Truth Half Told: Finding the Perfect Pitch for Advertising and Marketing in Socialist Yugoslavia, 1950-1991

Beginning in the 1950s, advertising and marketing specialistsin Yugoslavia campaigned aggressively to change public and officialperceptions of their work. By casting commercial promotion interms of categories already established as legitimate in theideology of Yugoslav socialism, the industry gradually naturalizedadvertising and marketing, transforming them from suspect capitalistpractices into apparent necessities of progressive, rationalproduction and distribution. Although the rhetoric used in thiscampaign consistently appealed to socialist values, in practiceYugoslav advertising and marketing were largely based on Westernmodels. Yugoslav commercial promotion was only superficially"socialist advertising"; practitioners' arguments tended toobscure the true qualities of the industry.     

Giving mergers a head start

Mergers with substantial business overlap face a barrier to speedy integration: Antitrust regulations limit the information companies can share before a deal closes. But as Dow Chemical and Union Carbide found, premerger planning by "clean teams" of former employees can help merging companies hit the ground running.     

Public sector health insurance trusts

Public sector associations have successfully developed and run employee health insurance pools for almost 30 years, providing members with savings and flexibility not available from commercial health insurance carriers. This article looks at the models, technical tools and governance philosophy that have contributed to their success in a very challenging business environment.     

Mercantilism and Imperialism in the Rise and Decline of the Dutch and British Economies 1585-1815

This essay locates the rise and relative decline of the economy of the Netherlands over the period l585-l8l5 in geopolitics. It has used the rise of Britain, l688-1815 as a point of reference and for bilateral comparison, in order to validate a hypothesis that the degree of avoidable decline had less to do with inefficiencies in the economic sphere, but flowed essentially from political failures to countervail blatant and violent challenges from the new nation's mercantilist rivals – particularly France but also Britain. I concluded that a similar pattern of political complacency, cultural inertia and liberal myopia marked the response of imperial Britain to the threat from Germany after its reunification in l870.     

Agribusiness and FAO: A critical view

The author seeks to redress the balance of views expressed about the role of industry in the UN system. He does this through a redefinition of the links in the Industry Cooperative Programme of FAO and its perceived role and a critique of the article by Kimberley Albright et al in the February 1977 issue of Food Policy.     

The Marketers’ Prismatic Palette: A Review of Color Research and Future Directions

Color carries meaning and can influence consumers’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Many disciplines, such as neuroscience, psychophysics, visual cognition, and biology have used new technologies to gain insights in understanding the complexities of color perception, yet there exists relatively little research in the field of marketing. This paper aims to reestablish the importance of color research in marketing, draw attention to the complex nature of this research, and to fuel further investigation and the development of new insights about color as it relates to marketing. The authors offer an integrated conceptual framework centered on the embodied and referential meanings of color and highlight the complexities and nuances that researchers must consider in order to develop this area. Insights from and gaps in the extant literature are highlighted to present a set of questions and propositions for future research in this area of investigation.     

Measuring the immeasurable — A survey of sustainability indices

Sustainability indices for countries provide a one-dimensional metric to valuate country-specific information on the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, environmental, and social conditions. At the policy level, they suggest an unambiguous yardstick against which a country's development can be measured and even a cross-country comparison can be performed. This article reviews the explanatory power of various sustainability indices applied in policy practice. We show that these indices fail to fulfill fundamental scientific requirements making them rather useless if not misleading with respect to policy advice.     

An investigation of path-goal leadership theory and its impact on intrachannel conflict and satisfaction

This path-analytic study examined the relationships among channel members’ perceptions of dimensions representing channel leader behavior, channel conflict and satisfaction. In doing so, the path-goal theory of leadership is tested in a franchise channel of distribution. The results indicate that both the consideration and the initiating structure dimensions of leader behavior significantly influence franchisees’ satisfaction with the franchise arrangement. As defined in the theory, these relationships were found to be mediated by the existing level of conflict being experienced by franchisees. Causal linkages are also found between intrachannel conflict and satisfaction. Specific recommendations are provided to franchisors and other channel leaders.     

Testing a DSGE Model of the EU Using Indirect Inference

We use the method of indirect inference, using the bootstrap, to test the Smets and Wouters model of the EU against a VAR auxiliary equation describing their data. We find that their model generates excessive variance compared with the data. But their model fits the dynamic facts quite well if the errors have the properties assumed by SW but scaled down. We compare a New Classical version of the model which also performs reasonably if error properties are chosen using New Classical priors (notably excluding shocks to preferences). Both versions have (different) difficulties fitting the data if the actual error properties are used. A model combining rigid and flexible-wage/price sectors, with a weight of around 5% on the rigid sector, does best in fitting the data.     

REINVENTING THE WHEEL? AFRICAN COOPERATIVES IN A LIBERALIZED ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT

ABSTRACT ** :  Cooperative development in Africa can be said to have traversed two main eras: the era of state control and that of liberalization. The first era lasted up to the early 1990s and saw the origin and substantial growth of cooperatives on the continent. During that period, different models of cooperative development were introduced on the continent. We distinguish a unified cooperative model, a social economy model, a social movement model, a producers' model and an indigenous model. But in all cases, cooperatives were engulfed into state politics. However, little is known about the impact of liberalization measures on these models. Our research in 11 African countries reveals that cooperatives in Africa have survived the market forces and continued to grow in number and membership. We see a slow but sure erosion of the unified model and the adoption of a social economy model. Cooperatives in Africa are re-examining their organizational forms and diversifying their activities in response to members' interests and needs.