Developing Countries in the WTO System: Applying Robert Hudec's Analysis to the Doha Round

In his 1987 Developing Countries in the GATT System, Robert Hudec concluded that the identity of developing countries in the GATT system was primarily a matter of their demanding non‐reciprocal and preferential treatment, developed countries responding grudgingly to those demands and that this situation had been unfruitful either to support developing country reforms or to discipline developed country restrictions aimed at developing countries. Hudec was pessimistic about the relationship becoming more productive, but his expression of despair offered a glimmer of hope: ‘There are those who believe that the GATT has become so committed to the current policy that the only way to change it would be to start a new organization’. A new organisation was started, the World Trade Organization, but has the WTO achieved what Hudec hoped a new organisation might? At the 1987–95 Uruguay Round, developing country leaders acted as Hudec had hoped. They used international rules and bindings as leverage to support their own internally‐driven reforms; to overcome generations of accumulated protection, to lock in reforms against the backsliding that had undone previous reforms. Dealing with the Uruguay Round's ‘unbalanced outcome’ and the overlapping ‘implementation problem’ have shaped the Doha Round, but the negotiations have misconceived and mismanaged both issues. Rather than seeking to identify their real economics, the negotiations have gone back to the traditional idea of special and differential treatment. Perhaps the largest cost of this mismanagement is that in many developing countries the unilateral momentum for liberalisation has waned. To the extent that the Doha negotiations have drawn attention away from the domestic issues that were the basis of developing country liberalisation – and enhanced the status of negotiators relative to the leaders who fought at home for reform – they have contributed to that waning.     

Participation in the organization: An ethical analysis from the papal social tradition

How one structures an organization is not only important from the perspective of productivity and efficiency, but primarily how it affects the moral formation of those who are employed in that organization. Organizational structures whether in the manufacturing, service or non-profit sector have moral dimensions that cannot be escaped. Papal social tradition has been concerned about the moral formation of all workers within the organization. This tradition has maintained that an essential component to a humane organizational structure is participation of those involved in the organization, and consequently that participation must be understood primarily in terms of the formation of employees. This article explores the papal social tradition's understanding of participation and examines its significance in today's organizational environment, particularly in reference to work-teams.Michael Naughton is an assistant professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. He holds a joint appointment in the theology and management departments. He received his Ph.D. in theology, where he studied social ethics and organizational theory. He is currently finishing his MBA at the University of St. Thomas. He is the author ofThe Good Stewards which examines the relationship between organizational issues and the Catholic social tradition. He has also published several articles and has delivered several papers, presentations, and workshops on organizational issues and the Christian social tradition.     

王振乾 天道酬勤

<正>【公司简介】北京市中农良种有限责任公司是由中国农业科学院发起设立的集育、繁、推于一体的高新技术种业公司,成立于1993年,营销网络覆盖全国。公司现为高新技术企业协会理事单位,北京市海淀区种子商会会员单位,北京市种子协会会员,北京中关村企业信用促进会会员单位。公司通过了ISO9001:2008国际质量管理体系认证,被评为"全国高新技术企业"、北京市"中关村高新技术企业"、"海淀区创新企业"、"2009河北省三农明星企业",其主要标识获"北京市著名商标"称号。     

曹晖 玻璃帝国的少帅

被誉为中国最慷慨的慈善家、世界"玻璃大王"的曹德旺在经历了"去家族化"的传承波折后,郑重宣布把企业交给长子。他认为,把福耀玻璃交给长子曹晖,曹家是最大的牺牲者……去年4月,在央视赈灾晚会上,福耀集团董事长曹德旺和集团总裁曹晖父子二人,以个人名义为玉树捐款1亿元。至此,福耀家族企业为中国慈善事业捐款已达45.8亿元。曹晖——这位低调的汽车玻璃王国的少帅,终于以首善的姿态出现在公众视野。而子承父业的故事,对他来说,才刚刚开始……     

Consumer Law and the Environment: From Consumer to Citizen

This paper addresses the question of the relationship between consumer law and the protection of the environment. In contradiction to those who see the goals of consumer protection and environmental protection as being close to each other, this paper presents the relationship as one of conflict rather than one of harmony. Consumer law as an expression of the consumer society promotes goals which sometimes run counter to the environmental interest. This clearly comes to the fore when analysing the main consumer rights and their relationship to environmental issues. However, despite this basic incompatibility, the book of consumer law also contains some small stories of environmentally constructive behaviour. The telling of these good stories would require us to transcend the boundaries of traditional consumer law and to replace "the consumer" by "the citizen" who is interested not only in his own consumption but in all aspects of social life. In support of this development certain consumer law measures can be used to raise the awareness of consumers regarding environmental issues.     

Consumer response to and choice of customized versus standardized systems

Recent research on customization suggests that a need exists to examine conditions under which selling customized versus non-customized offerings will be more beneficial to vendors. To this end, this paper empirically evaluates consumer response to and choice of customized systems (offerings that are integrated and customized) in relation to standardized systems (offerings that feature integration but not customization). Through a series of studies, we demonstrate that the relationship between a buyer's systems purchase strategy and their future repurchase intentions toward the seller is moderated by a buyer characteristic (that is, a consumer's insight into his/her own preferences, or the degree to which a consumer can confidently and consistently express his or her true preferences) as well as a seller characteristic (retailer reputation). Given that consumers who are experts have greater insight into their own preferences than novices, our work also suggests that this greater insight into one's own preferences is a plausible explanation for why experts are more likely to choose a customized system. The main practical implication of our research is that it prompts managers to challenge the contention in some mass customization writings that customized offerings have universal appeal. Although the participants in our studies also tended to be more attracted to customized systems in general, this proclivity was lower for consumers with less product category expertise. This is important because our results convey that repurchase intentions towards a vendor will be higher after the purchase of a non-customized system by those consumers who lack insight into their preferences. As such, firms should try to propose customized systems only to those prospective buyers who possess strong preference insight, and propose standardized systems to those buyers who do not.     

Thomas mann and the business ethic

Son of a North German businessman, Thomas Mann chose as theme for his early narrative work the conflict between the standards and values of business and those of the artist-writer.Buddenbrooks andTonio Kröger exhibit the tension of values in opposite ways. InThe Magic Mountain, Mann expands his canvas to include military as well as business values in their relation to the creative potential in a young engineer who exiles himself to an Alpine tuberculosis sanatorium to enjoy a unique educational experience. Mann believed that the businessman, like the artist, had a light and dark side, committed by the Protestant ethic, yet bound to entrepreneurial standards of utility and profit. On that account, the businessman, like the creative artist, may experience a certain alientation from ‘Life’.     

Jack Goody. Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2004. vii + 200 pp. ISBN 0-7456-3190-8, $56.95 (cloth); 0-7456-3191-6, $21.95 (paper).

When and why did the West gain its current economic advantageover the rest of the world? This topic is the source of an animateddebate within the academy today. Jack Goody, a noted socialanthropologist, analyzes these questions and offers his ownviews in his new book, Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate. The participants in this debate often have been divided intotwo broad camps. On the one side, which I will call here theEuropeanists, are those who     

读懂这动荡的一年 2009年度最受商业领袖关注的书籍

生活在网络时代里，博客和微博随时随处可以为人们提供那些关于家长里短的流言飞语，充分满足了大众的好奇心，但是这些稀奇古怪、佯装知情的消遣式信息永远不能构成人们需要的真知。如果人们误以为知识的获取主要靠的是速度，那就大错特错了。其实，无论科技如何飞跃，书籍始终是知识、思想和智慧最好的载体之一，因为阅读是一种真正的沉潜的思考和学习。     

The end of the American challenge?

“Fifteen years hence not Europe will be the third industrial power in the world, after the United States and the USSR, but American industry in Europe” Servan-Schreiber wrote 1967 in his “The American Challenge”. Now those fifteen years are past. What has happened really?     

The lessons from stakeholder theory for U.S. business leaders

It has been 20 years since Freeman [Freeman, R. E. (1984). Strategic management: A stakeholder approach. Marshfield, MA: Pittman Publishing.] first proposed his stakeholder approach to strategic management, which stated that corporations must consider the needs and demands not only of their shareholders but also those of a wide range of other external constituencies, or “stakeholders.” Examples of stakeholders include customers, employees, suppliers, and communities. Freeman's theory has generated an extensive body of research, including not only the efforts of the management researchers who have tested, revised, and refined the theory, but also the views of corporate executives who have used the stakeholder approach in their strategic planning. This article, based upon a review of that literature, identifies five important lessons from the stakeholder model for today's business leaders. These lessons are particularly timely, given the inappropriate behavior that has occurred in the business world during recent years.     

The time-harried shopper: Exploring the differences between maximizers and satisficers

Schwartz and his colleagues have proposed individual differences in consumer decision goals. Maximizers are those who always strive to make the best possible decision, whereas satisficers are those who are usually willing to settle for a “good enough” option. In this study, we explore the influence of the maximizing trait in situations where consumers have to make quick purchase decisions. The context for our empirical study is online gift purchases made under a time constraint. The results support our predictions that maximizers (vs. satisficers) engage in more prepurchase browsing behavior and also perceive more decision time pressure. Furthermore, these effects are moderated by the size of the available choice assortment. The results also show that maximizers are more likely to change their initial time-constrained choices if given the opportunity to do so. We discuss the implications of the research for the study of individual differences in consumer behavior and also for customizing retail sales and Internet marketing tactics based on buyer segmentation.     

Exchange rate flexibility and the international liquidity “problem”

Contrary to the expectations of those who advocated flexible exchange rates prior to 1973, Williamson, in his study on exchange rate flexibility and reserve use, presented data which suggested “the paradoxical conclusion that reserve use actually increased following the adoption of floating”. As this finding was based on developments immediately after the final collapse of the Bretton Woods system in March 1973, there arises the question of whether it remains consistent with subsequent experience. Our author argues that the international liquidity “problem” has indeed not been resolved during the last decade and, proceeding from this conclusion, assesses its current implications.     

从市井到官场的角色转换——西门庆形象再论

《金瓶梅》中的西门庆是一个极具时代特色和认识价值的人物形象.他在短时间内由一个阒然无名的“市井棍徒”,摇身变为手眼通天、声势显赫的掌刑千户,金银贿赂自然是其官运亨通的主因.同时,我们也注意到：西门庆进入官场之后,有意识地在生活方式和言行举止上向仕宦阶层靠拢,以求获得官僚集团的认同,最终完成了由市井到官场的角色转换.     

Diaspora entrepreneurs as institutional change agents: The case of Thamel.com

Diasporans are migrants and their descendants who maintain a relationship to their country of origin (Safran, 1991). Diasporans who establish new ventures in their countries of origin comprise a special case of international ethnic entrepreneurship.In countries of settlement, diasporans confront institutional environments that often are quite different than those that exist in their countries of origin. We refer to the exposure to and adoption of institutional roles and relationships associated with a new cultural setting as “institutional acculturation.”Most extant work in management and marketing focuses on how a migrant's acculturation affects his/her behavior in the new country of residence. We shift the analytical lens to the country of origin. Utilizing a case study from Nepal, we demonstrate how institutional acculturation can inspire a diaspora entrepreneur to transform institutional arrangements in his/her country of origin and generate dramatic change in society's role expectations of the government, suppliers, and buyers.     

Verbraucherpolitik als gewerkschaftliche Aufgabe

Trade unions and consumer policy. In the first part of his essay, the author discusses the position of the DGB (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund), the largest and most important of the West German trade unions, in the field of consumer policy. Consumer policy has been part of the statute of the DGB since 1971. Trade unions in West Germany regard themselves as consumer organisations because their members are consumers as well as employees, and consumer policy is understood to be part of the general economic policy of the unions. In 1975, the congress of the DGB accepted a programme of consumer policy. The programme demands that consumers rank equal with producers in the market. This goal should be reached by price competition (as a dominant factor of competition), by transparency (Markttransparenz) of prices and quality, and by the appointment of an ombudsman as a legal caretaker of consumer interests. The DGB rejects new consumer organisations, because in its view the trade unions constitute a well organised consumer institution. There is some cooperation, however, with the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verbraucher, the chief German organisation for consumer affairs. The author disagrees with legal writers who deny trade unions a right of claim against unfair competition and against unfair standard contract clauses, according to para. 13 of the German Unfair Competition Act. In the second part of his essay, the author analyses the legitimation of trade union consumer policy. The discussion concerns the question of whether or not employees are the only consumers who are in need of protection, and if there is a conflict between their interests as employees and as consumers. The author suggests that legal consumer protection should shield only individual persons as buyers (not small firms, for example). Furthermore, consumer interests should be defined from the perspective of the consumer who is anemployee. A consumer who is at the same time an employer, does not need protection because he can compensate for the disadvantages sustained in his consumer role by exploiting his position as an employer. Conversely, the employee-consumer has the weaker position in both of his roles. Another important question is whether or not there is a conflict between a high standard of consumer protection and a high level of wages. The author cites some economists who suggest that this conflict may be resolved, and that the real conflict is not between consumers and employees, but between those two on the one side and business on the other. The author draws the conclusion that there exists a theoretical legitimation for trade unions to represent the consumer interest. There is a wide gap, however, between the programmes of the trade unions and their policy as evidenced by their everyday activities. The hope is expressed that this gap will become narrower.     

基于团队工作理论的供应链协同激励机制

供应链协同中存在着集体理性和个体理性对立统一的矛盾,解决这一矛盾的关键是能否设计出合适的协同激励机制。一般的激励机制大多是委托人所设计,因此他必然将自己的利益放在第一位,系统帕累托最优并不是他考虑的问题,所以不一定能实现系统最优化。由于协同供应链是一个复杂系统,其涉及面广,委托代理关系错综复杂,需要引入激励机制的环节众多,而一般的激励机制往往只着眼于解决某局部的激励问题。     

Taking the pulse: Ethics and the British Cooperative Bank

Policy statements on ethical issues abound. If all organisations which produce mission statements, codes of practice or ethical codes were, therefore, ethical in conduct and performance, business ethics would be non-problematic. However, the effectiveness of corporate codes of ethics is dependent, inter alia, on the day-to-day behaviour of managers.Interest in the impact of ethical codes and mission statements on managerial behaviour has grown in recent years. The assumption underlying this paper is that one way of enriching our understanding of the ethical behaviour of managers is to focus on actual behaviour in real organisations.This paper reports the findings of a research project aimed at discovering the extent to which the British Cooperative Bank's Ethical Policy influences the behaviour of those managers at the Bank who are responsible for achieving the Bank's objectives in acquiring new business in the corporate market.It seeks to explore the impact of the Bank's Ethical Policy on the day-to-day behaviour of a significant group of the Bank's managers.Alan Kitson obtained his first degree in Politics and his doctorate in the political theories of Hegel and Marx from the University of Nottingham. He is Head of Bolton Business School at the Bolton Institute, England and teaches business ethics to undergraduate and MBA students.     

An analysis of the profiles and motivations of habitual commodity speculators

The focus of this study is the habitual speculator in commodity futures markets. The speculator's activity broadens a market, creates essential liquidity, and performs an irreplaceable pricing function. Working knowledge of the profiles and motivations of habitual speculators is essential to both market theorists and policy makers. Responses to a 73-question survey were collected directly from retail commodity brokers with offices in Alabama. Each questionnaire recorded information on an individual commodity client who had traded for an extended period of time. The typical trader studied is a married, white male, age 52. He is affluent and well educated. He is a self-employed business owner who can recover from financial setbacks. He is a politically right-wing conservative involved in the political process. He assumes a good deal of risk in most phases of his life. He is both an aggressive investor and an active gambler. This trader does not consider preservation of his commodity capital to be a very high trading priority. As a result, he rarely uses stop loss orders. He wins more frequently than he loses (over 51% of the time) but is an overall net loser in dollar terms. In spite of recurring trading losses, he has never made any substantial change in his basic trading style. To this trader, whether he won or lost on a particular trade is more important than the size of the win or loss. Thus he consistently cuts his profits short while letting his losses run. He also worries more about missing a move in the market by being on the sidelines than about losing by being on the wrong side of a market move; that is, being in the action is more important than the financial consequences. Participating brokers confirmed that for the majority of the speculators studied, the primary motivation for continuous trading is the recreational utility derived largely from having a market position. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 18:765–801, 1998     

中国第一商贩年广久

<正>他是第一代个体暴发户的代表,是改革开放的风向标,他一生被邓小平三次点名,其命运的起承转合暗合着个私经济的发展进程。作家吴晓波在著作《激荡三十年》中写道:"在1978年到2008年的中国商业圈出没着这样一个族群:他们出身草莽,不无野蛮,性情漂移,坚韧而勇于博取。"年广久正是他们中典型的一位。他的身后总是不乏不屑甚至鄙夷的目光;他目不识丁,却认为自己深谙实践中的经济学,靠炒瓜子在20世纪