Battling against the odds: the emergence of senior women trade unionists

In Britain, in July 1990, there were five women general secretaries, all of these had come into post since 1985. This article explores the negotiating context and styles of these leaders from a gender management perspective, paying particular attention to the danger of convergence contained in situations where male trade union leaders greatly outnumber their female counterparts.     

Review essay

Clayne R. Jensen, Outdoor Recreation in America, 4th ed. (Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing, 1985), ISBN 0–8087–1082–6, 412 pp., $24.95.     

Beyond budgeting or budgeting reconsidered? A survey of North-American budgeting practice

Budgets have historically played a key role in management control; however, recently they have become the subject of considerable criticism and debate. Some argue that the problems with budgeting stem from the way budgets are used (Horngren et al., 2004) while others argue that budgeting processes are fundamentally flawed (Hope and Fraser, 2003a). Hansen et al. (2003), among others, have called for a systematic examination of these issues against empirical evidence. In this paper, we present the results of two surveys of mid- to large-sized North-American organizations to 1) update the literature on North-American budgeting practices, 2) collect empirical evidence to assess the criticisms, and 3) begin to identify strong tendencies or patterns in budgeting practice to inform future academic research. Overall, we find for the majority of firms that budgets continue to be used for control purposes and are perceived to be value-added. While problems exist with budgets, organizations are adapting their use to account for these problems rather than abandoning budgets altogether.     

Movies and the Mystery of the Missing Trade: Is Hollywood Good for U.S. Exporters?

Research has shown that consumers have a preference for goods based on the origin of production. This is important because it suggests that, in some cases, even lowering trade barriers may not significantly increase trade flows. In particular, flows may be lower than are predicted by trade theories such as Heckscher-Ohlin. Despite evidence that home consumption bias exists in many countries, it is only recently that research has begun to examine the sources of this bias.

This article fills a gap in the literature by testing a model that addresses the source of this consumption bias. The paper's model incorporates consumers' exposure to foreign products and culture through media imports and tourist visits as factors affecting consumers' preferences for foreign products. Using panel data from 19 countries, the article's results support the hypothesis that lagged exports of U.S. movies have a positive impact on other U.S. exports. Some evidence is also found of a positive effect of tourist visits on U.S. exports.

Since U.S. media exports may generate demand for other U.S. goods and services, opening up foreign media markets should receive a higher priority in U.S. trade negotiations. Another interesting implication of the paper is that overall U.S. export losses resulting from media piracy may be lower than previously calculated, as the consumption of pirated media products may increase demand for other U.S. exports.     

Using PDA consistency checks to increase the precision of profits and sales measurement in panels

Personalized Digital Assistants (PDAs) and other forms of hardware needed to collect survey data electronically have become more affordable and powerful in recent years, leading to their use in a number of surveys in developing countries. Simple use of these devices can offer the prospect of more timely data entry and greater accuracy in guiding respondents through skip patterns. Further benefits are possible through the use of more complex consistency checks. We use PDAs to measure sales and profits for microenterprises, which are notoriously noisy. Consistency checks in the cross-section compare sales and profits, while those in the panel query responses which result in large changes from one period to the next. Cross-sectional checks also served as a second prompt in the case of missing profits. These checks do succeed in reducing the standard deviation and in increasing the correlation of the observations for which corrections are made. However, we find that the vast majority of large changes in enterprise sales and profits are confirmed by firm owners as genuine, highlighting the volatility of income in this sector. As a result, the overall impact of these consistency checks on the full sample is rather limited, suggesting that while such checks are useful if computerized forms of data collection are being used, the consistency checks per se are not a strong reason for using computerized data collection in collecting firm profits and sales.     

Assessing foreign direct investment relationships between China,Japan, and the United States

China has received enormous inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) in recent years, including significant flows from Japan and the US. We examine these investment flows in detail to gain perspectives on their relative importance for the three countries involved. We also analyze the industrial composition of FDI flows over time. American FDI flows to China have been less concentrated in manufacturing than average for investors in China while Japan's FDI flows have been much more concentrated in manufacturing, particularly in transport, electrical and machinery industries in recent years. Using survey data from American and Japanese affiliates, we compare the employment patterns and sales destinations of American and Japanese affiliates in China. We find a much higher degree of export-orientation for Japanese affiliates than American affiliates, with the latter tending to make the vast majority of their sales in the Chinese market. Over time, however, we find a tendency towards convergence in the sales destinations of Japanese and American affiliates.     

Go boldly!: Explore augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) for business

It is not surprising that managers find it hard to distinguish similar-sounding, IT-based concepts such as augmented reality and virtual reality. To many, all of these constructs mean nearly the same and, as a result, the terms are often used interchangeably. This confusion holds back those eager to explore the different opportunities these new technologies present. This Executive Digest presents six different types of reality and virtual reality—(1) reality, (2) augmented reality, (3) virtual reality, (4) mixed reality, (5) augmented virtuality, and (6) virtuality—as part of our actual reality/virtual reality continuum. We then illustrate their differences using a common example and outline business applications for each type.     

The co-location of production and distribution: emergent trends in consumer services

This paper identifies ,re-emergence, of the co-location of elements of the production 'process with the distribution process in a range of consumer series. It suggests that this trend is being facilitated by technological development, particularity in control systems, that allow many of the benefits of centralized production to be achieved with decentralized production and that co-location satisfies additional consumer preferences, not achievable with centralized production. The authors indicate how this trend might be examined within a posi--Fordist framework.