Economic Integration, Factor Mobility, and Wage Convergence

This paper studies the effect of economic integrationof two regions on the mobility of skilled and unskilled workersacross regions and on the resulting location of industrial activity.In particular, we study what happens when wages in both regionsare set by the unions of the West—the region with agreater initial relative stock of human capital. We show thatunder some circumstances, it is the interest of the West's unionsto set up a speed of wage convergence greater than equilibrium,thus generating unemployment in the East. This slows the migrationof human capital toward the East, but quickens the migrationof raw labor toward the West. A greater share of economic activityis eventually located in the Western region. Unions in the Westwill benefit from this provided human capital has low migrationcosts relative to raw labor.     

Intercultural communication, interreligious dialogue, and peace

In an increasingly interdependent world that includes great cultural, ethnic, racial, national, and religious diversity, it is imperative that we find ways to come together as a human family while still honoring and respecting our many diversities. In the nuclear age, and now the bioterrorism age, and in the wake of September 11, 2001, it is also imperative that we find ways to resolve our conflicts short of violence. The fields of intercultural communication and interreligious dialogue provide important tools to help people deal with all these diversities in more positive ways that increase understanding between people and can enrich people’s lives. People must still resolve their conflict issues, but understanding other people’s cultures, negotiating styles, and religions will prevent unnecessary misinterpretations of other people’s behavior, which can exacerbate conflicts that already exist. This article is concerned with many positive approaches and tools for dealing with diversity from the fields of intercultural communication and interreligious dialogue as these pertain to creating more peaceful futures. It is a basic hypothesis of this article that a more peaceful future requires adoption, by people worldwide, of a dynamic, interdependent, complex (not homogenized) whole systems’ worldview, which honors both our unity and interdependence, as well as our diversity—of races, ethnicities, cultures, nationalities, and religions.

Our generation has arrived at the threshold of a new era in human history: the birth of a global community. Modern communications, trade, and international relations as well as the security and environmental dilemmas we all face make us increasingly interdependent. No one can live in isolation. Thus, whether we like it or not, our vast and diverse human family must finally learn to live together. Individually and collectively we must assume a greater sense of Universal Responsibility.

The XIVth Dalai Lama

No peace among the nations without peace among the religions. No peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions.

Hans Kuhn     

The science of ‘what-if?’

An appropriate response to the new challenges to science will require more than new explicit goals and social organisation. New leading questions will be appropriate. The traditional questions of ‘what/how?’ for research and ‘how/why?’ for the design fields, will be supplemented by ‘what-if?’. This previously had its place in exploratory phases of all research; now it will become an essential component of ‘post-normal’ science. Its form precludes the dogmatic and exclusive styles which have hitherto been dominant in science as applied to policy problems; and it lends itself to open enquiry and public participation.     

Road testing a new model at the Australian Foresight Institute

This paper reports on the development of a new program of post-graduate studies in strategic foresight. It briefly describes how the program began and some of the ways it attempted to learn from other initiatives in order to develop what might be called a ‘second generation’ approach. A number of distinguishing features are briefly outlined, along with some of the early results. These include publications, research and work in the area of ‘methodological renewal’. Finally, an attempt is made to summarize ‘lessons learned’ that can be applied more widely.     

Participation in budgeting: A critical anthropological approach

Accounting researchers adopting structural and post-structural interpretive approaches have long criticized mainstream assumptions about the enduring economic aspects of accounting systems, highlighting their roles in reflecting and shaping social realities that are contradictory, diverse, and changing. The paper aims to develop this critique by inquiring empirically and philosophically into the roles that constructing participation in budgeting might play in enhancing ‘ontological plurality’, that is, supporting actors’ perspectives, abilities and concerns which are generally excluded by structuring action to maximize private profits. It defines and elaborates a critical anthropological approach using Marx’s notion of ‘social praxis’ and Latour’s idea of ‘modes of existence’ to highlight the theoretical contribution of anthropologists exploring beyond traditional divides over social agency through studies of grassroots participative responses to contemporary socio-economic crises. Drawing on ethnographic data collected through a multiple site case study of eight worker cooperatives in Argentina, the paper analyses how reciprocal relations between the actors’ levels of agency in wider associative actions, and their degrees of participation in budgeting, caused gradual expansions in ontological plurality, moving the actors beyond their particular tensions and broader structural conflicts. Exploring the notion of ‘ontological movements’, the paper develops a continuum of participation and ontological pluralism in budgeting, which it argues contributes to the structural and post-structural interpretive accounting literatures through historical, constructive, and participative components.     

How to make enemies and influence people: anatomy of the anti-pluralist, totalitarian mindset

This essay outlines the characteristics of what I call the ‘totalitarian mindset’. Under certain circumstances, human beings engage in patterns of thinking and behavior that are extremely closed and intolerant of difference and pluralism. These patterns of thinking and behaving lead us towards totalitarian, anti-pluralistic futures. An awareness of how these patterns arise, how individuals and groups can be manipulated through the use of fear, and how totalitarianism plays into the desire in human beings for ‘absolute’ answers and solutions, can be helpful in preventing attempts at manipulation and from the dangers of actively wanting to succumb to totalitarian, simplistic, black-and-white solutions in times of stress and anxiety. I present a broad outline of an agenda for education for a pluralistic future. The lived experience of pluralism is still largely unfamiliar and anxiety inducing, and that the phenomenon is generally not understood, with many myths of purity and racial or cultural superiority still prevalent. Finally, as part of that agenda for education, I stress the importance of creativity as an adaptive capacity, an attitude that allows us to see pluralism as an opportunity for growth and positive change rather than simply conflict.     

Is there a postnormal time? From the illusion of normality to the design for a new normality

Ziauddin Sardar's characterization of ‘postnormal times’ elegantly captures the mood of despair, uncertainty and insecurity in the West due to the multiple shocks of terrorism, economic recession and climate change. However, the prevailing mood in India, most of Asia and developing countries in general is confidence and optimism for the future. The label ‘postnormal times’ is inappropriate for resurgent Asia and other ‘emerging markets’. Similarly, these countries - as illustrated by examples from India - need more modernization and efficiency to save and improve the lives of their citizens. This paper argues that the seeming normality of twentieth century in the West was an illusion arising out of the ignorance and neglect of environmental and health consequences of unbridled industrial growth. The distorted assumptions of neoclassical economics are largely to blame for this. It is now time to pay back for those excesses. A new normality will emerge only by addressing these distortions and by creating democratic global institutions that can reflect the changed global balance of power of the 21st century. The intellectuals, opinion-makers and leaders of the world have to exercise their ethical responsibility and creative imagination to enable this new normality to emerge.     

The Eurozone needs exit rules

This study argues that the key issue for defining and solving the Eurozone’s (EZ) difficulties lies in readjusting the relationship between the centre and the periphery of the EZ. Our argument proceeds in two steps. Firstly, the basic finance problem of a centre-periphery system is captured by a threat game with complete but imperfect information. To get close to the essence of the current EZ sovereign debt crisis we analyse to what extent a ‘troubled’ periphery member can negotiate a bailout from the centre due to the existence of a negative externality arising from its potential default. Secondly, we analyse how establishing ‘exit rules’ would shift the centre-periphery relationship in a way that safeguards the stability of the EZ. We demonstrate that such rules may help limit the scope for brinkmanship whereby fiscal problems in one member state create a negative externality for the rest of the EZ. We then discuss key policy implications concerning financial aspects of the centre-periphery relationship within the EZ.     

The construction of calculative expertise: The integration of corporate governance into investment analyses by sell-side financial analysts

This study analyses an emerging form of economic calculation in financial markets, namely, the integration of corporate governance into investment analyses undertaken by sell-side financial analysts. It examines how the expertise of these analysts in corporate governance integration is constructed, with particular attention to the calculative ideas and calculative devices through which it is achieved. Corporate governance integration is shaped by certain ‘calculative ideas’. These relate to ideas about the potential link between corporate governance and financial performance and the ideal of incorporating governance criteria into the investment process. This paper suggests that these calculative ideas have constituted the discursive conditions under which analysts sought to build their expertise in a new domain. The paper also shows that at a time when the quality of traditional sell-side research was scrutinised, the investment professional association and constituents of the investing public, through their arguments and discourses, constructed analysts as the ‘specialists’ having the imperative and credibility to perform corporate governance integration. Furthermore, as the paper demonstrates, analysts have sought to ‘theorize’ calculative ideas. They have normatively deployed certain ‘calculative devices’ to make corporate governance integration operational. Corporate governance integration is conducted in ways that make it receptive to the claims of a particular form of expertise, that of analysts. This paper suggests that it is through the assemblage formed over time between the ideas and aspirations on the one hand, and the tools and devices on the other, that the expertise of analysts in corporate governance integration has gradually been formed.     

The effectiveness of the mandatory disclosure of independent directors’ opinions: Empirical evidence from China

Since 2001, the regulatory authority of the Chinese stock market has required the independent directors of listed firms to disclose their opinions on important board decisions. Using a novel dataset of independent directors’ opinions, this study examines the effectiveness of that mandatory disclosure requirement. We find that the stock market reacts negatively to announcements of independent directors saying ‘no’. Firms with more severe agency problems are prone to experiencing independent directors saying ‘no’. Independent directors are also more likely to say ‘no’ when they have multiple directorships, longer tenure, financial expertise, or live in places other than where the firms they serve are located. Consequently, firms with independent directors who say ‘no’ tend to experience cuts in inter-corporate lending, a lower propensity to pay dividends, reduced bank loans, and greater turnover of top executives. In addition, these firms are more likely to receive a modified audit opinion, obtain ‘special treatment’, or be subject to regulatory enforcement action in the year after independent directors say ‘no’. Overall, the results indicate that independent directors saying ‘no’ can help to protect the interests of outside investors, and thus lend support to regulations mandating the disclosure of independent directors’ opinions.     

Feral futures: Zen and aesthetics

Studies of ‘futures’ have hitherto focused on those that are predictable and ‘tame’, and on those that are unpredictable and ‘wild’. Here we consider a new class, the ‘feral’; which are expectations that things might be made worse by risk-based actions. The type case is the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, where operatives assumed that what was unfolding was of a sort described in their manual, and discovered too late that responses based on that assumption were making the situation worse. In this paper we review the idea of ‘feral’ and how it applies to futures, and discuss the different modes of engagement (or non-engagement) with feral futures. To make feral futures manageable, we suggest two ideas from other spheres of activity. Zen is a practice and philosophy which enables us to drop our preconceptions and thereby to respond to emerging, unprecedented situations. Aesthetics articulates a particular way to sense and appreciate realities intuitively, again enabling a direct response. The combination of Zen and aesthetics with scenario practice in the tradition of Pierre Wack provides a promising mode of response to emerging feral futures.     

Regulatory hybrids: Partnerships, budgeting and modernising government

This paper examines the ‘modernising government’ initiative in the UK, and the ‘flexibilities’ – lead commissioning, integrated provision, and pooled budgets – introduced in the Health Act 1999. This policy reform, and the associated tools to operationalise it, placed ideas of cooperation and partnership at the heart of inter-organizational relations in the domain of public administration, and gave prominence to the roles of management control practices in facilitating cooperation. We consider how the ideals of cooperation and partnership were discursively articulated, how professional and administrative boundaries were given visibility in particular legal cases, and what happened when local practitioners sought to make these ideals operable. We demonstrate how cooperation initially emerged as a ‘local’ phenomenon, both prior to and subsequent to the Health Act 1999. We then examine how those delivering services sought to mediate pragmatically between legal and policy injunctions to engage in formal cooperation, and the imperative to provide services across organizational and professional boundaries. Finally, we consider the limits of cooperation across organizational boundaries in settings with strongly developed professional enclosures. The paper draws on both archival material and fieldwork to examine what are termed ‘regulatory hybrids’ – those inter-organizational processes, practices and expertises that are formed from two or more elements that previously existed separately, and that emerge in part out of regulatory or judicial interventions rather than simply the imperatives of voluntary coordination. The paper seeks to build on suggestions for developing the links between the accounting and public administration literatures, and it draws on ‘governmentality’ studies to analyse the phenomenon. This argues for the importance of considering three distinct and interrelated layers or levels of analysis: the programmatic or discursive, the practices and processes to which such discourses are intrinsically linked, and the professional ‘enclosures’ that can emerge in some domains. While drawing on governmentality studies, we also suggest extending them by paying greater attention than is customary in such writings to localised processes and practices. In particular, we propose the concept of ‘mediating instruments’ to explain how management control practices link the larger political culture with the ‘everyday doings of practitioners’.     

‘Exploratory landscape scenarios’ in the formulation of ‘landscape quality objectives’

The European Landscape Convention (ELC) calls for the definition of ‘landscape quality objectives’ (LQO) as “the formulation by the competent public authorities of the aspirations of the public with regard to the landscape features of their surroundings”. However, it is not yet defined how the integration of the visions of the public should be carried out. Notably in regions with poor participatory culture and in rural landscapes abandoned by people and consequently by their activities, dealing with the future does not seem a straightforward task. In these marginal rural landscapes the role of agriculture is being altered under the influence of the new rationale of the Common Agriculture Policy, so it may have to assume different functions in the future. Thus, this paper aims at showing how the development of ‘exploratory landscape scenarios’ can be a useful tool, firstly to find plausible landscape futures, and secondly to trigger discussions with the public regarding their aspirations for their landscape. The development procedure for ‘exploratory landscape scenarios’ builds on the ‘intuitive logics’ approach that focuses on the production of a variety of scenarios as starting point for discussion about the future rather than on finding an optimal one, which can limit the options unnecessarily from the beginning. The methodological approach is illustrated at a local scale by using the case study of Mértola in southeast Portugal. The results of the scenario exercise point out the adequateness of the methodology in the development of futures that are perceived as plausible by local stakeholders and, thereby, able to bring out their desires and threats towards the future of their landscape.     

Timing feminism, feminising time

This article deals with feminist engagement with the futures studies (and vice versa) and analyses the uneasy relationship that exists between the two. More specifically, it investigates the feminist theorizing of ‘patriarchal time’ and efforts to both decolonise and ‘reconstruct’ time based on feminist epistemological frameworks. Feminism is here understood as a social movement, ideology, theory, philosophy, worldview and a way of life. As such this term overlaps with, yet represents a distinct category from terms such as ‘women’, ‘gender’, ‘femininity’ and ‘women's movements’. Thus, feminism itself is historicized and spatially contextualised as is the notion of non-patriarchal ‘women's/feminist time’ developed by feminists.     

Problematizing international business futures through a ‘critical scenario method’

This paper proposes the need for change in how managers in international business (IB) determine organisational objectives and what criteria they use in addressing complex problems. We propose a move from a largely firm-centric focus; on profit maximization and shareholder value; to a broader societal and environmental view. We see the educational context as the locus for initiating such a shift. However, we see obstacles within the canon of mainstream IB textbooks, with their focus on exposition of normative models of managerial action, illustrated by case studies of successful multinational enterprises (MNEs). Whilst we acknowledge their incorporation of critical issues, we view the lack of substantive critical reflection on the wider implications of IB activity as underpinned by an implicit assumption of the ‘good’ of IB. We posit that the normative structure of mainstream texts militates against students understanding the full range of possible futures for IB practice, and against developing the capability to cope with situations of uncertainty and ambiguity. Seeking to promote a critical pedagogy that accommodates consideration of both mainstream approaches and critical responses to these, we propose one approach to teaching and learning about IB futures that is based upon development of what we term ‘critical scenario method’. This offers a basis for active investigation of complex problems in the ‘real’ world from a range of perspectives, beyond that of profit maximization. We provide a worked, case example of our new method and demonstrate how it will enhance perceptions/understandings of involved and affected actors’ interests and their likely (re)actions as a particular scenario unfolds. The theoretical grounding for this approach is based upon contemporary social science interpretation of the Aristotelian concept of phronēsis, or ‘practical wisdom’.     

Give me a two-by-two matrix and I will create the market: Rankings,graphic visualisations and sociomateriality

Scholars have described how rankings can be consequential for the shaping of the economy. The prevailing argument is that they wield influence through encouraging ‘mechanisms of reactivity’ amongst market actors. We ask the question as to whether there are additional agential aspects found within rankings that extend ‘social’ accounts. We suggest that ‘sociomateriality’ is also a significant aspect of a ranking’s influence. Through developing the notion of a ‘ranking device’, we examine how the “format and furniture” of a ranking can mediate and constitute a domain. Drawing on a detailed study of a prominent graphical performance measure from within the information technology (IT) arena, we provide evidence to show that IT markets can be as much a product of the affordances and constraints of ranking devices as any other (non-material) aspects of the ranking. The article integrates literature from Accounting research and Science and Technology Studies to contribute to our understanding of how material things and the economy mutually constitute one another. It also offers one of the first empirical accounts of the sociomaterial construction of a graphical ranking.     

Ethnic conflict, ethnic imagination and democratic alternatives for Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka's unitary state and consequently much of its pluralist contestations are products of a precise colonial legacy, particularly the organization and reproduction of the constitutional principle of European/British unitary state in the island. Only after decades of violent ethnic conflicts between the minority Tamils and the majoritarian Sinhalese population did the Sinhalese ruling elite realize the need for altering the unitarist bases of the Sri Lankan state within a framework of ethnicity-based power sharing. Although concepts of ‘devolution’ and ‘federalism’ have entered the mainstream political discourse, which is indeed a healthy sign, but these are of limited use unless there is a democratic re-constitution of the modern state by reforming and federalizing it from within, in its foundations, at its center and importantly at its periphery and regions.     

Practising the scenario-axes technique

Studying the future seems a mission impossible, since both the appearance of the future and its underlying dynamics are unknown and unknowable. Nevertheless, the future is being studied by professional futurists. So, professional futurists seem to have found ways to structure ‘the unknown’. The question is, then, how do they do this? Over the years, professional futurists have developed several types of techniques and methods to structure thinking and discussing the future. The scenario-axes technique, which aims to align divergent perspectives on how the future may unfold, is one such structuring device.In the past 2 years, we did ethnographic research at the Netherlands Institute for Spatial Research (RPB) and followed professional futurists constructing and applying scenario axes in their scenario projects. Our observations illustrate how the scenario axes are practised by professional futurists and show that the scenario axes do not function as a unifying structure fostering alignment of different perspectives in the way that scenario theorists and practitioners often suggest. Instead, not one, but three different applications and interpretations of functional meaning of the scenario axes co-existed: the scenario axes as a ‘backbone’, as a ‘building scaffold’ and as ‘foundation’.     

The dystopia of technoscience: An ecofeminist critique of postmodern reason

This essay addresses postmodern feminist statements on ‘women’ and ‘nature’, as expressed in the influential work of US theorist Donna Haraway and some of her European followers like Braidotti, Bryld and Lykke. It makes a critical reading of epistemological postures adopted by these postmoderns, revealing a number of internal incoherencies. And it finds their substantive analyses as unhelpful to radical political action in the here and now, as it is to utopian prefiguration of a just and sustainable future. The author argues from the perspective of an ‘embodied materialist ecofeminism’ and makes two claims. First, the postmodern preoccupation with methodologies of discourse analysis becomes counterproductive by deflecting attention from activism. Secondly, Haraway's quasi-celebration of capitalist patriarchal technoscience with it iconic cyborg, presents a dystopia that confuses the political focus of feminists, just as an aggressive neoliberal form of globalisation colonises and consumes the support systems of all life on earth.