Intergenerational Mobility and Interracial Inequality: The Return to Family Values

This paper investigates two questions. First, what is the relative importance of the components of childhood family environment—parental values versus parental class status—for young adult economic outcomes? Second, are interracial differences in labor market outcomes fully explained by differences in family environment? We find that both family values and family class status affect intergenerational mobility and inter‐racial inequality. Consideration of racial differences in parental values and class status alters but does not eliminate the impact of race on the labor market outcomes of young adults.     

Differences across Cohorts in Finnish Intergenerational Income Mobility

Trends in intergenerational economic mobility in Finland are analyzed using panel data from 1950 through 1999 on more than 250,000 sons and daughters born between 1930 and 1970. A significant decline is estimated in the intergenerational transmission elasticity from the 1930 birth cohort until the baby boom cohorts of the early 1950s. After that we observed no increase in the extent of mobility for 1950s and 1960s birth cohorts, but rather the reverse. The result holds both for sons and daughters. A decomposition of the intergenerational transmission elasticities across cohorts shows that most of the early decline in transmission reflected a drop in the influence of parental income on the children's earnings that operated through investments in the child's schooling. This early pattern is postulated to reflect the phases of secondary educational expansion at the time. Throughout, a rise is estimated in the intergenerational transmission elasticity with age at which sons and daughters are observed. This has also been noted in prior U.S. studies and, at least in this Finnish context, this seems to result almost entirely from rising estimated returns to education with age.     

Business marketing and the ethics of gift giving

This paper focuses on the common though ethically problematic practice of suppliers providing gifts and other benefits to buyers in a business-to-business context. It is argued that contrary to the claim that the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable practices is blurred when there is a focus on developing mutually beneficial, long-term relationships between suppliers and their business customers, there is a straightforward decision making procedure that can be applied. Central to this decision making procedure is the concept of a conflict of interest. While all organisations have very good reasons to address the issue of gifts and benefits, in a relationship marketing context there is even more reason to do so.     

中国玩具礼品第一展10月深圳揭幕 玩具礼品上演总动员

10月24日至27日,“第16届中国（深圳）国际玩具及礼品展”将在深圳会展中心隆重揭幕。本届展会的规模首次突破9万平方米,七大功能馆囊括了玩具、陶瓷、工艺品、商务礼品、家纺家居、箱包皮具等热销产品,相比春季礼品展增加了两个功能馆,预计海内外参展厂商近3000家,到场观众达12万人次,继续保持中国礼品第一展的优势地位。     

Late Entry in Swedish Tertiary Education: Can the Opportunity of Lifelong Learning Promote Equality Over the Life Course?

In this article, I investigate the relation between economic inequality and the decision to take up studies at the tertiary level late in life. Who exactly decides to enrol? Is it advantaged or disadvantaged groups in terms of current earnings rank, occupation, unemployment experience and social origin? Using unique register data of university applications and discrete time hazard regression models, the results show the likelihood of a late entry to be especially high for individuals who are disadvantaged to a moderate extent in terms of current earnings rank and also with some unemployment experience. Class differences in the transition to tertiary education decline with age. This suggests, with a moderate amount of simplification, that lifelong learning tends to promote both intra‐ and intergenerational equality.     

励展华博携手玩具世界，改写深圳玩具礼品展历史 “中国玩具礼品第一展”十月亮相深圳

创办于1993年的中国（深圳）国际玩具及礼品展览会,为中国最早举办的玩具礼品专业展会之一。深圳玩具礼品展的主办机构深圳市华博展览有限公司本着“创造品牌展会,缔造无限商机”的经营宗旨,历尽十五年的精心打造,使该展成为“中国礼品第一展”,并获得：“中国行业品牌展会金手指奖”,UFI国际展览联盟的认证的成员和展会,     

Affiliation, integration, and information: ownership incentives and industry structure

This paper presents theory and evidence on horizontal industry structure. At issue is the question: what makes industries necessarily fragmented? The theoretical model examines trade‐offs associated with affiliation and integration, and how they are affected by the contracting environment. I show how contractual incompleteness can lead industries to be necessarily fragmented. I also show that contractual improvements will tend to lead to a greater concentration of brands, but whether they lead industries to be more or less concentrated depends on what becomes contractible. I then discuss the propositions generated by the model through a series of case study examples.     

The analysis of technological activity using abstracting services

Many organizations are at the present time faced with two problems. First, what are the events that are likely to have important implications for their activities in future time periods? Second, what new areas should they consider entering and how can they make quick appraisal of the potential in such areas? There are no easy answers to either of these questions but a number of methods have been proposed which have been found to be of assistance. This paper outlines an approach based on the use of abstracting services which can provide useful information quickly and inexpensively.     

Success Factors in Product Innovation: A Selective Review of the Literature

In today's increasingly competitive climate, more and more managers are having to update themselves on the range of factors that determine product innovation success. Such successes can be measured at the project (product) level or at the program level. Axel Johne and Patricia Snelson have prepared a review of factors associated with achieving success in a high proportion of recently developed new products. The authors address practical questions, such as the following: To what extent can product innovation be planned? Should development tasks be scheduled sequentially or in parallel? What is the proper degree of formality in effective new product decision making? What are the optimal organizational arrangements? The article concentrates on recent writings, drawing chiefly from journal articles published after 1980, including a large number from the Journal of Product Innovation Management. Factors contributing to success are ordered according to the now well-known McKinsey 7 Ss framework popularized by Peters and Waterman in their book In Search of Excellence. Detailed development tasks are considered according to the schema advanced by Crawford in his book New Products Management.     

Universal service and disabled people

The EU regulatory framework enacted 25 May 2011 has the objective to provide functionally equal access to telecommunication services for disabled persons. What are the rules, who are the target groups, and what obstacles do they face when using various telecommunication services? And what arrangements do exist in a selected group of six EU Member States to remove these obstacles? Recommendations include the introduction of a more market-oriented approach, independent of specific networks.     

Sustainability research in business-to-business markets: An agenda for inquiry

Corporate interest in the topic of sustainability has increased in prominence. Most of the research on sustainability has a business-to-consumer focus, with limited research emphasizing sustainability in the context of business-to-business marketing. The paper examines research on sustainability, published in the journal Industrial Marketing Management, where thirty-eight articles have appeared in the past twenty-seven years, the majority on supply-chain research. Research on sustainability in business-to-business markets is sparse, and some of the fundamental research questions in this area have gone unaddressed. This paper addresses three interrelated research issues associated with sustainability in business-to-business markets. First, what research is available to researchers and practitioners? Second, what framework can be used to examine sustainability research in business-to-business markets? Third, what subareas of sustainability research need focus and deeper examination, and what are the associated research questions? Overall, the findings from this paper suggest the need for additional research in the area because of its substantial implications for theory, research, and practice.     

Perspectives on roadmaps: how organizations talk about the future

Roadmaps, in the traditional sense, are concerned mostly with space and position. In the way that industrial and public research institutions use the term, though, roadmaps reveal the time dimension of technological progress. The many and increasing applications of roadmaps have generated confusion about what they are for and what they accomplish amid the many tools and techniques of managing technology. Roadmapping is itself a trend, while it seeks to exploit the trends underlying technology. The practice has side effects, biases, and behavioral consequences that are often not visible to practitioners, and until now, were unexamined by researchers. This study provides an organizational perspective on roadmapping as currently practiced, presents the experience of several organizations that have implemented it, and evaluates the results. Using a case‐based, exploratory method the author addresses several practical questions, such as: What are the effects of roadmapping? How are they measured? Is roadmapping always appropriate? How would an organization know if it was roadmapping well? What are the various kinds of roadmaps and how do they relate to each other? In addition, some more general lessons about organizational behavior emerge from the case data. Cases were selected from several large industrial firms participating in a research consortium exploring the modern challenges and tools of technology management. These firms granted extensive access to the research team and actively participated in the analysis, demonstrating a unique and productive model of research collaboration between academic researchers and business practitioners. Central to an understanding of roadmapping behavior is noticing the tension between its dual nature. Roadmaps are both forecasts of what is possible or likely to happen, as well as plans that articulate a course of action. They are, in a sense, personal to their authors. Roadmaps can be used to align organizations in times of predictable change, but have limited insight into disruptive change. The most influential roadmaps originate as responses to perceived threats, and link the technical storyline to organizational and personal concerns. For those who would implement the technique, the article suggests practical ways to use these and other findings and offers basic definitions and vital questions for future research.     

Rhetoric in Economic Research: The Case of Gender Wage Differentials

Scientific rhetoric can have a profound impact on the perception of research; it can also drive and direct further research efforts. What determines whether results are discussed in a neutral or a judgmental way? How precise and convincing do results have to be so that authors call for significant policy changes? These questions are in general difficult to answer, because rhetoric on the one hand, and content and methodology of the paper on the other, cannot be separated easily. We therefore used a unique example to examine this question empirically: the analysis of gender wage differentials. Here, the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition represents a standard research method that compares male and female earnings, holding observable factors constant. We analyzed close to 200 papers to investigate what drives authors to talk about discrimination, whether and when they call for policy activism, or when they are more hesitant to do so. Our results show that American authors are more reluctant to refer to discrimination. So are women, but only with respect to the titles of their papers. Furthermore, we find that the better the data and method used in a paper, the more likely an author is to assign his/her estimate of unequal wages to discrimination. The contrary is true the higher the prestige of the author or the research outlet.     

So What Do Parents Want and Expect from a Technology Education Programme? – An Exploration

Everyone seems to have a view on how and what should be taught in our schools and Technology Education is no exception. In New Zealand, as in the United Kingdom, recent legislation has encouraged parents to take a more active role and to voice their opinions (Banks 1994). Satchwell and Dugger (1996) observe that in the current context of educational reform, parents are questioning what students should be expected to know and be able to do. So what do parents want for their children? This investigation briefly documents a new partnership between a College of Education and a primary school in New Zealand. Parents were questioned over the course of the first year of this new partnership, in order to determine their expectations from the Technology programme.     

Agility index in the supply chain

To achieve a competitive edge in the rapidly changing business environment, companies must align with suppliers and customers to streamline operations, as well as working together to achieve a level of agility beyond individual companies. Consequently, agile supply chains are the dominant competitive vehicles. Embracing agile supply chain requires asking some important questions, namely: what exactly is agility and how can it be measured? Moreover, how can agility be effectively achieved and enhanced? Due to the ambiguity of agility assessment, most measures are described subjectively using linguistic terms. Thus, this study develops a fuzzy agility index (FAI) based on agility providers using fuzzy logic. The FAI comprises attribute’ ratings and corresponding weights, and is aggregated by a fuzzy weighted average. To illustrate the efficacy of the method, this study also evaluates the supply chain agility of a Taiwanese company. This evaluation demonstrates that the method can provide analysts with more informative and reliable information for decision.     

技术商业2012 粘稠世界

在越来越广泛连接的时代中,一个越来越粘稠的商业世界正呼啸而来。生活在瑞士日内瓦的爱德华·贝尔已经从事了十几年的轨道巡检工作,正在发生着静悄悄的变化——无论是他巡检的对象,抑或是工作方式。敲击,这个自他开始工作以来重复过无数次的动作,将在不久之后从他的工作中彻底消失。取而代之的,是安装在铁轨上的一个个固定位置的微型传感器,爱德华会对它们做定期维护,以确保其状态正常;沈华在北京开出租车已经快10年了,从面的、夏利到伊兰特,他的车换了一茬     

Growth,Industrialization, and the Intergenerational Correlation of Advantage

The shift from feudalism to industrial capitalism was generally accompanied by an increase in social mobility. We ask whether such an increase has occurred in a developing nation currently undergoing rapid industrialization, Indonesia. It has, at least as measured by a declining intergenerational correlation of education. To highlight the effects of economic growth on intergenerational mobility, we contrast Indonesia's experience with that of Bangladesh, where industrialization has proceeded more slowly and the correlation between parents’ and children's education has been roughly stable. We also examine potential causal channels for the rising educational mobility we find in Indonesia, but cannot identify specific pathways related to above‐average school building or rapid industrialization in a region.     

1978年以来中国发展的轨迹与启示

自1978年以来,中国实行经济体制改革和对外开放政策,已经历了30个年头。30年所取得的巨大成就,令世界瞩目甚至震撼。二三十年前,“中国”曾经是“贫穷”、“落后”、“封闭”的代名词,今天,中国给世界的印象已是“繁荣”、“财富”甚至“强大”。只是一代人的时间,一个13亿人口的巨大国家就发生了天翻地覆、脱胎换骨的变化,是何种神奇力量所致?美国经济学家E.赫尔普曼(2004)在研究了各国发展的历史后指出:“我们可以认为,与研发投入或物质及人力资本积累相比,制度是决定经济增长的更基本因素。”那么,制度背后的力量又是什么?制度是人创造的,也是人改变的。可以说,是全体人民在创造和改变着社会制度,至少,只有得到人民认同的制度才能发挥推动历史的巨大作用。而制度的创造必须基于两个最基本的因素:一是现实的物质经济条件;二是对于发展的共同意识(这种共同意识可以是自觉的也可能是不自觉的)。因此,我们可以从这两个观察视角来回顾和分析中国近30年所走过的道路和取得的巨大成就,同时也更清晰、客观地认识面临的问题和矛盾。     

Gift type,guanxi, and gift acceptability in Chinese business circles: The mediating effects of perceived manipulation and face threat

Although gift giving, a catalyst of guanxi, plays an important role in doing business in China, few studies have examined how to give a proper gift within business-to-business guanxi. Drawing on guanxi and gift-giving literature, this study investigates gift acceptability in the light of gift type and guanxi in two dimensions (relational closeness and relative status) in a hierarchical Chinese business circle. We classify gifts into monetary and nonmonetary gifts. The findings from two scenario-based experiments indicate that a monetary gift versus a nonmonetary gift decreases gift acceptability through the increased level of perceived manipulation (PM) and face threat (FT) and these indirect effects are contingent on different guanxi types. The mediating roles of both PM and FT turn more significant when relational closeness (gift recipient's status relative to giver) increases. These findings help Western businesspeople select the right gift form to give to the right Chinese counterparts in the right way.     

Value judgment and social action in technology studies

The paper raises the question: what should educators now be doing to promote informed judgment and responsible action in advanced technological society? After providing a narrative of the development of the context for this question, the paper argues that educators should now be allocating less time and attention to general education and more to projects at specifically targeted learning sites such as environmental and community service programs.