War and economy. Rediscovering the eighteenth-century military entrepreneur

Abstract

The detrimental effects traditionally assigned to warfare in the development of pre-industrial economies have obscured the prominent role that military entrepreneurs played in economic development in this period. Historiography minimises the extent to which war and the concomitant strengthening of the central state provided a whole new range of opportunities for capital investment, a tendency that has been strengthened by the paradigm of Redlich’s ‘decline of the soldier-entrepreneur’ and the technological determinism of the debate on the Military Revolution among others. The aim of this introduction is to look into the background of this relative lack of interest and to reaffirm the mutual dependence of eighteenth-century state-formation and the business of war.     

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT AND THE INTERPRETATION OF STRATEGIC ISSUES: A NOTE ON CEOS’ INTERPRETATIONS OF FOREIGN INVESTMENT*

This paper explores the relationship between organizational context and the interpretation of strategic issues by examining the hypothesis that CEOs' interpretations of foreign investment in the USA are influenced by the organizational context in which they are embedded. Three aspects of organizational context - the global business experience of the firm; the firm's level of organizational inertia (as represented by firm age and size); and the resources available for responding - are examined as predictors of CEOs' perceptions of foreign investment as a threat or an opportunity. Analysis of data from 320 organizations, controlled by industry, shows that global business experience, firm size, and perceived capability are significant predictors of the perception of threat and opportunity. the discussion addresses the implications of these findings for future research on issue interpretation and organizational context.     

Opening the Black Box: Corporate Codes of Ethics in Their Organizational Context

A review of the literature on Corporate Codes of Ethics suggests that whilst there exists an informative body of literature concerning the prevalence of such codes, their design, implementation and promulgation, it is also evident that there is a relative lack of consideration of their impact upon members' everyday organizational behaviour. By drawing upon organizational sociology and psychology this paper constructs a contextualist and interpretive model which seeks to enable an analysis and evaluation of their effects upon individual, group and organizational behaviour.     

Question order effects in taste testing of beverages

The effect of order position has been demonstrated in marketing research, sometimes compromising survey results. This paper studies the influence of order position in product taste trials of carbonated beverages using a sequential monadic design. The authors measure attitude ratings across product trials rather than across products to examine the effect of order position on preference ratings.     

Income determination in market disequilibrium: The implications of spillover for the design of monetary policy

This paper specifies and analyzes a generalized disequilibrium macroeconomic model that explicitly includes the concept of spillover in nontatonnement financial and real markets. It is shown that the dynamic quantity and expenditure theories of income determination are special cases of the model which depend upon the degree of spillover from the bond to the commodity market. Simulation experiments designed to produce a vigorous monetary shock to the system clearly show that national product is very sensitive to the degree of spillover, and thus, the design of monetary policy within the context of gradual market clearing should consider the size of spillover.     

The Effect of Illegal Insider Trading on Takeover Premia

This paper empirically investigates whether illegal insidertrading increases the premium a bidder pays for a target. Illegalinsider trading is trading by traditional corporate insiders,as well as others in a position of trust and confidence (e.g.investment bankers, lawyers), based on material, non-publicinformation (‘inside information’). The paper examinesthe premia of takeovers with known illegal insider trading andcompares them to a control sample of takeovers matched by industry,time period, and size that do not have detected illegal insidertrading. After controlling for differences in merger characteristics,such as number of bidders, type of offer, form of payment, etc.,we find that takeovers with detected illegal insider tradinghave takeover premia which are approximately 10 percentage points,or almost one-third, higher than the control sample. We conductadditional tests in an attempt to determine the direction ofcausality between illegal insider trading and takeover premiasize and explore the effect of potential detection bias. Theresults suggest both that illegal inside traders base theirtrades on factors other than premia size, and that illegal insidertrading in takeovers with large premia is not necessarily morelikely to be detected. Our findings are consistent with thehypothesis that the illegal insider trading itself tends tocreate larger takeover premia.     

Russian workers’ experiences with and perceptions of sexual harassment severity

As the reach of global business operations increases, cultural context will likely influence the nature and amount of sexual harassment workers experience. Surprisingly, little is known about sexual harassment in Russia, an attractive target for expanding companies. To address this gap in the literature, we examine Russian workers’ perceptions of sexual harassment severity through the lens of cultural context. In particular, we examine the sexual harassment severity perceptions from the perspective of both targets and perpetrators. Results indicate that as targets of sexual harassment, Russian women and men held similar sexual harassment severity perceptions. However, as perpetrators, Russian women reported perceiving the harassment they committed as being less severe than the reports of Russian men. Further, among both targets and perpetrators, Russian women held less permissive sexual attitudes than Russian men, with this difference mediating the relationship between participant sex and perceived sexual harassment severity: women perceived greater severity than men because women hold less permissive sexual attitudes. Implications for research, practice, and the role of national culture in shaping the social construction of sexual harassment are discussed.     

Adaptive capacity to technological change: A microfoundational approach

Research summary> : W e take a microfoundational approach to understanding the origin of heterogeneity in firms' capacity to adapt to technological change. We develop a computational model of individual‐level learning in an organizational setting characterized by interdependence and ambiguity. The model leads to organizational outcomes with the canonical properties of routines: constancy, efficacy, and organizational memory. At the same time, the process generating these outcomes also produces heterogeneity in firms' adaptive capacity to different types of technological change. An implication is that exploration policy in the formative period of routine development can influence a firm's capacity to adapt to change in maturity. This points to a host of strategic trade‐offs, not only between performance and adaptive capacity, but also between adaptive capacities to different forms of change . Managerial summary : W hy are firms differentially effective at adapting to technological change? We argue that firms differ in the adaptive capacity of the routines that underlie their capabilities. These differences arise well before change occurs, and result because firms build routines that are differentially responsive to signals of performance decline associated with technological change. Thus, early managerial efforts to build superior productive efficiency must be complemented by efforts to build superior adaptive capacity. Our theory suggests that managers can prepare for technological change by implementing policies, in the formative period of organizational development, that promote individuals' exploration of novel actions. However, there are trade‐offs because preparation aimed at building adaptive capacity to one type of technological change may limit adaptive capacity to other types of change . Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Employee responsibility in benefit change

If employers want to move employees beyond superficial acceptance of benefit changes, organizations need to increase the focus on how they manage the change process and support employee decision making. This article describes how employers can help workers understand changes and, through effective change management and communication, successfully navigate in an evolving benefits world. Using recent survey research about large employer and employee attitudes, the authors demonstrate tangible proof that these efforts pay off, both in financial and cultural terms.     

New business formation in a rapidly growing economy: the Irish experience

The extraordinary growth of the Irish economy since the mid-1990s—the ‘Celtic Tiger’—has attracted a great deal of interest, commentary and research. Indeed, many countries look to Ireland as an economic development role model, and it has been suggested that Ireland might provide key lessons for other EU members as they seek to achieve the objectives set out in the Lisbon Agenda. Much of the discussion of Ireland’s growth has focused on its possible triggers: the long-term consequences of the late 1980s fiscal stabilisation, EU structural funds, education, wage moderation and devaluation of the Irish punt. The industrial policy perspective has highlighted the importance of inflows of foreign direct investment, but a notable absence from the discourse on the ‘Celtic Tiger’ has been any mention of the role of new business venture creation and entrepreneurship. In this paper we use unpublished Irish VAT data for the years 1988–2004 to provide the first detailed look at national trends in business birth and death rates in Ireland over the ‘take-off’ period. We also use sub-national VAT data to shed light on spatial trends in new venture creation. Our overall conclusions are that new business formation made no detectable contribution to the acceleration of Ireland’s growth in the late 1990s, although we do find evidence of spatial convergence in per capita business stocks.