A Changing World : Challenges for Landscape Research
Written primarily for researchers and advanced students in environmental and social sciences, this latest book in Springer’s Landscape Series looks at some of the emerging fields and new challenges in landscape research. These include: the role of value systems in perceiving, appreciating, and managing landscapes the ‘space’ and ‘place’ concept in landscape research GIS and remote sensing techniques for gathering and processing spatially and temporally explicit land cover, vegetation, and land use data methods of landscape history landscape genetics and genetic methods to test landscape connectivity and dispersal of plant and animal species
Automotive production systems and standardisation : From Ford to the case of Mercedes-Benz
The introduction of the Mercedes-Benz Production System (MPS) is exemplary of a trend within the automotive industry: the creation and introduction of company-specific standardised production systems. This book contributes to the debate about production systems by examining the social and economic implications of the role of standardisation in production systems. In this context it addresses three core issues: First, the driving forces behind the changing forms and functions of standardisation and the role of institutions therein. Second, the impact of standardisation on the evolution of automotive production systems. Third, based on the author's own empirical research conducted over a three year period at the Mercedes-Benz plant Stuttgart-Untertürkheim/Germany, the book examines the influence of standardisation on the work of actors on the shop floor in terms of organisational learning processes and the regulation of work.

