David M. Henkin. The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America

David Henkin is a student of the development of popular literacyand mass communications in the nineteenth century. His firstbook, City Reading: Written Words and Public Spaces in AntebellumNew York (1998), is a highly original, intriguing study of theways in which a broad array of ubiquitous, ordinary public texts(newspapers; paper currency; handbills; outdoor signage) wereexperienced by New Yorkers of different social groups and degreesof literacy. The present study extends the author's     

High-Technology Employment Growth in Major U.S. Metropolitan Areas

High technology employment has received little attention in shift-share analysis. The purpose of this paper is to utilize shift-share analysis to analyze high technology employment change in 37 metropolitan areas. We find that shift share analysis is a useful tool to study employment gains and losses in metropolitan areas. Most of the gains and losses in a metropolitan area can be explained by the regions competitiveness component.     

Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen. Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich

Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen's book, Financial FoundingFathers: The Men Who Made America Rich, has two chief themes,neatly separated by the colon in the book's title. The firstis to introduce the reader to America's financial founding fathers.These men, Alexander Hamilton being perhaps the most celebrated,transformed the American financial system. The financial institutions,which Americans take today for granted—banks, insurancecompanies, and the like—were practically nonexistent inAmerica before the Revolution, and constructing     

Firm Size and Performance of Manufacturing Enterprises in P.R. China: The Case of Shanghai's Manufacturing Industries

This paper studies the relationship between firm size and technical efficiency of manufacturing enterprises in Shanghai's manufacturing sector from 1989 to 1992. Although our empirical results show that technical efficiency is increasing in the firm size, the group of the smallest enterprises (0–99 workers) have very high technical efficiency. The group of enterprises with size of 100–249.9 workers have the lowest technical efficiency while the largest size (1000 workers or above) group usually have the highest technical efficiency. Finally, technical efficiency computed from net industrial product has large upward biases compared with that computed from gross industrial product.     

Preconditions for Product Re-innovation in Taiwan: Evidence from High-Technology Firms

The phenomenon of product re-innovation has often characterized Taiwanese high-technology firms over the last decade. However, the literature reflects surprisingly little effort to understand their preconditions. Based on extant knowledge and 68 field interviews with managers in diverse departments and firms of high-technology industries in Taiwan in mid-2006, the authors provide a foundation for future research by developing research propositions that relate to preconditions for product re-innovation. Managerial and research implications are discussed and suggestions are made for future research.     

International Interdependencies between the Deregulation of Domestic Service Industries: A Case Study of Aviation in North America

This article is concerned with the interdependence of national markets for service industries. It focuses in particular on the North American aviation industry. It looks at the effects that deregulation and other developments in the US market had on Canadian aviation and air transport policy after 1978. What emerges is that, in the aviation sector at least, national markets for services can no longer be treated in isolation from changes in other, and especially larger, national markets. This is not only a topic of academic interest but has implications for the development of EC policies.     

Kennedy,Sherril H., and David R. Corkindale. Managing the Advertising Process. Lexington,Mass.: Lexington,Books, 1976

Abstract

A mail survey was conducted among a sample of account and creative services personnel working in advertising agencies nationwide to determine areas of conflict in working relationships between these two groups. Additionally, respondents were asked to perform the same critical analysis of their colleagues within their own departments. Analysis of responses from 256 agency employees indicate that some disagreement between account management and creative services exists. Creative services personnel tended to be more critical of account management than account managers were of creative people. Results are explained by the differing perspectives of the generalist (i.e., account managers) and specialist (i.e., creative services) that must be brought together in an agency to produce effective advertising.     

Sean Patrick Adams. Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. xiv + 305 pp. ISBN 0-8018-7968-X, $45.00.

In this superbly crafted study Sean Adams compares the developmentof the coal industry in Virginia and Pennsylvania before theCivil War. The comparative method allows Adams to focus hisanalysis around a seemingly simple question: Did Pennsylvania’smore open and democratic state government create a more efficientinstitutional framework than Virginia’s planter-dominatedlegislature? Posing this question allows Adams to avoid somewhatstale debates about whether large numbers of slaves could workin manufacturing, or if anticapitalist planters opposed industrialization.     

David G. Schwartz. Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling

David Schwartz appears to be the perfect author to take on aglobal history of gambling: he was born in Atlantic City, hasworked in and written about the gaming industry, received aPhD in history from UCLA, and is the director of the Centerfor Gaming Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Rollthe Bones is an encyclopedic narrative of gambling, coveringsix continents from the earliest times to the present. While     

Effect of Alliance Orientation on Firm Performance: An Empirical Study on High-Technology Firms in China

Based upon the dynamic-capability view and social capital theory, this paper examines the effect of alliance orientation on firm performance. Hypotheses are tested with data collected from 195 high-tech firms in China. Results show that alliance orientation has a significant and positive effect on firm performance. Moreover, market dynamism exerts a positive moderating effect on the relationship between alliance orientation and firm performance, whereas technological dynamism negatively moderates the relationship. Moreover, relational capital partially mediates the same relationship and the interaction effects of alliance orientation and market dynamism on firm performance.