Social entrepreneurship: towards conceptualisation

The marketing in strategy dialogue and the emerging marketing/entrepreneurship interface paradigm stress the need for marketers to research entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneur‐ship, the entrepreneurship leading to the establishment of new social enterprises and the continued innovation in existing ones, is much discussed but little understood and given the increasing importance of such organisations should be addressed. This paper conceptualises social entrepreneurship as a multidimensional construct involving the expression of entrepreneurially virtuous behaviour to achieve the social mission, a coherent unity of purpose and action in the face of moral complexity, the ability to recognise social value‐creating opportunities and key decision‐making characteristics of innovativeness, proactiveness and risk‐taking. The paper discusses implications for policy and practice and concludes with a consideration of theoretical issues and directions for future research. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

RENT DISSIPATION AND THE SOCIAL COST OF PRICE POLICY

This paper uses a general equilibrium-based exchange economy model to examine rent seeking for a price policy. Opposing interests spend resources to influence the government's choice of a price vector. Rents, the willingness to pay for the policy, are determined endogenously from the Nash equilibirum of a non-cooperative game. Numerical simulations explore the degree to which rents are dissipated by wasteful rent seeking. It is found that dissipation, measured as the ratio of rent-seeking costs to rents garnered, can grow without limit, and is greatest when opponents are evenly matched. Dissipation is smallest with widely disparate groups, a result that might help explain the underdissipation that seems to occur in many industries.     

A bell system view of videotex

Within the last few years videotex has attracted considerable attention. Unfortunately, but as frequently is the case with novel services that are still evolving, a precise definition of videotex is somewhat difficult to obtain. To some people the term videotex applies to a wide variety of time-shared computer services for the home and business market, while to others, the term videotex is very specific perhaps best exemplified by the UK Prestel service. In its most narrow and specific meaning, videotex is a subset of online, time-shared computer services. It utilizes the home TV set for display to access a large, central database of frames of general information in colour with graphics. The database is organized in a tree fashion, and the main target is the home market.     

What happened after Bell spilled the acid?: Telecommunications history: a view through the literature

The article is an extensive review of the literature covering the history of telecommunications, primarily the telephone and telegraph. Much of the history itself is discussed in the process, including the politics of inventions, monopolies and anti-trust pressures, and industry interaction with government. The ignorance of many authors on the actual workings of the telephone is decried, and many sources for gaining an understanding of the technology are indicated.     

Matt Goldspan's trilogy

Matthew Goldspan was faced with a series of coincidental personnel issues that tested both his fairness and integrity. He had been a branch manager of a financial services operation for three years, where he oversaw thirty five employees. In one instance, a clerical employee protested salary differences she discovered; in another, his affirmative action record, as well as his right to make hiring decisions, was in question; and thirdly, he had to decide how to respond to theft by a temporary employee who happened to be the son of a prized member of his staff. In each case, employees were looking for Matt to demonstrate appropriate leadership and sound judgment.Jay Halfond is currently Associate Dean of the College of Business Administration at Northeastern University, where he also teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in social and ethical issues of management. He has published numerous articles, reviews, and cases on higher education administration and on ethical issues in management.