INTRODUCING MARKET FORCES INTO MANAGERIAL DECISION-MAKING IN CHINESE INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES

This paper focuses on the fundamental changes in the management of state enterprises that are taking place in China. Specifically, we discuss the expansion of enterprise autonomy and changes in the managerial decision-making structure. The genesis of the reform programme is traced back to inefficiencies caused by the over-centralized state planning system which reduced enterprise management to little more than an administrative function dominated by the Party secretary. As a consequence, managerial and technical cadres became demoralized and the growth of staff functions such as accounting, marketing and personnel management was stunted. From a series of experiments launched in 1978 has grown the realization that tinkering around with the state planning apparatus is insufficient to stimulate entrepreneurship and vigorous industrial expansion. Accordingly, reform has been launched on a broad front both within the state apparatus, in an endeavour to roll back external constraints on enterprise, and within the enterprise itself, by seeking to provide powerful incentives both to managerial cadres and workers through a system stressing individual responsibility and rewards commensurate with results. A number of severe constraints on the reform programme are analysed, in particular, the changing balance of power within the enterprise between the factory director, the Party secretary, the workers’congress and the trade union. Contradictions exist within the new structure of decision-making but, given a period of political stability and sustained economic growth, there should be sufficient surplus to mollify discontent and stifle those who refuse to give up their belief in the virtues of having‘politics in command’of the industrial enterprise.     

A curtailed test for the shape parameter of the Weibull distribution

Summary A procedure is proposed in this paper for testing the shape parameter, of the Weibull distribution. The test statistic which is based on the extremal quotient, possesses a monotone property which makes it possible for rejection earlier than the last planned observation of the null hypothesis,H ₀: =₀ when the alternative hypothesis isH _a: <₀ and early acceptance ofH ₀ whenH _a: >₀. The test being scale-free, does not require the scale parameter to be known.     

The impact of the WARN Act on firm value

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act of 1989 mandated that at least 60 days advance notice be given to employees. Critics argued that its passage would decrease managerial flexibility in closing plants, subsequently reducing firm values. This study addresses this issue by examining the stock market's reaction to announcements leading to the eventual enactment of the WARN legislation. We find evidence indicating negative effects of the legislation on stock returns of small firms.     

江西大型企业资本运作模式的现状及其改进对策研究

资本运作是一种有效配置资源、实现企业资本增殖的活动,其核心是产权制度创新。本文对江西大型企业资本运作模式的现状进行了分析,进而提出了一系列的合理的改进对策,以期提高起运作绩效。     

Anchor stores

Planned shopping malls usually have one or more department (anchor) stores and multiple specialized retailers selling substitutable commodities in each commodity category. If consumers know their taste for the anchor's commodity and its price, but learn about a retailer's commodity only by costly search, collocation may benefit both store types. Intra-mall competition reduces markups, but anchors guarantee a minimum surplus from search. A mall with many retailers makes finding a suitable specialized commodity highly probable. For some parameters, additional consumer search dominates the loss in retail markups, so a profit-maximizing land developer would rent mall space to both store types.     

Does subsidised temporary employment get the unemployed back to work? Aneconometric analysis of two different schemes

Subsidised employment is an important tool of active labour market policies to improve the reemployment chances of the unemployed. Using unusually informative individual data from administrative records, we investigate the effects of two different schemes of subsidised temporary employment implemented in Switzerland: non-profit employment programmes (EP) and a subsidy for temporary jobs (TEMP) in private and public firms. Econometric matching methods show that TEMP is more successful than EP in getting the unemployed back to work. Compared to not participating in any programme, EP and TEMP are ineffective for unemployed who find jobs easily anyway or have a short unemployment spell. For potential and actual long-term unemployed, both programmes may have positive effects, but the effect of TEMP is larger.     

Inferences about the parameters of a time series model with changing variance

Summary We consider the problem of making inferences about the parameters of a time series model when there is the possibility of a discrete variance change at an unknown time point. For this we obtain the posterior distributions of the parameters and of the variance ratio.     

DISSIMILAR STRUCTURAL AND CONTROL PROFILES OF EDUCATIONAL AND TECHNICAL ORGANIZATIONS[1]

This article contrasts the characteristic structural and control profiles of educational organizations with those of technical organizations. A group of primary and secondary schools and the operating units of an industrial firm differed both in structural variables and in three activities of control: buffering, smoothing, and forecasting. the article suggests that educational organizations emphasize modes of control that operate on components peripheral rather than central to the organization's technical core.