An Ethics Case in Point: MacLine - the commercial value of ethical management

'Small businesses do not have the depth to sustain mistakes and losses in the way that large businesses can. It is the view of the management of MacLine that an ethical approach to business is one of the key factors in ensuring the long term survival of the business.'Dr Yehuda Baruch is Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Organisational Research, London Business School, Sussex Place, Regent's Park, London NW1 4SA; and Mr Mark Lewis is Managing Director of MacLine. Teachers interested in having a package of teaching notes and transparencies relevant to this case may contact Dr Baruch at the above address.     

Union Membership and the Legal and Institutional Environment: Labour Market Policy in Australia and the United Kingdom

This article examines how the political and institutional environment impinges upon unionisation. Changes in policy towards trade unions in two countries are contrasted: the United Kingdom under the Conservative government where the industrial relations legal environment shifted in a direction antithetical to unionism, and Australia under the Labor administration where the union movement was incorporated into the labour policy process through a corporatist, centralised wage-fixing system—the Accord. How these changes in the legal and institutional environment in the two countries affect the propensity to unionise is examined. It is found that in both the United Kingdom and Australia union density has declined from what it otherwise would have been in the absence of these radically different policies. It is argued that the extremes of corporatist centralisation and laissez-faire decentralisation, perhaps paradoxically, make it difficult for unions to increase their membership.     

Administrative theory and administrative systems: A synthesis among diverging fields of inquiry

Taking what is termed an “administrative systems perspective”, this paper describes the interrelationships which exist among 5 fields of inquiry, traditionally treated separately in the literature on administration and management: organizational design, organizational strategy, organizational values, motivation and management control. Several areas of interaction are discussed: (1) among strategy formulation, motivation, and organizational design, (2) among organizational values, motivation, and the management control process, (3) between management control and organizational design, and (4) between management control and strategy.     

Public sector consumer problems: A reply to the responses

In this paper, the author replies to Bish, McKean, Offe, Stevens, and Bull, concerning his original paper Consumer Problems in the Public Sector, JCP, 1, 1977/3. The reply elaborates on the concepts of tax-price, political and organizational failures, and the relationships of these failure modes to public sector consumer problems. The present paper also develops a more explicit classification of public sector consumers, and it relates the discussion of public sector consumer problems to branches of the literature concerned with fiscal illusion and consumption costs.

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Verbraucherprobleme im Bereich öffentlicher Leistungen: Eine Antwort auf die Stellungnahmen von Bish, McKean, Offe, Stevens und Bull

Zusammenfassung Die Antwort klärt und verteidigt die Verwendung des Steuer-Preis-Konzepts bei der Ableitung von Unzulänglichkeiten einerseits im Bereich der politischen Willensbildung und andererseits im Bereich der Bürokratie, aus denen im ersten Beitrag des Autors seine Systematik von Verbraucherproblemen bei öffentlichen Leistungen abgeleitet wurde. Die Antwort arbeitet schärfer die Unterschiede und Wechselbeziehungen zwischen den beiden Arten von Unzulänglichkeiten und ihre Beziehungen zu einzelnen Verbraucherproblemen heraus. Darüber hinaus entwickelt sie eine Klassifikation von Verbrauchern öffentlicher Leistungen, behandelt die Unterschiede von Verbraucherproblemen und allgemein gesellschaftlichen Problemen und diskutiert kurz, durch welche institutionellen Reformen öffentliche Anlaufstellen für Verbraucherprobleme geschaffen werden können. Schließlich zeigt die Stellungnahme einige Linien für die Weiterentwicklung der Forschung im Bereich von Verbraucherproblemen bei öffentlichen Leistungen auf.

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Dennis R. Young is an Associate Professor at the W. Averell Harriman College for Urban and Policy Sciences, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 11794, U.S.A. He is grateful to Professor John Russell of the Germanic and Slavic Languages Department at Stony Brook, for his translation of Hans Peter Bull's comments from German to English, and to Professor Richard Silkman of the Harriman College at Stony Brook for his suggestions on this reply.     

Effects of household size and composition on consumption in rural households in Matabeleland South,Zimbabwe

This study, using a survey of rural households in Zimbabwe in 1990/91, focuses on the effects of changing household composition on patterns of expenditure and provides estimates of the ‘cost of a child’ as well as of family members in other age groups. In addition to age differences in the size and direction of responses to changing family composition, the paper highlights significant differences across product groups. These effects are more muted in larger households.     

Is hard work the key to success? A socioeconomic analysis of immigrant enterprise

This study examines the personal backgrounds, business objectives, modes of operation, and degrees of success of Korean greengrocers and Hispanic grocery store owners in the New York metropolitan area. In so doing, the study seeks to uncover factors that may condition differential business performance among all groups of imigrant entrepreneurs, including Koreans and Hispanics. A survey of 40 Korean and 72 Hispanic businesspersons revealed that both groups tended to work equally hard in terms of the number of hours worked in the business per week. However, the Korean greengrocers were found to be more successful in terms of the profitability and cash flow generated by their stores. The primary reason for this difference appeared to be the fact that Korean business practices were guided mainly by the profit motive, while those of Hispanics were influenced by such nonmonetary concerns as independence and personal satisfaction. These findings led the authors to conclude that there are alternative measures of material “success” and that the equally strong efforts of both groups of immigrant entrepreneurs have resulted in two different, but important kinds of success. Certain policy implications of this conclusion could lead to further immigrant participation in small business. This study was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (DAR-8011625).     

Off-farm labour allocation decisions in small-scale rural households in Zimbabwe

The double hurdle model is used to analyse the off‐farm labour decisions of small‐scale agricultural household members in the Shamva District of Zimbabwe. The approach permits the joint modelling of the decision to participate in the labour market and the decision regarding the amount of time allocated to work. Results indicate that a number of variables (notably, gender, education and assets) indeed have effects which are qualitatively and quantitatively different in terms of participation and hours worked. Overall, the empirical analysis confirms the importance of individual characteristics (such as gender and education) and household/farm characteristics (e.g. land area accessible to the household, productive assets, remittances and the agricultural terms of trade) in influencing the labour market decisions of rural household members.     

A SYSTEM APPROACH TO MODELLING SUPPLY EQUATIONS IN AGRICULTURE

A multinomial logit model is a useful approach in the study of the allocation of a fixed resource between alternative uses. Here a geometric mean form of the system is presented and a number of theoretical and empirical issues are explored. In particular, its performance is compared with the use of double logarithmic equations estimated separately. As an illustration of the methodology, an allocation model of UK cereals area is specified and estimated in both static and dynamic forms.