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> Competing in the Global Economy

The last decade began with America feeling the assault of sharp competition from Japan and Europe and that ended with a new era American competitive supremacy, only to feel the sting of the Enron scandal. In a series of specials for PBS, Correspondent Hedrick Smith examines the impact of the new global economy on American competitiveness. He goes inside the power centers of Wall Street, Frankfurt and Tokyo; journeys through the most efficient manufacturing plants in the world from Boeing to Toyota to Daimler Benz; talks to corporate CEOs, bank presidents and ordinary working people on three continents, and comes home with insights on the impact of the global economy on the American middle class and strategies for saving jobs, companies and communities in the face of intense competitive pressure and disruptive change. Find out what we can learn both from our own economic pioneers and from our competitors abroad, and how better partnerships between management and labor can improve productivity and profits while giving workers a bigger share of the returns.

Surviving the Bottom Line: Running with the Bulls
In part one of the PBS series Surviving the Bottom Line, Hedrick Smith takes viewers behind the scenes on Wall Street to reveal the massive power shift in corporate America from CEOs to money managers -- and explains what their influence means to the captains of industry as well as ordinary Americans.

Surviving the Bottom Line: Living on the Fault-Line
Part two of the Surviving the Bottom Line series looks at the self-proclaimed city of the future: San Diego, California. Smith goes inside the thriving high-tech entrepreneurial economy, across the border into the Mexican maquiladora factories, and into the transformed lives of the American middle class.

Surviving the Bottom Line: Learning to Survive
Smith goes seeking successful strategies for educating and preparing average young people for the economy of the future in such different locations as Shanghai, China, rurally, heavily Hispanic Southern Texas, inner city Oakland, California and the Midwest heartland city of Cincinnati. He finds surprising success stories in education.

Surviving the Bottom Line: Beating the Bottom Line
In the final installment in the Surviving the Bottom Line series, Hedrick Smith criss-crosses America and travels to Holland and Quebec to discover how some innovative companies are forging creative partnerships among labor, management and surrounding communities to save jobs, companies, and even regional economies.

Rethinking America
From reporting on three continents, America, Europe and Asia, Hedrick Smith compiles his findings in a book that became a nationwide business best seller. This single volume takes readers inside the corporate disasters and success stories of the 1990s to show how a dynamic, agile, and fast-changing new economic made the traditional American practices in both business and education obsolete for the 21st Century economy. This volume also shows how innovators are succeeding by rethinking America.

Challenge to America: Old Ways, New Game
The premier program in the PBS documentary series Challenge to America (1994) looks at the emergence of global competition -- and how it undermined successful American corporate giants, such as GM, RCA and IBM.

Challenge to America: Education - The Heart of a Nation
School is where global competition begins, so Hedrick Smith takes us to second grade and high school in Germany, Japan, and America to see what kind of education best prepares youth for the 21st century.

Challenge to America: Culture of Commerce
The PBS series' third episode explores the systemic differences between America's individualistic, entrepreneurial style of capitalism where the CEO reigns supreme, and the alliance capitalism of Germany and Japan where cooperation is the hallmark.

Challenge to America: Winning Strategies
From the troubled streets of New York's East Harlem to California's Silicon Valley, Smith crosses the nation to bring us stories of American success and effective pathways into the future. He looks into two major areas - effective educational reform and corporate change to meet global competition.

View from the Top
In a series of ten probing and candid interviews, the world's masters of corporate change talk with Hedrick Smith about their winning strategies.. The video series includes interviews with top executives from: Boeing, Deutsche Bank, Daimler-Benz, General Motors, Ford, Motorola, Intel, U.S. Steel and Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation.

Managing Corporate Change
Nine of the corporate world's top executives sit down with Hedrick Smith to explain how they are leading their companies into the global arena. Includes interviews with Lucent CEO Henry Schacht, Sunbeam CEO Al Dunlap, money manager Michael Price, executives from Northwest Airlines, Qualcomm, Chase Manhattan Bank, Harman International, Hathaway Shirt and San Diego economic strategist Neil Whitely-Ross.

Outside Resources:

Securities and Exchange Commission
The SEC's Edgar database provides on-line access to information on every publicly traded company in the U.S.

Paywatch
How much does your CEO make? Find out on the AFL-CIO's executive compensation list.

NewsHour
Search the for the latest stories on business and the international economy from the PBS NewsHour.

"Betting on the Market"
A Frontline report on America's fascination with Wall Street.

U.S. Department of Labor

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The on-line source for every labor statistic imaginable.

Census Bureau
Keep track of the U.S. trade balance with every country in the world -- from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

Labor Policy in the Netherlands
A list of links to current information on Dutch labor policy.

More Links
A comprehensive list of international trade links.