SME Competitive Strategy and Location Behavior: An Exploratory Study of High-Technology Manufacturing

Forty-four Scottish small and medium-sized high-technology manufacturing firms were surveyed regarding their technology strategies and the impact of regional- and site-specific infrastructure requirements on their location behavior. An empirically derived typology of technology content for high-technology firms was developed via cluster analysis and utilized, together with selected technology and manufacturing strategy variables, to investigate whether significant linkages existed between these variables and firms' related location decisions. Results suggest that location decisions are directly correlated to a firm's competitive strategy and that they should actually be considered a dynamic dimension of strategy rather than a static one-time choice.     

Inequality and Economic Growth: A Global View Based on Measures of Pay

This paper discusses two issues in the relationship betweeninequality and economic growth: the data and the econometrics.We first review the income inequality data set of Deiningerand Squire (D&S), which, we argue, fails to provide eitheradequate or accurate coverage, whether through time or acrosscountries. We then introduce our own measures of the inequalityof manufacturing pay, based on UNIDO's Industrial Statistics.These provide indicators of pay inequality that are more stable,more reliable and in our view also more comparable across countries,than the D&S data. Turning to the fabled "Kuznets" relationship between inequalityand economic development, we diagnose several common econometricproblems in the literature, including measurement error andomitted variable bias. By taking steps to account for theseproblems, and by introducing a more complete panel data setbased on pay inequalities, we seek more reliable inferencesconcerning the relationship between inequality, national incomeand economic growth. We find evidence that generally supportsKuznets' specification for industrializing countries: pay inequalitytends to decline as per capita income increases, though withsome tendency for the relationship to curve up for the richestcountries. After 1981 two findings emerge. First, per capitaGDP growth slowed dramatically in most countries, increasinginequality along the augmented Kuznets curve. Second, thereis a global and macroeconomic effect that produces rising inequalityin our data, independent of GDP or its changes. The timing ofthis effect suggests a link to the high real interest ratesand global debt crisis of the period beginning in 1982. (JELC23, D31, J31, O11)     

ESTIMATING THE INEQUALITY OF HOUSEHOLD INCOMES: A STATISTICAL APPROACH TO THE CREATION OF A DENSE AND CONSISTENT GLOBAL DATA SET

The deficiencies of the Deininger and Squire data set on household income inequality are well known to include sparse coverage, problematic measurements, and the combination of diverse data types into a single data set. Yet many studies have relied on this data due to the lack of available alternatives. In this paper we show how the UTIP-UNIDO measures of manufacturing pay inequality can be used, with other information, to estimate measures of household income inequality. We take advantage of the systematic relationship between the UTIP-UNIDO estimates and those of Deininger and Squire. The residuals from this exercise provide a map to problematic observations in the Deininger and Squire data, and the estimated coefficients provide a way to construct a new panel data set of estimated household income inequality. This new data set provides comparable and consistent measurements across space and through time.     

没有心肝的社会

在美国这样的“丰裕社会”中,贫困问题不仅仍未得到解决,而且丰裕本身就演化成贫穷的社会和政治条件。在过去的岁月中,通过自己的政治参与,富人们使国家实行了有利于自己的经济政策。同时,他们对穷人的境遇要么漠然置之,要么就用各种方式将贫富分化的状况合理化。作者认为,要解决贫困问题就必须依靠穷人自身的政治觉醒,穷人应该更积极地参与政治,通过选票改善自身状况。     

Nowcasting with payments system data

We consider the potential usefulness of a large set of electronic payments data, comprising the values and numbers of both debit card transactions and cheques that clear through the banking system, for the problem of reducing the current-period forecast (‘nowcast’) loss for (the growth rates of) GDP and retail sales. The payments system variables capture a broad range of spending activity and are available on a very timely basis, making them suitable current indicators. We generate nowcasts of GDP and retail sales growth for a given month on seven different dates, over a period of two and a half months preceding the first official releases, which is the period over which nowcasts would be of interest. We find statistically significant evidence that payments system data can reduce the nowcast error for both GDP and retail sales growth. Both debit transaction and cheque clearance data are of value in reducing nowcast losses for GDP growth, although the latter are of little or no value when debit data are also included. For retail sales, cheque data appear to produce no further nowcast loss reductions, regardless of whether or not debit transactions are included in the nowcasting model.     

Matching structure and strategy: Towards a market orientation in health care

The introduction of an ‘internal’ or ‘managed’ market mechanism into the National Health Service required fundamental structural reorganisation, involving the separation of purchaser and provider functions. While a degree of structural change has occurred among the emergent purchasing organisations subsequent to the initial reforms, there is a lack of corresponding evidence of ongoing structural change in acute provider units. Despite the existence of a direct relationship between organisational structure and strategy, the extent of change in the organisational structure of hospitals is questionable. Indeed at the macro level current acute hospital structures, that is NHS Trusts, are remarkably similar to ‘pre-reform’ structures, despite the unsuitability of these structures for the market orientation required by the internal market. Such prevalence arguably reflects the marginal effect that current managerial structures have had on those delivering services and the predominance of the medical hierarchies. Specifically, those responsible for the marketing of hospital services in current structures are not directly linked to those who deliver the service, in spite of the introduction of clinical directorate structures. Part of a broader study of the market behaviour of acute NHS Trusts in Scotland, this paper explores the organisational avenues open to health care providers to overcome this separation in the pursuit of market-led service delivery and concomitant market orientation.     

Decision rules used by male and female business students in making ethical value judgments: Another look

This study was conducted to corroborate findings that females invoke a decision rule that is significantly different from that of their male counterparts when making ethical value judgements. In addition, the study examines whether the same decision rule is used by men and women for all types of ethical situations. The results show that males and females use different decision rules when making ethical evaluations, although there are types of situations where there are no significant differences in decision rules used by men and women. The results do not suggest that any one particular decision rule is used by the majority of either males or females in different types of ethical judgements. There is a greater diversity in decision rules used by females than by males.Sharon Galbraith, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University, Seattle, Washington. She teaches Marketing and does research in the areas of consumer information processing, pedagogy, and business ethics.Harriet Stephenson, Ph.D., Professor of Management in the Albers School of Business and Economics, is Director of The Entrepreneurship Center at Seattle University. She teaches Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management and Business Policy and Organization and does research in areas of business ethics and entrepreneurship, and marketing for small business.This study deals only with the decision processes used in evaluating acceptability or unacceptability of certain actions. This is a sample question from the questionnaire.     

Designing the innovating organization

The innovating organization described is one that recognizes and formalizes the roles, processes, rewards, and people practices that naturally lead to innovations. The point we have emphasized throughout this article is that the organization that purposely designs these roles and processes is more likely to generate innovations than is an organization that doesn't plan for this function. Such a purposely designed organization is needed to overcome the obstacles to innovation. Because innovation is destructive to many established groups, it will be resisted. Innovation is contrary to operations and will be ignored. These and other obstacles are more likely to be overcome if the organization is designed specifically to innovate.Managers have tried to overcome these obstacles by creating venture groups, by hiring some entrepreneurs, by creating “breakthrough funds,” or by offering special incentives. These are good policies but by themselves will not accomplish the goal. Figure 1 conveyed the message that a consistent set of policies concerning structure, process, rewards, and people are needed. The innovating organization is illustrated in Figure 7. It is the combination of idea people, reservations in which they can operate, sponsors to supervise them, funding for their ideas, and rewards for their success that increase the odds in favor of innovation. Simply implementing one or two of these practices will result in failure and will only give people the impression that such practices do not work. A consistent combination of such practices will create an innovating organization that will work.