From I-O Economics' S-C-P Paradigm Through Strategic Groups to Competence-Based Competition: Reflections on the Puzzle of Competitive Strategy

Over the past 20 years one basic question which has occupied the attention of both researchers and practitioners in the strategic management field is ‘with whom and how do firms compete?’ How research in strategy has attempted to answer this question over the past 20 years is the subject of this article. We begin by reviewing the literatures on industrial organization, spatial competition, strategic groups, cognitive communities and networks and examine how each of these theoretical perspectives have been used to answer basic questions of competition and rivalry. We then show how the resource-based view of the firm and the theory of competence-based competition can be used to integrate these perspectives. We conclude by proposing six issues which should motivate future strategy research, and which can help and enhance our understanding of how firms compete.     

Promoting ‘Healthy Childhoods’ and Keeping Children ‘At Home’: Beninese Anti-Trafficking Policy in Times of Neoliberalism

This article offers the first examination of its kind of the content and nature of anti-trafficking policy as it is pursued in Benin. The article draws on data gathered from policy and project documents and from interviews and participant observation with actors integral to the constitution of policy in (and with influence over) the Beninese anti-trafficking community. It attempts to bridge the oft-lamented gap between page and practice by conducting analysis not only of the representation of policy in text, but also of its lived manifestations in processes, interactions and structures. It argues that the various different actors that comprise Benin's anti-trafficking pantheon seek to accomplish one fundamental goal – to protect children from trafficking – through two overarching strategies – the promotion of ‘healthy’ childhoods and the pre-emptive prevention of child movement. The article examines each of the main strands of policy and concludes by offering a Foucauldian analysis of their operation. It thus fills a major gap in the academic understanding of anti-trafficking policy in the Beninese context.     

American Racism: Implications for Social Work

The opportunity to conduct research into an area of personal disability provides the graduate student additional maturation and increased self-realization. The student is thereby able to contribute significantly to the corporate knowledge of the disability through integration of past personal experience with the knowledge and techniques gained through professional education.     

DPR Debate: Growth Identification and Facilitation: The Role of the State in the Dynamics of Structural Change

This DPR Debate is based on the contribution by Justin Lin, Chief Economist at the World Bank, and his colleague Célestin Monga, on ‘Growth Identification and Facilitation: The Role of the State in the Dynamics of Structural Change’. The article under consideration is important and timely as it articulates a number of new policy implications from Justin Lin's earlier work on New Structural Economics, which was discussed in a previous DPR debate (Lin and Chang, 2009). This symposium contains the article and comments on it from five distinguished specialists, and closes with a rejoinder by Lin and Monga. This introduction discusses the article, the comments and the rejoinder. The historical record indicates that, in all successful economies, the state has always played an important role in facilitating structural change and helping the private sector sustain it across time. This article puts forward a new approach to help policy‐makers in developing countries identify those industries that may hold latent comparative advantage, and recommends ways of removing binding constraints to facilitate private firms' entry into those industries. Two types of government interventions are distinguished: first, policies that facilitate structural change by overcoming information, co‐ordination and externality issues, which are intrinsic to industrial upgrading and diversification; and second, policies aimed at protecting certain selected firms and industries that defy the comparative advantage determined by the existing endowment structure.