Rezensionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The curse of bureaucratisation or the blessings of professionalisation? Nurses’ engaged adoption of quality management in hybrid managerial positions

The paper concerns how new quality management in the Danish hospital sector has created new career and professionalisation opportunities for nurses. While the well-known dualism between the logics of professionalism and managerialism is challenged in the literature, not much is known about how engagement in the tighter steering of practice may converge with professional identities and meaningfulness in work. The paper applies a Bourdieusian and ethnographic approach to the examination of nurses’ enthusiastic involvement in quality management as they take up hybrid managerial positions in an acute care department. The findings demonstrate the importance of the material and symbolic value of scientific-bureaucratic knowledge in legitimizing quality management, achieving meaningfulness in practice and bolstering the professional role of nurses.     

An action programme for land-locked LDCs

High on the agenda of the UNCTAD III Conference is the problem of least developed countries. It is realised that these countries need special cooperative action to improve their chances of overcoming the worst handicaps of poverty stabilised by stagnation. The hard-core cases within the group of least developed countries are the land-locked countries.     

Monopsony in the Labor Market,Minimum Wages and the Time Horizon: Some Unresolved Issues

This article discusses development of optimal solutions for monopsony in the labour market for the long run (when labour and capital are both flexible). It is shown that binding minimum wages up to a certain degree pushes the monopsonists to choose a high capital intensity of production, just as high as or even higher than that chosen when there is no regulation for minimum wages. Thereby, we demonstrate the existence of re-switching effects in the tradition of Piero Sraffa. The second part of the paper recalculates and analyzes earlier results by making use of the rather general constant elasticity of substitution production function. Based on a numerical solution for optimal monopsony under different regimes (no minimum wage, minimum wages of different values, etc.), we formulate a two-period game between the government and the monopsonistic firm (‘minimum wage game’). Finally, we analyze the relationship between the elasticity of substitution on the one hand and likely levels of employment on the other hand, after introduction of minimum wages.     

Launching a world-class joint venture

More than 5,000 joint ventures, and many more contractual alliances, have been launched worldwide in the past five years. Companies are realizing that JVs and alliances can be lucrative vehicles for developing new products, moving into new markets, and increasing revenues. The problem is, the success rate for JVs and alliances is on a par with that for mergers and acquisitions--which is to say not very good. The authors, all McKinsey consultants, argue that JV success remains elusive for most companies because they don't pay enough attention to launch planning and execution. Most companies are highly disciplined about integrating the companies they target through M&A, but they rarely commit sufficient resources to launching similarly sized joint ventures or alliances. As a result, the parent companies experience strategic conflicts, governance gridlock, and missed operational synergies. Often, they walk away from the deal. The launch phase begins with the parent companies' signing of a memorandum of understanding and continues through the first 100 days of the JV or alliance's operation. During this period, it's critical for the parents to convene a team dedicated to exposing inherent tensions early. Specifically, the launch team must tackle four basic challenges. First, build and maintain strategic alignment across the separate corporate entities, each of which has its own goals, market pressures, and shareholders. Second, create a shared governance system for the two parent companies. Third, manage the economic interdependencies between the corporate parents and the JV. And fourth, build a cohesive, high-performing organization (the JV or alliance)--not a simple task, since most managers come from, will want to return to, and may even hold simultaneous positions in the parent companies. Using real-world examples, the authors offer their suggestions for meeting these challenges.