The role of managerial learning and interpretation in strategic persistence and reorientation: An empirical exploration

This study uses a managerial learning framework to build and test a model of the decisionmaking process that drives decisions to strategically reorient an organization. The model examines the effects of past performance, managerial interpretations, and top management team characteristics on the likelihood of strategic reorientation in two distinct environmental contexts. The results indicate that poor past performance, environmental awareness, top management team heterogeneity, and CEO turnover increased the likelihood of reorientation. There are some differences in the ways in which these variables affect reorientation across the two environmental contexts. Poor past performance was more strongly associated with reorientation in the stable environment than in the turbulent environment. The tendency to make external attributions for poor performance outcomes decreased the likelihood of reorientation in the turbulent environment, but not in the stable environment.     

Inequality,technology and payments systems

The paper considers the way in which the interaction between technology, population growth and the payments system is responsible for growing inequality in many poor countries. The payments system describes the set of rules governing property rights, access to work and income from work. Payments systems may be classified into traditional, capitalist, mixed and socialist, although most economies exhibit hybrid characteristics. It is argued that capitalist and mixed economy payments systems are largely responsible for those situations where poverty has increased despite growth in per capita income. Finally the paper considers methods of reforming the payments system.     

A note on social cost-benefit analysis and class conflict in LDCs

The article shows that project selection using social cost – benefit analysis (SCB) is critically dependent on the values adopted. It is argued that the problem of ascertaining social values is generally skated over. Use of government values as widely advocated is illegitimate because governments represent particular classes. Governments tend to find SCB acceptable, rather than other instruments of policy which would achieve the same ends (e.g., taxation), either because SCB is likely to be ineffective, or, where effective, because SCB involves a different class distribution of burden and benefits, and one which is more acceptable to the classes in power.     

Further Evidence on the Impact of SFAS 52 on Analysts' Earnings Forecasts

This study examines the impact of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards Number 52 (SFAS 52) on analysts' earnings forecasts. Value-Line forecasts of multinational firms' earnings were examined for the years 1979-1984. Forecast errors did not exhibit a significant linear trend. However, the results show a decline in signed forecast errors from the pre-SFAS 52 to the post-SFAS 52 period reflecting a change from an overstatement bias to relatively unbiased forecasts.
Overall, the results suggest that (1) overstatement errors were greater in the pre-SFAS 52 period than in the post SFAS 52 period, and (2) overstatement errors in the year that SFAS 52 was adopted were greater than surrounding years. In addition, a strong negative relation was found between 1981 signed forecast errors and both revisions in forecasts and the income effect of the accounting change.     

Cognitive Load in Collaboration: Convergence

Collaboration is inherent to complex participatory multi-actor and multi-agent social technical systems. Supporting collaborative problem solving is challenging, especially with the increased amount of data and information available for decision makers; they often experience information overload. Therefore, one of the key steps in problem solving is convergence; after considering many alternatives, the group converges their focus to a few for decision making. One of the key production factors in collaborative problem solving, and thus convergence is cognitive effort. Understanding cognitive load involved in convergence tasks is therefore important to the design of collaboration support. Convergence is a complex collaborative task, which is much less studied than the often preceding, divergence or brainstorming task. On the basis of an overview of convergence techniques and literature on convergence this paper presents a framework for the assessment of cognitive load during collaboration processes, and strategies to deal with cognitive load in convergence. Evaluation of the framework with experts and with participants in a convergence process provides the grounds for reflection on the use and implications of the framework.     

Business students' and practitioners' ethical decisions over time

This paper compares the ethical decisions and attitudes of business students and practitioners. Recent unpublished data from a national study of over 1600 students are contrasted with information reported previously. Students are found consistently to make less ethical choices than practitioners, and there is some indication that students are making less ethical choices in the 1980s than in the 1960s. In addition, both students and practitioners agree that buyers should beware, view the role of business more narrowly, and find fewer incentives to behave ethically over time. Codes of ethics appear to be less influential than the individual's strong personal value system and one's superiors behaving ethically; support for codes is declining. The paper concludes with observations about the limitations and possibilities for survey research in this area drawing on other studies that used the same instrument utilized for this paper. Some implications for future research are suggested.James R. Glenn, Jr. is Professor of Management in the School of Business at San Francisco State University. His research focus is on the ethical dimensions of decisions made in business, professional and medical organizations. His writing on decision making, research and teaching business ethics has appeared in several periodicals and books. He is currently revisingEthics in Decision Making (John Wiley, 1986) for a second edition.M. Frances Van Loo is Associate Professor of Economic Analysis and Policy, and Business and Public Policy at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley where she is Director of the Public and Nonprofit Management Program. Her research uses a variety of social science disciplines to study business, public, and nonprofit policy issues.     

The American Example in Health Care

Medical provision to British taxpayers under the National Health Service has often been favourably contrasted with the experience of American consumers. Frances Stevens who has worked in the NHS for years suggests from her observation of the American health system that the NHS can learn much from America.