Major Psychological Factors Affecting Acceptance of New Breeding Techniques for Crops

New plant biotechnologies called new breeding techniques (NBT), which will follow the present genetically modified (GM) technology, have appeared and are attracting attention worldwide. The first purpose of this study was to show consumer attitudes toward traditional plant breeding, GM, and NBT crops. The second purpose was to verify the validity of a psychological model determining the acceptance of NBT crops. A survey was conducted in Japan with 657 randomly selected adult participants. The results showed that perceived risk, perceived benefit, trust, sense of bioethics, anxiety, and anger play an important role in the personal and public acceptance of NBT and indicated that trust and anxiety are especially important factors in both situations.     

‘An Incomplete Contract Approach to Eurozone Fiscal Governance’ – Commitment vs. Flexibility

In this paper, we take an incomplete contract approach to Eurozone Fiscal Governance between the European Commission (EC) and any heavily debt member state, Greece in particular. Incomplete contract approach makes possible to put a long process of Eurozone Fiscal Governance into an extensive form game in which a renegotiation procedure is incorporated. We theoretically reveal the conflict of interests between the EC (Germany) and Greece over the Greek debt repayment plan proposed in 2015. We show that the Greek’s position is consistent with incomplete contract theory, but that the EC (Germany) does not allow the renegotiation for restructuring for growth-oriented debt repayment program proposed by the Greek government because the EC (Germany) judges that the commitment effect (on fiscal austerity) is greater than the flexibility one (pro-growth effect). This will undoubtedly provide a novel and interesting approach to Eurozone Fiscal Governance.     

Finite-dimensional utilities

Summary. Sufficient axioms are identified for the existence of a finite- dimensional quasilinear utility function whose lexicographically ordered vectors preserve a decision maker's preference order on a mixture set . It is shown that those axioms are also necessary for the linear lexicographic representation when the underlying set is a mixture space. Received: August 20, 1998; revised version: December 14, 1998     

Reflexive Organizing for Knowledge Sharing: An Ethnomethodological Study of Service Technicians

This study examines how organizing is done reflexively through practice in the context of knowledge sharing. Organizing concerns reduction of equivocality and sensemaking so that actions can be interpreted and coordinated. Reflexivity refers to the fact that this organizing is done through talk, and that talk is an action that requires organizing. To examine how this reflexive organizing is accomplished, detailed analysis of video‐recorded interactions among photocopier service technicians revealed various interactional methods to make actions of requesting and offering assistance understandable and relevant. To explain these methods, Goffman's concept of embedding is applied. By embedding other social situations in the current talk, one can project a certain sense of one's talk. This reflexive organizing clarifies that organizing is part of, not separate from, any practice and that knowledge sharing is accomplished not through a retrospective narrative but through reflexive construction of the situation in which talk is made possible.     

Factor price equalization and a factor offer analysis of international trade

This paper presents a general equilibrium analysis of international trade which exploits the univalence condition of the factor price equalization theorem to derive such concepts as factor trade indifference curves, factor offer curves, and factoral terms of trade in the factor space, parallel to the traditional development in the commodity space. The analysis accommodates some instances of variable factor supplies. It also serves to synthesize the comparative statics of factor growth in the standard two-factor as well as the multi-factor models of trade.     

AGRARIAN LAND TENANCY IN PREWAR JAPAN: CONTRACT CHOICE AND IMPLICATIONS ON PRODUCTIVITY

We study the tenancy contract choice and its impact on productivity in the prewar Japanese agriculture, where a unique contractual form, the rent-reduction contract, was predominant. Theoretically, this contract is more efficient than share tenancy or fixed-rent contract in terms of provision of incentives and risk-sharing, and thus raises the question of why such an efficient contract was uncommon outside Japan. We argue that transaction costs on the execution of rent reduction were the key element in the adoption of this contract. In prewar Japan, local communities played some role in governing the process of rent reduction and mitigated such costs. Thus the study proposes transaction costs and institutions as additional determinant of tenancy contract choice. We also find that higher prevalence of tenancy was associated with lower average rice yield at the prefectural level and such correlation was stronger in prefectures with a greater proportion of share tenancy.     

Local assimilation of an enterprise system: Situated learning by means of familiarity pockets

Once a new information system is introduced to the workplace, individuals confront it and struggle to make sense of it. Over time, it must be somehow learned and assimilated into everyday work practices. Enterprise systems, because they are complex and integrate work across functions and distance, pose special challenges to learning at the firm's periphery, where local users are distanced from both the centralized system and others elsewhere, and where a community of learning may be thin or lacking. The present study, using direct observations and interviews at a bank in which a new CRM system was introduced across small regional branch offices, explicates the local learning process. Findings suggest that in assimilating the system, bank representatives created familiarity pockets within which they routinely worked with it and outside of which they competently ignored it. Even within familiarity pockets, routine use of the system, while skilled, masked much that was not known by the bank reps. In short, in local assimilation of enterprise systems, knowing in practice may be constituted as much from what can be competently and routinely ignored by users, as from any deep knowledge of the system itself.     

Management Accounting Practices in the U.S. and Japan: Comparative Survey Findings and Research Implications*

In recent years, the success of Japanese firms in the global market has prompted efforts to understand the sources of their competitive advantage. It has been suggested that one such source is the Japanese firms' management accounting systems, and a number of articles have claimed that important differences do exist between U.S. and Japanese firms in this area. However, these claims have tended to be supported by anecdotal, rather than systematic, evidence. The objective of this article is to contribute further insights into similarities and differences between U.S. and Japanese firms' management accounting practices. Exhaustive searches of published surveys in the U.S. and Japanese literatures (much of which is in Japanese) provided the basis for U.S.-Japan comparisons on six aspects of management accounting practices. In turn, these comparisons were used for deriving implications for future research. Two major limitations of extant research and, thus, directions for future research are identified. First, future research needs to go beyond the simple use or non-use of techniques to investigate more detailed aspects of technique use. Second, since management accounting is only one component of a firm's total management system, attention also needs to be devoted to the organizational context, process, and goals of a firm's management accounting practices.