Search results

A common problem in many public and private sector organizations is the stagnation of strategic planning after four or five planning cycles. At this stage of development strategic planning is maturing as a management discipline; however, as corporations grow accustomed to formal planning's concepts and techniques, there often evolves an attitude of complacency among top management that, if left unchecked, can undermine planning's essential value.

How to cultivate innovation and creativity within the corporate structure.

A $1.5 billion manufacturing company spent over eighteen months and countless man‐years of effort methodically hammering out a strategic plan for its domestic and international operations. The new corporate strategy called for a significiant shift in priorities. There was to be a substantial product innovation in maturing markets and marketing and sales activities which were new to the manufacturing oriented company. After two years, the senior management team was frustrated by the lack of progress in implementing the plan. The CEO commented, “The organization is just not responding to the new strategy.”

The purpose of this paper is to draw on the literature debating research policy, research and the role of researchers, in discussing a single researcher's (Jan‐Erik Gröjer's) research during the 1980s and 1990s.

Jan‐Erik Gröjer's publications during the period are compared with different research modes 1 and 2, communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, originality and scepticism and PLACE within this polarized world, i.e. between demands from different research ideologies universities as well as individual researchers perform their research.

This paper can be read as both a contribution to the debate about the researcher's role and as a tribute to a friend who was able to investigate and practise different roles: normative and critical, theoretical and applied and provocative and humble, to name a few.

Further case studies of single researchers could serve as a valuable input to the discussion of different research ideologies.

The paper could be used in, e.g., doctoral student education when discussing the researcher's role but also when discussing the role of university research in general.

The used research modes have not before been analyzed using a single researcher as a case. It could be useful for individual researchers as well as in discussions about management of universities.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the selection of decision-making approaches at manufacturing companies when implementing process innovations.

This study reviews the current understanding of decision structuredness for determining a decision-making approach and conducts a case study based on an interactive research approach at a global manufacturer.

The findings show the correspondence of intuitive, normative and combined intuitive and normative decision-making approaches in relation to varying degrees of equivocality and analyzability. Accordingly, the conditions for determining a decision-making choice when implementing process innovations are revealed.

This study contributes to increased understanding of the combined use of intuitive and normative decision making in production system design.

Empirical data are drawn from two projects in the heavy-vehicle industry. The study describes decisions, from start to finish, and the corresponding decision-making approaches when implementing process innovations. These findings are of value to staff responsible for the design of production systems.

Unlike prior conceptual studies, this study considers normative, intuitive and combined intuitive and normative decision making. In addition, this study extends the current understanding of decision structuredness and discloses the correspondence of decision-making approaches to varying degrees of equivocality and analyzability.

Laboratory studies of social interaction have revealed a wide range of phenomena that are difficult to explain using standard economic models. For example, people will often sacrifice their own earnings in order to be generous, cooperative, punitive, and retributive in interactions with anonymous strangers. “Behavioral” models that redefine agents’ preferences attempt to provide an account of these phenomena as reflecting a “taste for fairness” or altruism, aversion to inequality, concern about others’ beliefs, and so on. Such models either fail to account for the rich sensitivity of actions to context or in allowing for rich context-dependence, these models ultimately substitute description for explanation. Hayek’s work provides a foundation for thinking about how to explain these phenomena, by conceiving of people as both purpose-seeking (as in economic models) and rule-following. Decisions are shaped both by material interests and by a normative framework that is evoked by context and helps people decide what one ought to do in a particular situation. The implication of this approach is that rather than trying to understand heterogeneity across individuals in terms of preferences, experimenters should instead try to understand heterogeneity across contexts in terms of the rules and norms that operate in the background and guide or constrain people’s purpose-seeking tendencies. What economics needs, then, is a theory of how and why these rules and norms vary with context as they do.

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize that East Asia and South East Asia, despite enormous economic advances, have a deficit on rule of law, analysed as either judicial autonomy and legal integrity (rule of law I) or as voice and accountability (rule of law II).

First, a distinction is made between two key aspects of rule of law; second, these two aspects are measured by data from the World Bank Governance project, relating them to various measures on socio‐economic development and economic growth.

It is not generally true that development leads to or entails freedom, as several countries in the ASEAN +3 region display low scores on either one of the dimensions of rule of law or both.

In both research and in practice, one needs to devote more effort into understanding how rapid economic development may be possible without strong rule of law, either as legal integrity and judicial autonomy, or as voice and political accountability. In the process of globalisation, demands for more of rule of law in this region appear justifiable.

This paper provides useful information on economic development and political development, which is highly relevant for understanding the implication of economic growth in the countries in ASEAN +3.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.