The Evolving Role of Government in China's Transitional Economy

This paper recounts the changing economic role of Chinese government, both at the central and local levels, in the reform process. The previously all-encompassing role of the central government has been greatly reduced, mandatory plans abolished, prices decontrolled, and administrative controls decentralised. Decentralisation has reoriented the interest of local governments towards reform and system innovation, fostered a climate for reform initiatives and spontaneous reform at local level, and induced competition among different localities that has again provided incentives for local governments to change, to adapt to changes, and to innovate. Decentralisation, however, has also led to dilemmas and problems, and created instability and uncertainty in China's macro-economic conditions and central-local relations.     

East Asian Scholarly Research: A View from the 94th Floor

This article examines both applied and academic research relating to East Asia published during 1994 in terms of its applied relevance and its contributions to existing theory. In recent years the volume of research related to East Asia has expanded rapidly, and this review looks at the hightlights of that literature. Research from each of the functional business areas is examined, both in terms of its current and future contributions. In addition, special attention is paid to the areas of strategic management and entrepreneurship, which had a large amount of important research published during this period. Finally, there is an overall assessment of the impact of this research.     

A Fallen Idol? Japanese Management in the 1990s

The authors argue that the elevation of Japanese manufacturing management in the West rested on the idea that superior performance resulted from new productive techniques and different systems of management. The object of this article is to shift the balance of placing more weight on structural factors and less on management success or failure. Attention is drawn to the fact that Japanese industry operated in a favourable domestic environment. Output expansion at home and a favourable social settlement (wages, hours worked) operated to ensure that exports, sold in markets where quite different social settlements set higher prices, generated a great deal of cash for Japanese producers. It is argued that the erosion, if not disappearance, of these favourable conditions from the mid-1980s onward has contributed substantially to the recent difficulties of Japanese producers.     

Financial contagion in East Asia and the origins of the economic and financial crisis in Korea

In this article the major elements of the 30 year old Asian development model are examined in the light of the financial crisis in the region. The notion of a common model is examined and found to be overstated. The monetary crisis in Asia has affected countries to different degrees, with Indonesia and Korea being particularly weakened. Korea has two major economic problems which can be traced to economic policies established in the 1960s. First, the industrial organization of the economy under a few industrial conglomerates, which has outlived its usefulness and is now a major source of the troubles in the economy. The conglomerates have been responsible for an investment policy where risk has been pushed to recklessness and the rate of return on capital employed is meagre. Second, banking policy, which is best characterized as a severe form of ‘moral hazard’. Both of these policies, while having played major parts in past economic successes, are now the main cause of a weakened economy in a globalized world.     

Transnational organization and symbolic production: Creating and managing a global brand

In recent years, there has been sustained debate pertaining to how global markets should be conceptualized, enacted, and addressed. The purpose of this study was to expose the pivotal managerial thought processes and practices of senior managers at Guinness and the actions of symblic workers involved in the reconciliation of trends toward increasing global cultural convergence and a need for local cultural differentiation within the “global culture industry.” Our findings reveal the strategic processes and mechanisms involved in the creation of a series of polysemic, multi‐vocal texts positioned to allow multi‐level interpretation of the brand in ways that permit simultaneous engagement with, and negation of, local idiosyncrasies.     

Tobacco Advertising and Children

This paper expresses the results of an investigation of the influence of tobacco advertising on children's smoking. The investigation examined the existing body of evidence and literature on the subject including data obtained from empirical research carried out by the Children's Research Unit in London. Despite the speculation regarding the possible role of advertising in juvenile smoking, no evidence was found to link juvenile smoking initiation with tobacco advertising. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that smoking initiation is more dependent on family smoking behaviour and peer pressures. These factors emerged consistently as the major influences in smoking initiation throughout the literature and the range of countries investigated regardless of the extent of tobacco advertising permitted in each country. Advertising is not as influential as is often supposed. Psychological filter systems are employed by the consumer, who selects only that information which is of relevance or interest to him. Widespread awareness of the tobacco-health issue means that an additional barrier is formed in the case of cigarette advertisements. There is no evidence that tobacco advertising influences non-smokers (either children or adults) to take up smoking.     

A longitudinal study of the professions' attitudes towards competition & advertising

The attitudes towards competition and advertising of the members of five professions in New Zealand were monitored in three surveys carried out in 1985, 1988 and 1994. This paper reports on the changes in attitudes that occurred over this nine-year period, noting marked trends in all the professions towards an acceptance of a competitive orientation and advertising in particular. A partial exception to the general trend favouring competition has been the attitudes towards matters directly related to money (for example, fees and credit facilities), where there was markedly less enthusiasm for competition. Attitudes towards advertising by professional practices have relaxed sufficiently to question whether advertising needs to be a matter of concern to the professions.     

React to the future: political visualization,emotional reactions and political behavior

Abstract

This study explores the mediating role political visualization – the process of imagining future political scenarios – plays in determining how political advertising affects voting behaviour. Specifically, we theorize that when partisans are exposed to political ads that are narrative (compared to non-narrative) in nature, they will engage in more political visualization. Partisans will then experience emotional reactions to these imagined futures – specifically, enthusiasm for the in-group candidate and anger towards the out-group candidate. These emotional reactions, in turn, will make a partisan more likely to vote for the in-group candidate and less likely to vote for the out-group candidate. We test this model by employing an experimental design where American partisans were presented a political ad (in the form of an email) that is either narrative or non-narrative. Results provide support for most of our expectations and suggest that visualization may play an important role in determining the influence of a political ad.     

New technology in UK retailing: Issues and responses

Technology application in retailing has a considerable history, with applications for the most part aimed at labour cost reduction. The technologies now being applied in retailing and distribution however differ from these earlier ones in a fundamental way. The new technologies in micro‐electronic based computing and micro‐electronic communications differ by being general purpose and flexible and by developing very rapidly. The new technology is enabling changes to take place in the distribution channel. The areas of applications of the new technology and the applications and reasons of technology introduction are analysed in this paper.