The concept of professionalism and the management of salaried technical professionals: A cross-national perspective

Based on a conceptual cross-national framework, the authors demonstrate how differences in a nation's prevailing beliefs about professionalism can affect national practices in managing technology and technical professionals. In the United States, the notion of professionalism has led in some cases to vertical polarization within the firm, a lack of adequate technical training among managers, an overuse of operational control of professionals, an over-emphasis on breakthrough technology, and a de-emphasis on practical production technologies. The authors conclude that a balanced view of professionalism can enhance a nation's competitive position.     

The effect of production uncertainty on the labor-managed firm

The effects of production uncertainty on the behavior of the labor-managed, cooperative firm are examined and it is shown that they generally differ from the case of certainty and the case of the entrepreneurial, profit-maximizing firm. In particular, it is shown that the risk-averse (risk-seeking) cooperative will have a larger (smaller) ratio of labor to nonlabor input employed in production than the risk-neutral cooperative.     

Crisis and opportunity: From technological to social change

Despite rapid technological and social change, we continue to play the game by the old rules, exacerbating the global crises and undermining chance and choice for the future. This article calls for new rules: determined and responsible political leadership, an improved social conscience, pluralism in technology, and the acceptance of unemployment as a temporary and creative necessity rather than fighting it by resisting technological innovation. Anticipation and preventive action in confronting the future are better than post facto adjustments or repair.     

Age structure shifts in Research & Development (R&D): Some statistical evidence and an integrative approach to link behavioural aspects of individual and group age in collaborative R&D

Since empirical material concerning the age structure of industrial R&D organizations is scarce an attempt is made to present some statistical evidence in support of the wide-spread notion of a shift toward a higher median age in R&D laboratories during the past years. Then, on an individual level of analysis the results of an extensive review of existing empirical research on the covariation of individual age and scientific performance are summarized in brief. On a group level of analysis research relating age of collaborative R&D groups (i.e., average length of time group members had worked together in a particular group) to group performance is discussed. To integrate the contradictory findings of prior research two analytic concepts are introduced, namely the discrimination of different situations of collaboration and the identification of two basic functions of interactions in collaborative R&D. Based upon these concepts an integrative approach to account for time-related performance patterns on an individual and group level of analysis is laid out. Finally, possibilities of a diagnostic application of the suggested concepts are indicated.     

Productive efficiency of French grain producers: A latent variable model

In this article we propose to implement a covariance structure analysis to deal with the estimation of a stochastic frontier production function on panel data and the measurement of a time-varying technical efficiency. First, this method solves the potential problem of correlations between input quantities and individual effects. Second, individual effects and efficiency measures can be recovered as a byproduct of the analysis through the so-called factor scores. We implement this approach by fitting to a balanced panel of French grain producers, a parsimonious version of the Cornwell, Schmidt, and Sickles [1990]'s model where technical efficiencies are individual-specific linear functions of time. A specification search shows that this model is preferred to the traditional production function. Results shed light on the temporal pattern of efficiency in the French grain production sector.The authors thank Jacques Mairesse, Quang Vuong, two referees, the editor, and session participants at the Econometric Society European Meeting, Cambridge, September 1991, at the Second European Workshop on Efficiency and Productivity Analysis, Louvain-la-Neuve, October 1991, at the Conference on Current Issues in Productivity, Newark, December 1991, and at the ENSAE-EHESS seminar, Paris, March 1992, for helpful comments and suggestions.     

Disutility of pollution and endogenous growth

Endogenous growth is generally built on a positive externality hypothesis which is the opposite of a negative externality caused by pollution. We study a linear technology with simple assumption: an aggregate capital stock which represents a learning by doing effect and a pollution flow proportional to production. In this framework, we analyse the precise effects on growth of the disutility of pollution and its interaction with the utility of consumption in an economy without abatement technology. The decentralized equilibrium always leads to unlimited growth, but optimal growth is often limited (the negative effect of pollution dominating the positive effect of learning by doing). In this case, the optimal policy which leads the decentralized economy to follow the optimal growth path is to tax capital; in contrast with the optimal subsidy policy in an economy without pollution. When an abatement technology is introduced, the optimal solution can lead the economy to unlimited growth, whatever the form of the utility function.