Reviews

PLACE PROMOTION.

Gold, J.R. and Ward, S.V. (eds) 1994: Place Promotion; The Use of Publicity and Marketing to Sell Towns and Regions. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, £35, cased.

INWARD INVESTMENT.

Hill, S. and Munday, M. 1994: The Regional Distribution of Foreign Manufacturing Investment in the UK. London: Macmillan Press Ltd. £35, cased.

COMMUNITIES AND CARING.

Mayo, M. 1994: Communities and Caring: The Mixed Economy of Welfare. Macmillan (UK), and St Martin's Press (USA), £10.99, paper.

COMMUNITY PROFILING.

Hawtin, M., Hughes, G. and Percy-Smith, J. 1994: Community Profiling: Auditing Social Needs. Buckingham: Open University Press, £12.99, paper.

SUSTAINABILITY.

Hams, T., Jacobs, M., Levett, R., Lusser, H., Morphet, J. and Taylor, D. 1994: Greening Your Local Authority. Harlow: Longman, £25, paper.

URBAN POLICY.

1994: Urban Policy: The Challenge and the Opportunity. London: Association of Metropolitan Authorities in conjunction with the Association of County Councils and the Association of District Councils, £10 (£8 to the voluntary sector), paper.

POLICY ON INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY.

Ball, R. and Pratt, A.C. (eds) 1994: Industrial Property: Policy and economic development London: Routledge.     

Short reviews

Centre for Leisure end Tourism Studies, Polytechnic of North London, 1989: A Study of Arts and Employment in Islington. For London Borough of Islington, no price stated.

Centre for Leisure and Tourism Studies, Polytechnic of North London, 1990: Study into the Premises Heeds and Problems of Crafts Firms in Clerkenwell. For London Borough of Islington, no price stated.

CLES 1991: Challenging the TECs - First Year Interim Report of the CLES TEC/LEC Monitoring Project. CLES, Alberton House, St Mary's Parsonage, Manchester M3 2WJ, £20.00 paper

Rajan, A., 1990: 1992: A Zero Sum Game. London: Industrial Society Press, £27.50 cloth.     

Critères macroéconomiques actuariels et processus de Paul Lévy

The main purpose pursued by the author in the present article consists in showing how Lévy's processes can be used to describe and control some insurance activities. As an immediate consequence of the recommended model, he presents examples of natural constraints to be verified by any admissible choice at the macroeconomic level.     

Sequencing the COVID-19 Recession in the USA: What Were the Macroeconomic Drivers?

We apply a structural vectorautoregressive analysis to decompose fluctuations in the growth rate of industrial production and inflation precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA into aggregate demand, aggregate supply, and uncertainty shocks. While all three types of shocks contributed to output and inflation dynamics, the surge in economic uncertainty contributed to the decline in output more strongly than aggregate demand or aggregate supply disruptions. In 2021, the decline in uncertainty and adverse aggregate supply shocks emerged to be similarly important in spurring inflation.     

The gender representation gap: implications for workplace union effectiveness

This article investigates how the gender of workplace representatives has implications for three dimensions of union effectiveness: (i) responsiveness to members, (ii) opportunity to influence management and (iii) ability to bring about change. Utilising original analysis of the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Study, we examine three core elements of workplace employment relations processes that cut across the three dimensions: (i) workplace representation processes and employer support for union activity; (ii) substantive areas of representative involvement and (iii) quality of relations between union representatives and management, and between union representatives and employees. Our analysis highlights significant gender differences embedded in all three processes. The conclusion considers the broader implications of these findings for the gender equality project of British trade unions, beyond the objective of merely seeking to increase the numbers of women representatives.     

Whose land? The political economy of land titling in transitional economies

During processes of economic reform and transition, decision-makers are facing questions with potential far-reaching consequences, such as what institutions should be established, how to determine the relationship between state and market, and in what time frame and order. Against this background, this special issue has brought together four articles that analyze the type of institutional arrangements that emerge over time in relation to one of the basic means of production: land. The various contributions pay particular attention to an often-contested institutional development, the registration of land holdings. By proceeding with land titling under conditions of low socio-economic development, the state risks creating what is here termed as an “empty institution” rather than a “credible institution.” In other words, the new institution remains nothing more than a paper agreement or a hollow shell with little or even a negative effect on the actions of social actors. It is what might be called the “collective trust” in the system. As land becomes increasingly marketized and commodified, the state should ensure that the emerging land market does not result in a rapid concentration of land in the hands of a mighty few. This implies the control of market forces through the restriction or prohibition of land sales or land rental. In this context, effecting institutional change through land titling should be done with the utmost care.     

Codification,Abstraction, and Firm Differences: A Cognitive Information-based Perspective

Synopsis The resource-based view shares with population ecology, organizational systematics, organizational cladistics, and institutional theory a concern with why firms differ and with what keeps them different. These two questions only have meaning if – as has been the case in the eoclassical theory of the firm – similarities between firms are taken as the default assumption. This paper distinguishes between ontological heterogeneity – differences in the world – and epistemic heterogeneity – differences in the way that the world is construed. Focusing on the latter, it puts forward an argument for taking epistemic heterogeneity between firms as the default assumption. It starts with a general analysis of how living systems make sense of the world. It then goes on to identify the cognitive activities of codification and abstraction as key sources of epistemic heterogeneity. The findings are applied to those systems called firms where a dominant logic allows epistemic heterogeneity to persist. In some case this leads to competitive advantage, in others to a debilitating inertia. The implications for a knowledge-based theory of the firm are briefly explored.     

Indeterminacy problems and the interpretation of factor analysis results

Abstract  This paper reviews indeterminacy problems for the factor analysis model and their consequences for the interpretation of the results. Two types of indeterminacy are discerned: indeterminacy of the parameters in the model (the number of factors, the specific variances and the factorloadings) and the indeterminacy of the factors, given the parameters in the model. It is argued that parameter indeterminacy is partly to be overcome, provided that a strong underlying theory for the subject matter under research is present. Factor indeterminacy remains a major stumbling-block for the interpretation of results. The G uttman criterion is advocated as a measure of factor indeterminacy.     

Configurations of human resource practices and battlefield performance: A comparison of two armies

A prominent theme in the HRM literature is the organizational impact of configurations or “bundles” of human resource practices, mostly researched in business firms. A recurrent empirical finding here is that configurations of high performance HR practices generally have a more positive effect on employee attitudes and behavior and on organizational performance than configurations of traditional HR practices. In this paper this research is extended beyond business firms to include army organizations. Specifically it is argued, first, that these two configurations are exemplified in respectively the German Army and the US Army in World War II and second, that these configurations can be reasonably related to a relatively more effective battlefield performance of the German versus the US Army, even in spite of final defeat.