As a subsection of the field of strategic company management, international management is concerned with the development, shaping and maintenance of a company=s production and market relationships across national boundaries, with the aim of achieving a commercially optimized global value-creation chain that can stand up to the competition. The individual volumes in the "Executive Education" series are designed in the form of tutorial notes and are intended to be used for independent learning of the modular subject-matter and for rapid revision of the relevant lectures.