Different Manifestations of the Concept of Empowerment: The Politics of Urban Renewal in the United States and the United Kingdom

Over the course of the 1990s the concept of empowerment became firmly established within the vocabulary of urban politics in several different national contexts. This article analyzes the spread of this concept by looking at the politics of urban renewal in the United States and the United Kingdom. It shows that even if (and possibly because) the definition of empowerment remained vague, the turn to empowerment came out of and contributed to a shift in the nature of urban politics and to a reconfiguration of governmental methods, the role of the state and, consequently, to changes in civil society, all of which were associated with a rise to prominence of a neoliberal perspective.     

Sneaking through the minefield of talent management: the notion of rhetorical obfuscation

In spite of the growing popularity of talent management in practice, there has been a distinct lack of theoretical attention paid by scholars to such a strategically important innovation. To address this shortfall, we conducted an in-depth case study of a multinational enterprise to examine and conceptualise the rhetorical underpinnings of its efforts in implementing a talent management programme. Based on our findings, we propose the notion of rhetorical obfuscation to conceptualise the intentional use of persuasive language to selectively project and communicate organisational agenda as a means of directing and reinforcing relevant stakeholders' commitments and conforming behaviours. In particular, we found that rhetorical obfuscation was used extensively in the case organisation to cover up inconsistency in practices and lack of legitimacy during the institutionalisation of talent management. Our contributions are threefold. Firstly, this study has provided a necessary theoretical grounding to conceptualise talent management. Secondly, by introducing the theory of rhetorical practice to human resource (HR) innovation research, our account has demonstrated the usefulness of rhetorical practice and created a launch pad for other HR researchers to build upon. Thirdly, by exploring the rhetorical underpinnings related to the adoption of talent management, we have added to the rich intellectual tradition of rhetorical practice by presenting the notion of rhetorical obfuscation.     

The impact of credit rationing on the real sector: a study of the effect of mortgage rates and terms on housing starts

Various studies of the impact of credit rationing on the housing sector have examined its effect on mortgage terms and flows. If credit rationing has a significant effect on the economy, it must affect the real sector, i.e. housing starts. This paper examines the causal relationships between six different variables which describe mortgage rates and terms and single family housing starts. Two different types of tests for economic causality are used. The results indicate that neither credit rationing nor mortgage rates affect housing starts for the period 1963–1980. There is some evidence that housing prices have a causal relationship to housing starts, possibly reflecting speculative motives. On balance, the results are consistent with the rational expectations theory.     

Re-evaluation of Welfare Changes during the Transition in Poland

The costs of shortages/rationing are not captured by standard consumer price indices. Thus the change in real GDP per capita is an over-estimate of welfare losses in transition economies. In this study virtual prices are used to calculate new cost of living indices, making it possible to construct more accurate pre-reform and post-reform welfare comparisons. The results for Poland using virtual prices show 62-84% decline in welfare over the transition 1987-92. This welfare loss is approximately one-third of the value obtained using actual prices.     

Stochastic innovation and product market organization

Summary This paper analyzes how different types of product market organization affect firms' R&D investments in a stochastic innovation framework. Product market competition determines payoffs to successful and unsuccessful firms. Restrictions on the research project success probability distribution are identified that yield an invariance result for expenditure per R&D project. The impact of the number of firms (n) on the amount of market R&D is shown to be sensitive to product market organization. For a major process innovation, firms undertake more R&D projects under Cournot product market competition than under Bertrand competition, forn sufficiently large. A numerical example is used to illustrate welfare tradeoffs.Tom Lyon, Herman Quirmbach, Ferenc Szidarovszky, Mark Walker and two anonymous referees gave us helpful comments and suggestions on prior versions of this paper. Lucy Atkinson provided expert research assistance on numerical computations. Special thanks to Ted Bergstrom who gave us valuable suggestions about the first proposition.     

The effect of portfolio weighting on investment performance evaluation: The case of actively managed mutual funds

Among the factors influencing investment performance measurement is the weight dedicated to each security. This paper develops metrics for measuring the extent of equal weighting and value weighting of a portfolio. A sample of 506 actively managed mutual funds shows that funds tend to be equally weighted to a greater degree than they are value weighted, implying that investment performance based solely on a single value-weighted benchmark may not adequately identify excess performance. We propose a two-factor model utilizing both a value-weighted and an equally weighted index and show that the model provides a better fit than the single-index model.(JEL G1)     

Ethical dilemmas of relationship building in china

We analyze and discuss some ethical dilemmas of doing business on the Chinese Mainland, referring to detailed accounts of the gift‐giving and contract‐getting experiences of two overseas Chinese managers in dealings with Mainland Chinese managers in the sporting and leisure industries. We compare these cases with accounts of transactions in worldwide ship repair, and with a newspaper report of a sport‐related case in Hong Kong. Using a version of Kohlberg's moral‐stages model, and identifying key differences between guanxi and rational‐legal ethics, we explain how guanxi can become entangled with corruption in China. We link our explanations to the absence of rational‐legal moral governance, and to the sociological phenomena of anomie and relative deprivation. We conclude with suggestions about the conduct of China business. ? 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

债务危机难撼迪拜金融中心地位

【美国《商业周刊》12月2日】在迪拜政府在11月底宣布国有控股投资公司迪拜世界寻求对近260亿美元债务进行重组后，全球股市应声暴跌。虽然海外股市随后迅速反弹，但迪拜股市惨遭重创，而且迪拜领导人信誉扫地。然而，