The determinants of occupational mobility patterns among blue-collar jobs

Barriers to mobility are commonly believed to partition blue-collar jobs into skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled components. This paper develops a model based in large measure on the classical gravity model for purposes of ascertaining mobility pattern determinants and for testing for the presence and form of mobility barriers. The model is implemented on a 1965–1970 sample data of male mobility among 60 intermediate-detailed blue- collar occupations. The empirical results reveal that mobility patterns in the blue-collar component conform well with neoclassical theoretical expectations. Very little support is found for the view that the blue-collar labor market is highly structured or segmented in its operations through the mobility process.     

Criteria for screening new industrial products

Screening new industrial product ideas—the initial GO/NO GO decision in the new product process—is a critical decision. This article reports the results of an extensive investigation into what criteria managers use in their screening decisions, and how these criteria are weighted and combined.     

Nine Tested Ways to Mislead Product Planners

Once concept development is completed, the next stage of the new product project has begun. It's time for more marketing research—good marketing research, because mistakes at this stage mean big money losses as well as job losses. This article sets out a number of marketing research mistakes that product planners should watch for.     

The perceived instability of tax legislation and its effect on consumption-investment decisions

During the past decade, there appears to have been an alarming decline in the flow of investment capital into ventures with uncertain returns. One factor which may have contributed to investor aversion to such investments is an increase in the perceived instability of the tax laws. This study examines the effect which this increase in the perceived instability of the tax laws may have on the two representative consumption-investment decisions of an owner-manager of a closely held corporation, namely: 1) the optimal periodic salary to draw from the corporation, and 2) the optimal time horizon for planning corporate affairs. These decisions are analyzed in the context of multiperiod optimization models. The study reveals that: 1) under certain conditions, increased tax rate uncertainty causes an increase in salary, and 2) increased tax rate uncertainty may cause a decrease in the time horizon for planning corporate affairs.     

Testing the addition hypothesis in Vroom's force model

Although Vroom's force model hypothesized that the products of multiplying expectancy E_ij and valence V_j combine additively, no methodologically adequate test of the addition hypothesis has existed. This research reports initial graphic and statistical tests of the validity of the addition hypothesis. Eleven of 22 subjects met both a statistical and graphic criterion for rejection of the addition hypothesis. An alternative hypotheses should be considered by expectancy theorists.     

Developing end-use marketing teams

This article describes how a sales group in a highly competitive business transformed itself—and its business volume and profits—with the help of a new marketing strategy and a results-focused training and development process.     

A new marketing tool: Life-cycle costing

Life-cycle costing is a method of calculating the total cost of ownership over the life span of the industrial product. It can be especially useful in the marketing of industrial products that sell for high initial prices, but which provide long-run cost savings. This paper explains the life-cycle concept and its implementation.     

Social technology and economic development

The large gap between the best available technology and technology in use, especially in the less developed world, is primarily due to social and cultural factors that can only be changed by means of deliberately applied social technologies. Thus, conventional strategies for global population stabilization, economic development, and environmental improvement often put the cart before the horse.     

Economists as subjects: Toward a psychology of economists

Economists can reflect on their own field of research and themselves in a number of ways. The philosophy of science has long been the dominant way to reflect on the work of scientists, to be joined in more recent times by both the sociology of science and the rhetoric of science. In this paper I do not argue that these approaches are wrong, but I do argue that they should be complemented with a study of the individual scientist. A psychology of economists, in other words, is called for. One important theory in recent psychological literature (social learning/cognitive theory) is introduced as an instance to indicate what kind of suggestions concerning the reflective position of individual scientists might be derived. It would be preferable from this perspective that scientists set high standards for themselves, have an open mind to what happens in different disciplines, and set high standards by which to judge others. Then follows a discussion where some potential objections to the approach in general, or to the specific psychological theory in particular, are refuted.     

Boulding Among the Structuralists

The character of structuralism is given as studies of systems of perception wherein the author interposes in organizing element between observation and perception. The organizing element for Piaget is the cognitive structure, for Foucault the epistime, for Kuhn the paradigm, for Solo ideology, and for Boulding the image. The idea and significance of “the image” in Boulding's book The Imageis analyzed and the place of that work in Boulding's grand project, to create a universal science, is indicated.