Criticisms of capitalism,budgeting and the double enrolment: Budgetary control rhetoric and social reform in France in the 1930s and 1950s

This article is a contribution to the study of the spread of management innovations, methods and rhetorics. It particularly concerns the influence of ideological and political factors, which have so far mostly escaped in-depth study. In particular, we seek to understand to what extent a critique of society developed by social reformers can be a source of inspiration for managers, leading them to change their practices and experiment with new devices. Relying on the framework of historical change in management practices developed by Boltanski and Chiapello [Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, E. (2005). The new spirit of capitalism. London: Verso (Translation of Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme, Paris: Gallimard, 1999)], we study the specific development of budgetary control in France, examined in the light of the general political and economic history of the 20th century. This framework simultaneously encompasses the dissemination of a new accounting practice, the transformation of capitalist institutions and mo des of regulation in a given period and country, and the programmatic discourses [Miller, P., & Rose, N. (1990). Governing economic life. Economy and Society, 19(1), 1–31] associated with the historical move.     

Geodesic normal distribution on the circle

This paper is concerned with the study of a circular random distribution called geodesic normal distribution recently proposed for general manifolds. This distribution, parameterized by two real numbers associated to some specific location and dispersion concepts, looks like a standard Gaussian on the real line except that the support of this variable is [0, 2π) and that the Euclidean distance is replaced by the geodesic distance on the circle. Some properties are studied and comparisons with the von Mises distribution in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic means and variances are provided. Finally, the problem of estimating the parameters through the maximum likelihood method is investigated and illustrated with some simulations.     

Social Entrepreneurs as Responsible Leaders: ‘Fundación Paraguaya’ and the Case of Martin Burt

A country known for its longstanding struggle with corruption and dubious governments may not be the obvious venue for a socio-economic revolution that is expected to play an important role in the elimination of global poverty. However, Paraguay, an ??island without shores??, as the writer Augusto Roa Bastos once described it, is home to one of the world??s most innovative social enterprises??the Fundación Paraguaya. While its achievements and success are the result of a team effort, its remarkable development can be largely attributed to Martín Burt, the founder and chief executive. We study the case of Fundación Paraguaya??the first and longest-running non-governmental organisation in Paraguay??with two primary research objectives: (1) to analyse the organisation??s pioneering way of solving social problems under difficult socioeconomic circumstances and its increasingly global outreach to eradicate poverty; (2) and to analyse the responsible leadership of Martín Burt.     

Volunteering for heterogeneous tasks

We model the search for volunteers as a war of attrition. Every player is tempted to wait for someone else to volunteer for the tasks. When tasks are not equivalent, it may be optimal to volunteer quickly to perform an easy task. We analyze the trade-off between volunteering for an easy task and taking the risk of having to perform a more strenuous task in order to get the chance of avoiding all tasks. When the cost of waiting is borne by agents until every task has found a volunteer, we show that it may be optimal to volunteer for the difficult task even if an easier task is available, in order to speed up the process and reduce the costs of waiting.     

Market Segmentation, Market Integration, and Tacit Collusion

Moving from market segmentation to market integration (firms cannot discriminate among markets) is shown to have often anticompetitive effects in an infinitely repeated Cournot game. In particular, market integration between two countries leads both of them to experience anticompetitive effects when product markets are similar. The same conclusion holds when trade liberalization is modeled as a decrease in bilateral trade barriers followed by moving from market segmentation to market integration. The analysis also predicts that a less efficient country (like a country in transition) enjoys pro–competitive effects from market integration.     

On the evaluation of power in parliaments and government formation

This paper is devoted to the study of power in Parliaments. We explain how the power of coalitions can be computed after elections. We add to the existing literature by using this analysis to predict what government may emerge from these elections.      

The Significance of Working Time Arrangements Accompanying the Introduction of Teamworking: Evidence from Employees

A study is reported where the introduction of teamworking was accompanied by negotiated changes in working time patterns, involving some employees transferring to a 5‐shift, 8‐hour pattern, others to a 5‐shift, 12‐hour pattern. Employee attitude surveys before and after the changes show those moving to 12‐hour working much more satisfied with both working time and other changes, compared with those remaining on 8‐hour shifts. The creation of extra non‐work days was seen as the major advantage of the longer shifts, which compensated for the harder work regime identified under teamworking and the greater rigidity of the 5‐shift system. The findings underline the potential significance of working hours for employee support for broader changes in working practices. Possible explanations of why the longer shift pattern met with considerable support at one research site, but failed to gain support at a similar site elsewhere, are also explored.