The gear legacy: did gear fail or move South Africa forward in development?

This article describes the economic and development policy legacy of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) programme. It considers the arguments for and against Gear, and attempts to answer the question whether or not the programme has moved us forward in development. The economic legacy is described as dismal development outcomes but excellent macroeconomic policy outcomes. The policy legacy is described as continuing with Gear in some respects, but also incorporating a shift in development strategy that takes into account critique of Gear from the left and proposes a more active and direct role for the state in employment creation. This shift is seen as positive because the key challenge in the post‐Gear period is how to use the state more effectively to create jobs and provide income for the poor. The overview of the arguments for and against Gear finds most of the former to be thin. Moreover, it highlights conceptual flaws in the strategy that explain why it failed to produce the promised employment creation and poverty reduction by the end of the programming period (1996–2000). However, there is no clear answer to the question of whether or not Gear has failed – would an alternative policy have produced better outcomes in the period? Also, Gear has improved the private investment climate and produced better resource and institutional conditions for government to play a more active role in pushing future development. Whichever way it is argued, a key point that emerges is that development prospects will remain gloomy if the government reverts back to the strategy of relying largely on the private sector to reduce poverty, and fails to do more itself via effective income support programmes for the poor.     

The role of inflation uncertainty in Germany: Friedman's hypothesis revisited

The paper reconsiders Friedman's (1977) proposition that increased inflation uncertainty may have adverse real effects for the German case. A proxy for the unobservable uncertainty variable is obtained from the Kalman-filtering estimation of a time-varying parameter model of inflation. This measure is introduced into an output equation that also includes anticipated and unanticipated inflation, thus allowing tests of both the Friedman and the Macro Rational Expectations hypotheses. The empirical evidence does not provide strong support for Friedman's view. Unanticipated inflation, on the other hand, seems to play a significant role for German output growth in the short run.     

Using human resource management to enhance competitiveness: Lessons from four excellent companies

Recent research has emphasized the strategic focus that human resource management must have in order for an organization to fully utilize its human resources in a competitive market. However, few empirical studies have been done to date regarding how human resource planning should be linked to strategy. An extensive in-depth study of four large, complex, and very successful companies supports the widespread belief that human resource management can be a powerful tool to enhance competitiveness when policies and practices are logically driven by a firm's strategy and by the key environmental factors it faces. This article describes that study and looks at how the areas of selection, appraisal, reward, and development are handled by these firms. Based on both the specific policies and the actual practices as perceived by middle managers (those that implement the policies), the article presents a contingency framework which offers guidelines as to how certain HRM practices should be implemented to gain competitive advantage.