Managing public policy issues

The role of the public sector has expanded significantly in the last 40 years. The ability to anticipate public policy changes has become a critical component of an organization's environmental scanning activities. Today, every segment of society is affected by the development of government policies and programmes. Organizations that correctly anticipate government actions can achieve significant benefits and minimize loss potentials. Given the size and role of government, a significant literature has emerged which attempts to analyse and assess likely public policy developments. The objective of this article is to develop a simplified format, based on this literature, which will allow organizations to develop a check list against which potential public policy actions may be assessed.     

Sustainability as the lynch pin of public policy and industry initiatives

Does managed care have a sustainable future? So far, managed care has not lived up to its promises and potential. Admittedly, the health care system prior to managed care was a non-system. But its features included committed health care professionals, caring local institutions, freedom of choice, and laws reflecting public confidence. And it was based on the assumption that needed health care services are a customary, moral, and implied legal right of U.S. citizens. In contrast, today's version of managed care is characterized by financial and legal manipulation, "choice" constricted by provider selection of physician panels, and laws reflecting lack of public trust. Managed care can survive its initial foolish years, if it heeds the voices of those urging that two priorities be reflected in public policy, legislative efforts, and business practices. One of these priorities is accountability for today's actions. The other is preserving this country's health care resources. This article explored the concept of sustainability--the need to strike a balance between seeking immediate profit and preserving available resources.     

创业研究前沿理论探讨--定义、概念框架与研究边界

目前创业研究领域还没有发展出一个真正意义上的创业理论.比较并归纳较有影响、有代表性的创业定义,找出创业定义的立足点,在此基础上初步确定创业研究的原始概念框架;为进一步修正这个概念框架,利用数据库检索并查阅了核心管理期刊和创业研究专刊的相关文献,进一步细化了各个因素涉及的变量,最终提出了一个包括创业者特征、创业过程、创业结果和创业环境的概念框架--研究边界模型.     

The shape of public health policy: the Australian experience

Public health policy is shaped by many factors. A brief historical reflection is given on policy development in Australia to illustrate the various influences on health policy. Medical technology; ethical trade-offs; environmental, social, and political imperatives; popular movements; and changing patterns of disease; as well as market forces have helped to shape Australian contemporary public health policy. These multiple and often competing forces, however, can work against individual consumer choice in health care decisions. This article demonstrates through the eyes of history the factors that shape public health policy. As Australia has a short history compared to most industrialized democratic societies and can be viewed as a microcosm, it is used as the exemplar.     

Comments on globalization, interdisciplinary research, myopia and parochialism, government, convergence, and culture

Globalization presents social scientists with a wide variety of issues and challenges that cut across disciplinary boundaries. Disciplinary boundaries encourage specialization and advances in understanding aspects of social behavior, but specialization also creates barriers to more comprehensive understanding of social behavior such as globalization. Successful interdisciplinary efforts entail gains from trade across disciplinary specializations. The papers in this volume help outline an agenda for interdisciplinary investigation of globalization to knock down disciplinary boundaries and encourage gains from trade that further our understanding of globalization. But much work remains before we see real fruits from such efforts.     

企业家精神、外资依存度与区域经济增长

本文基于我国2005~2014年31个省的面板数据建立个体固定效应模型,从全国及区域层面实证检验企业家精神、外资依存度与经济增长之间的关系。研究结果表明,我国企业家精神对经济增长具有显著的促进作用,而外资依存度对整体经济增长具有阻碍作用。分组回归结果显示,企业家精神对各区域的经济增长均具有推动作用,而外资依存度在各区域则呈现出不同的作用效果,其对中部地区的经济增长具有显著的正效应,但是对东部及西部地区的影响并不显著。     

The ethics of tolerance and the evolution of smoking and gambling as public policy issues

Since 1964, there has been an expansion in the amount and the variety of state-sponsored and state-sanctioned gambling opportunities throughout the US. At the same time, the number of laws prohibiting cigarette smoking have grown enormously. It is striking how one of these activities is tolerated even encouraged by public policy makers while the other is rapidly being prohibited by them. This paper will examine this phenomenon in three parts: (1) defining what is meant by the ethics of tolerance and contrasting it with the ethics of sacrifice; (2) giving a brief historical synopsis of how the gambling and smoking issues have evolved over time; (3) drawing the implications of a shift to an ethics of tolerance on future public policy issues.     

Unemployment Insurance and Entrepreneurship

Based on administrative registers from Norway, we examine how unemployment insurance (UI) and active labor market programs (ALMP) affect the transition rates from unemployment to regular employment and entrepreneurship, as well as subsequent earnings levels. We find that both the employment and entrepreneurship hazards rise sharply in response to UI sanctions and UI exhaustion. On average, transitions to entrepreneurship are more profitable than transitions to regular employment. While employment transitions are highly pro‐cyclical, entrepreneurship transitions are weakly counter‐cyclical. ALMPs targeted at entrepreneurship are rare in Norway, but the few start‐up subsidies that are provided are successful in terms of generating paid work.     

家族性、社会认知与家族创业行为

与非家族性企业创建过程不同,家族性是家族创业行为所独有的特性.具有亲情或血缘关系的家族创业者之间强调奉献和关爱的利他行为,形成家族创业行为的集体性创业智慧即家族性社会认知.本文通过对思凡公司12年的创业历程分析发现,家族性能形成具有稳定性、一致性和可靠性的家族性社会认知,而创业行动可以增强家族性社会认知能力;由家族性产生的集体性社会认知有利于家族创业机会识别和把握、资源能力改进和创业组织形式动态演变.研究表明,以不断提高的家族性社会认知为驱动力,组织认知模式和创业行动路径选择之间互动形成了家族企业创业活动演进过程.     

Regional strategy and the demise of globalization

The controversy over globalization and its implications for strategies of multinational enterprises (MNEs) would disappear if authors would look at the evidence. Both aggregate data and firm-level data indicate that globalization is a myth however defined. Instead, the world's business is mainly conducted within the triad economic blocks of the European Union (EU), North America, and Asia. MNEs perform internationally, but the vast majority has an average of 80% of their sales within their home region of the triad. Professors of international business need to refocus from global strategy towards new thinking about triad strategy.     

Voices and values: Linking values with participation in OR/MS in public policy making

It is now widely accepted that public policy development requires both an appreciation of public values and an ability to involve insights from local people. Operational research (OR) has made some contributions to public policy development, and there has been a call to use problem-structuring methods (PSM) in this environment. This growing need for greater use of OR/management science (MS) in policy making is due to its ability to work with insights that are sometimes hard to pin down. This paper presents some research about values and local people's voices in public policy making, which the authors believe present a challenge to OR/MS and to the use of PSM. The paper will describe a framework for understanding values and exploring insights into including local voices in policy making using PSMs. Key to the framework is in the emphasis on differences, rather than similarities, in value priorities. A case study in which local people as well as decisions makers and politicians were engaged in a process to decide the future of a local hospital will be described.     

Stemming the downturn: How ambidexterity and public policy influence firm performance stability during economic crises

A key question confronting policy makers during economic crises is how they can support firms to maintain their performance levels until the economic storm has passed. The present study bridges insights from the ambidexterity and public policy literatures to examine how firm-internal responses (that is, ambidexterity) and external public policy incentives (that is, demand-pull policies) affect the stability of firms’ performance in a recessionary economic context. Using data from private German renewable energy firms at a time following the global financial crisis, we find that only firms with low ambidexterity achieve performance stability in light of demand-pull policies. This research draws attention to the relevance of stability as a policy-relevant performance measure during times of economic crises. Further, we suggest that greater insight into the interplay of managerial and political factors is necessary to enable policy makers to support the stability of certain industries during crises.     

Operational Entrepreneurship: How Operations Management Research Can Advance Entrepreneurship

In this article, we introduce the notion of operational entrepreneurship—the selection and management of transformation processes for recognizing, evaluating, and exploiting opportunities for potential value creation—to offer examples of research opportunities at the interface of entrepreneurship and operations management. Specifically, we believe that operations management has been under‐utilized for gaining a deeper understanding of (i) the knowledge and motivation required for opportunity recognition, (ii) evaluations of a recognized opportunity to determine if it represents an opportunity for the specific entrepreneur, and (iii) the role that feedback from an exploitation of a current opportunity plays in the recognition and evaluation of subsequent opportunities. We also introduce (but not develop) the notion of entrepreneurial operations.