Buildings for the Japanese information economy : Neighbourhood and resort offices

A new physical infrastructure to support activities based on communications and the transmission of information is being developed. Part of this infrastructure includes the construction of ‘intelligent’ buildings which are seen to play as important a role in improving efficiency of office workers as automation has played on the shopfloor of manufacturing industry. The location of these buildings is important. This article focuses on two types of experimental office development—neighbourhood offices and resort offices.     

Corporate Social Performance, Stakeholder Orientation, and Organizational Moral Development

This article begins with an explanation of how moral development for organizations has parallels to Kohlberg's categorization of the levels of individual moral development. Then the levels of organizational moral development are integrated into the literature on corporate social performance by relating them to different stakeholder orientations. Finally, the authors propose a model of organizational moral development that emphasizes the role of top management in creating organizational processes that shape the organizational and institutional components of corporate social performance. This article represents one approach to linking the distinct streams of business ethics and business-and-society research into a more complete understanding of how managers and firms address complex ethical and social issues.     

Service Competitiveness – An Anglo-US Study

This article reports on the latest in a series of international comparisons of management practices and performance outcomes of industries in various countries. Here, it is the service industries in the UK and the US which come under the microscope. Among the companies surveyed, there were more world-class performers in the US than the UK, but also more low performers. The concluding part of the article is diagnostic – the authors also suggest measures which could improve performance.     

The divide-and-conquer and employer/ employee models of discrimination: Neoclassical competition as a familial defect

This article is an examination of the similarities between Michael Reich’s divide-and-conquer model of discrimination and the Becker-Arrow taste model of discrimination. It shows that Reich’s model of discrimination is analytically identical to Arrow’s employer discrimination model when employer utility is a function of total profits and the racial employment ratio. It also shows that the Becker-Arrow distinction between employer and employee discrimination is invalid. Finally, the author argues that neoclassical competition is the major defect of both models. After discussing the implications of these results the article points to new directions in the literature on the economics of discrimination.     

A note on incentive incompatibility under franchising

This note provides a formal demonstration of the incentive incompatibility problem that exists in franchisor — franchisee relationships. It is shown that incentive incompatibility exists with respect to both price and quality. Several contractual mechanisms designed to mitigate the incompatibility problem are examined.