Computer capacity utilisation – a multilevel perspective on decades of decline

This article uses a multilevel perspective to explain why there has been a dramatic decline in the utilisation of computer-processing power during the last two to three decades. It identifies that computers have been used in two different ways – either as single-user systems where each users received his or her own computer or as time-sharing systems where each computer was shared by several users. It finds that the time-sharing systems made considerably better use of the computers' resources than the single-user systems and that the utilisation of computer-processing power began to decline as single-user microcomputers began to replace time-shared minicomputers and mainframes. The article argues that this development contradicts much of the recent research on capacity utilisation, but argues that this contradiction can be explained by analysing this development as a transition process with multiple levels of interaction.     

The Influence of Retail Management’s Use of Social Power on Corporate Ethical Values,Employee Commitment,and Performance

Recent cases in retailing reflect that ethics have a major impact on brands and performance, in turn, demonstrating that brand owners, employees, and consumers focus on ethical values. In this study, we analyze how various sources of social power affect corporate ethical values, retailer’s commitment to the retail organization, and ultimately sales and service quality. Multi-source data based on a sample of 225 retailers indicated a strong link between power, ethics, and commitment and that these affected output performance.     

Can Japan Make a Comeback?

Since the beginning of the 1990s Japan has experienced economic stagnation. The economy had been allowed to overheat in the 1980s and a bubble had been built up. When this burst, there was massive asset‐deflation, which led to a banking crisis. The bad debts were not faced up to effectively. Japanese banks could not achieve high enough margins to recapitalise themselves, and the government was for a long time reluctant to intervene effectively. The shock made economic agents more pessimistic, which led to an imbalance between savings and investment‐demand. Excess savings were placed abroad and used to finance a domestic fiscal deficit, but this was not enough to close the gap and sustain growth. To be able to run a large current account surplus the yen needed to depreciate, but this was not achieved due to expectations about a future appreciation. The strategy to get out of the liquidity trap would include credible inflation targeting and yen depreciation. Monetary policy should have an inflation target well above zero per cent. Such macroeconomic measures need to be complemented by structural reforms such as deregulation of financial services, competition policy and reallocation of public investments. The Japanese development model with close connections between firms and banks needs to be reformed. Japan should be able to achieve stable growth again, but since the catch‐up phase is over one would not expect growth in Japan to be higher than in other developed countries, even if Japan undertakes the needed reforms.     

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