Contents to Volume 15, 2002

Volume Contents

Contents to Volume 15, 2002     

Sustained Monopolistic Business Relationships: An Interdisciplinarity Case

Business‐to‐business relationships within sustained monopolies, such as those within UK defence procurement, have received scant attention by management researchers. This is unusual because under these market circumstances there appear to be few incentives to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes despite their strategic policy importance. This paper argues that an understanding of the monopolistic environment using a transaction cost economics theoretical framework and supply‐chain management, relationship marketing and transaction cost economics concepts provides an innovative, interdisciplinarity approach to solving this problem as well as testing aspects of these disciplines empirically in a novel area. This paper describes the results from a substantial research project to test this hypothesis in the UK defence procurement situation. It reveals a number of key dynamics within the sustained monopolistic relationships surveyed and suggests considerable potential for further research.     

中国金融业盈利之路

中国的金融业正在蓬勃发展。以前，金融业滞后于移动通信、汽车等行业，因为政府较早放松了对那些行业的监控，并且接受了国外投资者的注资。然而，中国的银行、保险及证券业目前正受到世界瞩目。2005年海外金融机构在中国银行业投资了142亿美元，到2005年底，世界许多最大的银行或者选择一个伙伴，或者选择多个，共同进入新兴的中国金融市场。上述举措发生在银行业的同时，在保险、资产管理与证券业的投资也在连续不断地增加。     

Remembering the May Events

In May of 1968 ten million French workers transformed a student protest into a revolutionary movement by joining it in the streets. In the short space of a month France was overthrown and restored, but not without suffering a shock which resounds to this day. Like many an unsuccessful revolution before it, the May Events triumphed in the political culture of the society that defeated it in the streets. In the perspective of ten years, it now appears that May '68 inaugurated a new era in French political life, which still continues. The May Events lay at the intersection of two histories: not only did the new left of the sixties peak in France in 1968, but France gave the first signal of the political instability that has overtaken much of Southern Europe in the seventies. In 1968 no one imagined that the Events would be relayed by an electoral movement such as Eurocommunism. Then the talk was all of the “senility” and “sclerosis” of the official opposition parties. In fact the May Events overthrew not the Gaullist state, but the narrow ideological horizons of the old left it challenged in challenging capitalism in new ways. The Events transformed the popular image of socialism in France, contributing to the collapse of moribund Stalinist and social democratic traditions, and to the rise of an aggressive Eurocommunist movement. Some of the most important ideas of May continue to live through this movement. The paradoxical survival of themes and hopes from the sixties in the mainstream politics of France in the seventies testifies to the need for a new interpretation of both the May Events and their Eurocommunist successor. In the pages that follow I will reconsider the May Events in the light of four of these themes, which have a continuing relevance. They are: the struggle against technocracy; a new and more libertarian image of socialism; the rejection of authority relations in the workplace; the ideological crisis of the middle strata. In challenging both the French establishment and its official opposition around these themes, the May Events radically altered the cultural presuppositions of the French political system, with consequences that are still unfolding. The remembering of May 1968 is therefore also a moment in the dialectics of the present.     

Can business learn from wargames?

The value of planning, particularly strategic planning, has long been recognized by both the military and business. Recently, the military has made significant contributions in the area of strategic decision making through the use of war games. Business managers may be able to expand their strategic decision-making judgment by employing the wargaming technology developed by the military. If the wargaming concept is embraced by business, it must serve, as it does in the military, as an aid to decision-making rather than as the decision itself.     

An evidence-based approach to lifestyle interventions in urogynaecology

Urinary incontinence, urgency, overactive bladder symptoms, cystitis and urinary tract infections are common conditions that collectively trouble over one-third of the female population around and beyond the time of menopause, with a detrimental effect on physical, social and mental wellbeing. Apart from pharmacological and surgical treatments, a long list of lifestyle, behavioural, physical and complementary interventions have been introduced over the years to relieve lower urinary tract symptoms. This review examines the effect on these symptoms of lifestyle factors (such as weight, smoking, dietary components, fluid intake, exercise and bowel habit), complementary therapies (such as herbal remedies, acupuncture and hypnotherapy), behavioural therapies (bladder training and timed and prompted voiding), pelvic floor muscle training and some over-the-counter preparations. The high prevalence of the above conditions in combination with the increasing publicity for and awareness of the subject has contributed to the popularity of the interventions considered in this review. Many of them, however, lack a solid evidence base with regard to their efficacy and few have been subjected to robust randomized trials. It is widely recognized that there is a need for further prospective interventional studies of all lifestyle interventions to evaluate the effects of modifying these factors on lower urinary tract symptoms.     

Perceived Availability,Risks, and Benefits of Gambling among College Students

The current study was an exploration of gambling-related perceptions and their relation to gambling behavior among young adult college students. Three hundred and two ethnically diverse undergraduates at a large urban public university completed a survey to assess their perceptions of the availability, risks, and benefits of gambling, and the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) to assess gambling behavior and problems. Participants generally rated gambling as more available than alcohol or marijuana, and less risky than alcohol or cigarettes. The most common perceived benefits of gambling were social enhancement, financial gain, and positive changes in affect. Perceived benefits were a significant predictor of gambling problems. Perceived availability, perceived risk, and perceived benefits were found to be significant predictors of regular gambling. These results provide valuable information about the ways that college students perceive gambling and demonstrate that perceptions can be important predictors of gambling behavior. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Perspectives: Abortion and Genocide: The Unbridgeable Gap

This article examines The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform's claimthat abortion is genocide, assessing it against legal, trait-basedand "dynamic process" definitions of genocide. The purpose ofthis exercise is not to give credence to what many consideran outrageous claim, nor is it to merely refute this claim basedupon a close reading of existing definitions of genocide; instead,by subjecting The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform's claim to anethical and performative evaluation, our goal is to illustratehow the term genocide can be "misused." In the end, we arguethat The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform uses the term genocidefor its own totalizing and essentializing purposes, and in doingso engages in practices that share an affinity with the exclusionarydiscourses that help make genocide thinkable.     

The efficacy of the Rio Hondo DUI court: a 2-year field experiment

This study reports results from an evaluation of the experimental Rio Hondo driving under the influence (DUI) court of Los Angeles County, California. Interviews and official record checks with 284 research participants who were randomly assigned to a DUI court or a traditional criminal court were assessed at baseline and at 24-month follow-up. The interviews assessed the impact of the DUI court on self-reported drunk driving behavior, the completion of treatment, time spent in jail, alcohol use, and stressful life events. Official record checks assessed the impact of the DUI court on subsequent arrests for driving under the influence and other drinking-related behaviors. Few differences on any outcomes were observed between participants in the experimental DUI court and those assigned to the traditional court. The results suggest that the DUI court model had little additional therapeutic or public safety benefit over the traditional court process. The implication of these findings for the popularity of specialized courts for treating social problems is discussed.