Deconstructing the future of management: Pharmakon,Gary Hamel and the impossibility of invention

There has been a growing tendency to argue that the practice of management must be reinvented in the future in order to energize the creative potential of employees. However, the discourse on ‘management innovation’ attributes a curious dual function to the concept of management. On the one hand, management is portrayed as the ‘toxin’ that can impede innovation. But on the other hand, management is portrayed the ‘cure’ that will heal the defects that prevents innovation. Informed by Derrida's reflection upon the dual meaning of pharmakon, a word that means both ‘remedy’ and ‘poison’, the paper engages with Hamel's popular management handbook The Future of Management. Although Hamel attempts to establish a clear-cut distinction between those principles of management that obstruct and those that facilitate innovation, one is ultimately left uncertain whether management is a cure or a poison for innovation. This ambivalence points to an underlying paradox of contemporary post-managerial thinking that is characterized by incorporating transgression into its productive logic.     

DESIGNOR: A decision support procedure for industrial product design

This paper presents a model-based methodology called DESIGNOR to support design decisions for new industrial products. Models and measurements are developed to assess the relationship between product features and market potential. The methodology incorporates a measurement survey for model calibration and leads to empirical tradeoff curves between design dimensions. The approach handles discrete as well as continuous features and can be incorporated into a procedure aimed at finding a profit maximizing design. It can be used to support decisions concerning product design as well as for product line expansion. The approach provides a consistent way of evaluating market potential for new industrial products and presents important advantages over other product design methodologies.     

Situational logic in social science inquiry: From economics to criminology

Karl R. Popper proposed that the method of explanation in economics, or situational logic, should become the general model for analyses across the social sciences. This article makes good Popper's proposal by extending situational logic to a social problem outside the traditional scope of economics: crime. Specifically, the discussion reviews models developed by economist Gary S. Becker and criminologist Ronald V. Clarke. Becker's ‘economic approach’ to crime incorporates essential features of situational logic. Clarke's ‘situational crime prevention’ offers an even better demonstration; it explicitly incorporates the ideas of piecemeal social engineering and unintended social repercussions. Popper took situational logic from Menger and the Austrians, making this emerging area of criminology an extension of Austrian economics.

PROBLEMS OF PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE USA: CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

High costs and low graduation rates characteristic of 21^st‐century US public higher education stem from the bout of rent‐seeking attributable to the post‐Sputnik explosion in research spending and the consequent crusade to enrol new students, with diminishing concern for academic aptitude. New policies that tighten admission standards, encourage earlier graduation and enhance financial aid for the truly needy would constructively address these problems, as would incentives for faculty members to curtail outside consulting.     

A descriptive model of the trade-show budgeting decision process

Spending decisions for industrial trade shows are studied here. A discriminant analysis procedure identifies those factors that separate products that use trade shows from those that do not. The product category, fraction of sales made to order, industry sales level, importance of the product to the customer, and purchase frequency were found to be most instrumental. Another model evaluates the level of spending for products that use trade shows. The sales of the product and stage in the life cycle are shown to be most important in the budget-setting process. The potential use of these results for industrial communications and promotional planning and evaluation decisions is discussed.     

Engaging with Social Networks: The Bourdieu-Becker Encounter Revisited

Economic implications of social networks are of great importance and economic motives may well play crucial roles in network formation and dissipation. Although historically speaking the mainstream economics' attention to the subject had rather been limited, in the previous couple of decades, the economics discipline developed its own branch of social network analysis and incorporated in their analysis individuals' networking decisions based on a standard Beckerian cost-benefit calculus. In understanding the scope of this new branch in economics discipline to incorporate social dimensions of the economy, this article aims to bring a Bourdieusian critique toward this approach, given that Bourdieu had been critical to a Beckerian cost-benefit reductionism in decision-making and had himself developed his own approach to social relations.     

Intraindustry marketing strategy effects on the analysis of firm performance

Data aggregation across industries has been shown to be inappropriate in describing correlates of business firm performance. This study examines firms performing a similar function within one industry and suggests a further qualification to this analysis; it may be necessary to account for dominant and varying marketing strategies when estimating performance equations in some industries.