Environmental performance: Quality,measurement and improvement

Environmental management is becoming a key business management concern. Effective management requires appropriate and timely data on which decisions can be based. In addition, there is increasing pressure to provide reports on the environmental probity of companies. This requires objective, factual data. This paper considers this aspect from the perspective of the quality of environmental performance. Measurement techniques are outlined and their use in on-going performance appraisal and monitoring to show improvements is discussed. Potential pitfalls in taking reported environmental performance claims at their face value are also considered.     

Merger strategy: An examination of Drucker's five rules for successful acquisitions

This paper critically examines five rules for making successful acquisitions advocated by Peter Drucker. In an attempt to verify the rules, supporting and non-supporting empirical evidence, opinions and arguments are reviewed. The analysis suggests that the rules are not conclusively supported by current evidence or argument. Adopting these rules does not ensure successful acquisitions and may needlessly limit managers' opportunities for successful acquisitions.     

Urban size (dis)amenities revisited

An article by Kelley in this Journal has argued that most studies of urban-size amenities built around the analysis of wage differentials have ignored the interaction of supply and demand forces. The result, it was argued, has been serious simultaneous equation bias which suggested that larger cities had lower-valued non-pecuniary amenities. If the bias is eliminated, the opposite is shown to be correct: urban amenities increase in value with city size. This note argues that Kelley's conclusions are themselves based on serious theoretical and econometric errors: (i) He ignores the equilibrium conditions of the model. (ii) He treats variables as exogenous which are not. (iii) He ignores almost perfect collinearity between the variables he uses.     

UK GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE—IMPLICATIONS OF CHANGES IN AGRICULTURAL OUTPUT UNDER THE COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY

The change in government expenditure which accompanies change in agricultural land use and output is an important parameter in current policy decisions. This change is estimated in this paper using a simple accounting model which recognises the diversity of support schemes in operation and the interaction between them. Use of the model is illustrated by estimating the effects of changes in beef, sheepmeat and cereals output under alternative assumptions about market conditions, yield levels and land classes affected. The paper concludes by discussing other ways in which the model might be used.     

Reel Geopolitics: Cinemato-graphing Political Space

Recent research has focused on the efforts of national leaders to legitimize and strengthen national identity through the construction of uncomplicated, linear national histories. Paralleling, and in some respects advancing, these efforts are initiatives aimed at staking national claims to particular territories. These claims are the product of 'regimes of territorial legitimation' that reflect the norms of the modern state system. They are fundamentally influenced by two geographic circumstances: the political-territorial status of states at the time of entry into the modern state system and prevailing ideas about the cultural-historical character of state territory. A comparative framework focused on the intersection of these two circumstances provides insights into some basic features of national senses of territory as articulated by those in power within existing states.     

A Map Is Not a Territory—Making Research More Helpful for Sustainable Consumption Policy

The need to make consumption patterns more sustainable is widely acknowledged, yet effective policies for sustainable consumption are lacking. This article examines Nordic policy makers' views on why sustainable consumption research is difficult to apply in policy practice. We draw on the knowledge brokering literature to outline how the challenges of knowledge utilization in policy are connected to knowledge communication practices and to the types and scales of policy problems. Our empirical material is based on in-depth interviews with Nordic civil servants working with sustainable consumption issues. Our findings identify problems in sustainable consumption policy that are well documented in other fields, such as policy makers' lack of time and the inconclusiveness of research findings. However, we also identify more fundamental problems, which relate to administrative fragmentation and to the status of social science in policy making, as well as to the linear model of knowledge use in policy making in which administrators are forced to serve as knowledge brokers between researchers and policy makers. Our research suggests that better forms of knowledge dissemination are not sufficient to overcome these problems. New forms of knowledge co-production are needed, in which researchers, administrators, politicians, and other stakeholders work together to solve real-life problems and build up a shared knowledge community. We conclude by highlighting the implications for researchers aiming to promote change toward more sustainable consumption patterns.     

Social Provisioning as a Starting Point for Feminist Economics

The past decade has seen a proliferation of writing by feminist economists. Feminist economists are not identified with one particular economic paradigm, yet some common methodological points seem to be emerging. I propose making these starting points more explicit so that they can be examined, critiqued, and built upon. I use the term “social provisioning” to describe this emerging methodology. Its five main components are: incorporation of caring and unpaid labor as fundamental economic activities; use of well-being as a measure of economic success; analysis of economic, political, and social processes and power relations; inclusion of ethical goals and values as an intrinsic part of the analysis; and interrogation of differences by class, race-ethnicity, and other factors. The paper then provides brief illustrations of the use of this methodology in analyses of US welfare reform, gender and development, and feminist ecological economics.