The Business School ‘Business’: Some Lessons from the US Experience*

US business schools dominate the business school landscape, particularly for the MBA degree. This fact has caused schools in other countries to imitate the US schools as a model for business education. But US business schools face a number of problems, many of them a result of offering a value proposition that primarily emphasizes the career‐enhancing, salary‐increasing aspects of business education as contrasted with the idea of organizational management as a profession to be pursued out of a sense of intrinsic interest or even service. We document some of the problems confronting US business schools and show how many of these arise from a combination of a market‐like orientation to education coupled with an absence of a professional ethos. In this tale, there are some lessons for educational organizations both in the US and elsewhere that are interested in learning from the US experience.     

Environmental management: from ‘fit’ to ‘stretch’

Environmental management is a budding discipline that studies the development and shaping of environmental policy in business. This article discusses what progress has been made in theory building in the field of environmental management, and what priorities should be set for future research. The level of ambition of a company with respect to its environmental performance is seen as the result of the following three variables: the coincidence of increased eco-efficiency and market opportunities; the internal structure and culture of the company (including the influence of a number of important actors in it) and the pressure from the immediate and wider social environment to take environmental measures. Research in the field of environmental management can improve our understanding of the conditions under which companies will strive for higher eco-efficiencies. It is argued that such research must concentrate on the interaction of the three variables mentioned above and on how they affect the actions of companies. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Why ‘Good Governance’ Fails: Lessons from Regional Economic Development in Colombia

By critically reviewing different strands of literature on institutional change and development, this essay argues that, in order to fully understand subnational economic development, we need to move away from ‘good governance' explanations in which geography‐specific analyses of power structures and elite interests are largely absent. Using findings for Colombia and insights from economic geography and heterodox political economy theories, this essay gives theoretical and conceptual guidelines and approximations for future studies on regional economic development. The contribution provides a place‐based discussion of how the historically evolved distribution of power balances, context‐specific elite interests, and the interaction between place‐bound actors and place‐less dynamics affect subnational institutional arrangements shaping policies and development outcomes. The conclusions drawn are not limited to Colombia and will prove beneficial to researchers studying regional economic development in subnational contexts elsewhere in the world.     

‘Derivative’ firms,agency and economic integration

This paper proposes a ‘derivative’ firm model that emphasizes the decisions to invest in productive assets and to contract with firm managers. Contemporary examples of derivative firms include joint ventures and LBOs. The traditional joint venture is recast as a derivative firm with the model pointing out why managerial contracts and asset investment decisions should be made simultaneously for optimal shareholder wealth.     

The ‘science’ and ‘practice’ of HRM in small firms

This paper looks at the ‘science’ and ‘practice’ of human resource management in small firms. While there is growing evidence that the practice of human resource management in small firms is characterized by informality, there is less evidence about the science, or explaining why this is the case. We look to writing on strategic human resource management, which has at its heart the resource based view of the firm, for possibilities offered to understanding the science of human resource management in small firms.     

‘Fog in the Channel,continent isolated’: Britain as a model for EU social and economic policy?

A discourse on British ‘exceptionalism’ is currently developing according to which the UK's apparently ‘flexible’ economy should serve as a model for the rest of the EU. This is explored through two case studies concerning the transmission of regulatory practices from the continent to Britain (working time) and vice versa (takeover regulation). We suggest that a UK model of the firm constructed around shareholder value and untrammeled managerial prerogative is unlikely to have much resonance for other European systems, in which the term ‘flexibility’ has different connotations.     

The sophistication of ‘naive’ modeling

The relatively high predictive power of a naive market share model is due to (1) its similarity to the reduced form representation of the underlying model and (2) the comparison with forecasts generated from structural models that are likely to be misspecified.     

From ‘tucked away’ to ‘joined at the hip’: understanding evolving relationships within the HRBP model in a regional energy company

Many authors have studied how the HRM function has evolved. A fundamental recurring theme in the literature centres upon the role HRM should play to ensure it adds real value to organisations. This article seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate surrounding the HRM role by reporting findings from case study research carried out in an organisation that has recently restructured its HRM function towards the Human Resource Business Partnership model. Through interviewing key stakeholders in the organisation, our aim was to understand the roles which HRM professionals play and the key stakeholders with whom they have relationships. Evidence suggests that, as a result of the restructuring, the HRM function has a more strategic and integrated position with many viewing HRM professionals and advisors as valued business partners. However, we also noted some important ambiguities, tensions and role conflicts amongst the key parties involved in the partnership, which suggests that further work is required to fully clarify the role of the HRM function in this organisation and to ensure that relationships continue to evolve successfully.     

Institutionalization of ‘The Property Mind’

This essay discusses the idea of ‘the culture of property’ and whether it combines the economic and cultural explanations of gentrification. To explore the idea of a culture of property in the case of Singapore, it examines both what motivates Singaporeans to invest in real estate (e.g. nostalgic feelings, duty, guilt, moral economy, face, filial piety towards ancestors and a way to remember their origins as reasons for investing in properties in China), and the institutions in the property state of Singapore (e.g. the possibility of owning and selling public housing, collective sales legislation that encourages collective profitmaking and the pension system) that increase Singaporeans' appetite for property and make them watchers of the property market. Lastly, the essay discusses the consciousness of evictions and of class differences and notes the random and unfair nature of the property market. It ends with a call for further research on real estate and property development, and their role in increasing urban inequality.     

Patent statistics: deciphering a ‘real’ versus a ‘pseudo’ proxy of innovation

Patent statistics have fascinated economists concerned about innovation for a long time. However, fundamental questions remain as to whether or not patent statistics represent the real state of innovation. As Griliches pointed out, substantial questions involve: What aspects of economic activities do patent statistics actually capture? And, what would we like them to measure? He pointed out that these statistics can be a mirage appearing to provide a great number of objective and reliable proxies for innovation.This paper aims to address some of these questions by making a comparative evaluation of the representability of patent statistics in four levels of the innovation process, using as examples research and development (R&D) in Japan's printer and photovoltaic solar cell (PV) industries over the last two decades. Furthermore, this research provides a new set of patent statistics which could be considered a more reliable proxy for innovation.