangements that can reduce these costs. There is substantial empirical support for these theories. Property rights—based theories are sometimes interpreted as formalizing some of Williamson's work. However, little empirical work has focused on property rights—based theories per se. Principal-agent theories of vertical integration that are distinguished from other organizational theories primarily by assumed differences in risk aversion between principals and agents and associated moral hazard problems have also been advanced. They add little to the other theories and have limited independent empirical support.