Action Teams That Work

A growing awareness of workplace hazards and identification of airborne contaminants, coupled with a changing safety and health regulatory environment, created an unexpected demand for new and innovative respirators in the early 1980s. 3M's Occupational Health and Environmental Safety Division broke new ground by taking the team concept further than ever before in the company. The division's Action Teams successfully designed, built and introduced products in less than half the time it would have taken previously. Robert Hershock, Charles Cowman and Douglas Peters describe how 3M learned important lessons about team selection, training, performance and motivation, the importance of project sponsors, and the role of middle management.     

Further Ambiguity When Performance Is Measured by the Security Market Line

This paper employs the optimality conditions for expected utility and mean-variance portfolio problems to examine the ambiguities associated with the security market line criterion both at a point in time and through time. At a point in time, we show that the security market line criterion can be irrelevant, even in meanvariance economies. In a multiperiod setting, we show that the analysis of performance based on portfolio choice is inconsistent with the analysis based on return generating models. Empirical work suggests that the inconsistency can lead to dramatically different estimates of a security's required return.     

Developing Countries' Changing Participation in World Trade

Recent years have seen substantial reductions in trade policyand other barriers inhibiting developing country participationin world trade. Lower barriers have contributed to a dramaticshift in the pattern of developing country trade—awayfrom dependence on commodity exports to much greater relianceon manufactures and services. In addition, exports to otherdeveloping countries have become much more important. Thesechanges have profound implications for the role played by developingcountries in the world economy and trade system.      

PROBLEMS OF AGRICULTURAL EXTERNALITIES: A CONCEPTUAL MODEL WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH

Using a bargaining model the interaction between agriculture and the environment is explored. Application of the model to nitrogen pollution and management agreements directs attention to the research needs for achieving more rational environmental management     

The Politics of Housing Unmasked

Proposed economic reforms often neglect to take into account the interests of groups which have benefitted from establishing or maintaining the status quo. Martin Ricketts, Reader in Political Economy at the independent University of Buckingham, assesses the political pressures that have produced regulation of the housing market, and suggests reform which accommodates realistic expectations of resistance from local politicians and subsidised tenants.     

在衰退中成长

如今,全球都笼罩在经济衰退之中.如果下一个就要轮到贵公司,你该怎么办?当然你要尽力保证企业财务的稳定.但更重要的是,你还必须了解公司在衰退结束后的目标设计.如果你知道企业的发展方向和如何实现这一目标,那么衰退时期是改善公司相对战略地位的好时机.