Ideation,entrepreneurship, and innovation

In this his paper I discuss the origins of ideas starting with Locke. I do this to motivate the question: Why do scholars of entrepreneurship, innovation, and enterprise dynamics need to know about the sources of ideas that lead to new technology and innovation. I suggest and illustrate an answer to this question as well: One might want to think about the source of ideas if one seeks a perspective, theoretical or empirical, about covariates with successful R&D-based activities.     

柳秋合 如画人生

<正>2007年,文莱公主出嫁,各国为表示祝贺和友好,纷纷送去礼品道贺。而在这众多礼品中,最被公主喜爱的,当属中国赠送的一个内画着文莱特色景观的水晶球。这个水晶球因文莱公主的喜爱在当时颇为轰动,而创作出这个备受瞩目的水晶球的,是中国的一位知名内画师——柳秋合。     

Marketing in five “simple” questions!

Peters (1987) describes how after some of his seminars he is asked “But what do I DO?”. This question is also often directed at people who have been introducing marketing ideas to businessmen—particularly businessmen whose work does not bring them into contact with customers. This article explains how anybody can start to think in marketing terms by asking five simple questions about the organisation they work for. “Simple” to ask, but requiring disciplined thought if answers are to be found which lead to appropriate managerial actions. “Difficult” to answer not least because the answers to each question affect the answers given to the others. In doing so it also introduces a number of basic but important marketing concepts.     

From Increasing Gas Efficiency to Enhancing Creativity: It Pays to Go Green

What are the common denominators for success when we consider increasing gas efficiency and enhancing creativity in organizations? As an analogy, the principles of increasing gas efficiency are applicable to enhancing creativity in organizations: Plan activities in advance, allocate sufficient time, resources, and set a SMART goal with clear priority and focus. Identify talent in ourselves and others and do not fall into the temptation of following others. Big ideas take time. Maintain momentum, avoid interruptions, incorporate new technologies, information, and feedback, and modify action to achieve goals. We have 100% control of our thoughts and action. Stop idling, take action, and do it now. If everyone contributes just a little, the cumulative effect over time can be huge. If we have the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) for doing the right things that will benefit humanity and the whole world, but fail to do them, is this ethical? We, the managers, need to focus on what we have done and what we have failed to do, change our thinking, change our behavior, and accomplish our goals.     

Inspiring action,building understanding: how cross-sector partnership engages business in addressing global challenges

Existing research highlights the role of partnerships between business and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in addressing poverty, climate change, disease and other challenges. But less is known about how such partnerships may also challenge our very understanding of the nature of those problems. This paper draws on Habermas' theoretical ideas about communicative action and deliberative democracy, applying them to an ethnographic study of Concern Universal, an international NGO with a particular focus on working collaboratively with business. The focus of the study is the seam between two apparently different ‘worlds’, along which alternating processes of ‘colonisation’ and resistance are played out. Partnership emerges as an arena for both instrumental and communicative encounters, in which slow progress is occasionally punctuated by leaps in partners' understanding of both themselves and the challenges they seek to address. As such, despite the evolutionary ambitions of participants, partnership emerges as a potential catalyst of social change.     

Generating and Evaluating International Entrepreneurial Ideas

Much has been written about the role and usefulness of entrepreneurial education in America's dynamic environment beset by a chronic shortage of good entry and career jobs. This paper focuses on two aspects of entrepreneurial education that are decisive to the success of a new venture, yet are hard to teach: (1) how to find profitable, realistic ideas for a new business and (2) how to evaluate them. The author applied the experiential learning approach to these two critical phases of entrepreneurial education in his international marketing classes. He describes five steps that must be taken to introduce this method in the classroom: an Idea Generating Matrix based on deductive procedures and empirical reasoning; a Multifactor Screen to select, postpone, or discard entrepreneurial ideas; a Multilevel Idea Model by applying the case of an ethnic fast food franchise; a Modus Operandi/ Modus Acquirendi Matrix to decide on the operational and acquisition strategy; and a final step, in which reflective and "respondent" behavior must convert to action and "operant" behavior.     

Sleep and entrepreneurs' abilities to imagine and form initial beliefs about new venture ideas

In spite of enthusiastic encouragements, theories of entrepreneurship still poorly explain the influence of physiological resources and dynamics on entrepreneurs' abilities to perform cognitive tasks known to enable entrepreneurial action. To advance research in this area, we develop and test new theoretical notions about sleep's effects on entrepreneurs' abilities to imagine promising new venture ideas, and to form initial beliefs about the attractiveness of such ideas. Results from three studies, including a self-comparison study over time and a randomized sleep deprivation experiment, show that a good night of sleep positively influences entrepreneurs' abilities to perform cognitive tasks at the very basis of entrepreneurial pursuits, whereas shortchanging sleep can yield suboptimal performance.     

Free Exchange for Mutual Benefit: Sweatshops and Maitland’s “Classical Liberal Standard”

Ian Maitland defends sweatshop labor on the grounds that “A wage or labor practice is ethically acceptable if it is freely chosen by informed workers” (he calls his view “the Classical Liberal Standard,” CLS). I present several examples of economic exchanges that are mutually beneficial and satisfy the requirements of the CLS, but, nonetheless, are morally wrong. Maitland’s arguments in defense of sweatshops are unsuccessful because they depend on the flawed “CLS.” My paper criticizes Maitland’s arguments in defense of sweatshops, but I do not claim that his conclusions are false—I do not claim to have shown that the labor practices Maitland defends are morally wrong. I argue that some of the disagreements about sweatshops between Maitland and his critics depend on disagreements about the answers controversial questions in ethical theory. In the absence of definitive answers to those questions, there are no decisive arguments for or against Maitland’s view about sweatshops.     

McMahon on Workplace Democracy

This paper offers a sympathetic critique of Christopher McMahon’s Authority and Democracy: A General Theory of Government and Management. Although I find fault with some of his arguments, my goal is not to show that these arguments are irreparable, but to highlight issues that deserve further consideration. After defining some terms, first, I raise an objection to McMahon’s rejection of the moral unity of management (MUM) thesis. Second, I draw attention to his “moralization” of the workplace, and examine the role it plays in his arguments about the relative strengths of the different kinds of authority. Third, I raise questions about his reliance on an analogy between states and firms. I suggest that states and firms are in some ways more alike, but in other ways less alike, than he allows.     

Work-related Attitudes, Values and Radical Change in Post-Socialist Contexts: A Comparative Study

Marcoux argues that job candidates ought to embellish non-verifiable information on their résumés because it is the best way to coordinate collective action in the résumé ‚game’. I do not dispute his analysis of collective action; I look at the larger picture, which throws light on the role game theory might play in ethics. I conclude that game theory’s conclusions have nothing directly to do with ethics. Game theory suggests the means to certain ends, but the ethics of both the means and ends must be assessed separately before any ethical recommendation can␣be made. Marcoux makes several highly disputable assumptions in order to fit résumés into game theory; his analysis does not take into account the consequences that embellishing has beyond the submission and assessment of␣résumés; his argument depends on his claim that a résumé system in which everyone embellishes is attainable; and finally, his argument relies on an idealization of human␣motivation, rather than abstraction. I conclude that candidates should never embellish their résumés.John Douglas Bishop is a Professor in the Business Administration Program at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. His research interests include both business ethics and ethics and capitalism. He is the editor of Ethics and Capitalism, University of Toronto Press, 2000.     

Dismemberment,divorce and hostile takeovers: A comment on corporate moral personhood

We can explain our intuitions about corporate takeover cases by appeal to Peter French's picture of the corporation as a moral person. He argues that corporations are persons in much the same sense as you and I, and are entitled to the same rights as humans. On this analysis, takeovers are murders, attempted murders, attempts to enslave, etc. I want to explore the consequences of this view for corporate takeovers. I shall argue that, though French can explain why our moral intuitions seem to arise in response to some concern about the corporations themselves, his analysis commits us to the wrong intuitions in some cases. I shall then offer an account of these intuitions which focuses on the character of corporations.Rita C. Manning is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University. She has published widely — on Artificial Intelligence, Ancient Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Law, Social and Political Philosophy, and Informal Logic, in addition to Business Ethics. She is currently working on a Feminist critique of Moral Philosophy.     

America's need for an ‘Ethical Renaissance’

Remember the words of Cain, “Am I my brother's keeper?” God said to him that “his brother's blood cries out from the ground”. What do these words suggest for the role of government? I assert that there is an ethic of accountability, caring and sharing fundamental to individual and corporate life. Creation was provided for all humanity. Until we can grasp a global view of resource stewardship we cannot begin to consider wise utilization. The goal must be an ethical renaissance that will bring security more effective than any military force.     

Character and Environment: The Status of Virtues in Organizations

Using evidence from experimental psychology, some social psychologists, moral philosophers and organizational scholars claim that character traits do not exist and, hence, that the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics is empirically inadequate and should dispose of the notion of character to accommodate the empirical evidence. In this paper, I systematically address the debate between dispositionalists and situationists about the existence, status and properties of character traits and their manifestations in human behavior, with the ultimate goal of responding to the question whether virtue ethicists need to abandon the very enterprise of building a character-based moral theory in business ethics and organizational behavior. In the course of this paper, I shall defend the claim that the situationist argument relies on a misinterpretation of the experimental evidence. Miguel Alzola is a Fulbright Fellow from Argentina completing his Ph.D. in Business Ethics at Rutgers University. He is doing research on moral psychology, virtue ethics and organizational behavior at the Prudential Business Ethics Center.     

饮食美的创造论(下)

饮食美的创造过程中的审美化实际上是“人——机——环境”系统中饮食劳动主体人与成为其审美对象的饮食劳动工具和劳动环境交互作用的结果。具体而言,饮食劳动主体进行饮食美创造时,其审美对象的饮食劳动工具和劳动环境是分别以其直接和间接的无机身体的身份而存在的创作条件,其审美化是形式美依附于功能美,功能美寓于形式美。只有这样系统把握饮食美的创造才能够全面实现饮食劳动的审美化,为饮食美的持续发展提供不竭动力。     

Enduring Attitudes and Contextual Interest: When and Why Attitude Surveys Still Matter in the Online Consumer Decision Journey

Consumers leave traces of key interest to managers on their journey to purchase. Next to traditional survey-based attitudes, readily available online metrics now show aggregate consumer actions. But how do survey response metrics and online action metrics relate to each other? To what extent do they explain and predict brand sales across consumer categories? This article shows that surveys and online behavior provide complementary information for brand managers. Times series data for 32 brands in 14 categories reveal low correlations but substantial dual causality between survey metrics and online actions. Combining both types of metrics greatly increases the model's power to explain and predict brand sales in low-involvement categories. By contrast, high-involvement categories do not gain much from adding survey-based attitudes to a model including online behavior metrics. The authors synthesize these generalizations in a new framework relating enduring attitudes to the contextual interest expressed by online actions. This new framework helps managers assess both types of metrics to drive brand performance depending on whether their goal is short-term sales or long-term brand health.     

Effects of transitory shocks to aggregate output on consumption in poor countries

This paper provides instrumental variables estimates of the response of aggregate private consumption to transitory output shocks in poor countries. To identify exogenous, unanticipated, idiosyncratic and transitory variations in national output we use year-to-year variations in rainfall as an instrumental variable in a panel of 39 sub-Saharan African countries during the period 1980–2009. Our estimates yield a marginal propensity to consume out of transitory output of around 0.2. To explain this result we show, using instrumental variables techniques, that there is a significant negative effect of transitory output shocks on net current transfers and a significant positive and quantitatively large effect on the trade balance. An important implication is that frictions to private financial flows do not necessarily imply large effects of transitory shocks to aggregate output on private consumption in poor countries.     

饮食美的创造论(上)

饮食美的创造活动实际上是主体人在饮食生活、生产实践中按“美的规律”来构筑满足自己的“饮食审美化”的活动。因此,在餐饮生产劳动中饮食劳动主体美既是饮食美创造的出发点,也是饮食美创造的归宿点,贯穿于饮食美创造活动始末,为饮食造美的第一要素。具体对于饮食“造美”活动中的劳动主体美的内涵把握,依据社会主体人“生物人”与“社会人”的双重属性,将其划分为“劳动主体美的生理基础”和“劳动主体美的心理要求”两个层次。     

Cutting through the clutter: purchase intentions as a function of packaging instrumentality,aesthetics, and symbolism

This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of the impact of packaging in marketing, and confirms the importance of perceived instrumentality, aesthetics, and symbolism in this process. This study examined two types of packaging used by a firm that makes chilled meals. One package had a transparent cover showing the food inside and the other had an opaque wrapper showing a picture of the food. Sales for the product with the transparent cover were 30% lower than for the same product packaged in the opaque wrapper. An experimental study examined the effects of packaging on buying intentions. Supermarket shoppers (n = 100) were shown the same product in one of the two packages and answered a survey about the mediating variables: perceived instrumentality, aesthetics, and symbolism, and the dependent variable, purchase intentions. As predicted, participants expressed more interest in buying the product with the opaque packaging. In addition, the transparent packaging was perceived as more instrumental, less aesthetic, and less symbolic of quality than opaque packaging. Perceived aesthetics and symbolism, but not instrumentality, were documented to mediate this process. Analyzing packaging using the instrumentality, aesthetics, and symbolism model can help marketers and designers develop more effective packaging for various products, contexts, and consumer groups. The study views packaging as a critical marketing tool and not merely a logistic tool, and identifies one psychological mechanism that underlies the impact of packaging on purchase intentions.     

Friedman's Stockholder Theory of Corporate Moral Responsibility

In this paper I critically discuss MiltonFriedman's classic article, ``The SocialResponsibility of Business is to Increase itsProfits.' Friedman offers several argumentsfor his stockholder theory of corporate moralresponsibility, according to which acorporation's only moral responsibility is topromote the financial well-being of itsstockholders. I first consider aninconsistency in his statement of his position– namely, the distinct and non-equivalentconstraints he places on profit-maximization(``the rules of the game' and ``the rules ofsociety'). I then turn to a consideration ofsix arguments Friedman gives to support histheory, spelling them out in detail and showingthat none of them is sound. I conclude with abrief intuitive argument against his theory.