STRATEGIES OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN FIRMS 1

Summary The pace of change of the last ten years has challenged the traditional management processes to the point that the key organizational question is no longer to fit new strategies into available organizational patterns but instead to fit the organizational structure to the kind of problems to be faced. However, the intricacy of strategic and structural difficulties is often such that the appraisal of organizational inadequacies may prove difficult: symptoms may be wrongly considered as problems which may in turn be over-or understated so that corrective measures may well be inappropriate. This is why the saying‘When in trouble, reoganize!’is of little practicability. The lack of organizational planning in framing responses to structural problems will more and more make adjustments necessary. In our attempts to define the nature of organizational changes which are likely to occur within business firms in the future, we shall isolate the stragetic decisions related to corporate expansion on a transnational, trans-continental and eventually on an intercontinental scale. We shall start by analysing present organizational patterns — as they reflect decisions made in the past regarding current strategies — and we shall try to outline some possible structural developments as they may be required by the implementation of future strategies.     

PROPRIETORIAL CONTROL IN FAMILY FIRMS: SOME FUNCTIONS OF 'QUASI-ORGANIC' MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the strategies of managerial control which are used by the proprietors of family-owned business enterprises. Interviews with the proprietors and senior managers of businesses in the building industry illustrate the ‘quasi-organic’ nature of management structures. These grant some autonomy to senior managers without threatening proprietorial decision-making prerogatives. Although the family firm has certain distinctive features, similar control strategies designed to ensure that delegated decisions are ‘reliable’ and ‘responsible’ are evident in various types of business enterprise. There is, then, scope for further comparative research within a conceptual framework which does not entirely divorce the family firm from other business organizations.     

MYTH AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE AMERICAN ACCOUNTING PROFESSION

The American accounting profession attempts to provide the public with efficient and effective financial reports; but to succeed, it must satisfy an environment of diverse, often conflicting, institutions. This article critically interprets the profession's development, arguing that it displays an interplay of myth and technology. This interplay generates structural flaws in the profession as well as a bias against reform.     

EFFECTS OF REGIONAL COOPERATION AMONG SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED FIRMS ON THEIR GROWTH IN JAPANESE INDUSTRIAL CLUSTERS

We examine the effects of regional inter-firm cooperation on firm growth by estimating the firm growth function, using the data of a questionnaire survey for three major industrial clusters in Japan, namely, Tama, Kinki and Hokkaido. We focus on the specific content of cooperative activities for two aspects: that is, three production stages of R&D, commercialization, and marketing for cooperation and different types of alliance partners. The findings for our study areas demonstrate: i) vertical cooperation, the most prevalent with suppliers and customers, does not contribute to firm growth; ii) the clusters do not enjoy "urbanization economies arising from agglomerating a variety of different industrial sectors"; iii) the alliances with "universities" and "cross-industry exchange organizations" show positive effects on firm growth; and iv) both contributions and limitations are identified for the cluster-promotion policies in Japan.     

ON THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF SOME SMALL, UK-BASED INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FIRMS*

The paper reports on the discovery of some small but successful information technology firms. These firms, which are geographically and structurally highly mobile, were found in a recent survey of information technology firms in the north-west of England. Detailed investigation of the firms as case studies, revealed that they have many distinctive and interesting properties. Eleven distinguishing characteristics in addition to small size are identified; among them being lack of hierarchy, pervious boundaries, and extreme mobility including growth by replication. In the discussion, some differences in the organization of the firms are identified, it being argued that although all the firms lack hierarchy and tend to adopt very extreme forms of matrix organization, they do this to a greater degree the less they are dependent on technology for the creation of their products, and/or on the extent to which they retain proprietary products in their range. the paper concludes with a consideration of other work on new technology firms and argues that these findings are not unique. However, it is also argued that small firm researchers have not been very creative in their use of the available frameworks to account for the existence of the firms analysed in this paper, or to understand that it is the contingencies they face which allow them to be highly mobile and adaptable.     

REVIEW ESSAY STUDIES ON TRANSITIONS: MEANINGS AND METHOD

This article analyses the link between research methodology and knowledge generation. It argues that the selection of a method of data collection and analysis determines the potential boundaries and depth of knowledge that can be generated. Choice of methodology, therefore, has major constraining or liberating potential. This is illustrated in an examination of three recent texts on transition. The first of these adopts an occupational psychology approach based on large-scale surveys. It is argued that this approach runs the risk of ignoring key existential issues. The two other texts analysed are a clinical psychology approach to the major transitions in work and power occasioned by the introduction of new information technologies, and a novel examining key transition episodes in the ‘lives’ of its main protagonists. These two texts, it is suggested, provide an extremely rich source of data and are a pleasure to read. The article ends with an argument for the redefinition of the boundaries that constitute knowledge in management and organization studies.     

内地企业在香港上市十年回顾和展望

自1993年首家国企以H股形式在香港上市,揭开了香港证券市场大规模为内地企业筹集资金的序幕.十年来,内地企业与香港的证券市场已建立非常紧密的关系,下列的数据可以充分反映两者关系的情况.     

FAMILY BACKGROUND,EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT IN URBAN ETHIOPIA†

Most studies suggest that family background has a strong effect on earnings both directly and indirectly through the returns to own education. However, such effects might reflect the influence of family background on entry into work rather than a productive effect on earnings. The paper uses data from a survey of 16–29 year olds in urban Ethiopia to examine the impact of family background on selection into work and earnings. Family background strongly influences entry into the public sector; accounting for such selection removes its impact on earnings. This contrasts with the persistence of family background effects on private sector earnings.     

EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION LEGISLATION AND THE GROWTH OF THE SERVICE SECTOR IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

In modern developed economies it is the service sector that generates jobs. In Anglo-Saxon economies, where employment protection legislation is low and unions comparatively weak, services account for three-quarters of income and four-fifths of jobs. Yet in France, Germany and Italy, where the reverse is true, the service sector accounts for much less of the economy in terms of income and jobs. This article shows that employment protection legislation – defended by trade unions still dominating manufacturing in continental Europe – results in higher unemployment rates and also negatively affects the growth of services.     

INSTITUTIONS AND PERFORMANCE IN EUROPEAN LABOUR MARKETS: TAKING A FRESH LOOK AT EVIDENCE

Abstract This paper presents a selective survey of the recent literature on labour market institutions and offers new empirical EU‐based evidence on the impact of labour market reforms on employment and labour market adjustment. Although the literature traditionally treats labour market institutions as exogenous, attention shifted recently towards understanding the underlying causes of specific institutional arrangements. As a consequence, the literature highlights the great importance of an efficient policy design exploiting these interactions wisely and identifies general principles for achieving an efficient policy design at both macro and micro levels. Although empirical evidence does not show a major change in terms of intensity of labour market reform after the setting of the Economic and Monetary Union and the creation of the euro, the reforms aiming at strengthening the labour market attachment of vulnerable groups tend to have been successful both in raising their employment and increasing labour market adjustment.     

PROFESSIONALIZATION AND BRITISH MANAGEMENT PRACTICEPROFESSIONALIZATION AND BRITISH MANAGEMENT PRACTICE: CASE EVIDENCE FROM MEDIUM-SIZED FIRMS IN TWO INDUSTRIAL SECTORS*

High levels of occupational specialization, problems of cross-functional integration and distinct bureaucratic tendencies have traditionally been seen as problems endemic to British management practice. Over the last decade, these problems are expected to have disappeared - or at least diminished - as major developments in management and organizational theory, as well as changing economic circumstances, have redirected management thinking towards ‘new’ ideas of flatter, simpler organizational structures, increased flexibility and decentralization, improvements in the quality of inter-functional relations and the like. Yet, despite these developments, there is comparatively little research that has investigated actual patterns of change within management and, in particular, what is happening in what could be regarded as the mainstream of British industry - namely, ‘ordinary’, medium-sized firms operating in ‘traditional’ industrial sectors. Moreover, rarely does such research focus upon the implications of management change for the strategies of professionalization adopted by competing specialist occupational groups within management. This paper sets out to help fill these gaps, by reporting the findings from case studies of four such firms, taking into account the particular contexts and historical circumstances that have helped shape any such change and drawing out the key influences on changed management practice.     

FACTORS OF INTERREGIONAL INCOME INEQUALITY IN POSTWAR JAPAN: THEIL DECOMPOSITION AND GAP ACCOUNTING ANALYSES

This study empirically identifies some factors of interregional income inequality in postwar Japan during the period 1955–2005 using a decomposition analysis with a Theil L index and a gap accounting analysis. One major empirical finding was that interregional inequality in per capita GDP during the period 1955–2005 showed a double peaked M‐shaped curve, which was predominantly attributed to interregional inequality in labor productivity. The sectoral decomposition analysis revealed that the factors that caused fluctuations in interregional inequality in labor productivity differed from year to year. The fluctuations during the period 1960–1980 were caused by an intersectoral equilibrating process between the tertiary sector and other sectors, whereas that the fluctuations that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s resulted from interregional disequilibrating and equilibrating processes within the tertiary sector.     

A REVIEW AND COMPARISON OF TESTS OF CROSS-SECTION INDEPENDENCE IN PANELS

Abstract.  In this paper we review and compare diagnostic tests of cross-section independence in the disturbances of panel regression models. We examine tests based on the sample pairwise correlation coefficient or on its transformations, and tests based on the theory of spacings. The ultimate goal is to shed some light on the appropriate use of existing diagnostic tests for cross-equation error correlation. Our discussion is supported by means of a set of Monte Carlo experiments and a small empirical study on health. Results show that tests based on the average of pairwise correlation coefficients work well when the alternative hypothesis is a factor model with non-zero mean loadings. Tests based on spacings are powerful in identifying various forms of strong cross-section dependence, but have low power when they are used to capture spatial correlation.