Efficiency and Productivity Change of Non‐Life Insurance Companies in Japan

In a book published in 1994, Production Frontiers , Färe and colleagues developed an output‐based DEA (data envelopment analysis) technique to compute productivity change. The technique constructs the Malmquist index using Farrell measures of efficiency. The Farrell efficiency measures are derived from linear programming problems which allow slack in output constraints. The possible existence of output slack is less than desirable in the computation of efficiency. Therefore, the present paper constructs also the Russell and Zieschang measures of efficiency, which disallow output slack and compares them with the Farrell measures. The analysis uses data on Japanese non‐life insurance firms during the period 1983–94.     

Forecasting the Technology Revolution: Results and learnings from the TechCast Project

This research report presents latest results on the TechCast Project, first reported in Technology Forecasting & Social Change 14 years ago [1]. TechCast is an online Delphi system that pools background trends and the judgment of experts around the world to forecast breakthroughs in all fields. Results are presented for strategic technological advances that are likely to enter the mainstream and their expected impacts, providing an overview of the Technology Revolution. Aggregating the forecast data then provides macro-forecasts of broad timetables for economic and social change. This analysis suggests that the global economy is likely to enter a new economic upcycle about 2015 and reach an advanced stage of development about 2020. We also examine examples of how organizations develop technology strategy to compete in an era of economic transformation, and conclude by analyzing the role of forecasting as one of many methods for reducing uncertainty.     

Managing the knowledge-based organization: five principles every manager can use

The post-industrial enterprise is knowledge-based organization whose wealth creation is based on innovation, creativity, discovery and inventiveness. What principles should guide managers in their efforts to make such firms successful in the global market-place? The author offers five: (1) conceptualize the business; (2) create high-value know-how; (3) organize around information; (4) productively mange knowledge workers; (5) transform work using information technology (IT). The author says that these principles are replacing those of the industrial age, when command and control management was demed necessary to implement the wealth-creating formula of efficiently allocating resources (labor, capital, materials and energy). While acknowledging that IT is an important tool, the author stresses that intellectual capital is the fundamental key to success of the modern firm.     

Organizational Contexts for Environmental Construction and Objectification Activity

This paper argues that organizations are the source of an adaptation–construction cycle. In that cycle, the consequences of organizational adaptations to current environmental states are constructed by the organization's managers into new environmental states. Therefore organizational action in response to environmental conditions has both an adaptive component and an unintended environmental enactment component. The paper identifies attributes of adapting organizations that increase the level of managerial activity devoted to environmental construction and objectification. The theoretical logic of delineating these organizational attributes moves the paper beyond present versions of enactment theory, ‘social construction of reality’ theory, and structuration theory to focus on predictors of variation in concrete activity resulting in environmental construction and objectification. Based on the discussion of the organizational predictors, propositions to be tested in future empirical research are offered. Also, the propositions are used to suggest extensions to enactment theory, social construction of reality theory, structuration theory, and contemporary versions of neo‐institutional theory. These extensions are detailed in the discussion section.     

Time diversification: Definitions and some closed-form solutions

We establish general conditions under which younger investors should invest a larger proportion of their wealth in risky assets than older ones. In the finite horizon dynamic setting, we show that such phenomenon, known as ‘‘time diversification,” can occur in the presence of human wealth, guaranteed consumption, or mean-reverting stock returns. We formalize two alternative notions of time diversification commonly confounded in the literature. Analytic solutions are provided for both time-series and cross-sectional forms of time diversification. To our best knowledge, this paper is the first to solve in closed-form the hedging demand for a CARA investor with inter-temporal consumption and a finite horizon, facing mean-reverting expected returns. Our results indicate that horizon can have a significant effect on the portfolio demand of a CARA investor due to inter-temporal hedging.