ECONOMIC INTEGRATION,POLITICAL INTEGRATION OR BOTH?

We study the effects of economic and political integration by presenting a model in which firms compete with each other in both an economic market—where they produce a good and compete for market share—and in a political (rent seeking) market—where they compete for transfers from the government. Growth is driven by firms’ cost‐reducing innovation activity and economic and political integration affect firms’ incentive to innovate differently. In this setting, economic and political integration can be seen as complementary. Economic integration, when not accompanied by political integration, can lead to less innovation and slower growth as firms respond to increased competition in the economic market by focusing more on rent‐seeking activity. When economic integration is accompanied by political integration, innovation and growth will be stronger and welfare higher.     

A Comparative Analysis of Korean and American Management Education: A Knowledge-Based Odyssey

The evolution of post-industrial society is resulting in a `knowledgeeconomy. The changes involve `knowledge workers' in contrast to `manualworkers' of the past industrial economy. The quantity and quality of knowledgeworkers will determine success in national borderless competition. Althoughthe United State's recent prosperity and near perfect employment rate areexemplary, the technology leading to this success has been developed andshared by traditional industrial powers, i.e., Japan and France, and mid-techpowers such as South Korea.This paper examines methods by which South Korea incorporates Americanapplications of the knowledge economy into its system. The interdisciplinaryapproach includes sociological, linguistic, educational, and ethical elements.Suggested methods include double loop sharing, knowledge management withelectronic support systems, professional journals, and professionalinternational conferences. This paper offers a brief history and synopsis ofcurrent developments in knowledge-based systems, and suggests South Korean andAmerican applications. Recommendations also include the emphasis on Englishas the primary language to improve Korean communication among government,industry, and academic entities.     

经济影响、政治分歧与制度摩擦——美国对华贸易反倾销实证研究

使用格兰杰因果检验与计数模型,本文对美国对华贸易反倾销的经济、政治及制度因素进行了实证分析,结果显示,经济因素仍然是美国对华贸易反倾销的主要原因,其中,美国国内工业产出的波动与对华贸易逆差显著提高了美国对华的反倾销调查频率,实证结果同时显示中美政治联系与美国对华反倾销之间存在显著的联系,中美政治联系的恶化将强化中美在贸易领域的冲突。     

ARTIFICIAL STATES

We define artificial states as those in which political borders do not coincide with a division of nationalities desired by the people on the ground. We propose and compute for most countries in the world two measures of the degree to which borders may be artificial. One measures how borders split ethnic groups into two separate adjacent countries. The other measures the straightness of land borders, under the assumption the straight land borders are more likely to be artificial. We then show that these two measures are correlated with several measures of political and economic success.     

The future of American health care in the "post-reform" era

"As the debate over health care reform rages in Washington, the market is reforming itself. For any given market, it's a question of 'How soon will it hit?', not 'Will it hit?'" Health care reform and market restructuring are ushering in a new era of integrated health care. Although the future is not fully clear, there are at least three competing models for the creation of regional and statewide health systems that will integrate the financing and delivery of services to large enrolled populations of consumers: Payer-driven networks. Provider-sponsored systems. Partnership models. Whatever the future scenario, physician executives will play a larger, more dominant role. Research on integrated health systems has identified three critical success factors for future success: physician-hospital integration, clinical integration and information integration. For managed care to be successful, there must be clinical leadership. The essence of managing care is clinical efficiency, based on "critical-path" treatment protocols and real-time patient care management, supported by integrated information systems.     

How often do dictators have positive economic effects? Global evidence, 1858–2010

Supposedly well-intentioned dictators are often cited as drivers of economic growth. We examine this claim in a panel of 133 countries from 1858 to 2010. Using annual data on economic growth, political regimes, and political leaders, we document a robust asymmetric pattern: growth-positive autocrats (autocrats whose countries experience larger-than-average growth) are found only as frequently as would be predicted by chance. In contrast, growth-negative autocrats are found significantly more frequently. Implementing regression discontinuity designs (RDD), we also examine local trends in the neighbourhood of the entry into power of growth-positive autocrats. We find that growth under supposedly growth-positive autocrats does not significantly differ from previous realizations of growth, suggesting that even the infrequent growth-positive autocrats largely “ride the wave” of previous success. On the other hand, our estimates reject the null hypothesis that growth-negative rulers have no effects. Taken together, our results cast serious doubt on the benevolent autocrat hypothesis.     

中国管理科学发展方向之管窥

改革开放30年来,我国的政治和社会经济取得了长足发展,与此同时,管理科学在我国也得到了广泛应用.在我们基本解决了"温饱"问题、并向可持续发展和和谐社会迈进之际,世界经济格局经历了经济全球化和经济虚拟化的变革;同时知识经济也已显现,自然资源和环境问题凸显.而此时管理科学的哲学基础正逐步由还原论向系统论和整体论转移.因此,我们必须调整我国管理科学的发展方向,建立有中国特色的、具备东方文化底蕴的、具有足够话语权的管理科学势在必行.     

Strategic planning for international business

Although international business is old, today's problems deserve careful thought: the methods by which international strategic plans are made are capable of improvement in many companies. Further, much of today's international business has to face up to being multi-national, rather than international, which means that it exists in an environment which in many ways is not in step with its aims. The legal, political, social and economic climates bring many problems to the group which is endeavouring to be multi-national, problems which will be discussed later in this paper.     

跨国公司在华投资的物流策略与中国物流业的发展

自80年代中期以来中国经济的持续、快速增长创造了一个经济奇迹,但是物流业正逐渐成为中国经济发展的重要制约因素。对于如何发展我国物流业,那些在中国市场上取得成功的世界顶级跨国公司为我们提供了有价值的案例。如果我们能够从它们的成功中吸取经验并应用于实践,对我国物流业的发展将是有益的。     

Getting the Fundamentals Right: Autonomization as a Reform and Governance Tool in the Case of the State Insurance Company Ltd. (SIC) in Ghana

The article is primarily a case study of the use of autonomization in the reform and restructuring of the State Insurance Company Ltd, an SOE in Ghana and addresses two main questions. (1) In view of the fact that the SIC has dual commercial and political objectives, is autonomization suitable for its reform? (2) Under what circumstances can autonomization actually promote efficiency and effectiveness in the proper management and functioning of the SIC? The findings point to answers for both questions. First, autonomization is a defective tool for reforming politically sensitive SOEs but better for non-politically sensitive ones. Secondly, the results point to genuine concerns that autonomization weakens the bonds of political accountability and increases fragmentation of government programs. Finally, the key words in the adoption and implementation of autonomization ought to be context, agency task-specificity and creative adaptation. It adds to the management literature on sub-Saharan Africa and to understanding the management context of Ghana.     

Culture and Crisis Communication: Nestle India's Maggi Noodles Case

Extant theoretical paradigms in the field of crisis communication are organization-centric and do not adequately recognize the role of culture. The purpose of this essay is to analyze a crisis faced by Nestle India using the framework of global public relations which defines culture broadly to include political, economic, media, societal, and activist cultures. Our analysis revealed that a multinational corporation with over a century of presence in the country struggled to align itself to the complexities of the cultures of the host country. In the case of Nestle India, whereas environmental variables such as political economy and Westernization of urban India boosted the growth of its instant noodles, the multinational also struggled to cope with the rise of media corporatization, activist pressure and the vagaries of regulatory enforcement not to speak of cultural nationalism. It is evident that Nestlé's crisis response was governed more by its traditional corporate culture than by an ability to keep pace with the changing demands of its environment, leading to the amplification of an issue into a crisis. The study concludes that multinationals that ignore culture will be forced to pay a heavy price both in terms of reputation and the bottom line.     

The role of the coordinator of care

Regardless of the specific outcome of the current health reform debate in Washington, it is likely that major changes to the health care system are in the offering. These changes, many of which are already in place or imminent in some locations, will have a major impact on the evolving relationships between physicians and hospitals. Most expect that these changes will accelerate the development of integrated health care delivery systems that will compete in the marketplace for a mixture of public and private health insurance dollars. In this system of "managed competition," health care dollars will flow to those systems that can ensure the best clinical outcomes while using the least economic resources. In this scenario, competing collaborative health networks that can manage the continuum of care will be central to the health care delivery system. The economic and political ties between physicians and hospitals will become more closely linked as government and private payers of health care services foster the development of these integrated, value-based health care delivery systems.     

Corporate Services in Poor Areas: A Case Study with Participative Multistakeholder Involvement

Corporations that provide services such as water, sewage disposal and electricity in poor countries or deprived areas face political, social and economic problems that make it difficult to simultaneously favor the interests of shareholders and other relevant stakeholders. In this paper a case study is presented in which a company, Aguas Argentinas, promoted innovative and participative multistakeholder involvement that produced benefits for all parties. Key factors in the model employed were the generation of credibility and trust, adaptive management to the specific situation of deprived areas, stakeholder dialogue, and participation. It is argued that understanding corporate citizenship as reciprocity and common effort in solving interdependent problems were fundamental to the success of the company in this case.     

Successful entrepreneurship in Hong Kong

The business performance of Chinese firms throughout the world is generally regarded as outstanding. It is also generally accepted in the literature that entrepreneurial business firms play a significant role in economic development of countries at every level of industrialization. Even though entrepreneurship is a major influencing factor for economic growth and development, the interpretation of this factor is still debatable. This paper examines the following factors which might influence the emergence of entrepreneuship: (1) economic; (2) non-economic; and (3) psychological. It then relates these factors to Chinese culture in an attempt to explain the apparent outstanding entrepreneurial skills of the Chinese people. As for economic factors, in Hong Kong the free open market and voluntary exchange provide freedom for distribution of income which in turn allows business practitioners to retain profits and accumulate wealth. Non-economic factors in Hong Kong include is blocked upward mobility in political channels in the colonial environment. This causes the Chinese to use economic mobility as an alternative. Psychological factors include the viewpoint that Chinese are more concerned about a sense of personal or individual achievement, power and influence than other cultures. This causes the Hong Kong Chinese to shift their achievement drives to business success and this encourages entrepreneurship.     

De Beers,Anglo American and Optima Magazine

We consider in this article how the largest corporations in Apartheid South Africa used an in‐house magazine to manipulate their shareholders' perceptions of the current political scenario. We argue that in that era, business felt compelled to respond to the portrayal of events in South Africa presented by the international media. Furthermore, we examine the motivation of business for doing so and why that motivation does not exist in post‐apartheid South Africa.     

Can Public Management Contribute to Governance in Developing Countries?

Governance ensures a wide range of desirable values including efficiency, productivity, participation, transparency, and accountability. The wide scope and overambitious demands of governance make it difficult to conceptualize and operationalize. Despite huge investments in time and resources, developing countries seldom succeed in establishing good governance. Based on the experience of Hong Kong, this article argues that many of the desired values of governance can be attained through effective design and the implementation of public management reforms. Public management cannot serve as an alternative for governance, but reforms in this area can help update and adjust institutional structures, processes, and practices in developing countries; they help to ensure the benefits of the desired values of governance without undertaking enormous risks. However, the size of a country and the nature of its political system will influence the degree of success in establishing governance.     

A national strategic planning model

Can nations choose among several possible futures, or is the future pre-determined on the basis of geographic, demographic, cultural, economic and political features? The author maintains that newly developing patterns may well change the traditional deterministic characteristics of society, and that it is possible for nations to be masters of their own future. This will depend on the development of sophisticated and democratic national planning processes.     

Contemporary public leadership in China: A research review and consideration

China garners great international attention due to its rapid economic development, unprecedented nationwide political reform, and significant social progress over the last 25 years. Contemporary public leadership in China is arguably a major force for the myriad of recent economic, political, and social transformations in the country. This article reviews the academic literature on that leadership, providing an overview of interest to scholars, teachers, and practitioners whose work deals with cross-cultural studies of leadership development. The review focuses primarily on materials published between January 1999 and June 2004 that explicitly address public leadership in China. The review identifies six areas of research to date: (1) leadership transition, (2) democratization, (3) prominent political figures, (4) local leadership, (5) cultural and historical traditions, and (6) other identified forms of public leadership (military versus Party leadership, women as public leaders, religion and public leadership, and student leadership). The article concludes with discussions of characteristics of the literature and directions for future theoretical and empirical work.     

Middle Managers Moulding International Strategy: An Irish Start-up in Jamaican Telecoms

This is a story of how a group of middle managers moved beyond just implementing their firm’s tightly prescribed strategy for developing an international venture to the point where it could be argued that they failed to accomplish the four clear strategic objectives set by the firm’s executive management. Instead, the authors suggest, their success was in collectively orchestrating an emergent strategy¹ which provided the executive with a better, more profitable and durable embodiment of their strategic vision.Operating between the parent firm’s original strategic intent and the political and economic realities of the host country environment, their strategic influence is worthy of close examination. They can be divided into two distinctive groups—parent country nationals and host-country nationals—and the extent to which they co-operate with or obstruct each other will have a significant effect on the success of the enterprise.² The middle management in this case example, an Irish company launching a mobile telecommunications network in Jamaica, is drawn from both groups. This article investigates the apparent autonomy from executive control afforded these particular middle managers to identify the contingent factors that appear to allow, or constrain, their positive transmutation of the original strategic objectives. The key questions addressed are first, how the two groups, both individually and collectively, played out their roles in shifting strategy, and second, once these contextual dynamics have been identified, how other executive management groups can learn from this Irish/Jamaican experience considering similar international ventures. The authors’ response highlights those elements of strategy design, organisational structure and human resource management that they believe are critical in maximising the strategic contribution of middle managers to international ventures, and hence providing a better chance of success.     

Can Sustainable Development and the Market Co-exist?

This article looks at Shell vision of sustainable development which is based on three essential and inseparable building blocks — the creation and maintenance of economic wealth, environmental improvement and social equity. All three must be integrated and balanced for long-term success, and all three underpin the Shell approach to global markets.The process of moving towards a sustainable future is under way, but the rate of progress depends on customer choice, innovation and investment — in other words, on market forces. If governments set targets and provide a good framework, companies like Shell will take the chances and offer solutions that support sustainable development. Then the markets will decide.Shell companies see support for sustainable development as a key element in continuing business success. This article discusses some of the ways Shell works with a wide range of partners to seek ways of achieving the best balance between economic, environmental and social considerations and between short term and long-term benefits. On this basis, the market supports the aims of sustainable development and Shell companies intend to play their part by providing, responsibly, efficiently and profitably, the energy the world's growing populations will need and want in the 21^st century.