Interpreting futures through the multi-level co-evolution of organizational practices

This paper explores the relationship between anticipatory cognitive frameworks and the multi-level co-evolution of practices within organizations, as the conceptualization of organizations in evolutionary terms influences the interpretation and development of futures. The paper begins with an overview of the evolutionary approach in the study of organizations, which is followed by the identification of units of analysis including habits, routines and cognitive frameworks. A conceptualization of the co-evolution of practices at multiple levels is then put forward, focusing on the role played by cognitive frameworks in the interpretation and anticipation of futures. In the process of these developments, three key tensions are identified including a temporal tension, tension between levels and tension with localism.     

SHORT‐RUN POLICY COMMITMENT WHEN INVESTMENT TIMING IS ENDOGENOUS: ‘MORE HARM THAN GOOD?’

In our model, firms choose when to set cost‐reducing investment and the government, which only has short‐run commitment power, sets an output subsidy. We show that firms that delay investment without government intervention have an incentive to invest early under policy activism, strategically underinvesting or overinvesting to obtain larger subsidies. The policy scheme thus creates a new, potentially more harmful, distortion. Under oligopoly, a firm has a weaker incentive to manipulate policy than under monopoly, which makes policy intervention less harmful. We investigate when the government may do better by adhering to laissez‐faire than by engaging in active policy intervention.     

Intellectual Property Rights and Entry into a Foreign Market: FDI versus Joint Ventures

We study the effect of the intellectual property rights (IPR) regime of a host country (South) on a multinational's decision between serving a market via greenfield foreign direct investment to avoid the exposure of its technology or a North–South joint venture (JV) with a local firm, which allows R&D spillovers under imperfect IPRs. JV is the equilibrium market structure when R&D intensity is moderate and IPRs strong. The South can gain from increased IPR protection because it encourages a JV, whereas policies to limit foreign ownership in a JV gain importance in technology‐intensive industries as complementary policies to strong IPRs.     

Public Service Leaders as ‘Change Agents’ – for Whom?

Abstract

This article examines how far senior staff in English educational and health service organizations view themselves as leaders who are ‘change agents’ for government-driven reform and independent change agendas. The contribution of external leadership development provision to shaping these self-perceptions is explored. Special attention is paid to national leadership development bodies with different degrees of formal association with government. Whatever this relationship, such provision and other development support apparently reinforced a strong sense of personal agency (choice of action) associated with being a leader, empowering senior staff to adopt a modestly mediatory stance towards both reform and leadership development provision.     

Temporary social dumping,union legalisation and FDI: a note on the strategic use of standards

This paper analyses the welfare implications for a developing country of using union legalisation as a policy instrument to attract inward foreign direct investment. While its presence may discourage a foreign multinational (MNE) from locating in the host country, unionisation is an important rent-extracting instrument for the host country. We show that if the MNE benefits from dynamic effects, the host country government may have an incentive to adopt temporary social dumping: banning the union in the short run to extract higher rents in the future. However, if the government can use a fiscal instrument in conjunction with union legalisation, the former can circumvent the need to engage in social dumping.     

Geographic Indications and Farmer‐Owned Brands: Why Do the US and EU Disagree?

Geographic Indications (GIs) identify the geographic origin of products whose quality, reputation or other characteristic can be attributed to the geographic origin. We focus on a subcategory of GIs, Farmer Owned Brands. Like GIs in general, FOBs require governmental assistance to protect the property rights of the brand owners. GIs are receiving increased attention because many countries and producer groups realize the importance of property right protection for GIs, and are negotiating such rights in international forums like the World Trade Organization. Here we explore possible reasons for US opposition to EU policies conferring special property right protection to GIs. We conclude that the most plausible explanation for the US position is the lack of a domestic constituency advocating greater GI protection, which means that the US position represents the interests only of those who stand to lose from such protection. It will take a change in US property right regulations and a widespread understanding and adoption of the concept among producer groups before the political pendulum changes within the US. This process will take several years and until then we will have the unusual situation of the US opposing the only market-based solution to the US rural development problem that we are aware of.     

Genetically Modified Crops: Their Market and Welfare Impacts

A framework is developed for examining price and welfare effects of the introduction of genetically modified (GM) products. In the short run, non-GM grain generally becomes another identity-preserved product. However, more profound market effects are observed under some reasonable parameterizations. When calibrated to reflect the U.S. corn market, introducing GM technology increases aggregate welfare over a wide range of scenarios, unless the corresponding production cost savings are small and consumers are seriously concerned about GM products. The possibility that GM technology may reduce aggregate welfare is interesting because the model assumes rational agents and does not include regulatory constraints.     

OPEC: Retrospective and prospects 1973–1990

Using a relatively simple economic model of the world oil market, we review what has happened since the price quadrupling of 1973–1974, comparing the model's results with actual historical data. We also make projections through 1990, assuming that OPEC's real price is either held constant or determined by a target-capacity-utilization pricing rule.     

Playing away to win at home

This paper presents a model of the interaction between two rival firms based in the same country. Each firm must decide how to serve a foreign market (export or foreign production) and how much to invest in a corporate-wide asset that reduces production costs and/or augments the willingness-to-pay for their product. In this scenario, the firms’ foreign direct investment decisions are interdependent. Furthermore, strategic motives for FDI relate to a firm's domestic, as well as foreign, market profits. One possibility is that a firm sets up overseas production even though its foreign market profits would be higher by exporting.