The role of entry barriers in the development of the offshore supply sector in scotland

This paper examines the offshore oil supply sector and shows how the entry barriers experienced by new supply firms are imposed not by other supply firms but by the oil companies. This is done to ensure product quality and reliability of service rather than the more general attention to price considerations. The range of entry barriers are discussed in relation to key characteristics of the oil industry. As a spin-off this experience appears to have generated a more responsive attitude towards technological and commercial change throughout Scottish industry.     

Financial distress and the business cycle

In this paper we argue that firms' financial distress shouldplay a greater role in the macroeconomic analysis of the businesscycle. We provide a non-technical account of a general equilibriummodel that exhibits financially-driven equilibrium cycles. Weshow that the empirical evidence is widely supportive of thekey hypothesis and implications of our approach. We use themodel in order to evaluate the effects of several policy measures.It turns out that deepening the market for second-hand capitalgoods, subsidizing the interest payments of companies whichstart up when financial conditions are tight, and bailing outsome companies in default can indeed 'stabilize' the economy.By way of generalization, we may say that the policy reactionto a financially driven bust should be accommodating.     

Disclosure, leaks, and slips: Issues and strategies for prohibiting employee communication

Both popular and social science literature are replete with recommendations for enhancing communication effectiveness, typically defined as improving the clarity and impact of the spoken and written word. However, managing internal organizational processes and external market competitiveness often requires a different communication strategy, specifically silence and non-disclosure, while adhering to statutory regulations. This article summarizes the rationale for communication prohibitions, highlights counter forces mitigating their intended effects, and offers recommendations for successful implementation. The three major counter forces are: employee motivation and perception, changing socio-cultural norms, and organizational structures reflecting virtual teams and project teams. The eight recommendations for combating these forces are subsumed under one of two categories: creating an organizational culture supporting prohibitions, and executing the prohibitions with a minimum of employee resistance. In summary, employees charged with maintaining secrecy and adhering to non-disclosure prohibitions must view those restrictions as reasonable, warranted, equitable, and legal.     

The South African labour market, 1995–2015

This study investigates the changes in the South African labour market in the post-apartheid period. While unemployment increased over the 1995–2015 period, employment also increased. Nonetheless, the extent of employment increase is not rapid enough to absorb all net entrants into the labour force, resulting in increasing unemployment, or an employment absorption rate of 65.3%. Unemployment is concentrated in specific demographically and geographically defined groups, most notably Africans, the lowly educated and those aged below 30 years, residing in rural areas in Gauteng. Finally, four worrying findings are observed: youth jobseekers aged below 30 years struggle to find their first job; chronic unemployment is more serious for the relatively older jobseekers (aged 45 years or above) with past work experience; employees working for small, medium and micro enterprises still stagnate at approximately 3.5 million; and jobseekers from the older age cohorts are less likely to actively seek work by enquiring at workplaces and answering job advertisements.