Bentham and Owen on entrepreneurship and social reform

Abstract

Jeremy Bentham invested an important amount of money in New Lanark's cotton mills, which at that time were run by Robert Owen. However, apparently Bentham never took a serious interest in the organisation of such a successful entrepreneurship and new model society, although it seemed to fit in with Bentham's ideas of the entrepreneur (‘projector’) and also with Bentham's ideas on social reform, seeking the greatest happiness of the greatest number. This article explains how Bentham's share in New Lanark came about. It tries to ascertain whether the New Lanark experiment and Owen's ideas fit Bentham's managerial theory and ideas on social reform so as to understand why Bentham did not pay more attention to Robert Owen's practice.     

The evolving role of organisational and personal networks in international market venturing

In a study of 1304 Australian manufacturing industry SMEs, we investigate the relationships among networking (i.e., inter-personal and inter-organisational networks), international market venturing (i.e., export intensity), and family ownership. We find evidence that (1) inter-personal networking and inter-organisational networking positively influence SME international market venturing, but this relationship is contingent on a time lag effect, and (2) family ownership negatively moderates the effect of inter-organisational networking on international market venturing. Implications for managerial practice and public policy are discussed.     

Unbundling tolls from contracts: a new road PPP model

Considerable evidence from different countries has revealed important shortcomings in most road public–private partnership (PPP) models. In this paper a new PPP model is presented that overcomes some of the problems found in PPP road contracts. The new model is based on separating user tolls from the fees paid to PPP contractors and setting up new institutional arrangements to oversee PPPs.     

Developing an alert system for local governments in financial crisis

This article presents a new model which will show whether a local authority is heading for financial trouble. The model is simple for national audit bodies to use and provides an early warning of financial tensions allowing corrective action to be taken before there is a crisis.     

Enterprise Web Accessibility Levels Amongst the Forbes 250: Where Art Thou O Virtuous Leader?

The research team measured the enterprise web accessibility levels of the Forbes 250 largest enterprises using the fully automatic accessibility evaluation tool Sortsite, and presented the compliance of the evaluated websites to WCAG 1.0, WCAG 2.0 and Section 508 accessibility levels. Given the recent attention to organizational leaders having ethical duties towards their dedicated employees, we propose that ‘societal citizenship behaviour’ concerns ethical duties of organizational leaders towards society in general and in particular to those who have less means to assert their needs. In effect, we found enterprise website accessibility levels to be in need of significant improvement. An interpretation of a positive path forward to better enterprise website accessibility levels is put forth based on a focus-group interaction and using BNML—a novel Business Narrative Modelling Language.     

The influence of human resource management in savings bank performance

The aim of this article was to analyse the value of human resources (HR) for competitive advantage and their influence on the firm's performance in the service industry. To achieve our goal, we have first proposed a resource-based framework to discuss the circumstances under which human resources can be a source of competitive advantage. Then, an empirical research was developed in the Spanish savings bank sector to analyse the relationship between HR management and the firm's performance. Our results, suggest that those savings banks which better combine their HR practices to create and to develop a strategic human capital pool have shown better levels of profitability and productivity.     

Multiplicity in general financial equilibrium with portfolio constraints

This paper explores the role of portfolio constraints in generating multiplicity of equilibrium. We present a simple financial market economy with two goods and two households, households who face constraints on their ability to take unbounded positions in risky stocks. Absent such constraints, equilibrium allocation is unique and is Pareto efficient. With one portfolio constraint in place, the efficient equilibrium is still possible; however, additional inefficient equilibria in which the constraint is binding may emerge. We show further that with portfolio constraints cum incomplete markets, there may be a continuum of equilibria; adding incomplete markets may lead to real indeterminacy.     

Changing Patterns of Precipitation at the Sooke Reservoir in British Columbia

The paper is a parametric and nonparametric analysis of past precipitation data. We analyze 90 years of daily precipitation data at the Sooke Reservoir in British Columbia, Canada, for evidence of climate change. We fit probability density functions (PDFs) to the data and find evidence of a structural break in the data generating process by using the Andrews-Ploberger test. To confirm this finding, we analyze higher moments of the distribution of precipitation and show that the PDFs have become more leptokurtic. The results show how the pattern of precipitation has changed.     

Do missing values exist? Incomplete data handling in cross-national longitudinal studies by means of continuous time modeling

In cross-national longitudinal studies it is often impossible to administer the same measurement instruments at the same occasions to all sample units in all participating countries. This quickly results in large quantities of missing data, due to (a) missing measurement instruments in some countries, (b) missing assessment waves within or across countries, (c) missing data for individual sample units. As compared to cross-sectional studies, the problem of missing values is further aggravated by the fact that missing values are always associated with different time intervals between repeated observations. In the past, this has often been dealt with by the use of phantom-variables, but this approach is limited to simple designs with few missing value patters. In the present paper we propose a new way to think of, and deal with, missing values in longitudinal studies. Instead of conceiving of a longitudinal study as a study with \(T\) discrete time points of which some are missing, we propose to conceive of a longitudinal study as a way to measure an underlying process that develops continuously over time, but is only observed at some selected discrete time points. This transforms the problem of missing values into a problem of unequal time intervals. After a quick introduction to the basic idea of continuous time modeling, we demonstrate how this approach provides a straightforward solution to missing measurement instruments in some countries, missing assessment waves within or across countries, and missing data for individual sample units.