What does corporate social responsibility mean for charitable fundraising in the UK?

Coporate social responsibility (CSR) has grown enormously in the last ten years and the business case is compelling. That is not to say that CSR is the ‘silver bullet’ for achieving meaningful social change — this will require collaborative action. Part of this is a more mature relationship between charities and businesses — something beyond the worth ‘charitable donation’. Charities need to engage with business in a way that achieves mutual benefit; not ‘cap in hand’ but exploring the potential in shared objectives. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

The myth of purchasing professionals’ expertise. More evidence on whether computers can make better procurement decisions

In a previous experiment, we have shown that risk assessments of purchasing experts are certainly not better than that of subjects untrained in purchasing, and worse than the decisions made by formal models (J. Purchas. Supply Manage. 9 (2003) 191–198). Since both these results are rather counterintuitive, we conducted a series of experiments geared at replication and extension of these findings. These new experiments show that our previous results are robust, and reveal an additional finding that is both worrying and puzzling. It actually seems to be the case that for the purchasing decision tasks in our experiments, experts perform worse with growing experience. It therefore seems that, at least for the kinds of purchasing decisions under study, it does not make much sense to use expert judgments at all. However, we show that there is a way in which expert judgments can be used in combination with formal models to improve the predictive accuracy of purchasing predictions. In our case, superior predictions are made when we combine the prediction of a formal model with the prediction of the ‘average expert’, thereby combining the robust linear trends as encapsulated in the formal model with the more intuitive configural rules used by experts. We provide several explanations for this phenomenon.     

Client, User and Architect Interactions in Construction: Implications for Analysing Innovative Outcomes from User-Producer Interactions in Projects

Three case studies of user/client-architect interaction, and their implications for an understanding of the design and innovation process in capital goods projects, are considered in this paper. The studies presented include a major 'City Challenge'-funded social housing development programme in the UK, a housing co-operative-driven workplace and housing scheme associated with the same programme and a new building for the business school of a major UK university. Reflecting upon existing literature on user-producer relationships, the paper draws two key conclusions from the case studies that add to this literature. The first points to the need to account for the broader strategic motivations of agents within projects. Two of the case studies describe how innovation driven by the architects involved exceeded the original requirements of the client, and in so doing reveal architects to be oriented toward non-project specific goals. The second conclusion focuses on the user/client and points to the importance of a strong and coherent 'customer vision' in 'enabling' the client to determine project outcomes more fully. Following from these conclusions, it is argued that an analysis of client/ user-producer interactions needs to account more fully for the effects of longer-term strategic planning by agents.     

Varietal Licensing Standards and Canadian Wheat Exports

Canada's wheat grading system is largely based on visual criteria and it is based on relatively high quality standards. A strict varieties licensing system exists to maintain the integrity of the grade standards. One of the consequences of the licensing system is that higher yielding, lower or different quality wheats have not been grown in Canada until recently. The basic objective of this paper is to examine some of the consequences of the regulatory strategy of limiting wheat production to the traditional high quality wheats. This question is analyzed in the context of important changes in the international grain markets. Using a partial equilibrium trade model this paper estimates that if higher yielding wheats were permitted to be grown, annual producer gains would be 5 to 17 percent of current net farm income.
Le classement des blés au Canada est basé sur des critères visuels qui sont de hautes qualités. Le système actuel d'homologation des variétés est tel que l'intégrité de ce système est maintenue. En conséquent, ce système n'a pas encouragé la cultivation des blés de hauts rendements ou des varietés différentes que tout récemment. L'objectif principal de cette étude est d'examiner quelques unes des conséquences de la stratégic de la réglementation visant à limiter la production du blé aux variétés de hautes qualités. Cette question est adressée dans le contexte des changements importants qui ont eu lieu dans le marché international des grains. A l'aide d'un modèle d'équilibre partiel des échanges, la présente étude démontre gu'en permettant la production des blés de hauts rendements, le gain annuel aux producteurs serait de 5 à 17 pourcent du revenue agricole net.     

Tourism today: A geographical analysis : by D.G. Pearce Longman, Harlow, 1986, 229 pages, £9.95

Chris Cooper, of Surrey University's Department of Management Studies for Tourism and Hotel Industries, describes the uses and significance of the technique of interpretation in providing an interface between the tourist destination and the visitor. Interpretation can enhance the visitor experience by making the attributes of the resort more comprehensible.     

Foreign direct investment and vertical integration of production by Japanese multinationals in Thailand

We test the vertical model of foreign direct investment (FDI) empirically using firm level information on Japanese multinational activity in Thailand. These data allow us to investigate the effects of both home country (Japan) and host country (Thailand) characteristics on the inter-industry pattern of FDI. For 85 manufacturing industries over the period from 1985 to 1995, we find a positive influence of industry variation in skill intensity and market size in the host country and a negative effect of transport costs on the amount of FDI. These results provide strong direct econometric evidence of vertical integration of production across the countries. Journal of Comparative Economics 32 (4) (2004) 805–821.     

The application of Operation and Technology Roadmapping to aid Singaporean SMEs identify and select emerging technologies

In order to aid Singaporean SMEs identify and select emerging technologies for business benefit, a modified process of the Cambridge T-Plan methodology has been introduced and applied to a pilot sample of 30 companies in a variety of manufacturing sectors. This fast and simple process takes the company through five key steps to enable them to create their first Operation and Technology Roadmap (OTR). The paper explains the background to the approach and focuses on the initial benefits identified by a survey of the pilot companies.     

The Economic Value of Volatility Timing

Numerous studies report that standard volatility models have low explanatory power, leading some researchers to question whether these models have economic value. We examine this question by using conditional mean-variance analysis to assess the value of volatility timing to short-horizon investors. We find that the volatility timing strategies outperform the unconditionally efficient static portfolios that have the same target expected return and volatility. This finding is robust to estimation risk and transaction costs.