‘Home comes first’: housing and homemaking in Finnish civic educational films during 1945–1969

This article focuses on how the ideals of housing and homemaking were presented in post‐war civic educational films in Finland. The films chosen for the article pertain to housing on a wide scope. The analysis shows that the ideals of good homes appeared to be remarkably consistent in the Finnish educational short films. The most important objective was to guide citizens towards careful household management and saving. Through rationalizing home economics, consumers were able to buy their own home. The ideal housewife had a positive attitude towards technology and rational household management. While the short films instructed people towards temperate and sensible consumption, they also created space for ordinary people to envision new opportunities for consumption.     

The role of consumers in product‐oriented environmental policy: can the consumer be the driving force for environmental improvements?

In environmental policy, it is increasingly accepted that more emphasis should be placed on consumption and its implications from the point of view of the environment. Another relatively new feature is the focus on products. At the policy level, this perspective is known as product‐oriented environmental policy or, in brief, product policy. This approach is closely related to the idea of product chain thinking, which means recognizing the fact that environmentally relevant decisions are made at all stages during the products’ life cycle, from raw material extraction to consumption and beyond. Based on a Finnish study on product chain actors and environmental improvements, this article discusses the role of consumers in product policy (i) with respect to theories on consumer mecision‐making and (ii) in the light of product chain thinking. As consumers’ decision‐making models with respect to consumer products are most often based on heuristics simplifying the decision process, incorporating environmental considerations into these models is a challenging task for environmental policy.     

路企直通运输联合调度模式研究

路局调度所是直通运输方案实施者，是路企直通运输这一新的组织模式效率和效益的源头。为促进直通运输步入有序化、正常化、规范化，需要加强联合调度模式研究，创新信息整合、流程再造、作业组织、联劳协作、调度指挥等，确保直通运输组织稳中求进，顺利实施。     

Class Size,Teacher Hours and Educational Attainment*

We employ a regression‐discontinuity design to identify effects on educational attainment after compulsory school of class size and the number of pupils per weekly teacher hour using administrative rules as instruments. We use Danish administrative panel data. Average class size is 20, about the same as in the US and most European countries. Restricting the sample to observations close to the enrolment discontinuity points where the administrative rules have greatest predictive power, instrumental variables estimates are consistently negative. Estimates from the preferred specification are marginally significant and indicate modest effects in line with earlier studies. Estimates for subgroups are less precise, but they indicate larger effects for pupils from less advantaged backgrounds.     

Value,rareness, competitive advantage,and performance: a conceptual‐level empirical investigation of the resource‐based view of the firm

The resource‐based view of the firm (RBV) hypothesizes that the exploitation of valuable, rare resources and capabilities contributes to a firm's competitive advantage, which in turn contributes to its performance. Despite this notion, few empirical studies test these hypotheses at the conceptual level. In response to this gap, this study empirically examines the relationships between value, rareness, competitive advantage, and performance. The results suggest that value and rareness are related to competitive advantage, that competitive advantage is related to performance, and that competitive advantage mediates the rareness‐performance relationship. These findings have important academic and practitioner implications which are then discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

New Public Management: The Cruellest Invention of the Human Spirit?1

This article examines one of the most significant phenomena of the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries—the emergence of New Public Management (NPM). NPM has been widely adopted, internationally. However, its adoption is based on governments having faith in its deployment to transform their public sectors using private sector performance criteria. In this article, the case is advanced that the widespread use of NPM is often a cruel disappointment for governments. This is demonstrated by focusing on four key elements of NPM, as practised in the early twenty‐first century—the role of management consultants, the development of e‐government, the emergence of the ‘audit society’ and the increasing importance of risk management.     

CUSTOMER SERVICE IN THE INTERNET‐ENABLED LOGISTICS SUPPLY CHAIN: WEBSITE DESIGN ANTECEDENTS AND LOYALTY EFFECTS

This article extends the existing research on logistics customer service‐loyalty relationships to the online logistics supply chain environment by examining potential website determinants of logistics customer service quality. A structural equation analysis of 373 online shopping transactions suggests that perceived quality of all logistics customer service activities (perceived cycle time, in‐stock availability, and customer responsiveness) varies inversely with: (1) perceived ease of use, and (2) content vividness of the website; and positively with product information content. However, only retailer customer responsiveness assessment was found to have any significant influence on consumer intended loyalty behavior in Internet‐enabled supplies chains.     

Optimal management of annual ryegrass (Lolium rigidum Gaud.) in phase rotations in the Western Australian Wheatbelt*

Lucerne (Medicago sativa L.) helps to prevent soil salinisation in the Western Australian Wheatbelt by reducing recharge to saline water tables. There is broad consensus, though, that it is not sufficiently profitable to motivate producers to plant it at the intensity at which considerable off‐site benefits would be conferred. This paper employs a multiple‐phase optimal control model to explore the value of this perennial pasture for the management of herbicide‐resistant annual ryegrass (Lolium rigidum Gaud.) in a crop–pasture rotation, given the difficulty of observing this value in practice. The availability of selective herbicides for efficient weed control is found to determine whether or not it is profitable to adopt lucerne pasture under optimal management. Herbicide resistance requires producers to employ costly, non‐selective treatments for in‐crop weed control. Thus, it motivates the adoption of perennial pasture in which cost‐effective forms of control can be implemented. Moreover, this result is robust to feasible changes in the current economic environment.     

VERTICAL DIFFERENTIATION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME

The paper analyses the effects of income concentration on the behaviour of a duopoly with vertical product differentiation and uncovered market. By using a trapezoid distribution, we solve explicitly for market equilibrium as a function of a mean preserving spread of the income distribution. We show that overall more concentrated incomes imply stronger product differentiation, as the presence of a large share of middle‐income consumers stimulates a price competition, whose effects are dampened through an enlargement of the quality spread. While the high‐quality advantage and market coverage increase unambiguously in the degree of income concentration, the behaviour of prices is non‐monotone in the distribution parameter.