Note from the publisher

摘要

I attended a number of very different conferences over the course of 2010, including the American Sociological Association, Global Business School Network, British Academy of Management and the inaugural conference of the International Services in Emerging Markets. What struck me forcibly at each event was how often I was asked about books and journals that I would not have automatically associated with that particular event. I have talked about rapid prototyping to sociologists and teaching languages to service managers. Of course this can mean that we do not always have the precise book or journal to hand for that discussion, but more positively it also underlines how inter-disciplinary the research contained in each title has become.