New development: Managing and accounting for sustainable development across generations in public services—and call for papers

Social and environmental justice across generations is a fundamental attribute of sustainable development. In this article, which is also a call for papers for a future theme in Public Money & Management (PMM), we develop our case for further research on how governments and public service organizations seek to address sustainable development in their decision-making processes. We believe that accounting for social and environmental aspects is an underdeveloped area of research and practice that is worthy of further critical enquiry. We therefore call on researchers and practitioners to submit their research to a themed issue of PMM on managing and accounting for sustainable development in public services.     

Measuring regional competitiveness in oilseeds production and processing in Nigeria: a spatial equilibrium modelling approach

The four main resource regions of Nigeria, namely, the East, Middle‐belt, West and North, differ in their endowments in the production and processing of oilseeds. The Federal Government has allocated resources to the oilseeds sub‐sector across the regions without apparent rational basis. Consequently, huge imports of oilseed products, high and unaffordable oilseed product prices, and the establishment of new oil mills in the face of frequent shutdowns and chronic under‐utilisation of existing mills, still characterise the sector. In this paper, a spatial equilibrium model of the Nigerian oilseeds economy is used to determine the optimal location and number of mills across the regions, and to establish regional competitiveness in aid of the planning and development of the oilseeds sub‐sector. In the model, production (farming and milling) activities are tied to arable land and milling capacity constraints. The shadow prices of the arable land and milling capacities are used as a measure of competitiveness. Results indicate that, because of its central location, the Middle‐belt is the most competitive in oilseeds production at a shadow value of N 18,400 per hectare of cultivated land, followed by the North, West and East regions. However, the East is the most competitive in oilseeds milling, followed by the West, due to their close proximity to ports of export. These results suggest that transport cost is the main determinant of the viability of oilseeds production and milling in Nigeria.     

Children Crying at Birthday Parties. Why?

We consider the problem of dividing a non-homogeneous one-dimensional continuum whose endpoints are topologically identified. Examples are the division of a birthday cake, the partition of a circular market, the assignment of sentry duty or medical call. We study the existence of rules satisfying requirements of efficiency, fairness (no-envy), and immunity to misrepresentation of preferences (strategy-proofness). This work, supported by NSF under grant SES. 0214691, was presented at Laval University, at the May 2004 Israeli-Turkish Conference on Economic Design at Bilgi University, at the July 2004 Meeting of the Society for Economic Design at the University of Mallorca, and at the July 2004 Seventh International Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare at Osaka University. I thank Julius Barbanel, Steven Brams, Youngsub Chun, Bettina Klaus, Toyotaka Sakai, and Chun-Hsien Yeh for their comments.     

A retrospective and prospective analysis of HRM research in Chinese firms: Implications and directions for future study

Based on an extensive review and analysis of 182 articles published in the field of human resource management that focus on China since its economic reform, this article discusses the major reasons for the growth in this area of research. We identify five major categories spanning research and practice, ownership type, and research method. Further, we examine issues and deficiencies in the research literature. Based on our analysis of each research category, we present a substantial series of research questions and implications for future research on HRM in China. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

On the existence of consistent rules to adjudicate conflicting claims: a constructive geometric approach

For the problem of adjudicating conflicting claims, a rule is consistent if the choice it makes for each problem is always in agreement with the choice it makes for each “reduced problem” obtained by imagining that some claimants leave with their awards and reassessing the situation from the viewpoint of the remaining claimants. We develop a general technique to determine whether a given two-claimant rule admits a consistent extension to general populations, and to identify this extension if it exists. We apply the technique to a succession of examples. I gratefully acknowledge support from NSF under grant SBR-9731431 and SES 0214691, and the comments of Carmen Bevia, Rodrigo Velez, Chun-Hsien Yeh, and a referee.     

Equity in exchange economies

Let ψ be a “fair” choice correspondence, i.e., ψ associates to every economy in some initial position a set of final allocations at which the gains from trade have been fairly distributed. We propose to declare equitable any final allocation which is invariant under arbitrary permutations among the agents of the components of the initial allocation, followed by the operation of ψ. We also formulate a series of other criteria patterned on this model, and we investigate the existence of allocations satisfying these criteria for several natural choices of ψ.     

A maturity framework for autonomous solutions in manufacturing firms: The interplay of technology,ecosystem, and business model

Significant advancements within the fields of digitalization, electrification, and automation have enabled the development, testing, and implementation of increasingly advanced autonomous solutions. Current examples of industrial automation promise significant economic and sustainability-oriented benefits for industrial customers. Yet, implemented autonomous solutions have rarely advanced beyond ‘islands of autonomy’. Although enabling initial improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of operations, they have not led to the systemic process improvements that fully integrated site-wide solutions can achieve. It is becoming increasingly clear that the major challenges in this shift extend beyond technology to focus on business transformation and ecosystem relationships. Yet, extant research offers few insights into these domains. There is a need to develop a business-focused maturity framework for autonomous solutions to contribute to a predominantly technical discourse and support equipment actors and their wider ecosystems in commercializing autonomous solutions. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how industrial equipment manufacturers can align the development of technology, business models and ecosystem relationships for the advancement of autonomous solutions. We build on case studies that include 32 interviews from four industrial equipment manufacturers and their extended ecosystems of customers and partners. We capture our findings in a three-level maturity framework for industrial autonomous solutions. This framework unwraps the attributes of each level from the perspectives of technical system development, ecosystem configuration, and business model design and is complemented by three overarching principles for the successful commercialization of autonomous solutions.