The Division of Labour,Capitalism and Socialism: An Alternative to Sayer

Sayer (1995) has argued that the division of labour has a structure that is distinct from capitalist relations of production, and, following Hayek, that it is determined most strongly by the use of knowledge by enterprises. Conscious coordination or alteration of the division of labour therefore usually result in reduced efficiency and in an authoritarian suppression of difference. In this article we argue that the division of labour in capitalism is strongly determined by conflict within and between classes, and that in the short term socialist policy can and should aim to alter it. A model of socialist economic coordination is presented which is feasible and ameliorates many of the problems of the capitalist division of labour. This model would enable the development rather than suppression of positive differences.     

Evolutionary Business Information Systems

This article reflects on existing and emerging future challenges arising in the area of “evolutionary business information systems”, a class of systems that demand an evolutionary software development process and which support secondary design of various conceptual layers. We place both existing contributions and future research opportunities in context by referring to an idealized, preliminary system architecture. Finally, we emphasize our pluralistic perspective on the research object and the resulting need for methodological flexibility in the sense of interdisciplinary configurations of research methods.     

Taxes,start-up costs,and innovative entrepreneurship

Prior research investigates the role of start-up costs and taxes with regard to entrepreneurship. Yet, little distinction is made regarding the type of entrepreneurship, particularly innovative versus non-innovative entrepreneurship. We shall argue that start-up costs and taxes are associated in different ways with innovative versus non-innovative entrepreneurship. Taxes being recurring costs should mainly relate to innovative entrepreneurship, whereas start-up costs being one-off costs should mainly relate to non-innovative entrepreneurship. Analyzing a dataset of 632,116 individuals, including 43,223 entrepreneurs from 53 countries, we can partially confirm our predictions. Corporate taxes show a negative relationship with innovative entrepreneurship, whereas income taxes seem to have no relationship. High start-up costs have a positive relationship with innovative entrepreneurship, although this finding only holds true in cross-sectional investigations. Our paper contributes to the discussion on how governmental regulation and taxes relate to entrepreneurship.     

Extreme negotiations

CEOs and other senior executives must make countless complex, high-stakes deals across functional areas and divisions, with alliance partners and critical suppliers, and with customers and regulators. The pressure of such negotiations may make them feel a lot like U.S. military officers in an Afghan village, fending off enemy fire while trying to win trust and get intelligence from the local populace. Both civilian and military leaders face what the authors call "dangerous negotiations," in which the traps are many and good advice is scarce. Although the sources of danger are quite different for executives and officers, they resort to the same kinds of behaviors. Both feel pressure to make quick progress, project strength and control (particularly when they have neither), rely on force rather than collaboration, trade resources for cooperation rather than build trust, and make unwanted compromises to minimize potential damage. The authors outline five core strategies that "in extremis" military negotiators use to resolve conflicts and influence others: maintaining a big-picture perspective; uncovering hidden agendas to improve collaboration; using facts and fairness to get buy-in; building trust; and focusing on process as well as outcomes. These strategies provide an effective framework that business executives can use to prepare for a negotiation and guide their moves at the bargaining table.     

Universal Values, Behavioral Ethics and Entrepreneurship

This is a comparison of graduate students attitudes in Spain and the United States on the issue of universal versus relativist ethics. The findings show agreement on fundamental universal values across cultures but differences in responses to behavioral ethics within the context of entrepreneurial dilemmas.     

Reviews

”THE GEOGRAPHY OF ECONOMIC CHANGE“ Martin and Rowthorn (eds), 1986: The Geography of De-industrialisation. London: Macmillan, £30 cloth, £8.95 paper.

Champion, A. G. et al, 1987: Changing Places. London: Edward Arnold, £7.95 paper.

“WHAT FUTURE FOR THE LOCAL STATE?” Simon Duncan and Mark Goodwin, 1988: The Local State and Uneven Development. Cambridge: Polity Press, £8.95 paperback.

“THE 'SEEDS' APPROACH”

(1) All Change: A study of Bus Transportation Planning, Deregulation and Privatisation in seven towns; Consultant Dr P. A. Stanley; March 1987.

(2) After Chernobyl: A safe energy policy for the South East; Consultant Adrian Atkinson; May 1987.

(3) Troubled Waters: Water services in the South East Region; Consultants Dr J. Rees and Dr M. Synott; May 1987.

(4) Jobs Plan Workshop [W.P.2]; Oxford City Council; May 1987.

(5) Opportunities for energy conservation in Brighton and Harlow council housing stock: G. Matthews, S. Hodgkinson and M. Fergusson.

(6) Defence Electronics Conference [W.P.1]; Stevenage DC; November 1987.

(7) British Rail Services in the Southampton Area (W.P.3]; Consultant Helen Dawson; February 1988.

(8) Right Lines?: A study of British Rail Services in the South East; Consultant Helen Dawson; September 1988.

(9) South-South Divide; SEEDS 1987.

All published by SEEDS, The South East Economic Development Strategy.

“INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING — PROCESSES AND POLITICS” Irene Hardill, 1987: The regional implications of the restructuring in the wool textile industry. Aldershot: Gower, £25.

Bo Strath, 1987: The politics of deindustrialisation. The contraction of the West European shipbuilding industry. London: Croom Helm.     

Did large institutional investors flock into the technology herd? An empirical investigation using a vector Markov-switching model

This article investigates whether large non-bank institutional investors herded during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s. We use the vector Markov-switching model of Hamilton and Lin (1996) to analyse the technology stockholdings of 115 large institutional investors from 1980 to 2012. By imposing different restrictions on the elements of the transition probability matrix, we are able to test for various lead/lag scenarios that might have existed between the technology stockholding of each investor and that of the residual market. We find that only 17.4% of the investors in our sample herded during the dot-com bubble. Thus, during the dot-com bubble, herding among large institutional investors was not an especially widespread phenomenon. Among those investors that herded, 80% herded during the run-up, 10% during the collapse and 10% during both phases of the dot-com bubble. About 23% of all investors in our sample exited from the technology sector before the bubble collapsed. These results seem to support Abreu and Brunnermeier’s (2003) theory of bubbles and crashes.     

Equilibrium with capacity-constrained firms: A classroom experiment

The authors develop a two-stage classroom experiment to illustrate convergence to long-run equilibrium in a market where price-taking firms are capacity-constrained. Once equilibrium in the first stage is established, capacity constraints are introduced by imposing discontinuities in the fixed costs of several firms. The experiment demonstrates that this supply shock yields a higher market price and, under assumed parameterization, several higher-cost firms that otherwise are not able to survive in the long-run equilibrium enter the market and earn positive profits.