For the Sake of Argument: Towards an Understanding of Rhetoric as Process

ABSTRACT   This paper seeks to respond to two particular aspects of Legge's work, her development of the concept of rhetoric and her commitment to the educative process. Legge has been drawing attention to the concept of rhetoric for a long time (e.g. Gowler and Legge, 1981 , 1996 [originally 1983]; Legge, 1989 , 1995a ). However, despite its popularity as an epithet, the process of rhetoric remains largely unexplored. Locating rhetoric within a poststructuralist view of language, this paper utilizes and explores the contribution of 'The New Rhetoric' to such an understanding, focusing on issues of style and context. This is used to illustrate a characterization of rhetoric which emphasizes its quality as a closed system with an important role in maintaining the status quo of 'managerialism'. Highlighting the key concept within 'The New Rhetoric' of audience , we suggest that to achieve change it is necessary to intervene in the closed cycle of the relationship between producers and consumers of management knowledge.     

FAIR TRADE IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE – AND UNFAIR

Fair trade – paying a price premium for commodities based not on quality but on employment and other conditions – is counterproductive and unfair. It results in consumers getting a lower‐quality product. Much of the gain from the price premium goes to the fair‐trade bureaucracy rather than to the producer. Fair trade may even, if effective, destroy the banana industry. A better solution for consumers and third‐world producers is to abolish all remaining trade barriers.     

Measuring and Assessing Vertical Ties in the Agro-food System

This paper examines the extent to which the concept of vertical coordination in the agro-food sector lends itself to specification or measurement in a manner that is analytically useful. Based on a combination of theory and empirical evidence, it is suggested that vertical organization can be specified as a parameter, variable in degree of control by principal over agent. Such a specification has potential application in analytical models concerned with what gives rise to vertical ties and/or their economic consequences. Drawing principally on the concepts of transactions costs, factor price distortion, and vertical restraint, analytical attention is directed to the economic incentives for, and performance implications of the use of linkages other than spot market transactions for coordinating vertically interdependent stages in the food chain. Research challenges are identified.     

The dark side of financial innovation: A case study of the pricing of a retail financial product

The offering prices of 64 issues of a popular retail structured equity product were, on average, almost 8% greater than estimates of the products' fair market values obtained using option pricing methods. Under reasonable assumptions about the underlying stocks' expected returns, the mean expected return estimate on the structured products is slightly below zero. The products do not provide tax, liquidity, or other benefits, and it is difficult to rationalize their purchase by informed rational investors. Our findings are, however, consistent with the recent hypothesis that issuing firms might shroud some aspects of innovative securities or introduce complexity to exploit uninformed investors.