Some Properties of Past Entropy and their Applications

In the context of information theory, measure of uncertainty in past lifetime distribution has been proposed by Di Crescenzo and Longobardi (J Appl Probab 39:434–440, 2002). In this paper, we study some ordering and aging properties in terms of past entropy (based on past lifetime) and develop some characterization results. Some discrete distribution results are also addressed here.     

BEYOND THE HYPE: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY/KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

Abstract.  This paper explores the debates surrounding whether or not we have now moved into a new knowledge economy and/or knowledge society and if so whether this shift is as significant and as far reaching as the industrial revolution. In this possible transformation the place of information communications technologies has been crucial. Debate has occurred across both economics and sociology with differing emphases as is shown in the ranges of definitions that we review in the paper. One consistent factor is the lack of clarity and consistency between them both within and across the disciplines. In order to explore the issues that the debates raises in a more grounded way, the paper explores them in relation to intellectual property (IP) and the intellectual commons in the process of innovation, growth and economic development. The paper is developed through an analysis first of the industrial revolution and the role within this of uncertainty, technologies, complementarities and elective affinities and the way IP was protected and controlled through patents, secrecy, being first to the market and copyright. The second part of the paper examines definitions of the knowledge economy and society and the role within these of information communication technologies in order to explore whether the ways that IP is protected and controlled have changed. In the debate about the 'knowledge economy and society' the role of innovation via human capital with a greater reliance on intellectual capabilities has been emphasized. The role of IP thus remains central but is now challenged by the rise of new forms of communication, which make its protection harder and move much of the concern with respect to regulation to a global rather than national and local level.     

Value and liquidity under changing market conditions

Papers studying the liquidity of a market tend to focus on decisions involving the trade-off between the selling price and the time-till-sale for a given set of market conditions. This paper characterizes market conditions using a price-probability locus; a change in market conditions is some combination of changes in the level and/or slope of this locus. I show how the effect of either type of change on price and on the probability-of-sale can be decomposed into those commonly associated with an increase in the value and those which involve a substitution between price and probability. Two adding-up conditions restrict the set of possible predictions. Though the discussion focusses on real estate market, where scarcity is rationed by a mechanism which combines search and bargaining, the same ideas apply to markets with other types of selling mechanisms.     

Innovation and HRM: Absences and politics

This article analyses the role of HRM practices in the implementation of an innovative cross-functional approach to new product development (concurrent engineering, CE) in Eurotech Industries. Contrary to CE methodology stipulations, and despite supportive conditions, HRM received scant attention in the implementation process. Organizational power and politics were clearly involved in this situation, and this article explores how their play created such HRM ‘absences’. The article builds on a four-dimensional view of power in order to provide a deeper understanding of the embedded, interdependent and political nature of HRM practice and innovation.     

Rules,rogues, and risk assessors: Academic responses to Enron and other accounting scandals

Abstract

The recent accounting scandals in the USA and the resulting regulation of the US profession via the Sarbanes–Oxley Act have led to the resurrection of an old debate: principles vs. rules. We argue that such a debate is jejune and serves as little more than a diversion from discussing more substantive issues raised by events like Enron and Andersen. Accounting is not confronted by a choice of principles to the exclusion of rules or vice versa. Principles underlie any set of rules, and any implementation of principles will inevitably involve adopting some rules. We take issue with various analyses of the accounting scandals that rely too exclusively on the principles of neo-classical economics. We conclude by identifying four major obstacles impeding meaningful academic and educational treatment of the maladies of which Enron is merely a symptom.     

Claims,Concerns and Interests In British Credit Union Development

The British credit union movement has grown rapidly over the past decade, albeit from a low base relative to other nations. That growth has been led by a natlonal credlt union pollcy network. Thls article provides a detailed appraisal of the structure of that network, the motivations of its members and the relations between them.

This study highlights the existence of contradictions in the ‘policy space’ occupied by this network that have obscured the public interest In credit union development to date. These contradictions need to be resolved if the performance of the system as a whole is to be improved and public policy goals are to be met Increasing visibtlity ensuing from repeated endorsement of credit unions by the Labour government is bringing added pressures to bear on that network. New actors may be expected to enter the credit union polltlcal market as a result The irnpacts of entry, both positive and negative, are evaluated in terms of the coheslon and effectiveness of ihe credit union policy network.     

Leadership for Collaboration

Abstract

‘Leadership’ and ‘collaboration’ are integral to twenty-first century governance and management but, despite a growing literature, understanding about leadership for collaboration is hampered by a lack of specificity and nuance in theory and empirical research. This article responds to these limitations by working within an interpretive framework and employing Q-method to uncover different interpretations of leadership for collaboration operant among public managers in Wales. The article uses the concept of situated agency to explain why public managers offer diverse interpretations of leadership for collaboration despite working within the same governance framework, and to identify challenges to public managers in determining appropriate leadership for collaboration.     

In what sense ‘regional development?’: entrepreneurship,underdevelopment and strong tradition in the periphery

This paper explores whether entrepreneurship can help less successful regions to improve their regional economic situation, without all the benefits that entrepreneurship brings when being ‘stripped out’ to more successful regions. The paper uses the idea that peripheral regions possess qualities of tradition and underdevelopment, and that these help to anchor new firms into these regions, resistant to their concentration in core regions. The paper explores whether particular entrepreneurial events can be regarded as ‘densifying’ the regional entrepreneurial environment, thereby making a positive contribution to its economic development. The paper explores the role of these negative anchors to the entrepreneurial events and the densification process by following a sequence of high-technology spin-out firms in the North East of England. Using a realist methodology attempting to interview all the firms within the sequence which could be found, the paper discovers that quite positive advantages exist within these negative qualities.The paper then considers whether these processes, such as plant closure, might drive entrepreneurship in all regions.     

Ethnic minority business and the employment of illegal immigrants

Based on detailed case histories of South Asian workers and their co-ethnic employers in the West Midlands clothing and catering industries, this paper examines the use of illegal immigrant labour in small ethnic minority firms and attempts to tease out its implications for the migrants themselves, their employers and the broader national interest. To establish a proper context, we begin with a review of the recent literature on the structural changes – principally the confluence of globalization and post-industrialism – which have generated a seemingly unstoppable flow of labour migration; and the official state policies that have forced much of it underground. Our own case histories are seen as one of countless local expressions of this clash between economic and political imperatives, a clash which effectively criminalizes employers and workers for providing a positive economic and social contribution to the wider good. In the present case, it is only by employing immigrant labour that struggling entrepreneurs can survive in hyper-competitive sectors of the economy and the stark choice is between official tolerance of law-breaking or driving many of these enterprises to the wall.