The ARCO decision: Inroads into the per se rule under Section 1 of the Sherman Act

In this study, the author analyzes the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court decision inAtlantic Richfield Company vs. USA Petroleum Company approving Atlantic Richfield’s maximum pricing plan improsed on its distributors (despite the Court’s recognition that theper se rule forbade such schemes). Theper se rule had been one of the last substantial measures of effective antitrust policy administered by enforcement authorities and the courts, perhaps even more fundamental than scrutiny of proposed mergers and predatory practices. That principle has been weakened by the ARCO decision. The author addresses some of the likely consequences of the ascendancy of the Chicago School and the NeoClassical theory generally in antitrust interpretation.     

Contextual Influences on Thinking in Organizations: Learner and Tutor Orientations to Organizational Learning

This paper examines the orientations, or frames of reference, of participants in five bank training programmes run by three banks in the United Kingdom. Adopting a symbolic interactionist approach and ethnographic methods of investigation, the paper attempts to elucidate the ways in which both learners and tutors thought about their roles in the learning events and the goals and strategies they adopted in order to cope with their situation. It is suggested that in order to understand the participants' behaviour it is necessary to take into account the contexts in which their actions were constructed. In particular it is proposed that the organizational context of the training programmes, which exposed the participants to the gaze of ‘hidden audiences’ of organizational superiors, inhibited the potential of the programmes as vehicles for learning. It is also argued that interactionist approaches using ethnographic methods, which enable organizational actors to be studied in situ, have an important contribution to make to the wider study of organizational cognition.     

An input–output virtual laboratory in practice – survey of uptake,usage and applications of the first operational IELab

ABSTRACT

The Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory (IELab) is a collaborative cloud-computing platform for compiling large-scale, high-resolution, enviro-socio-economic accounts based on multi-region input–output tables and for conducting integrated sustainability assessment projects. These include, for example, assessments of biofuels and low-carbon construction materials or high-resolution waste modelling. This contribution provides a structured review of IELab applications that were published in either peer-reviewed journal papers or in the form of conference proceedings. The main research question posed is ‘What are the specific features of IELab that were used in the research and could the research have happened without them?’ It is investigated whether the IELab has actually and truly enabled new research. A detailed analysis of IELab characteristics and their usage is presented. The results can help with the design of new research projects and inform existing and prospective users of the IELab about the options for academic research and practical applications.     

Design of an interrelated quality system for a single product manufacturing process with assembly

The design of a single product manufacturing system with assembly is considered. The processing is on a lot-by-lot basis with the lot size fixed. The decision variables include interrelated single sampling plans, manufacturing process quality levels, incoming raw material quality levels and assembly process quality levels. A solution procedure is given to minimize the expected total of the costs associated with the quality of the finished product subject to a limit on the Average Outgoing Quality Limit of the finished product. An example is provided.     

Strategic interventions of management accountants: everyday practice of British and German brewers

A popular stereotype has it that German firms are somehow ‘long-term strategically oriented’ and British firms focus on short-term financial gain. Analysing ethnographic material from British and German brewers, this paper explores how management accountants in the two countries conceive of their relationship with processes of strategic formulation and how they seek to mobilize strategic arguments in their day-to-day contacts with operational management. The focus of this study is not on the strategy debates which one might expect among senior management, but on routine interaction between management accountants and managers in which the mundane events of organizational life are made to happen in the name of loftier ‘strategic’ priorities. From observations of such interaction and management accountants' reflections on them, contrasting ways of integrating management accounting expertise with operational knowledge of the firm are suggested for the British and German brewers studied. Those contrasts are developed by drawing on the relationship between time and the possibility for strategic intervention more generally.