Entrepreneurial Intentions and Outcomes: a Comparative Causal Mapping Study

This paper uses a causal map methodology to consider the contrasts between entrepreneurial intentions and outcomes. In evaluating a series of propositions drawn from the extant literature the study finds that the elicited causal maps are consistent with contrasts in entrepreneurial intentions, but not outcomes. This suggests that the existing emphasis on entrepreneurial strategies being deliberate, conscious processes may be misplaced: non-deliberate, emergent strategies may be just as influential in producing entrepreneurial outcomes. The study develops a series of output propositions suggesting that entrepreneurial outcomes are associated with causal maps which connect the internal operations of the business with the external environment. This implies that entrepreneurial success may be a result of intuitive systems thinking in which connections are made between the environment and the internal operations of the business.     

Top-down Production Management: A Recent Trend in the Japanese Productivity-enhancement Movement

It is well known that many of the manufacturing practices advanced in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s emphasize bottom-up decision processes characterized by teams, the empowerment of multi-skilled workers on the shopfloor, demand-pull and horizontal decision mechanisms. These practices include Just-in-Time (JIT) and quality management practices such as quality circles (QC) and total quality management (TQM). While these practices continue to be effective under appropriate circumstances, the drastic appreciation of the Japanese yen that has taken place since the mid-1980s and the prolonged recession following the burst of the bubble have forced many Japanese manufacturers to adopt new methods to improve their production efficiency. In this paper we discuss one of such methods called Total Productivity Management (TPM). Unlike JIT or TQM, implementing TPM requires a top-down approach. TPM provides direct connections between corporate-wide objectives such as the overall cost reduction and shopfloor practices. It is possible that TPM has contributed significantly to Japanese manufacturers' recent success in reducing their cost of operation. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Future European Labor Supply: The Critical Role of the Family

The European employment strategy initiated in 1997 is critically dependent upon the further integration of women into the labor market. The European Union has set a specific target employment rate for women of 60 percent by 2010 and is also committed to providing more and better child care facilities. This gender focus is reinforced by the requirement for gender mainstreaming in all aspects of European employment policy. There is an implied Europe-wide, universal policy of encouraging female labor-market participation and reducing the care work performed by domestic labor. However, the European Commission continues to have limited competence in areas of family, social, and welfare policy. As a result, these common employment objectives for women are thus being pursued against a background of quite different systems of social, family, welfare, and indeed labor-market organization. These systems have different economic and employment implications, such that the outcomes of the common European employment strategy will also be highly variable.     

Strategic alignment and organizational options in biotechnology firms

Biotechnology has created a number of oflfiortunities for new start-up firms. A feu of these fims have grown rapidly and have ambitious strategies. These strategies reflect the fim growing organizational competences i n the context of rapidly changing technological, competitive, Jinanczal and regulatory circumstances. The firms have pursued adaptive, learning-based strategies which give them advantages over large firms. Underpinning these strategies have been long-term efforts to establish a highly motivated and creative workforce. Using the examples fo the UK's two leading biotechnology firms, some of the features of these strategies are exumined. It is found that there are dgerences i n the organizational forms selected by the two fims. These reflect temporal factors, differing environmental conditioru, and elements of manugement choice. The difficulty oj strategic management in turbulent conditions 6s highlighted by considering some of the strengths and weaknesses of both options.     

Textbook Treatments of the Financial Market in the IS-LM Model

Intermediate macroeconomics textbooks introduce financial markets into the IS-LM analysis but typically as a beginning-of-period consideration. Here the financial market is introduced in an end-of-period model.     

Community college economics instruction: Results from a National Science Foundation Project

The principal investigator of a National Science Foundation project, “Economics at Community Colleges,” surveyed community college economics faculty and organized workshops, webinars, and regional meetings to address community college faculty isolation from new ideas in economics and economics instruction. Survey results, combined with National Study of Postsecondary Faculty data, help fill a lacuna in information about community college faculty. A key finding is the reliance in community college economic instruction on part-time faculty, including many who do not hold a graduate degree in economics. The project's webinars reached the most community college faculty, while the workshops were most effective in improving economics instruction. Areas for future research are identified.     

A Kantian critique of neoclassical law and economics

Abstract

This paper outlines a critique of neoclassical law and economics based on the ethics of Immanuel Kant, focusing on four central topics: efficiency as the sole evaluative criterion for policy-making, hypothetical compensation in Kaldor–Hicks efficiency, the instrumental nature of rights and the assumption of reciprocal causation, and the role of punishment to both society and the individual. This overview addresses issues of concern not just to Kantians, but to anyone dissatisfied with the utilitarian foundations of law and economics and the amoral view of law upon which it is based.     

The Point of Effective Demand

Abstract

Keynes's principle of effective demand conceives competitive equilibrium in terms of the choices of entrepreneurs, investors and consumers, rather than of the optimal allocation of factors of production. In The General Theory, effective demand is distinguished from aggregate demand and from income, expected or realised, and there is no suggestion that equilibrium means the convergence of expectations. Reconsideration of Keynes's use of time and equilibrium periods leads to the conclusion that he treats employment as in continuous equilibrium, at the point of effective demand, determined by the state of expectation, the correctness of which is strictly irrelevant. The nature of the equilibrium represented by the point of effective demand is here described, not in terms of the multiplier, but in terms of the continuous equilibrium of supply and demand in short-term forward markets. This reading is faithful to Keynes's conception of aggregate demand as dependent upon the expectations of entrepreneurs, and it resolves the meaning of his ‘long-period employment.’ Formal appendices identify the differences between Keynes and Walras and the nature of the multiplier. The paper concludes that the Keynesian cross and ‘Swedish’ analysis should be abandoned, and the Walrasian conception recognised as only the limiting case of general competitive equilibrium in a monetary economy.     

A Post-Keynesian Model of the Palestinian Economy: The Economics of an Investment-Constrained Economy

The 60-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict has deeply influenced the evolution of the Palestinian economy. In the last two decades political instability and the Israeli closure policy have generated protracted economic stagnation and poor capital formation. The paper describes the consequences on the Palestinian economy of existing high transaction costs and market fragmentation. We propose a simple one-sector Post-Keynesian model that describes Palestine as a demand-driven economy. We show that high transaction costs and market fragmentation discourage investment by curtailing expected profitability, reducing the size of the market and depressing entrepreneurs' animal spirits. In the short run, these two factors induce low levels of capacity utilization and low rates of capital accumulation. The situation is even more worrying in the long run when entrepreneurs can revise their expectations. Depressed animal spirits and low levels of capacity use give rise to a low-growth trap from which Palestine can hardly escape. We also highlight the possible positive impact of the removal of high transaction costs and of market fragmentation, and the ensuing beneficial effects on the long-run equilibrium values of capital accumulation and capacity use. The conclusions place these analytical results into the historical situation of the Palestinian economy, and consider what is needed, politically and economically, in order to establish a sustained development process.

The division of labour is limited by the extent of the market. (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, chapter III)     

Comments on “Consumption Values of Trade Unions”

The credit default swap (CDS) is implicated in the global financial crises because a vast market for securities collateralized by subprime mortgages and consumer debt could not have materialized if hedge funds and other holders of these instruments lacked a means of hedging default "risk." The argument is made that the CDS is an inherently defective concept because it is based on the assumption that future states of the economy are subject to probabilistic risk as opposed to uncertainty in the Keynes-Knight-Shackle-Davidson sense. The CDS also manifests the paradox of derivatives. By enabling individual money managers to safely increase leverage, it causes a system-wide buildup of leverage and financial fragility.