The financing of rural producer co‐operatives: A case study

The article attempts to address the lack of empirical data in literature on South African producer co‐operatives. A detailed analysis of the financial results of a rural producer cooperative over a twelve‐year period is used to evaluate the project's start‐up phase and long‐term viability. The results generally expose weaknesses well documented in the international literature. Due to the poverty of the membership, the co‐operative was dependent on loans for its foundation. In the long run, the co‐operative survived, increasing not only the number of members, but also their wages. It has been weakened, however, by a lack of reinvested earnings, which was due to repeated withdrawals of revenues as wages and slow‐growing sales due to a lack of marketing effort.     

Much ado about nothing: the limitation of liability and the market for 19th century Irish bank stock

Limited liability is widely believed to be a prerequisite for the emergence of an active and liquid securities market because the transactions costs associated with trading ownership of unlimited liability firms are viewed as prohibitive. In this article, we examine the trading of shares in an Irish bank, which limited its liability in 1883. Using this bank’s archives, we assemble a time series of trading data, which we test for structural breaks. Our results suggest that the move to limited liability had a negligible impact upon the trading of this bank’s shares.     

Gerschenkron Revisited: The New Corporate Russia

Our analysis is based on firm-specific data compiled from the Russian Trading System stock exchange and SKRIN (CKPиH in Russian) database. We seek to identify the factors behind Russia’s dramatically improved corporate sector performance from the beginning of the 2000s to December 2007. We argue that improved long-term corporate performance was a consequence of several policy initiatives associated with the state-dominated banking sector, which enabled statesubsidized investment funds to be channeled from a structurally reengineered energy sector to targeted investment projects located in other industries. We claim that Russia’s industrial strategy closely conforms to Alexander Gerschenkron’s catch-up theory.     

SPORADIC, FLUID AND CONSTRICTED PROCESSES: THREE TYPES OF STRATEGIC DECISION MAKING IN ORGANIZATIONS[1]

Using 136 cases of strategic decision-making described by a number of variables drawn from the literature, three distinct types of decision-making processes are found. These are termed sporadic, fluid and constricted processes. They are parsimonious characterizations of decision-making processes which, given the variety of the 30 organizations from which the cases are drawn, should be generalizable to a wide range of contexts.     

An economic appraisal of a South African producer co‐operative

In an earlier article in this journal, the authors analysed the financial results of a South African producer co‐operative over a ten‐year period. The study focused on the commercial viability of the cooperative in terms of the exigencies of the market place expressed in current prices. In the present study, cost‐benefit techniques are used to extend the analysis to an investigation of the economic viability of the co‐operative and an assessment of whether scarce financial and other resources have been misallocated. The concept of investment cost per Job is widened to include the cost of maintaining a Job. Various scenarios such as sales growth, lower wages and the benefits of government incentives were simulated to analyse the viability of the enterprise under differing conditions.     

COMPLEXITY AND CLEAVAGE: DUAL EXPLANATIONS OF STRATEGIC DECISION-MAKING [I]

This paper presents a framework for the comparative analysis of strategic decision-making processes. It draws together and integrates predominant but previously disparate theories of decision-making. Examples are given of how decision-making processes may be characterized and, hence, facilitate comparison across all types of strategic decisions. Explanation of why decision processes may differ is from two perspectives. First, the complexity of the topic may lead to particular characteristics of the decision process. Secondly, the cleavage of interests which a topic arouses may also lead to particular aspects of decision processes. We argue that each decision topic has varying levels of both complexity and cleavage and four examples of strategic decisions are analyzed on these dimensions. We identify four profiles of decision-making processes associated with varying levels of complexity and cleavage and we finally suggest that our model may explain and empirically demonstrate variations across a large number of diverse strategic decisions.     

Turnover and payroll levies: An unexploited source of regional economic data

Detailed regional economic data detailing past and current patterns of growth are needed to determine regional and local comparative advantages of geographical shifts in economic activity within regions and cities. The level of government between local and provincial government provides a potential source of such data, as it has been collecting levies based on the turnover and payrolls of all formal businesses throughout South Africa since 1994. The authors have utilised the database of one such body, now known as the Umgungundlovu Municipality, to prepare detailed real-time-series for the period January 1994 to January 2001. Comparisons with regional data supplied by the DBSA have established the reliability of such data, and the turnover and wage bill series were then used to provide economic analyses of a geographical and sectoral nature.