Enthusiastic Embrace or Critical Reception? The German HRM Debate

This paper discusses the reception of human resource management (HRM) in Germany. A review of the German HRM debate shows that this is dominated by business administration academics specializing in this field. In the past, these scholars as well as practitioners have generally embraced the techniques as well as the ideology of HRM. This finding can be explained by a relatively low emphasis on empirical research, a neglect of industrial relations issues, and a strong impact of theories and concepts developed in the USA. Today, however, there appears to be a change towards a more critical appreciation of the US HRM model and a more positive assessment of the German HRM model.     

Analyzing economic market interactions as conflicts: New concepts to assess market-based policy instruments

Complementing market-based policy instruments with conflict analysis approaches provides a wider understanding of market situations and allows to identify minimal requirements regarding needs, power and conflict dynamics. If these are not met, a market cannot be successfully introduced or a liberalization process implemented. Conflict analysis offers a language better suited to the concerns of people negatively affected by new markets. Applying this language helps to counterbalance the predominance of economic concepts. This fosters mutual understanding and enhances the prospect for successful implementation of market-based policies. We illustrate the potential of conflict analysis with examples from water privatization and labeling.     

China's new law on enterprise bankruptcy: a story with a happy end?

The Chinese National People's Congress has recently promulgated a new law on enterprise bankruptcy, which will come into force in June 2007. For the first time, the law intends to cover generally both private and state‐owned enterprises (SOEs). The law does widely comply with accepted international standards and provisions found in modern insolvency codes of other jurisdictions. However, it also contains several gaps, blurred provisions and legislative shortcomings, which have to be addressed promptly in order to assure a smooth implementation of the new law. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Impact of Personal Taxes on the Firm's Weighted Average Cost of Capital and Investment Behaviour: A Simplified Approach Using the Dempsey Discounted Dividends Model

The discounted dividends model advanced by Dempsey (1996) is extended to provide a weighted average cost of capital (WACC) assessment of investment opportunities with irregular cash flows. Thereafter, the framework is extended to an assessment of the implications of government tax policy for the firm's investment behaviour. The developed framework is consistent with the empirical evidence of Poterba and Summers (1985) which — over the period of UK tax history 1950–1983 encompassing four major tax on equity reforms — observes how the related dividend and investment politics of UK firms appear to be influenced by the level of dividend taxes.     

Demokratische Internet-Öffentlichkeit? Ein Vergleich der öffentlichen Kommunikation im Internet und in den Printmedien am Beispiel der Humangenomforschung

The importance of the internet has increased significantly in recent years. The easy access of this »new« medium sparked many hopes for a democratization of the public sphere and of public debate: Many authors argued that the internet will make actors and interpretations of topics visible to those parts of the broader public who are usually marginalized in »old« mass media. In an empirical analysis, we compared print media coverage and internet communication to assess these claims. For the case of human genome research — i.e. a bioscientific topic that reseived extensive media attention in Germany —, we analyzed which actors were given public standing and which frames came to the fore. In contrast to the claims mentioned above, our findings indicate that the debate in the internet does not differ to a significant extent from the offline debate in print media. We could not find a more egalitarian, democratic communication in the internet.     

Reviews

“THE POLL TAX” Flannery, Kate, 1987: More than Just a Poll Tax. Centre for Local Economic Strategies, £5.00. MacGregor, Susanne, 1988: The Poll Tax and the Enterprise Culture. Manchester: Centre for Local Economic Strategies, £3.95.

“ECONOMIC THEORY AND THE LOCAL ECONOMY” Smith, D., 1987: The Rise and Fall of Monetarism: The Theory and Politics of an Economic Experiment. Penguin, £3.95.

Holland, S., 1987: The Market Economy: From Micro to Mesoeconomics and The Global Economy: From Meso to Macroeconomics, Weidenfeld, £12.95 each.

Green, F. and Sutcliffe, B., 1987: The Profit System: The Economics of Capitalism. Penguin, £5.95.

“THE SERVICES REVOLUTION?” Rajan, A., 1987: Services: The Second Industrial Revolution? London: Butterworths, £27.50.

“ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY IN EUROPE” Joyce, F. E. and Schneider, G. (editors), 1988: Environment and Economic Development in the Regions of the European Community. Aldershot: Avebury/Gower, £18.50 hb.

“POLITICS OF PRIVATISATION” Ascher, K., 1987: The Politics of Privatisation: Contracting Out Public Services. London: Macmillan Education Ltd. £30.00 cloth, £8.95 paper.

“RECRUITMENT AND TRAINING POLICY” Davies, T. and Mason, C., 1986: Shutting out the Inner City Worker. University of Bristol, School for Advanced Urban Studies, £4.30.

Chapman, P. G. and Tooze, M. J., 1987: The Youth Training Scheme in the United Kingdom. Avebury: Gower Publishing Company, £22.50.

“JOB GENERATION RESEARCH” Storey, D. J. and Johnson, S., 1987: Job Generation and Labour Market Change. London: Macmillan.     

Industry Distributional Characteristics of Financial Ratios: An Acquisition Theory Application

This study explores the importance of capturing industry‐specific distributional characteristies in analyses based on financial ratios. As a test case, the study replicates Palepu (1986), who employs financial ratios in logit models to investigate the usefulness of six acquisition hypotheses in predicting takeover targets. Without adjustment for industry‐specific distributional characteristics, this study's findings are only consistent with one of the six acquisition hypotheses. After adjusting for distributional properties, the results are consistent with four of the six acquisition hypotheses. Furthermore, the adjusted model produces a classification accuracy significantly greater than chance, as well as significantly greater than that observed for the unadjusted model.     

Problems of world food and agriculture: Projections,models and possible approaches

This article is concerned with the global implications of recent work in food and nutrition planning. It is based on the realisation that the world food situation is critical. Two distinct explanatory/ action paradigms that have been adopted by food/nutrition planners and other professional writers are identified and discussed. These approaches are then assessed in the light of forecasting techniques used to explore the future world food situation and more appropriate techniques are proposed.