South Asia's Export Structure in a Comparative Perspective

World-wide cross-country regressions are used to examine South Asia's export structure through the lens of Heckscher‐Ohlin trade theory. By comparison with other regions, South Asia's exports are unusually concentrated on labour-intensive manufactures. This distinctive export structure is shown to be the result mainly of South Asia's distinctive combination of resources: by comparison with other regions, it has a low level of education and few natural resources, relative to its supply of labour. This basic economic fact must be recognized in the design of trade and development strategy for South Asia over the next few decades.     

Valuing medieval annuities: Were corrodies underpriced?

Medieval bishops condemned and restricted the sale of corrodies (a type of annuity), partly on the grounds of their perceived unprofitability. The available data on the profitability of corrodies is limited and little analysed, and the episcopal condemnation of corrodies has been adopted by modern researchers. After recognising the difficulties, this paper applies an annuity pricing model to study corrody pricing. Given various assumptions, contrary to the established view, it is argued that the sale of corrodies was financially profitable for institutions. Finally, some reasons are considered for the negative attitude of contemporary and historical opinion towards the sale of corrodies.     

LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS WITHIN A GLOBAL CONTEXT: AN OVERVIEW

This paper reviews 726 academic research studies covering logistics and supply chain management (L'SCM) applications within a global context. Articles are analyzed according to their publication year and outlet, common themes, and countries or regions investigated. The sample was drawn from the ABI/INFORM Global database, which includes almost 1,800 journal titles. The review offers a starting point for researchers, graduate students, faculty members or practitioners examining international L'SCM applications. The article also draws attention to the wide array of global L'SCM studies conducted, their settings and viewpoints. Additionally, this paper highlights some of the most interesting works and draws attention to lesser‐researched countries and regions of the world. The overview also provides an introduction for practitioners and managers to what academic research has covered in the area of global L'SCM. Practitioners can use this review as a starting point for the identification of relevant and useful references for their particular task.     

Does one model fit all? Exploring factors influencing the use of blogs,social networks,and wikis in the enterprise

Enterprise social media (ESM) have become increasingly widespread, but many intranet communities barely survive, miss their initially planned targets, or are even terminated. Research on technology acceptance can be a useful approach to improve adoption rates, but more empirical research needs to be conducted to examine factors driving the adoption of enterprise social media. To address this gap, we develop a model of individual ESM adoption, including technological and individual factors based on findings from collaboration and knowledge-sharing research. Because different ESM tools, such as blogs, social networks, and wikis, can be employed for fundamentally different uses, we explain differences between individual adoptions of the three technologies by identifying their uses and gratifications from the perspective of employees. The model is tested in three parallel studies, one for blogs, social networks, and wikis each, among employees of an international technology company in the pre-implementation phase. We find substantial differences between the factors influencing the intention to adopt the three applications. This provides the basis to employ the applications in a more effective way by considering organizational and employee needs.     

Challenges for land system science

While considerable progress has been made in understanding land use change, land system science continues to face a number of grand challenges. This paper discusses these challenges with a focus on empirical land system studies, land system modelling and the analysis of future visions of land system change. Contemporary landscapes are contingent outcomes of past and present patterns, processes and decisions. Thus, empirical analysis of past and present land-use change has an important role in providing insights into the socio-economic and ecological processes that shape land use transitions. This is especially important with respect to gradual versus rapid land system dynamics and in understanding changes in land use intensity. Combining the strengths of empirical analysis with multi-scale modelling will lead to new insights into the processes driving land system change. New modelling methods that combine complex systems thinking at a local level with macro-level economic analysis of the land system would reconcile the multi-scale dynamics currently encapsulated in bottom-up and top-down modelling approaches. Developments in land use futures analysis could focus on integrating explorative scenarios that reflect possible outcomes with normative visions that identify desired outcomes. Such an approach would benefit from the broad and in-depth involvement of stakeholders in order to link scientific findings to political and societal decision-making culminating in a set of key choices and consequences. Land system models have an important role in supporting future land use policy, but model outputs require scientific interpretation rather than being presented as predictions. The future of land system science is strongly dependent on the research community's capacity to bring together the elements of research discussed in the paper, via empirical data collection and analysis of observed processes, computer simulation across scale levels and futures analysis of alternative, normative visions through stakeholder engagement.     

Postmodernity,globalisation and nationalist conflict in the former Yugoslavia

During the 1990s, several of the conflicts that have demanded most media attention have been associated with the disintegration of the Yugoslav Federation. A number of attempts have been made to outline the main causes of these, but these causal factors remain difficult to describe definitively, largely owing to the complexity of the post‐Yugoslav political landscape. This paper studies the validity of employing a postmodern paradigm for investigating the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, as well as other current conflicts, arguing that the present cultural and philosophical context has to be addressed. After an outline of some of the key aspects of postmodernity, the focus centres on the importance of the media and the postmodern perspective on the issue of the nation state. Key theories related to postmodern conflict, with relation to economic and cultural factors, are outlined. These are evaluated as regards their applicability to the Yugoslav conflicts and ‐ by extension ‐ to all future wars in the postmodern era.     

The Influence of Managerial Relations on Waves of Employee Involvement

One of the most enduring issues in the debate about employee involvement (EI) and workers' participation is how it survives over time, and to what extent the dynamics of EI is linked with labour-management relations. In this article, which draws upon data collected in a two-year study of 25 organizations, it is suggested that managerial relations is a significant factor in explaining waves of EI, and one that is frequently overlooked. Waves of EI can be assessed in terms of the twin concepts of centrality and prominence, terms that are amplified below. The introduction of EI techniques is motivated by a number of forces, but one of the most important is a desire by managers to be noticed, to engage in ‘impression management’, via the creation of new schemes. Despite having high-profile introductions, these schemes soon tend to fade in importance, to a large extent because of problems within management such as internal political rivalries, low supervisory commitment to schemes, inadequate training provision or the downgrading of EI by management arising from conflicting priorities.     

Problems of Bank Lending in Bulgaria: Information Asymmetry and Institutional Learning

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies -