Dynamic strategic thinking

Market analysts and marketing strategists stress understanding the fundamental dynamics of a market, but how deeply do they think about the interplay of such fundamentals and what frameworks do they use in such thinking? How do business schools teach managers to think this way? The premise of this article is that in their strategizing, senior marketing executives, boards of directors, consultants, and financial analysts should see the market and the firm’s embeddedness in a market as a moving video rather than a static snapshot. The authors propose that what makes the video move are fundamental feedback effects that create the evolutionary paths that a market and a firm may travel. A taxonomy of systemic feedback regularities is presented with applications that demonstrate how the taxonomy and proposed soft mapping techniques can be use to construct dynamic mental models that help managers and consultants improve their dynamic strategic thinking and the strategic foresight of firms.     

Global market effects of alternative European responses to genetically modified organisms

Global Market Effects of Alternative European Responses to Genetically Modified Organisms. — Current debates about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture reveal substantial differences in the perception of the associated risks and benefits. Genetically modified crop varieties allegedly provide farmers with agronomic benefits, but environmental, health and ethical concerns are also being raised. This paper discusses the ways in which the emergence of GMOs could lead to trade disputes between Western Europe and the United States. It then uses an empirical model of the global economy to quantify the effects on production, prices, trade patterns and national economic welfare of specific policy and consumer responses to GMOs in Western Europe.     

UK universities and the state: a Faustian bargain?

The universities are now‘one of the last seminationalised sectors of the British economy,’used by government as an instrument of social policy. This situation represents a‘Faustian bargain’which threatens both the quality and the prosperity of universities. One solution would be privatisation of some universities through public flotation. These universities could then contract with government to take state-funded students. Two objections are that the scheme would promote elitism and that it would encourage greater inequality between universities, but the relevant question is whether it would offer an improvement on the present regime.     

Optimal Concentration and Deadweight Losses in Canadian Manufacturing

When economies of scale are impontant, there may be too many firms in a market to effectively exploit these scale economies. Although more firms imply reduced market power, this may not offset the adverse impact of higher unit cost. We explore this trade-off by estimating for 107 Canadian industries optimal concentration, this being the concentration that maximizes, for given firm conduct, producers and consumers' surplus. We then calculate deadweight losses as the difference between total surplus at optimal concentration and total surplus at current concentration levels. Among the conclusions are that the majority of industries have concentration that is too low.     

Ethical leadership across cultures: a comparative analysis of German and US perspectives

This paper examines beliefs about four aspects of ethical leadership –Character/Integrity, Altruism, Collective Motivation and Encouragement– in Germany and the United States using data from Project GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) and a supplemental analysis. Within the context of a push toward convergence driven by the demands of globalization and the pull toward divergence underpinned by different cultural values and philosophies in the two countries, we focus on two questions: Do middle managers from the United States and Germany differ in their beliefs about ethical leadership? And, do individuals from these two countries attribute different characteristics to ethical leaders? Results provide evidence that while German and US middle managers, on average, differed in the degree of endorsement for each aspect, they each endorsed Character/Integrity, Collective Motivation and Encouragement as important for effective leadership and had a more neutral view of the importance of Altruism. The findings are reviewed within the social‐cultural context of each country.     

PARTICIPATION AS A MEANS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CONTROL

Participation was considered as part of the structure of organization. For a sample of thirty-one organizations, representative participation was found to be related to the formalization whereas participation in the process of management (that is, participation which involves the individual directly) was found to be related directly to specialization and inversely to autonomy. These results are shown to be compatible with the view that participation represents an extension of organizational control over employees rather than the view that participation is a means of employee influence over upper level management. Organizational control is achieved through establishing a framework for participation which limits the issues that can be raised and the influence that can be exerted upwards.     

From multinational to transnational?

A little-researched area of international business is the extent to which U.S.-based firms have stripped decision-making of national bias, that is, have become true transnationals. Whether they should or not, from a nationalistic point of view, is of course a matter of opinion and the topic of this article.