Mapping the consumer‐subject in advertising

Traditionally marketing communication‐or more specifically advertising‐has been framed in terms of products/ services, needs and wants of consumers as if these were real givens, existing independently of the forms and acts of marketing communication itself. From this perspective, advertising is merely seen as a purveyor of information about products/services/needs between producers and consumers but hardly as actively implicated in shaping, not only the relation between the processes of production and those of consumption, but also the conception of the consumer‐subject. This paper makes a brief diachronic account of advertising with a view to highlighting how the consumer‐subject is represented. Whereas early advertising conceives of the consumer‐subject as a “rational” decision‐maker, aware of its needs and desire, more recent advertising constitutes the consumer‐subject in a hyperreal, dream‐like world, which seduces and spellbinds it.     

An exploratory study of organizational flexibility in Malaysia: a research note

This note reports on an exploratory study examining the relationships between rules on employee behaviour and on management discretion and other aspects of organizations in Malaysia. Using the data from thirty-five Malaysian organizations, the authors highlight the differences between the implications of the rules for the two groups and their relationships with company performance.     

Is quality management a prime requisite for globalization? Some facts from the sports industry

Countries have progressed during the decades through internationalization of their products. Pakistan is also trying hard to internationalize its products and has succeeded as far as the textile and sport ware industries are concerned. Pakistani Sports industry, though always relying on high quality products, lacked a formal quality management program till 1990’s. It was during this decade that most sports industries adopted a formal quality management program in the shape of ISO-9000. This paper encompasses different aspects of quality management and establishes its role in internationalization. Research findings presented in this paper are carried out in two phases. In phase-I, the detailed analysis of 6 sports industries is done, whereas in phase-II, a survey of one hundred industries was conducted and the role of quality management was established based on obtained results. It was found that 85% companies adopted ISO-9000 as a formal quality management program. The quality impact on internationalization was probed and it was found that the following quality management programs increased the sale, exports, profitability and the well being of the owner and the workers.     

The Growing Relationship Between China and Sub-Saharan Africa: Macroeconomic, Trade, Investment, and Aid Links

China's economic ascendance over the past two decades has generatedripple effects in the world economy. Its search for naturalresources to satisfy the demands of industrialization has ledit to Sub-Saharan Africa. Trade between China and Africa in2006 totaled more than $50 billion, with Chinese companies importingoil from Angola and Sudan, timber from Central Africa, and copperfrom Zambia. Demand from China has contributed to an upwardswing in prices, particularly for oil and metals from Africa,and has given a boost to real GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa. Chineseaid and investment in infrastructure are bringing desperatelyneeded capital to the continent. At the same time, however,strong Chinese demand for oil is contributing to an increasein the import bill for many oil-importing Sub-Saharan Africancountries, and its exports of low-cost textiles, while benefitingAfrican consumers, is threatening to displace local production.China poses a challenge to good governance and macroeconomicmanagement in Africa because of the potential Dutch diseaseimplications of commodity booms. China presents both an opportunityfor Africa to reduce its marginalization from the global economyand a challenge for it to effectively harness the influx ofresources to promote poverty-reducing economic development athome. JEL codes: F01, F35, F41, N55, N57, Q33, Q43     

The monetarist versus the neo-Keynesian views on inflation: Some Italian evidence

This empirical inquiry investigates the relative merits of the monetarist and the neo-Keynesian hypotheses regarding the behavior of inflation in the Italian economy over the 1955–1983 period. Based on testing three alternative dynamic models that have been proposed in the literature, the empirical results support the monetarist proposition that unemployment has an insignificant impact upon inflation, a finding that is at odds with the neo-Keynesian hypothesis. Indeed, consistent with the monetarist hypothesis, the results suggest that the rate of monetary expansion is a prime determinant of the rate of inflation and its acceleration in Italy.     

Corporate Data and Future Cash Flows

Abstract:   This article examines the ability of current accounting data to explain future cash flows for UK firms, as disclosed under FRS1 (1991). Rather than examining price data — from which cash flow implications have to be inferred — we follow the more direct approach used in several recent US studies, in which actual future cash flow data are examined. Specifically, our methodology is a development of the OLS regression framework employed by Barth et al. (2001) . We provide a replication of their main OLS analysis, and then extend this to deal with fixed effects and time trends in the levels of cash flow data. Our study finds that the disaggregation of earnings into cash flows and accruals, generates superior explanatory power with regard to future cash flows.