The Puzzle of Manufacturing Sector Investment

Investment in the manufacturing sector has lagged behind the rise in profits, cash flow, overall manufacturing activity and other drivers of investment since 2002. After reviewing several benchmarks that illustrate the lag in investment, various explanations as to why investment lagged are discussed. These explanations include: a lack of “animal spirits”; a capacity overhang from the late 1990s; rising structural costs; increased investment of U.S. firms overseas; the desire on the part of companies to improve their balance sheets and liquidity; and, significantly, increased spending on intangible investments (research and development, advertising, process improvements like “lean” manufacturing, employee training, and those information technology expenditures that are expensed). It is too soon to tell if the lag in capital expenditures will persist. But even if there has been a secular change in the pattern of investment spending, whether it will have negative impact on the economy in terms of productivity growth (and ultimately economic growth) or whether it implies a diminished role for manufacturing in the U.S. economy depends on the reasons for the change. If lagging investment is a result of, say, structural costs, it would have a negative impact. If, however, reduced capital expenditures reflect a shift toward intangible investment, then productivity growth need not be diminished and in fact could be raised.     

A two-stage test for one-way analysis of variance

A two-stage analogue of the Ftest for one-way analysis of variance is proposed. Critical values are given for selected cases and the method of obtaining critical values is described. Comparisons of the one-stage and two-stage tests are made in terms of the expected sample size required to achieve a given power.     

The evolution of futures in school education

School education seems to be mostly stuck in an outdated industrial era worldview, unable to sufficiently address the significance and increasing rapidity of changes to humanity that are upon us. An integrated forward-looking view should, now more than ever, be of central importance in how we educate. Yet there is little sign that—unlike corporations—school systems are recognising the true value of futures studies. A brief history of futures in school education shows the significant role played by the World Futures Studies Federation in its evolution to date. The article also introduces integral analysis as a way of opening up new possibilities to help school education develop due foresight and to more fully realise its potential as a prime facilitator in individual and cultural evolution.     

Effects of taxation for option writers: an Australian perspective

Writing an option is a taxable event for Australian investors. This method of taxation penalizes investors who hold open short option positions over the tax year end by accelerating their tax liability relative to the timing of the economic gain from writing options. This paper examines the levels of open interest in the Australian Stock Exchange over the change in financial year to determine whether investors time their transactions to avoid this tax acceleration. The results show that level of open interest is lower in the last month of the financial year after controlling for non‐tax determinants of option demand.     

trends in Internet-based business-to-business marketing

The Internet is changing the transactional paradigms under which businesses-to-business marketers operate. Business-to-business marketers that take advantage of the operational efficiencies and effectiveness that emerge from utilizing the Internet in transactions are outperforming firms that utilize traditional transactional processes. As an example, Dell computers, by utilizing business-to-business processes that take advantage of the Internet, has gained the largest market share in the PC business when compared to traditional manufacturers such as Compaq. This paper first examines the genesis of the Internet movement in business-to-business markets. The long-term impact of the increase of business-to-business utilization of the Internet on the marketing theory and marketing process is then discussed. Finally, managerial implications and directions for future research are highlighted.     

The influence of the JDR 3rd Fund on “business and society”: Incorporating corporate social responsibility in the business curriculum

The ideal of corporate social responsibility as a management orientation and as a field of study in business schools was given support by John D. Rockefeller 3rd (JDR 3). He attempted to promote this concept in the Committee on Economic Development and in certain business schools. This attempt was not very effective in academe, due partly to a lack of understanding about how universities function. As a result, an adequate academic infrastructure was slow to develop.Karen Paul is Professor of Business Environment at Florida International University and was a Research Associate in the Program on Non-Profit Organizations, Yale University when this study was accomplished. She has published widely in the field of business and society and business ethics.Peter Dobkin Hall is Research Scientist in the Program on Non-Profit Organizations, Yale University. Hall's published work includesThe Organization of American Culture, 1700–1900, Inventing the Nonprofit Sector and other Essays on Philanthropy, Voluntarism, and Nonprofit Organizations, and (with George Marcus)Lives in Trust: The Fortunes of Dynastic Families in Late Twentieth Century America.     

Compressing new product success-to-success cycle time: Deep customer value understanding and idea generation

Despite nearly 30 years of research focused on improving new product development (NPD) processes, recent research reveals that these improvements have failed to materialize as expected. Additionally, in today's continuous-change business environment, managers are focused on reducing cycle time in nearly all operations, including NPD, in order to realize acceptable returns on investments more quickly. Thus, we must not only be better but also faster at NPD, specifically at compressing the cycle time between new product successes, i.e., accelerating success-to-success velocity and not just accelerating each NPD project. But, how can businesses both improve the probability of new product successes and also speed up the process of doing so? This paper proposes that formalizing front-end processes will certainly help. Specifically, a process is presented which draws on customer value research that ought to help clarify the traditional “fuzzy front end” of NPD processes, resulting in consistently more successful new products.     

Using trade fairs in key account management

Trade fairs play an important role in marketing. In many cases, exhibitors view trade fairs as an opportunity for transactional selling, and thus may overlook opportunities that exist for initiating and building relationships with key accounts. This paper maps exhibitors' and visitors' exhibition objectives against key account management (KAM) activities, and in particular examines the role trade fairs can have in solving specific problems that arise at different stages in the development of the relationship between firms in a dyadic KAM scenario. Drawing on research conducted in the UK, US and Greece, the author concludes that trade fairs should occupy a pivotal position in KAM, but the evidence is that exhibitors are not taking full advantage of this opportunity.