Development policy in the doldrums?

The “Third Development Decade” of the United Nations, which runs to the end of the present decade, opened with a promising outlook for the developing countries. The economic situation of the OECD countries had improved during 1979 and the North-South dialogue seemed to be making progress. But the further course of 1980 revealed that the extent and long-term effects of the second oil price explosion had been seriously underestimated. As a rule these affected the developing countries more seriously than the industrialized countries. The recessive trend in the industrialized countries moreover contributed to budgetary bottlenecks which were not without consequence for development policy.     

Ethical implications of Human Resource Information Systems

As a result of the proliferation of Human Resource Information Systems among organizations, employee data are being used in nontraditional ways. Although these uses increase efficiency, they can conflict with the rights and interests of employees, external stakeholders, and society at large. Yet the ethical concerns associated with automated data bases larely have been ignored. This paper examines these issues within the context of three ethical theories. Implications and suggestions for managers are discussed.     

Light rail or busway? A comparative evaluation for a corridor in Beijing

Like most developing cities, Beijing's public transport is unable to meet demand, but it also faces growing bicycle use. Alternative public transport improvements in a congested corridor of the city — busway, light rail and elevated rail — were modelled and compared in a simple cost-benefit analysis. Complications arose in attempting bus-bicycle modal split modelling and in making due allowance for crowding in a developing country setting. Only the busway showed a positive net present value, but whether the implied withdrawal of roadspace and consequent restraint on the growing number of motorized vehicles is a virtue or not will depend on wider policy considerations.     

Supplier competence alignment: Cases from the buyer perspective in the Brazilian market

The research presented here has a double purpose. On the one hand to better define and frame the field of inter-organizational transfer of competences, and on the other to suggest that the competence-based marketing view can well stem from marketing initiatives targeting not just customers, or customers' customers, but also other actors in the market, in this instance suppliers.This research focus has led us to select a precise area of study so as to obtain situations in which the probability of the existence of transfer of competence is high. We chose to centre the study on transfer of competences in the area of logistics between MNCs and their local suppliers in Brazil.Research findings lead to proposals regarding correlations between types of competences transferred, transfer mechanisms and strategic objectives of the transfer.     

Measuring New Product Portfolio Innovativeness: How Differences in Scale Width and Evaluator Perspectives Affect its Relationship with Performance

Portfolio innovativeness is a central variable in innovation management. However, the impact of portfolio innovativeness on new product development (NPD) performance is unclear, which may partly be due to the construct's multifaceted nature. Different facets may reflect different degrees of innovativeness and may have different relationships with performance. In addition, firm members with different functional backgrounds may perceive and thus assess these facets differently, which again may influence the performance effect of portfolio innovativeness. Based on a sample of 746 CEOs and marketing as well as technology professionals from 117 firms and using Item Response Theory (IRT), a multifaceted scale of portfolio innovativeness, whose facets are able to cover the entire innovativeness spectrum, is developed. In addition, it is shown that the performance impact of portfolio innovativeness is dependent on the facets included in the scale, and on the specialization of the professional assessing the facets. Inverted U‐shaped performance effects are found when the scale covers the entire spectrum of innovativeness, and linear positive or zero effects with different types of more narrowly modeled scales. Inverted U‐shaped performance effects are also found when technology professionals assess the facets, while the assessments by marketing professionals lead to linear positive effects.     

Models and methods in motion: Declining the dogma dance

I take a communicative pragmatist and realist approach to futures studies. This implies a sensitivity to understanding what the audience can absorb and using futures methods effectively to create spaces for new futures. While Wilber's work affords us with new insights to engage with methodology, is not the only path. Indeed, it is intellectual bigotry to demand that everyone master the tools one personally deems most appropriate. Critical conversations about futures must remain open, where post-modernist and integral thinking widen our horizons, they are welcomed, where they straitjacket our thoughts, they are not.     

Bootstrapping structural VARs: Avoiding a potential bias in confidence intervals for impulse response functions

Constructing bootstrap confidence intervals for impulse response functions (IRFs) from structural vector autoregression (SVAR) models has become standard practice in empirical macroeconomic research. The accuracy of such confidence intervals can deteriorate severely, however, if the bootstrap IRFs are biased. We document an apparently common source of bias in the estimation of the VAR error covariance matrix which can be easily reduced by a scale adjustment. This bias is generally unrecognized because it only affects the bootstrap estimates of the error variance, not the original OLS estimates. Nevertheless, as we illustrate here, analytically, with sampling experiments, and in an example from the literature, the bootstrap error variance bias can have significant distorting effects on bootstrap IRF confidence intervals. We also show that scale-adjusted bootstrap confidence intervals can be expected to exhibit improved coverage accuracy.     

Keiretsu and Relationship‐Specific Investment: A Barrier To Trade?

This article develops a model of informal procurement within Japanese keiretsu so as to consider effects on intermediate-good imports, such as auto parts. Parts-suppliers make relationship-specific investments that benefit the automaker and prices are determined by bargaining after investment has been sunk. Although this investment raises efficiency, it limits the range of imports to less important parts, such as tailpipes, and it is possible that no parts are imported, despite lower foreign costs. Lack of information concerning investment rents combined with counterintuitive responses of imports to changes in output and costs could create unwarranted perceptions of a trade barrier.     

Optimal credit rationing in not‐for‐profit financial institutions*

We examine the dynamic optimization problem for not‐for‐profit financial institutions (NFPs) that maximize consumer surplus, not profits. We characterize the optimal dynamic policy and find that it involves credit rationing. Interest rates set by mature NFPs will typically be more favorable to customers than market rates, as any surplus is distributed in the form of interest rate subsidies, with credit rationing being required to prevent these subsidies from distorting loan volumes from their optimal levels. Rationing overcomes a fundamental problem in NFPs; it allows them to distribute the surplus without distorting the volume of activity from the efficient level.     

The Mixed Blessings of Technological Innovativeness for the Commercial Success of New Products

This study addresses the contradiction that, although technological innovativeness of new products is often seen as a major driver of competitive advantage and commercial success, empirical research is not always able to show a significant performance influence. In order to find an explanation, the effects of technological innovativeness are decomposed as its influence on the market, the innovating firm, and the firm's environment is considered. The proposed model is tested on a sample of new product development projects. In order to avoid systematic biases, this paper uses a longitudinal survey design with two informants and a sample that includes both incremental and highly innovative projects. The results show that technological innovativeness has both positive and negative effects on the commercial success of new products. On the one hand, technological innovativeness can increase customer value, which in turn has a positive effect on success. On the other hand, incorporating new technologies into new products also implies changes in the innovating firm and potentially in its environment. These changes have a negative impact on commercial success. The positive and negative effects compensate for each other, so that the total effect of technological innovativeness on commercial success is close to zero. The findings imply that firms developing new products through incorporating radically new technologies often seem to underestimate the inherent complexities with respect to both internal and external changes. Developing and introducing new products with a radically changed technology also implies anticipating the need for new competences, processes, structures, and network partners. Social and political resistance against technological changes, large investments in new infrastructures, and the long duration of these changes additionally become frequent features of such innovation endeavors. Hence, firms embarking on a path of exploiting radically new technologies should consider those complexities very carefully when making their new product development decisions.