Community in the new epoch: the social ergonomics of community design

‘Community’ as both location and structure of relationships is undergoing change. In the Western world the rate of changes will inevitably accelerate in this new century. Our predictions include: the vast growth of cyber communities, and an increasing bandwidth, immersivity and interactivity in such communities; the expansion of the surveillance age in urban and rural communities, as rampant public crime works against community safety; an increased emphasis on social control in highly conservative communities that foster conformity; the development of Smart Towns with every service, facility and communication accessed by fibre-optic cable technology. Style will become a major priority in the 2025 community. The gurus of the age will be the Community Designers. At first these will be multi-disciplinary visionaries, who will be accorded the fame and celebrity of late-twentieth-century film stars. Their ideas for planned communities will take into account the above, but also offer grand schemes for the development of theme towns.Our scenarios indicate the continuing need by many citizens for ideals and ideology of traditional community life, but encased in new guises, with individual well-being and entertainment as priority. In general, current trends of disenfranchisement through globalization, multinationals and non-consultative government act to increase the chances of our scenarios coming about. A major social change through political awakening of the young, global neo-environmental movements and other massive global paradigm shifts would mitigate against our scenarios. We see the latter as unlikely.     

Morgan Stanley's Approach to Assessing Credit Risks in the Microfinance Industry

Growing investor interest in microfinance combined with strong demand from microfinance institutions (MFIs) for capital have caused the financial industry and rating agencies to seek more reliable and precise methods for assessing the risks of MFIs. Drawing on the work of various industry leaders as well as its own experience, Morgan Stanley's Microfinance Institutions Group has created a comprehensive internal credit analysis and rating methodology—one that, by producing global (foreign and local currency) scale ratings, enables its analysts to assess and compare risks both within the growing microfinance sector and relative to other sectors.     

The role of the state and the hierarchy of money

This paper uses Minsky's definition of money as a two-sidedbalance sheet phenomenon to challenge many common positionson the nature, evolution and role of money. His definition isapplied to two opposing theories in the history of monetarydebates, and it is shown that the Chartalists (as opposed tothe Metallists) developed a general theory of money that canbe applied equally convincingly to the entire era of state money.This theory is then used to show that the state's power to makeand enforce tax laws renders its money the most acceptable formof debt within what can be considered a 'hierarchy' of monies.This leads to some important policy implications as well asa strengthening of the endogenous money position.     

Beyond clusters: How regional geographic signature affects firm value and risk

Existing studies examining how geography affects firm outcomes primarily consider how clusters affect performance. We examine how regional geographic signature—industry clusters, regional economic diversity, region size, and regional innovativeness—affects firm value and systematic and unsystematic risk using a sample of publicly traded American bank holding companies. After controlling for endogeneity of clusters, we find that locating in large and innovative regions enhances firm value, while locating in clusters and diversifying into many regions reduces value. Clusters reduce systematic risk and increase unsystematic risk, while economic diversity and innovativeness increase systematic risk. Thus, geographic locales exert multifaceted influences on value and risk, and we need to consider more than industry clusters and geographic diversification when considering geographic influence. Copyright © 2013 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Saving behavior and cognitive abilities

Experiments on saving behavior reveal substantial heterogeneity of behavior and performance. We show that this heterogeneity is reliable and examine several potential sources of it, including cognitive ability and personality scales. The strongest predictors of both behavior and performance are two cognitive ability measures. We conclude that complete explanations of heterogeneity in dynamic decision making require attention to complexity and individual differences in cognitive constraints.     

Metaheuristics in Logistics and Supply Chain Management

The modeling of logistics systems is performed to seek the best possible system configuration to minimize costs or maximize operational performance, in order to meet or exceed customer expectations. Classically, analytic system analysis of this type has been performed using optimization, simulation, or heuristics. However, in the past two decades, a newer class of techniques, metaheuristics, has emerged as a capable method for quickly providing near‐optimal solutions for problems that exact optimization cannot solve. This article outlines recent advances in metaheuristics development, and considers the ability of these advanced techniques to resolve various logistics and supply chain problem types. Specifically, the article discusses the ant colony optimization, genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, and tabu search metaheuristics. The capabilities of these metaheuristic techniques to examine supply chain risk and disruptions, intermodal operations, customer service trade‐offs, backhaul strategies, and simultaneous facility location and vehicle route problems are proposed. The article concludes by describing how faculty can bring these techniques into the classroom to ensure their students enter the logistics and supply chain field with a current and relevant understanding of the state of the art in supply chain design techniques.     

Advertising Management: Its Role in Marketing. Sachs,William S. Tulsa,Oklahoma: PennWell Books, 1983

Abstract

The advertising literature contains some evidence that offensive advertising is multidimensional in nature, but little is known about the character of these dimensions. In an exploratory study of TV advertising, two different dimensions of “offensive” were identified. These dimensions were labeled Offensive Products and Offensive Execution. This distinction is important both for the study of the construct as well as for advertisers who are faced with decisions on advertising execution. The Offensive Products dimension contains those products related to consumer problems which social norms dictate should not be discussed in public. The Offensive Execution dimension, the dimension over which the advertiser has more control, consists of those ads which are perceived to be offensive by the nature of the execution or themes and/or topics of the ad and not the product itself.     

Formal Employment and Informal Work in Household Services

This article discusses whether employment increases are likely in household services. The conclusion is that until recently, employment increased due to a shift of service work from households to the formal economy (especially the public sector). The growing number of childless or single parent households means a growing demand for services from the formal economy. Still, it seems likely that the service employment growth will slow down and be substituted by work in the informal economy, due to the cost increases in the formal economy connected with low productivity growth in service activities.     

Enchantment in Business Ethics Research

Journal of Business Ethics - This article draws attention to the importance of enchantment in business ethics research. Starting from a Weberian understanding of disenchantment, as a force that...