Urgency of trade reform over trade liberalisation

The GATT system has in recent years revealed a number of dangerous weaknesses. Therefore there is reason for concern not only with the further liberalisation of trade within the accepted framework of GATT rules but with a reform of the rules as well.     

The application of a Markov Chain in educational planning

Mathematical models can assist educators in the preparation of their educational plans and their potential in this regard is being increasingly realized. As a result, models have found application at all levels at which planning is conducted.This paper examines the potential of one model—the Markov Chain—which is capable of predicting enrolments for an education system.The model is applied to the New South Wales State Government education system between 1947 and 1961 and the projected enrolments compared to the actual enrolments in those years.Some success is achieved but it appears as if the data rather than the model are responsible for this. The limitations of the Markov Chain approach are discussed and present research and directions listed.     

Learning and product entry: How diversification patterns differ over firm age and knowledge domains in U.S. generic drug industry

This study uses learning theory to show how knowledge domains affect product extension decisions and how these product decisions change as firms age. Faced with the choice of new product‐markets, a firm might decide to introduce a similar product, by leveraging existing firm knowledge, or to experiment with a less familiar product, which requires new knowledge. Using data on new drug introductions in the US generic pharmaceutical industry, the analyses showed clear support for heterogeneous product‐market entry patterns across knowledge domains as the firm ages. Across time, the form of learning shifts from exploration to exploitation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Practices and Practicalities In Human Resource Management1

A wide-ranging research project covering change and its implementation in 27 companies provides the opportunity for the authors of this article to reassess the meaning and significance of HRM. They suggest that ‘it is too simple to dismiss HRM as “old wine in new bottles”.’ Rather, they find important changes taking place. But the true significance of HRM, they suggest, lies not in the fact that its practice actually does resolve underlying tensions but rather in its capacity to ‘manage’ these by ‘reducing, suppressing and glossing’ them. HRM itself is an outcome of the tensions in the employment relationship and, perhaps not surprisingly therefore, it continues to express them. the article ends with suggestions for future research.     

Unfinished Business: The Persistence of Child Labor in the US

Among historians it has become customary to acknowledge that children have always worked. That is, before industrialization children worked, but their work was not deemed a social problem. With industrialization, however, child labor came to be condemned as morally repugnant, economically foolhardy, and socially destructive. Reform efforts were mobilized and, after protracted struggle, children were effectively dispelled from the mines, mills, and factories. Problem solved-or at least we wished to think so. Unfortunately, the US accommodation with child labor was incomplete, and so, child labor persists in pockets of American society. In recent years there has been a growing recognition that many children work, and do so at very young ages. Not only have children always worked, but they continue to do so today.This essay assesses residual child labor problems in the US today. It asks why, when the US made its accommodation to child labor in mines, mills, and factories, we failed to adequately address child labor in other sectors, thus paving the way for continued problems in agriculture, street trades, sweatshops, and elsewhere in our economy.     

Organising the profession: A theoretical and historical examination of the development of the major accountancy bodies in the U.K.

The paper is concerned with the organisation of the accountancy profession in the U.K. In the first part a theoretical framework for understanding the emergence, development and role of accountancy bodies is advanced. By including a consideration of professionalisation as well as an examination of the institutions of the market and the state, this framework provides a perspective for understanding professional associations as political bodies developed to defend the interests and preserve the scarcity of their members' labour. In the second part of the paper the history of the professional bodies is traced, focusing upon competition between the major associations as well as the economic and political contexts of their emergence, merger and failed integration. In conclusion, some speculations upon the future prospects of these bodies are entertained.     

The use of co-nomination to identify expert participants for Technology Foresight

The United Kingdom has been carrying out a major exercise in the field of Technology Foresight, involving fifteen panels engaged in wide consultation about the future of their areas. The objectives of the Programme are to help set priorities for publicly funded science and technology and to create new working partnerships between science and industry. The paper describes the process by which members of the panels, and those whom they subsequently consulted, were identified. A survey-based technique known as co-nomination was employed, whereby respondents were asked to identify suitable participants and at the same time to profile their own expertise. The process was repeated with those nominated. The patterns of expertise thus revealed are themselves of interest and are used to construct a map of the inter-relationship between the fields covered by the panels.