CHAMPIONS OF CHANGE AND STRATEGIC SHIFTS: THE ROLE OF INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CHANGE ADVOCATES*

Change advocates who participate in the process of strategy-making can play an important role in enabling organizational adaptation. To examine the nature of this role, this article investigates the influence on strategic shifts of two such participants - new members of the top management team and management consultants. Empirical findings suggest that managers see these two types of change agents as having two different kinds of influence on strategic shifts. Specifically, the change agent role of management consultants is viewed as one that creates pressure for change by helping to shape new managerial perspectives of the environment. In contrast, the change agent role of new members of the top management team is viewed as one that counteracts inertial forces that may block the implementation of change. These results suggest that management consultants may be much more useful in stimulating changes in the ways executives think about their environment than they are in implementing radical strategic changes. To overcome institutional resistance to extreme strategic shifts, organizations may need to resort to stronger political and symbolic actions, such as promoting or hiring new top executives in key leadership roles.     

REGULATION AND THE NATURAL PROGRESS OF OPULENCE

Adam Smith taught us how government regulation can counteract the market forces that produce economic growth. Here I explore a more complex interplay between regulation and economic growth. Regulation creates behavioural incentives that weaken or offset entirely the goal of the regulation. Growth produces many of the benefits ascribed to regulation while also hiding the costs and failures of regulation.     

THE PROS AND CONS OF GOVERNMENT REGULATION

Regulation of human behaviour and human social interaction is a universal feature of both traditional and modern societies. In the latter, on account of their complex structure, regulation inevitably takes place at different levels, albeit within a framework set by government. Consequently, these societies are characterised by a web of formal as well as informal regulation and self-regulation, in other words by a plurality of regulatory systems. And this plurality of regulatory systems is an important source of tensions and conflicts in society.     

READINGS IN THE ECONOMICS OF LAW AND REGULATION

Book reviewed in this article:
READINGS IN THE ECONOMICS OF LAW AND REGULATION
THE REGULATION GAME, Ed. Aalan Poacook
MARX'S CAPITAL, Ben Fine
POUCY, POWER AND ORDER: THE PERSISTENCE OF ECONOMIC PROBLEMS IN CAPITALIST STATES, Keny Schott     

PRODUCTIVITY AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Abstract.  This paper is a survey of the existing research on structural change at various levels of aggregation with a special focus on the relation to productivity and technological change. The exposition covers the research concerning the development of the three main sectors of the private economy, multisector growth models and recent evolutionary theories of structural change. Empirical studies of the reallocation of market or sector shares as a result of differential productivity developments are also discussed. The synthesis emphasizes the crucial interaction of supply- and demand-side forces in shaping structural change.     

THE FISCAL CHALLENGE OF COMPETITIVE MARKETS

Competition maximises consumer satisfaction but creates a financial problem for enterprises. When prices are competed down to just cover marginal costs, part of the value added by the enterprise is externalised. Government has not been efficient at recycling that value back into the economy, which is why infrastructure is severely underfunded.     

THE PATIENT AS CONSUMER: THE ADVERTISING OF PHARMACEUTICALS DIRECTLY TO CONSUMERS SHOULD BE ALLOWED AND ENCOURAGED

The pharmaceutical industry, with few exceptions, is not permitted to advertise its products directly to consumers (DTCA). It is the author's opinion that DTCA should be allowed and encouraged and that it is only a matter of time before this happens. Support for this view comes from reviewing the substantial amount of research undertaken in this controversial area of health policy.     

THE ROLE OF CENTRAL BANKS IN FINANCIAL SUPERVISION AND REGULATION

This article describes thinking on the institutions of financial supervision and regulation prior to the current crisis and goes on to examine what lessons have been learnt subsequently. It concludes that the problem is not so much that central banks needed to be more closely involved in supervision at the outset but that many countries did not have satisfactory schemes in place for resolving problems in large institutions. Central banks and governments were then forced into ad hoc measures that could have unfortunate implications for moral hazard in the future unless fundamental problems are addressed.     

LEGAL REGULATION AND THE CONSTRAINT OF CONSTITUENT SATISFACTION[1]

Legal regulations pose both opportunities and constraints that can influence behaviours in and of organizations. This article uses a multiple constituency perspective to examine one such influence. Data from 340 units of a US medical service firm indicate that different legally mandated types of doctor involvement in unit operations are significantly related to variations in the satisfaction reported by manager, employee, and patient constituencies. It is concluded that different forms of legal regulations, which are intended to represent the broad interests of a‘public-at large’constituency, are differentially related to an organization's satisfaction of other special interest constituencies.     

2007年4A创意金印获奖作品欣赏

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THE DRIVERS OF STRUCTURAL CHANGE

The main goal of this paper is to provide an integrated survey of the literature devoted to identifying the drivers of structural change, broadly defined as the process of reallocation of economic activity across the three broad sectors agriculture, manufacturing and services. Using the GGDC 10‐Sector Database, this paper first presents the empirical facts associated with structural change in different regions of the world – that is Europe and the USA, Asia, Latin America, and Africa – then reviews four determinants of structural change: (i) changes in income, (ii) changes in relative (sectoral) prices, (iii) changes in input–output linkages and (iv) changes in comparative advantage(s) via globalization and trade.