Estimating and comparing learning curves in three Asian economies

This paper consists of two parts. In the first, a method is suggested to isolate the effects of scale economies on learning phenomena by integrating the conventionally specified learning curve with the production function in neoclassical economics. The problem of establishing the variable for measuring experience is dealt with in the estimation procedure. Using this method we estimated the learning curves of 20 industries in the manufacturing sector in Singapore using data taken from 1961 to 1991. More modern industries like electronics, precision instruments and pharmaceutics have steeper learning curves than older industries. Among traditional industries, the food and beverage industry has a greater learning potential than others. In the second part of the paper, the learning curves for 11 common industries in South Korea, Japan and Singapore were estimated and compared. The Japanese industries are found to have steeper learning curves compared to those in Singapore and South Korea.The authors are from the Department of Business Policy, Faculty of Business Administration, National University of Singapore. The authors would like to thank Ms Tan Mui Lee for her assistance in preparing the time series data used for this study.     

Victimisation and agency: the social construction of union women’s leadership

This article interrogates the notion that women union leaders lead differently. Despite significant variation in the union movements in Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK and the USA, similar discourses on women’s union leadership emerge in all five countries. Based on a materialist social construction approach which supports a recognition of difference without reference to essentialist ideas about women’s nature, this article seeks to identify what may be common across these countries to explain this phenomenon. The article argues that the fact that women face discrimination in unions, on the one hand, and organise as a constituency and have access to women‐only education, on the other, supports the development of transformational leadership among women unionists, even across diverse contexts and cultures. Unpacking union women’s leadership practices in this way reveals a dialectic of victimisation and agency.     

Exploitation or Choice? Exploring the Relative Attractiveness of Employment in the Maquiladoras

This study investigates the relative attractiveness of production level jobs provided by multinational firms in Mexico's maquiladora industry. We take the position that workers themselves are an important and often overlooked source of information relevant to the controversy focusing on the responsibilities of multinational companies to their employees in the developing world. We conducted interviews with 59 maquila production level workers in the Mexican cities of Cd. Juárez and Chihuahua. Using a relative attractiveness framework that compared maquila jobs to other employment available in the local economy, maquila line and technical workers responded to questions addressing why they were working at a maquila, their work history, the attractiveness of maquila jobs compared to both their prior jobs and the jobs held by friends and family, and whether they planned to continue working in the maquilas. While the responses from maquila workers are diverse, they suggest that maquila jobs provide attractive employment for the economically disadvantaged in Northern Mexico.     

A comparative perspective on gender and accountancy

Different theoretical approaches have been used to examine the process of assimi-lation of women into professional occupations. A Franco-British comparative study of women's incorporation into accountancy is used to test the explanatory value of different bodies of theory. The research suggests that the integration of women into the profession may have progressed further in France than in Britain, and that the process is influenced by societal characteristics. Differences in the relationship between training, the role of professional associations, organiza-tional structure and the public policy environment are shown to affect women's choices and career opportunities.     

NPM merger mania Lessons from an early case

A central doctrine of NPM requires the adoption of commercial management techniques to address the espoused goals of saving money and improving collaboration and service co-ordination. This article examines the evidence base for NPM mergers and uses study data to explain how two ingrained features of professional work helped to produce unintended outcomes at an early UK case involving a specialist mental health provider and an acute trust. The emergence of a de facto mental health trust within the merged entity arose from senior professionals' capacity to ‘buffer’ the work of colleagues from the rationalizing spectre of the merger. The persistence of ‘loosely coupled’ practices and structures restricted improvements in collaboration and service co-ordination. It is argued that these two enduring characteristics of professional organization will shape the outcomes of future NPM mergers in mental health care e.g. the creation of social care trusts and mental health ‘super-trusts’) and in other fields such as higher education.     

Parental Compensatory Behaviors and Early Child Health Outcomes in Cebu, Philippines()

A dynamic optimization model of parents choosing investments in their children's health motivates an empirical model of parents' choices of health inputs for their children and the impacts of these decisions on their children's subsequent health. Estimates of the child health input demand functions and the child health production functions from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey accord with the prediction that optimizing behavior results in higher levels of aggregate child health. Observable parental behaviors respond to the physical developmental status of their children. These parental responses appear to yield large and statistically significant improvements in children's early physiological outcomes. However, because some health inputs choices are not observable, it is impossible to ascertain whether these measured effects are due solely to variations in the observed input choices.     

China's productivity challenge

After capturing the world's attention with the 2008 Olympics, what's next for China? Linda Yueh says the answer can be found by tracking China's labour productivity.