Mutually acceptable courses of action

We offer a game-theoretic framework that enables the analysis of situations whereby rational individuals with different beliefs and views of the world agree to a shared course of action. We introduce a new solution concept: a mutually acceptable course of action, which can be viewed as an (incomplete) contract or a social norm that free rational individuals would be willing to follow for their own diverse reasons. We show that by varying the degree of completeness of the underlying course of action, our concept can be related to commonly used solutions, such as perfect equilibrium, perfect Bayesian equilibrium, (rationalizable) self-confirming equilibrium, and rationalizable outcomes. We are grateful to the editor and an anonymous referee for very useful and helpful comments and suggestions. Earlier versions of this paper were circulated under the title “Towering over Babel: Worlds Apart but Acting Together”. We thank participants at the World Congress of Game Theory Society (2004), the International Conference on Game Theory (2004), the European Meeting (2004), and the Econometric Society World Congress (2005). Financial support from SSHRC and NSERC of Canada, and the National Science Council of Taiwan are gratefully acknowledged.     

Managing the locals: employee relations in South Asian restaurants

This paper examines the management of employee relations in South Asian firms in the UK independent restaurant sector. Key working practices pertaining to the employment relationship are examined in a particular socio-economic and spatial context. Acknowledging such contexts facilitates an appreciation of how ethnicity and employment relations interact, rather than abstracting culture from the material context in which it operates. Consistent with this analytic focus, a mixed embeddedness perspective (Kloosterman et al. 1999) is adopted which recognizes the importance of both economic and social aspects of ethnic minority entrepreneurship. A qualitative methodology, drawing upon 23 case histories (involving both employer and employee perspectives) is deployed. The indications from this research suggest that the employment relationship is an outcome of the fluid interaction of social, economic and geographical contexts. This renders problematic both culturalist and purely economic approaches to ethnic minority entrepreneurship. Future research should carefully consider how the employment relationship is influenced by its embeddedness within specific communities.     

Management Research and the New Logics of Discovery and Engagement

This paper develops an argument that leads to a vision of management research as a form of design science. Such an approach to research requires an inversion of the relationship between rigour and relevance. Giving primacy to the pursuit of rigour, as tends to be the current norm, de-emphasizes the importance of relevance and leads to research that interests very few beyond the community of management scholars. We argue that we should re-imagine relevance as a necessary condition for rigour and that this will lead to new forms of engagement with theory and practice that have the potential to create a new science of management.     

CONCEPTUAL ISSUES IN COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF WELFARE-TO-WORK PROGRAMS

During the 1980s, a number of states operated welfare-to-work programs on a demonstration basis and subjected these demonstrations to formal cost/benefit evaluations. This paper examines the evaluators' methods and summarizes and interprets their findings. Cost/benefit analysis of welfare-to-work programs can provide a rough but useful assessment of a program's efficiency in reducing welfare caseloads. But the evaluation results are more difficult to interpret than they may appear to be. For example, the results typically imply that such programs produce small net gains to society when gains and losses are measured in terms of net income. However, a sensitivity analysis measuring net gains and losses to welfare recipients in terms of changes in net utility suggests that an important modification to the evaluators' methodology might well reverse this finding in many instances.     

E‐commerce: consumer protection issues and implications for research and education

The impact of e‐commerce on consumers, public policy, business and education is examined. It behoves academics and students alike to keep abreast of new developments in this field and to contribute to the public debate on the widespread effects of e‐commerce. A discussion of public policy initiatives, research questions and ideas for future research are given.     

Leadership for Sustainability: An Evolution of Leadership Ability

This article examines the existing confusion over the multiple leadership styles related to successful implementation of corporate social responsibility/sustainability in organisations. The researchers find that the problem is the complex nature of sustainability itself. We posit that organisations are complex adaptive systems operating within wider complex adaptive systems, making the problem of interpreting just in what way an organisation is to be sustainable, an extraordinary demand on leaders. Hence, leadership for sustainability requires leaders of extraordinary abilities. These are leaders who can read and predict through complexity, think through complex problems, engage groups in dynamic adaptive organisational change and have the emotional intelligence to adaptively engage with their own emotions associated with complex problem solving. Leaders and leadership is a key interpreter of how sustainability of the organisation ‘links’ to the wider systems in which the organisation sits, and executing that link well requires unusual leaders and leadership systems.     

Book review

Aliber, Robert Z., The Multinational Paradigm, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993, 282 pages.

Jerome, Robert W. (Ed.), World Trade at the Crossroads, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992, 290 pages.

Walters, Robert S. (Ed.), Talking Trade: U.S. Policy in International Perspective, Boulder: Westview Press, 1993, 159 pages.

Murray, Geoffrey, Doing Business in China, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994, 350 pages.

Schutte, Hellmut (Ed.), The Global Competitiveness of the Asian Firm, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994, 379 pages.     

New Producer Services Businesses: Are They Any Different From New Manufacturing Ventures?

Based upon the presumed importance of manufacturing firms in both wealth and job generation, the majority of research in the field of new ventures over the past 20 years has focused upon this sector. However, with the down-sizing of many large organisations and the growth of spin-outs and management buy-outs, many of which continue to serve their former owners, attention has shifted to a questioning of the role of ‘producer services'. This article adds to this debate by posing one broad research question: Are there any significant differences in the characteristics of new business founders and new business performance and growth between ‘manufacturing’ and ‘producer services' business? Overall, the paper concludes that there are many more similarities than there are differences. However, the final discriminant model also confirms many of the anticipated trends.