Global gamesmanship

Competition among multinationals these days is likely to be a three-dimensional game of global chess: The moves an organization makes in one market are designed to achieve goals in another in ways that aren't immediately apparent to its rivals. The authors--all management professors-call this approach "competing under strategic interdependence," or CSI. And where this interdependence exists, the complexity of the situation can quickly overwhelm ordinary analysis. Indeed, most business strategists are terrible at anticipating the consequences of interdependent choices, and they're even worse at using interdependency to their advantage. In this article, the authors offer a process for mapping the competitive landscape and anticipating how your company's moves in one market can influence its competitive interactions in others. They outline the six types of CSI campaigns--onslaughts, contests, guerrilla campaigns, feints, gambits, and harvesting--available to any multiproduct or multimarket corporation that wants to compete skillfully. They cite real-world examples such as the U.S. pricing battle Philip Morris waged with R.J. Reynolds--not to gain market share in the domestic cigarette market but to divert R.J. Reynolds's resources and attention from the opportunities Philip Morris was pursuing in Eastern Europe. And, using data they collected from their studies of consumer-products companies Procter & Gamble and Unilever, the authors describe how to create CSI tables and bubble charts that present a graphical look at the competitive landscape and that may uncover previously hidden opportunities. The CSI mapping process isn't just for global corporations, the authors explain. Smaller organizations that compete with a portfolio of products in just one national or regional market may find it just as useful for planning their next business moves.     

A note on comparative statics and stochastic dominance

This is a bibliographical note which points out the applicability of some existing results to the development of a sort of Stochastic Dominance ‘algebra’. The ‘more risk averse’ relation of Ross (1981) is established within a general framework.     

Annual Review Article 1989

This Annual Review Article 1989 considers the rising trend in inflation and earnings and indicates that in a wide variety of industries there was a marked upturn in union bargaining activity and industrial conflict. The Review considers some significant changes in employer preferences for particular unions in new or revised bargaining structures, and concludes with an examination of the debate concerning the 'juridification' of collective bargaining in the context of a possible return to 'adversarial' as opposed to 'new' industrial relations.     

new pricing in the pipeline

Ian Byatt, Director General of Water Supply, explains how the water and sewerage industry is regulated.     

A Market Policy for Socialists?

Socialists ought to welcome the efficiency and freedom of choice that markets bring, and be wary of the deficiencies of the state, according to lan Forbes, lecturer in Politics at Southampton University. But the freedom of choice claimed by the 'New Right' thinkers for their economic system would itself be attenuated by the operation of markets. Market socialism thus requires an institutional pluralism of both market and non-market elements.