Educating business schools about safety & health is no accident

This paper summarizes the consequences of safety and health inattentiveness, and reviews four primary dangers in the workplace. In addition, perspectives of employee health and safety are presented from industry and academia which provide the basis for a strong recommendation to include safety and health issues in business school curricula. Wayne H. Stewart's areas of research and teaching interest include Social Responsibility in Management, Entrepreneurship, and International Business. Wayne is currently on the editorial board of the International Journal of Case Studies, and has published in the Journal of Management Learning, as well as participating in several academic conferences. Donna E. Ledgerwood is currently the Secretary for the Southern Management Association. Donna was President of the Southwest Academy of Management in 1993 and served as the Academy of Management's Director of Exhibits/Publisher Relations and Director of Advertising from 1983–1991. Having written one of the first articles on sexual harassment in 1980, Donna serves on the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of Business Strategies and has published in the Labor Law Journal, the Monthly Labor Review, and the Personnel Administrator. Ruth C. May's areas of expertise are International Business, Business Policy and Strategy and International Human Resource Management. Specializing in the transfer of Western management practices to the former Soviet Union, Ruth is currently involved in the development of training programs and privatization processes in central Russia. She has published in the Academy of Management Executive, Multinational Business Review, and Socialist Labor (Russia).     

Internationalization and the Spaces of Temporary Labour: The Global Assembly of a Local Workforce

An increasing number of low‐status consumer service jobs in the UK are undertaken by economic migrants, who are often recruited through the aegis of employment agencies. This article explores the use of migrant agency workers by a London hotel and a hospital, looking at the ways in which such a labour force is recruited and assembled in parts of the service sector in Greater London. It argues that even in the most locally‐based of service‐sector jobs, typically involving face to face interactions, new sets of transnational connections are producing a globalized labour force.     

Trends in British public investment

British public investment has declined sharply both as a share of GDP and as a share of government spending since the 1970s. Only part of this decline is explained by privatisation, which transferred some public investment to the private sector. More important was the very large and permanent reduction in public house‐building between the mid‐1970s and the early 1980s. Between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the rate of public investment recovered somewhat, but after that time it declined again, reaching a record low in 1999. The most recent decline in public investment has affected a range of central government programmes, and it has not been significantly offset by investment under the Private Finance Initiative. The government now plans to increase investment spending, although levels look set to remain low by historical standards for some time to come.     

Boxed-in:: Top managers' propensities during crisis issue diagnosis

A key task of crisis preparedness is to diagnose those crisis issues that could threaten an organization in the future. Existing models, however, have focused on diagnosing issues that are already apparent versus those that may occur in the future. As a result, we lack understanding of the processes involved in such diagnosis and the barriers that constrain this process. This paper describes envisioning, noticing, and interpretation as critical processes involved in diagnosing potential crises. It also suggests that during such diagnosis, top managers have a propensity to focus on particular types of crises and be blind to others. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Bureaucratic integration and regional specialization in China

Fiscal decentralization introduced as part of China's economic reform since 1979 has unleashed strong incentives for China's local governments to pursue economic development, but the same incentives have also led to local protectionist policies inhibiting the process of regional specialization. This paper focuses on the constraints or freedom with which local governments can implement their protectionist policies. Using a panel data of 29 China's regions over the time period of 1985–1997, we find that China's political system of bureaucratic integration (specifically, concurrent appointment of local government officials in the central government) imposes constraints on the local governments from practicing protectionism. We also find that the effectiveness of local protectionist policies is limited by market competition, specifically, competition from foreign-invested firms operating in China and foreign imports. Our results on the role of local protectionism remain robust to controls for the regional variations in the size of the economy and the stage of economic development.     

Hospital Mergers and Antitrust: Some Economic and Legal Issues

A bstract The article traces the development of the market for hospital services through evolutionary stages to the present emphasis on merger and consolidation. Examination of the traditional principles of antitrust analysis suggests they are sufficiently flexible to warrant their application in evaluating the competitive impact of hospital mergers.     

Linking thoughts to feelings: Investigating cognitive appraisals and consumption emotions in a mixed-emotions context

While emotions have been shown to have significant influence on various consumer behaviors, the cognitive appraisals linked to consumption emotions have not been fully explored. This research investigates how individuals' cognitive interpretations of situations correspond to the emotions they experience in these contexts. Using analysis of variance and multiple discriminant analysis, our results show a systematic relationship between cognitive appraisals and 10 consumption emotions. The author's findings offer theoretical insights into these consumption emotions, the appraisal/consumption emotion correspondence, basisversus subordinate-level category differences in emotions, and mixed consumption emotions. The findings provide a practical framework for academics and practitioners interested in better understanding and managing consumption emotions. Julie A. Ruth (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is an assistant professor of marketing in the School of Business—Camden at Rutgers University. Her research interests include affect and emotions, consumer relationships, and consumer response to brand strategies such as brand alliances and sponsorships. Frédéric F. Brunel (Ph.D., University of Washington) is an assistant professor of marketing in the School of Management at Boston University. His research interests include consumer perceptions of product design and aesthetics, consumer attitude and affect, and gender and sociocultural issues in consumption. Cele C. Otnes (Ph.D., University of Tennessee) is an associate professor of business administration in the College of Commerce and Business Administration at the University of Illinois, Urbana. Her research interests include consumer rituals, affect and consumer ambivalence, and gift exchange.     

Academic Economic Opinion in East Asia

Surveys of economists' opinions have been reported from around the world over the past two decades, but never (as far as we are aware) from a non-Western country. This article presents the results of our survey of academic economists drawn from ten East Asian nations. Respondents gave their views on a number of economic propositions ranging across issues of deregulation, government business enterprises, micro-economic and labour market reform, income distribution, and attitudes to the market. Finally, the article reports the results of multidimensional scaling techniques which were used to compare the attitudes of East Asian academic economists toward the market with those of their international colleagues. Overall, we found that while our colleagues in Asia make some allowances for circumstances unique to fast-growing developing economies, their predilection toward market solutions to economic problems reflects that of their (predominantly) Western training. Economists in the ‘Tiger’ nations (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea) more closely reflect the views of colleagues in the market-friendly West (especially North America, Australia and Germany) than do economists in the newly emerging (‘non-Tiger’) nations such as Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.     

The rise of defensive engineering: how personal liability considerations impact decision-making

Abstract

Based on a survey of Australian engineers (n = 275) this paper examines the impact of personal liability considerations on engineering decision-making. Almost all respondents who make high-stakes decisions saw questions of liability as having both positive (90%) and negative (87%) impacts. Our analysis shows that awareness of personal liability acts to focus the attention of many engineers on the moral dimension of their work. However, it also encourages more expensive decision-making, inhibition of innovation and professional paralysis. We argue that while personal legal liability is a legitimate way to focus engineers’ attention on the potential impact of their work, a problem arises when decision-makers are held responsible for disasters over which they had little control. The focus then shifts to ‘defensive engineering’ practices that are aimed at limiting individual liability rather than disaster prevention. Legal processes that are seen to unfairly allocate blame do not encourage practices that support future disaster prevention.