Centres and Peripheries: Research Styles and Publication Patterns in ‘Top’ US Journals and their European Alternatives, 1960–2010

In view of recent literature, suggesting a growing international ascendancy of US‐style scholarship but also a decreasing US dominance in journal publications, I ask two questions with regard to management and organization studies: (1) whether there has been an increasing convergence towards US‐style research; and (2) whether the purported decline in the relative amount of US publications has been uniform across leading journals based in the USA and Europe. In addressing these questions, I take a historical perspective and draw upon the centre–periphery model of international scholarship, arguing that convergence or fragmentation in styles of research and variations in publication patterns have evolved through the interplay between processes of influence by the centre (i.e., the USA) and imitative or competitive responses by the periphery. Empirically, the study spans the period 1960–2010 and is confined to ‘top’ US‐based journals and their main European alternatives. The findings answer the first question with a ‘no, other than a greater tendency towards the US‐style when educational or collaborative ties to the USA are involved and by the recently emerging parts of the periphery’. The second question again is answered with a ‘no, the decline has been much less in “top” US journals relative to the ones based in Europe’.     

Financial Liberalization as a Process of Flawed Institutional Change

I argue that the financial liberalization of the last decades, which resulted in a worldwide crisis, relied on an institutional change that ill-shaped actors’ behavior so as to let them enter into unsustainable speculative activities at the expense of macro-stability. To support such an assertion, I draw upon a specific Veblen-Minsky approach to a credit-money economy and its endogenous fragilities. I also maintain that, when financial markets are liberalized and private-interestsrelated self-regulation replaces public macro-prudential supervision, the financial system undergoes institutional deadlock and the ensuing confusion is transformed into a market gridlock. Markets then become unable to recover without public rescue operations of banks. The subsequent negative economic and social consequences are beyond the limits of any acceptable liberal ideology and scientific understanding. Therefore, systemic stability calls for a tighter macro-regulatory framework to remove the domination of speculative finance over economic decisions and activities.     

Neo‐Liberal Transformation of Turkish Agriculture

This paper analyses the relationship between the internationalization of agriculture under the hegemony of transnational corporations and the transformation of Turkish agriculture by specifically looking at the implementation of neo‐liberal policies in rural areas. It contends that neo‐liberalism in Turkish agriculture since the 1980s represents the abandonment of the nationalist project that underlined state policies in industry and agriculture between 1930 and the late 1970s. Neo‐liberal policies implemented since 1980 have consolidated the stronghold of transnational agribusiness companies in Turkish agriculture. In cooperation with the World Bank, the EU and the WTO, the Turkish state has been preparing the necessary conditions for transnational agribusiness firms to control Turkish agriculture. Since 1999, the Turkish state has introduced fundamental institutional changes to ensure the smooth internationalization of Turkish agriculture, which has inevitably led to the impoverishment of the rural masses and to the abandonment of agriculture by small‐ and medium‐sized households.     

Power and control in distribution channels: The case of automobile distribution in turkey

Research into the behaviour, management and control of distribution channels has traditionally relied on behavioural frameworks of analysis. Agency theory offers a different but complementary perspective and by integrating behavioural concepts within the framework of agency theory, analytic approaches can be developed which explicitly acknowledge the importance of power within hierarchical relationships. The case of distribution channels for cars in Turkey is used to provide an illustration of the issues relating to power and control within a vertically quasi‐integrated distribution system.     

Optimal combinatorial mechanism design

We consider an optimal mechanism design problem with several heterogenous objects and interdependent values. We characterize ex post incentives using an appropriate monotonicity condition and reformulate the problem in such a way that the choice of an allocation rule can be separated from the choice of the payment rule. Central to the analysis is the formulation of a regularity condition, which gives a recipe for the optimal mechanism. If the problem is regular, then an optimal mechanism can be obtained by solving a combinatorial allocation problem in which objects are allocated in a way to maximize the sum of virtual valuations. We identify conditions that imply regularity using the techniques of supermodular optimization.     

A new perspective on the competitiveness of nations

The capability of firms to survive and to have a competitive advantage in global markets depends on, amongst other things, the efficiency of public institutions, the excellence of educational, health and communications infrastructures, as well as on the political and economic stability of their home country. The measurement of competitiveness and strategy development is thus an important issue for policy-makers. Despite many attempts to provide objectivity in the development of measures of national competitiveness, there are inherently subjective judgments that involve, for example, how data sets are aggregated and importance weights are applied. Generally, either equal weighting is assumed in calculating a final index, or subjective weights are specified. The same problem also occurs in the subjective assignment of countries to different clusters. Developed as such, the value of these type indices may be questioned by users. The aim of this paper is to explore methodological transparency as a viable solution to problems created by existing aggregated indices. For this purpose, a methodology composed of three steps is proposed. To start, a hierarchical clustering analysis is used to assign countries to appropriate clusters. In current methods, country clustering is generally based on GDP. However, we suggest that GDP alone is insufficient for purposes of country clustering. In the proposed methodology, 178 criteria are used for this purpose. Next, relationships between the criteria and classification of the countries are determined using artificial neural networks (ANNs). ANN provides an objective method for determining the attribute/criteria weights, which are, for the most part, subjectively specified in existing methods. Finally, in our third step, the countries of interest are ranked based on weights generated in the previous step. Beyond the ranking of countries, the proposed methodology can also be used to identify those attributes that a given country should focus on in order to improve its position relative to other countries, i.e., to transition from its current cluster to the next higher one.     

Travel and Leisure Services Preferences and Patronage Motives of Older Consumers

The population is aging and the number of people over 55 (older consumers) is increasing. Firms which recognize the importance of the older consumer segment can use this demographic change to their advantage. However, the older consumer market is more heterogeneous than the younger consumer market when it comes to preferences, motives, and spending patterns. Travel and leisure services are no exception. This study reports the result of a large‐scale study that examined the responses to travel and leisure services and patronage motives of different age and lifestyle groups. The results suggest several marketing strategies that would be most appropriate for reaching older consumers of travel and leisure services.     

Anticipating intended users: prospective sensemaking in technology development

How do developers and designers of a new technology make sense of intended users? The critical groundwork for user-centred technology development begins not by involving actual users’ exposure to the technological artefact but much earlier, with designers’ and developers’ vision of future users. Thus, anticipating intended users is critical to technology uptake. We conceptualise the anticipation of intended users as a form of prospective sensemaking in technology development. Employing a narrative analytical approach and drawing on four key communities in the development of Grid computing, we reconstruct how each community anticipated the intended Grid user. Based on our findings, we conceptualise user anticipation in terms of two key dimensions, namely the intended possibility to inscribe user needs into the technological artefact as well as the intended scope of the application domain. In turn, these dimensions allow us to develop an initial typology of intended user concepts that in turn might provide a key building bloc towards a generic typology of intended users.     

Sea turtle interactions with Hawaii's longline fishery: an extended multi-objective programming model incorporating spatial and seasonal dimensions

The numerous discussions regarding the advantages and disadvantages of Turkey's becoming a member of the Customs Union has been inconclusive. The empirical analysis that mostly focus on the changes in the volume of trade without much regard to the conjectural changes have also been insufficient. This study attempts to shed light on this issue in a formal analysis of Turkey's international trade by empirically accounting for the changes before and after the Customs Union Agreement (CUA). In doing so, we explicitly account for the concurrent changes in the macroeconomic environment that may have affected Turkey's trade with the rest of the world. Our empirical findings indicate that CUA has not only positively impacted on Turkey's trade, but also led to changes in the behaviour of both exports and imports with regards to their responsiveness to underlying variables.     

Earnings Manipulation and the Cost of Capital

The widespread use of accounting information by investors and financial analysts to help value stocks creates an incentive for managers to manipulate earnings in an attempt to influence short‐term stock price performance. This paper examines the role of earnings management in affecting a firm's cost of capital. Using an agency model with multiple firms whose cash flows are correlated, we demonstrate that the extent of earnings manipulation varies across the business cycle. Depending on a firm's earnings profile, it can have stronger incentives to overstate its performance in good times or in bad times. Because of this dependence on the state of the economy, earnings manipulation can influence a firm's cost of capital despite the forces of diversification.