The influence of the strategic planning process on strategic change

This paper proposes that organizational decision-makers exist in a market for strategic issues where different internal and external trends and developments compete for decision-makers' attention. The paper describes how an organization's strategic planning process affects the set of strategic issues that do capture decision-makers' attention. It explains how characteristics of the strategic issue array translate into effective and timely initiation and implementation of strategic change.     

Unnecessary Conflict: NHS Management's View of the 1989–90 Ambulance Dispute

This article gives the NHS management's view of the 1989–90 ambulance dispute. It is a factual and objective account of events before, during and after the dispute.     

Fertility, Contraceptive Choice, and Public Policy in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe has invested massively in public infrastructure sinceindependence in 1980. The impact of these investments on demographicoutcomes is examined using household survey data matched withtwo community level surveys. A woman's education is a powerfulpredictor of both fertility and contraceptive use. These relationshipsare far from linear and have changed shape in recent years.After controlling for household resources, both the availabilityand quality of health and family planning services have an importantimpact on the adoption of modern contraceptives. In particular,outreach programs such as mobile family planning clinics andcommunity-based distributors (CBDs) have been especially successful.However, not all women are equally served by this infrastructure.For example, CBDs have a bigger impact on younger, better educatedwomen, while mobile family planning clinics appear to have moresuccess with older, less educated women.     

Forward markets and the multiproduct,multifactor firm under price uncertainty

In this paper a competitive firm producing multiple outputs with multiple inputs is examined. All input and output prices are uncertain, and forward markets exist for all prices. The firm's optimal production and forward market strategies are analyzed.     

Penetration of industrial country markets by agricultural products from developing countries

About 55% of food and about 60% of non-food agricultural exports of the developing countries are sold in industrial country markets. Market access is therefore important.While the developing countries have been able to increase the market penetration of their manufactured exports in industrial countries at a remarkable rate of about 8% in the 1970s, market penetration in agricultural commodities has generally been less successful.From 1970 to 1980 the developing countries were able to increase their market penetration in processed agricultural commodities from 3.5 to 3.7%, which amounts to an average annual increase of only 0.6%. In basic agricultural products like sugar, maize, tomatoes and beef they even incurred losses in their market share that corresponded to an increase in the degree of self-sufficiency (and probably of protective trade barriers) of the industrial countries, in particular the EC.     

The North American horticultural industry and the risk of plant invasion

We develop a monopolistic competition model of the horticultural industry and estimate the resulting profit function with U.S. and Canadian industry data. Combining the results with a hazard analysis of the characteristics of exotic plants introduced in North America, we explore optimal tax simulations for internalizing the risk and costs of a potential plant invasion. If the share of the exotic plant sales in final profits is large, then the resulting annual fee will be high, discouraging the expansion of the nursery industry. However, the annual revenues could fund efforts to mitigate the damages resulting from any accidental plant invasion.