The Japanese Crisis — A Case of Strategic Failure?

This paper provides an alternative insight into Japan's current economic problems. We concentrate upon the role played by the economy's central actors, namely Japan's transnational corporations. Since the early 1980's, Japan's transnationals have become dominant players in the global economy, and now have a higher rate of physical investment in new, overseas greenfield sites than their competitors. This has had detrimental consequences for Japan's domestic economy, particularly for small firms who operate in keiretsu networks. This has led to concerns about the 'hollowing out' of Japan's domestic industry raising the possibility of long-term industrial decline and 'strategic failure'.     

The Violent Rhetoric of Re-engineering: Management Consultancy on the Offensive

Business process re-engineering (BPR) was a leading form of organizational restructuring from the late 1980s until the late 1990s. This paper seeks to contextualize its development and account for its particularly bellicose language by reflecting on its historical antecedents in the west and its contemporary competitors in the east. We suggest that one way of reading BPR is as a form of ‘inverse colonization’ in which US managerial discourse both assimilated and revolted against the growing domination of Japanese thinking and practice. We conclude with some speculative comments on related causes of the rise of violent managerial rhetoric.     

Automatic neural network modeling for univariate time series

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are an information processing paradigm inspired by the way the brain processes information. Using neural networks requires the investigator to make decisions concerning the architecture or structure used. ANNs are known to be universal function approximators and are capable of exploiting nonlinear relationships between variables. This method, called Automated ANNs, is an attempt to develop an automatic procedure for selecting the architecture of an artificial neural network for forecasting purposes. It was entered into the M-3 Time Series Competition. Results show that ANNs compete well with the other methods investigated, but may produce poor results if used under certain conditions.     

Technical change: The prospects for manufacturing industry

Technical change will cause problems in the OECD area in all three sectors of manufacturing industry : consumer, intermediate, and capital goods. The author describes the factors influencing this process : the changes in demand, resource costs, competition, and technology. He discusses the growth and employment prospects for various sectors. It is a mistake to assume that the service sector will be able to absorb either the number or the type of workers displaced: structural unemployment poses a serious threat. Those countries able to adapt well to technical change are identified.     

Resource determinants of strategy and performance: The case of British exporters

This study adopts the RBV of the firm in order to identify critical advantage-generating resources and capabilities with strong positive export strategy and performance implications. The proposed export performance model is tested using a structural equation modelling approach on a sample of 356 British exporters. We examine the individual as well as the concurrent (simultaneous) direct and indirect effects of five resource bundles on export performance. We find that four resources/capabilities: managerial, knowledge, planning, and technology, have a significant positive direct effect on export performance, while relational and physical resources exhibited no unique positive effect. We also find that the firm's export strategy mediates the resource–performance nexus in the case of managerial and knowledge-based resources. The theoretical and methodological grounding of this study contributes to the advancement of export related research by providing better specification of the nature of the effects – direct or indirect – of particular resource factors on export performance.     

Input demands and elasticities in U.K. defence industries

It is often claimed that U.K. arms industries are inefficient. This paper considers the input demand behaviour of defence industries. Two hypotheses are formulated relating to input inelasticity and the resource effects of cuts in military spending. First, it is predicted that the demand elasticities of inputs in defence industries will be lower than those in similar civilian sectors. Second, defence reviews are expected to have a ‘shock effect’ resulting in a ‘shake-out’ of resources from weapons producers. The evidence suggests that the U.K.'s defence industries do not respond to price changes nor to defence reviews.     

Workforce drug testing: a critique and reframing

This article aims to stimulate re‐engagement with workforce drug testing as a current managerial technology emerging in UK organisations and not solely confined to the US. Drawing on sociological, labour process and wider organization studies literature, it reconceptualises assumptions about managerial ideology, employee agency and drug user's subjectivity.     

The Political Economy of Arms Control

Can arms control be destabilising? Keith Hartley, of the University of York, explores the political economy of the arms race and disarmament.     

The Impact of Financial Participation and Employee Involvement on Financial Performance

In recent years, considerable attention has been given to the impact of various forms of financial participation on financial performance. However, financial participation is only one of a number of different schemes attempting to elicit better performance and is itself heterogeneous. Moreover, financial participation schemes are typically introduced in conjunction with employee involvement schemes and their combined effect can be very different from their individual contributions. Indeed, concentrating on only one type of participation can seriously distort its relationship with financial performance. In this paper, a range of different employee participation schemes is examined, including two types of financial participation. The results indicate that financial participation has important interaction effects with particular types of employee involvement scheme and that the two main types of financial participation scheme have negative interactions. Furthermore, some employee involvement schemes are found to have a lower or even negative relationship with financial performance when introduced in isolation.