The expert system: constructing expertise in an IT/management consultancy

Despite widespread uncertainty, if not scepticism, about the precise nature of the expertise that consultants bring to bear in their client engagements, organisations continue to employ consultants in large numbers, especially in information technology-related projects. Drawing on a participant observation study of IT/management consultancy practice, this paper seeks to explore the different ways in which consultants are seen as experts in the light of the pressures of the consultancy market place. The ongoing construction of consultancy expertise through the interaction of consultants and their clients with an array of elements, including technical knowledge, skilled practice, individual and collective experience, and commercial interests is discussed. It is suggested that, rather than being a relatively-enduring property of individuals, based on their mastery of a body abstract knowledge or their skills at managing the perceptions of their clients, the precarious and multi-faceted character of their expertise means that consultants are continuously engaged in its active construction through their situated practice.     

Supply chain finance schemes in the procurement of agricultural products

Product, information, and finance flows are all interrelated within the modern supply chain; thus, it is now more than ever of paramount importance for practitioners to integrate procurement and financial decisions. This challenge is exemplified in many agricultural supply chains, where operational risks are significant and access to capital differs sharply across firms. We study three management tactics that some large food/beverage manufacturers – situated downstream in these chains – have used to meet the challenge: ordinary fixed price contracts (or soft tolling) with direct suppliers, hard tolling and contract farming where the manufacturer intervenes upstream, providing capital, and coordinating procurement decisions. We place these upstream intervention schemes in the theoretical context of supply chain finance (SCF) and model their application to a three-echelon agricultural supply chain. We perform a numerical study in order to understand how the structure of capital constraints in the chain may influence the manufacturer's choice of SCF scheme. The numerical study is based on a business case that reflects the barley–malt supply chain of Heineken N.V. Despite greater coordination opportunities, we show that upstream intervention is not necessarily preferable for the manufacturer. Nevertheless, the preferred SCF scheme can be inferred on the basis of relatively simple characterization of the capital constraints in the supply chain.     

La transición de Tailandia en las esferas laboral y sanitaria

La economía de Tailandia ha cambiado rápidamente de la agricultura a la industria manufacturera y el sector de los servicios, pero el ordenamiento del mercado laboral y la representación de los trabajadores son mucho menos consistentes que en los países desarrollados, donde hubo una transición más lenta y gradual hace ya décadas. Los autores estudian el robustecimiento de las políticas y la legislación tailandesas en el ámbito de la seguridad y la salud en el trabajo, que obedece a las normas internacionales y a la nueva Constitución democrática. Por último, identifican los principales retos pendientes, entre ellos el cumplimiento de la ley y una medición mejor de los efectos del trabajo en la salud física y mental.     

Counterproductive work behavior as protest

We suggest that counterproductive work behaviors can be viewed as a form of protest in which organizational members express dissatisfaction with or attempt to resolve injustice within the organization. Incorporating the three key predictors (injustice, identity and instrumentality, [Klandermans, B., (1997). The social psychology of protest. Oxford: Blackwell.]) from the protest literature leads us to propose that counterproductive behaviors can be both individual and collective. Crossing this dimension with concepts of organizational and individual deviance leads to a fourfold classification of counterproductive work behaviors.     

Toward a Theory of Reinstatement: Seven Motivations for Reinstatement as Relationship Repair

There is a long, interdisciplinary tradition of examining why organizations remove privileges from members as a part of disciplinary action. In contrast, little is known about why organizations return privileges after disciplinary action has occurred. Nonetheless, such reinstatement is ubiquitous in organizations. This paper provides a starting point for a theory of reinstatement by using the emerging theoretical domain of relationship repair. Treating reinstatement as relationship repair highlights the importance of causal attribution, social equilibrium, relationship structure, and power as means of relationship repair. The paper uses these four bases of relationship repair to develop a series of specific motivations for why managers might reinstate privileges.     

The Strategic Significance of Negative Externalities

Negative externalities have competitive relevance in a market when they have selective impacts – as, for example, when a product in use imposes greater costs on consumers of rival products than on other people. Because managers have discretion over aspects of product design that affect external costs, the externality in such cases may be viewed as a strategic variable. This paper presents evidence of the existence of competitively relevant negative externalities. I introduce a metric for the externality's competitive effect, the external cost elasticity of demand, which I estimate econometrically using data from the motor vehicle industry. Managerial implications are considered. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Can neoclassical economics become social economics?

This essay has both a general and a specific purpose. Its general purpose is to pose the question: Can neoclassical economics be social economics? Its answer to this general question is: Yes, but only if it abandons its methodological soul; that is, by abandoning methodological individualism, positivism, and ahistoricism, and expressly and systematically adopting a methodological perspective which is holistic, normative, and historical. Its specific purpose is to identify and examine the major elements in the economics of one leading figure in the historical development of neoclassical economics who self-consciously attempted to combine, to paraphrase Schumpeter, a neoclassical head with a social economics heart: Alfred Marshall.     

Air Pollution and ‘Dirty’ Industries: How and Why Does the Composition of Manufacturing Output Change with Economic Development?

This paper examines the impact on air pollution ofchanges in the composition of manufacturing output indeveloped and developing countries. Pollutionemissions from manufacturing output are estimated ina manner which holds constant the effect of technologyand regulations allowing the impact of compositional changes alone on pollution to beestimated. The paper has three main findings; (1) theinverted-U estimated between per capita income and thepollution intensity of GDP arises due to both thecomposition of manufacturing becoming cleaner and theshare of manufacturing output in GDP falling.Compositional changes alone are not responsible forthe inverted-U between per capita income and percapita emissions; (2) changes to the composition ofmanufacturing output are consistent with the pollutionhaven hypothesis, however there is clear evidence thatrising per capita incomes are associated with afalling income elasticity of demand for `dirty'products. This fact may explain the compositionalchanges that occur with development; (3) in additionto the income elasticity effect, the analysis suggeststhat land prices and to a lesser extent the prices oflabour and capital, determine the proportion of dirtyindustry within a country's manufacturing sector.     

State competition in higher education: A race to the top,or a race to the bottom?

How does competition affect higher education? This paper explores this question for public and private universities. Theory indicates that competition can push higher education policy in one of two different directions. On the one hand, competition may increase spending. For states, this would occur if states treat higher education as developmental; for private universities this would occur if they view spending as a means to attract students and prestige. On the other hand, competition may decrease spending if states treat higher education spending as redistributive, and competition may decrease spending by private schools if lower spending enhances their ability to attract students with low tuition. To determine which of these perspectives is most valid, we examine higher education policy choices in the 1980s and 1990s. We find that states appear to act as if higher education funding is redistributive while private schools appear to compete more on the basis of tuition than spending. These results demonstrate the important effects competition and governance structure have on higher education.Received: August 2001, Accepted: May 2002, JEL Classification: I2, I22, H72, I3