The appliance of science? New public management and strategic change

Changes in the nature of science as a social practice were fundamentally organic and endogenous in nature prior to the 1970s. Since then changes in UK public science has been policy-led and the imperatives exogenous. This shift was the result of attempts to achieve strategic managed change in the sector using new public management (NPM) techniques. This paper explores the discourses that promoted the change effort and the NPM techniques and processes deployed to this end. It seeks to identify the aims and objectives of the intended strategic change and evaluates the extent to which they have been achieved. Our conclusion is that rather than a planned, strategic change process directed at improved economy, efficiency and effectiveness, what occurred was a poorly processed ideologically driven attempt to achieve political aims.     

编读互动

对于奢侈品来说,审美的终极目的是艺术,艺术是奢侈品的灵魂——这不仅是把一些钻石钉在衣服上卖出去那么简单。奢侈,是商人通过产品去推销的一种理想生活方式:住在皇宫般的房子里,喝着VOMEP级红酒,     

Lenders’ Response to Peer and Customer Restatements

We investigate whether restatements announced by economically related firms influence the contract terms a borrower receives from lenders. A restatement by a major customer firm increases the loan spread of a borrower by 11 basis points, on average. The contagion effects of customer restatements are higher (45 basis points) when a borrower's switching costs are high. Restatements by peer firms in the same industry also increase a borrower's loan spread, and this increase occurs regardless of restatement severity. Moreover, the sensitivity of loan spread to peer restatements is significantly greater when the restating peer firms are also in the bank's lending portfolio, suggesting that a lender's personal experience with restatements in an industry makes it more attuned to the potential implications of these restatements for the borrowing firm. Finally, our results suggest that lenders utilize information from peer restatements to anticipate future restatements by the borrowing firm.     

The Effects of Immigration on Regional Unemployment Rates in The Netherlands

The impact of immigration on the change in the unemployment rate in the Netherlands is analyzed using panel data from 26 labor market regions from 1996 through 2003. This study measures immigration through the year-to-year change in the foreign population, paying particular attention to immigrants of non-Western origin. Other variables controlling the composition of the local labor market include: occupation shares, the fractions of workers employed in high- and low-skilled jobs, the fractions of female workers, part-time employees, labor force participants over the age of 55, educational attainment shares, and population density. The ordinary least squares (OLS) results indicate a change in the foreign population in the labor force led to a statistically significant increase in the upward volatility of Dutch unemployment rates while the change in the non-Western share had no significant effect.

The effect of incidental affect on preference for the status quo

The authors report results from four experiments that describe the influence of incidental affect on preference for the status quo. The first and second experiments, each using different affect induction methods, demonstrated that positive affect increased and negative affect reduced the choice of the status quo alternative. The third experiment replicated the effect of incidental affect on a separate dimension of status quo bias, the preference of omission. The last experiment investigated whether preference for the status quo was affected by four specific emotions that differed along valence and certainty appraisal dimensions. Compared with affective states associated with uncertainty, affective states associated with certainty led to a greater magnitude of status quo bias. The certainty appraisals mediated the effect of specific emotions on preference for the status quo, regardless of the emotion valence. The findings extend our knowledge by showing that incidental affect can influence consumer choice through emotion-related appraisals.     

UK shocks and Irish business cycles, 1922–79

This article examines the transmission of UK and global shocks to the Irish economy over the period 1922–79, using annual data for consumer prices and real GDP in a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model. UK aggregate demand and supply shocks have large and significant effects on Irish CPI, but smaller effects on Irish real GDP. A historical decomposition indicates that UK aggregate supply and demand shocks played a more important role than domestic shocks in the evolution of Irish CPI. In contrast, the evolution of Irish real GDP is driven more by idiosyncratic domestic shocks than by UK shocks.     

Africa's clientelist budget policies revisited: public expenditure and employment in Kenya,Tanzania and Uganda, 1960–2010

What can be learned about policy prioritization in Africa by examining long‐run trends in public expenditure and employment? Many have contended that Africa's post‐colonial leaders pursued economically unproductive budget policies that prioritized the growth of their patronage networks over socially beneficial spending, resulting in bloated payrolls, persistent deficits, and a large rent‐seeking public service. Using a purpose‐built dataset of annual public expenditure and employment series from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda for 1960–2010 against which to test these assumptions, this article questions whether there was anything exceptional about the growth or composition of East Africa's post‐independence expenditure. All three states grew and contracted in roughly the same periods as other regions of the world, although their contraction after 1980 was particularly marked. Industrial policy and capital investments influenced budget priorities in the early independence era, while military expenditure and debt service payments escalated in the late 1970s. The government wage bill, meanwhile, fell as a proportion of total spending over the same period. To finance employment growth while the wage bill contracted, governments allowed real wages to plummet in the 1970s–90s. In light of these external constraints and legacies, this article questions whether a budget unencumbered by patronage would have looked very different.     

Is technology acquisition enough to improve China's product quality? Evidence from firm-level panel data

As developing countries open themselves up to trade, many industrial firms in these countries are finding it difficult to compete internationally due to poor product quality and low product variety. Although China has been the largest producer of crude steel since 1996, China's steel firms have produced an overabundance of low-quality steel while domestic purchasers of steel have increasingly demanded higher quality steel products. Many have argued that for Chinese steel firms to improve product quality they must adopt more advanced technologies. Employing firm-level panel data of steel firms in China, we econometrically test the relative importance of two possible sets of factors affecting a firm's ability to utilize technology to improve product quality: technology acquisition factors and technology absorptive capacity factors. We find that technology complements such as in-house R&D and foreign knowledge must be combined with technology for Chinese firms to improve product quality.     

Consuming nostalgia? The appreciation of authenticity in local food production

Many consumers consider local food a more sustainable choice than conventional food because of the shorter transport distances involved as well as the support provided to local economies. In addition, consumers value the perceived safety benefits, ethical associations and improved taste of local food. In this study, we focus on the cultural meanings of locally produced food among Finnish consumers. Based on interviews with 22 consumers, our analysis suggests that, besides consumers valuing sustainable, healthy and tasty locally produced food, they perceived self‐produced, self‐processed items, including those they have gathered, hunted and fished themselves, as the most authentic local food. Furthermore, local food is associated with craftsmanship and artisan production. We also found that interviewees tended to historicize their relationship to food through local production. Thus, consumers seem to be in search of ‘real’ or ‘true’ food that is embedded in their personal and shared social histories.