Virtual schools

Virtual schools have already made their appearance. This paper examines the factors which promote or slow the spread of virtual schools. Technological change, economic rationalism, and the suitability of conventional schools for the information age are identified as reasons for the continued growth of virtual schools. Conversely, the identification of an appropriate pedagogy, the lack of required teaching skills, concerns for the reshaping of human values, socialisation, and the continued need for student supervision are seen as reasons why virtual schools will not rapidly overtake conventional ones. It is concluded that virtual schools will continue to increase in the 21st century, and that appropriate planning must be made for their impact.     

Integer goal programming model for the implementation of multiple corporate objectives

The problem of long-range planning and investment project evaluation is complicated by the presence of multiple conflicting goals measured in incommensurable units, indivisibility of alternative projects, and the desire of management to consider mutually exclusive marketing-pricing strategies. The model proposed in this study attempts to allow for these complexities through the use of integer goal programming. It is the hope of the authors that this model will provide management with an additional decision-making tool for implementation of multiple corporate objectives.     

Operating a manufacturing plant in Indonesia

Running foreign plants is becoming more common for U.S. companies, but many executives still have reservations about dealing with developing countries and diverse cultures. This case study shows that with proper planning and a genuine sense of commitment, the result can be mutually rewarding for the U.S. company and for the overseas operation.     

International Executives,Identity Strategies and Mobility in France and China

The strategies of multinational firms increasingly rely in Asia Pacific Region on processes of socialising their employees, who are seeking to develop and reinforce a “global” company culture, without endangering the cultures of local subsidiaries. Specialists have coined the term “cross-cultural management”. A role of “company ambassador” is allocated to a new generation of international executives in Asia whose mission will be to play an effective role as interface between head office its the subsidiaries – and between the subsidiaries themselves – once they have been suitably “impregnated” with the company culture and the particular features of different markets.

The repeated experience of international mobility that executives live through means that the individual may well be living in conflict with previous identities. It is true to say that nobody stays long in an internationally mobile situation without running the risk of there being strong divergence between the domestic and residential worlds, the life of the community and the world of the company. This article has been written as a result of in-depth research into the way executives of a large French oil company built up their identities and as a result of a study examines intercultural learning based on French expatriates' experience in China. We consider how French expatriates experience China and what imaginary underlies their perception. Analysis of daily socialization and interaction processes shows intercultural competence develops along distinct immersion stages: immersion–adjustment, immersion–comprehension, and immersion–integration. Individually, adjustment and comprehension support intercultural practice. The ultimate immersion stage leads to enlightened pragmatism stemming from “nomadic intelligence”. Where a researcher in the social sciences or a business man might have expected to have found an homogenous international elite, international executives building an “international system”, the heterogeneous nature of the identity strategies of international executives give the lie to the myth of the large company as a space for the irreversible assimilation of its members. At an individual level, being an international executive is a unique way of living the experience abroad, or rather, several different ways of experiencing identity strategies linked to the manipulation of one's ethnicity in a context of significant geographical and functional mobility.     

Economic consequences of animal rights programs

Readily available data are used to provide relevant decision making information on the highly subjective issue of animal rights. Two examples of alleged crowding; cattle being finished in concrete lots, and broilers in confined operations were evaluated to determine the impact on producers and consumers from increasing space per animal. It is concluded that similar policy changes, such as doubling floor space, can lead to dramatic differences in economic impact depending on the industry affected. It is shown that economic analysis can provide valuable information in estimating the tradeoffs in moral issues. James R. Simpson is Professor and Livestock Marketing Economist at the Food and Resource Economics Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, U.S.A. He was formerly President and Senior Economist of InterAmerican Research Associates, and Cooperative Advisor of the Cooperative League of U.S.A. He was Scholar-in-Residence at the Rockefeller Foundation, Villa Serbelloni at Bellagio, Italy, 1979 and Visiting Research Professor at Kyoto University, Fall, 1982. His most important publications are: James R. Simpson and Don Farris, The World's Beef Business and Toward a Humanist Consensus on Ethics of International Development, in Morris Storer (ed.), Humanist Ethics. He is also author or co-author of over 100 articles in professional journals and chapters in books on livestock, international development and ethics. Bernard E. Rollin is Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the Colorado State University. His book Animal Rights and Human Morality (Prometheus Books) was selected as Outstanding Academic Book, in Choice Magazine, 1981. Other important publications by him are: Natural and Conventional Meaning: An Examination of the Distinction (Mouton, 1976); Papers published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association; Poetics; Kant-Studien; and Perspectives in Biology and Medicine.     

Patterns of strategic alliances between rival firms

This article describes the results of a research project which examined 171 alliances set up by competing firms in an international context. It presents an empirically-based taxonomy of such alliances constructed on the basis of a set of variables chosen for their demonstrated or assumed influence on the evolution and outcomes of strategic partnerships. Three contrasted types of alliances are identified: quasi-concentration alliances, market penetration alliances and shared supply alliances. They differ according to two fundamental dimensions: their symmetrical or dissymmetrical nature and the way in which they alter competition. Legal structure, often emphasized in previous research on the subject, does not emerge as a strongly discriminating factor. Hypotheses on the likely evolution and outcomes of each type of alliance are derived from the taxonomy.We are grateful to Barbara Gray, Stuart Hart, Aneel Karnani, Will Mitchell, Michel Tenenhaus, and to two anonymous reviewers for their very valuable and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Our research project was funded by Fondation HEC, whose support we gratefully acknowledge.     

Can the Beast be Tamed?: Reflections on John McMurtry's Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market as an Ethical System

My paper responds to certain themes of Professor John McMurtry's recent book, Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market as an Ethical System. Although I am in general sympathy with McMurtry's penetrating critique of conventional market theory and practice, I find Unequal Freedoms ambivalent on the critical question of whether endorsing and enacting the life-value code McMurtry proposes would require only a mitigation of the principles and definitive activities of the competitive market system or whether significant reforms within the system would have to be deep structural ones. It is argued that the second alternative is inescapable. I defend my perspective from the point of view of a philosophical analysis of orthodox or neo-classical theory-construction about the competitive market order. In particular, I examine three fundamental principles of such modelling: the maximization of the satisfaction of self-interest, the unboundedness of consumer desire for material goods, and the distribution of monetized wealth. In order for McMurtry's "civil commons" to survive, the practice of each of these principles would need to be radically modified. However, in doing so, competitive capitalism would lose its essential identity as a socio-economic order.     

Consumption and exchange rate uncertainty: Evidence from selected Asian countries

We set out to assess the effects of exchange rate uncertainty on real consumption in selected Asian countries. Consumption influences business cycles, which in turn shape short-run monetary policy decisions. Hence, understanding factors driving consumption is appealing to policymakers. To date, few studies have analysed the effects of uncertainty on consumption. The available ones generally focus on the long-run effects, in spite of the fact that the short-run persistence and adjustments to equilibrium are equally relevant. Our study takes these limitations seriously by distinguishing the short- and long-run effects of exchange rate uncertainty on consumption. Using a flexible dynamic panel data technique that allows long-run effects to be homogeneous and the short-run effects to be heterogeneous, we find that uncertainty impedes consumption in the long run. In the short run, however, the effects are immaterial. This evidence remains robust to the measure of uncertainty, asymmetric uncertainty, inflation and the global financial crisis of 2008. By decomposing uncertainty into its temporary and permanent components, we find that the latter have a stronger effect on consumption in the long run than the former. Although both components demand policy attention, the evidence suggests that policymakers should be more concerned with permanent uncertainty.