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Considers cases of new product launches where market analysis suggests that the product will fail but when pushed through by an entrepreneur proves to be a commercial success. Describes the process of product introduction to fill unrecognized needs as Ready‐Fire‐Aim, since the market can only be appreciated after the launch. Concludes that product champions must be in a corporate culture that allows risk, and should be prepared to risk their job on a risky venture.

When I came to Chrysler in 1979, the Michigan State Fairgrounds were jammed with thousands of unsold, unwanted, rusting Chryslers, Dodges, and Plymouths. Foreign operations were leeching the lifeblood out of the company. And worst of all, cars were coming off the assembly line with loose doors, chipped paint, and crooked moldings.

No company's strategic plans can survive in an environment where trade is not balanced fairly. American businesses need to band together to establish a policy that will stabilize trade.

Large corporations that don't tolerate contention age prematurely, the author finds. Management's conflict between strategic planning and opportunism, for example, is a healthy process.

Chrysler was about to go under in 1981, with 600,000 jobs in the balance. Federal loan guarantees were the last resort. At that time it was just plain survival—lifeboat economics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the generally accepted notion of Chinese “lawlessness” distorts the Chinese behavior by trying to understand it through the Western concept of the “rule of law” and to examine how the concept of “storied space” offers a more contextual understanding of the Chinese style of maintaining social order.

The paper adopts a theoretical approach.

Recent developments in fields ranging from neurobiology to complexity thinking and storytelling are coming together in a way of thinking about human social systems that has been called “storied space.” Applying this way of thinking suggests that current efforts, among both Chinese and Westerners, to apply the Western “rule of law” may actually distort the understanding of a series of behaviors often called “Chinese lawlessness”. A storied space approach suggests a different understanding and the need for a different way of addressing these concerns.

At a time when economic and political cooperation between Chinese and Westerners is becoming more important, this approach offers what may be a more efficacious way of understanding each other and, therefore, addressing the very real differences.

This paper would be the first published attempt to apply the idea of storied space to the legal issues that arise from the different ways in which Chinese and Western culture maintain social order.

Hercules Powder. Liebmann Breweries. These companies, and over 250 others that appeared on the very first Fortune 500 list in 1955, have vanished from the front ranks of American industry. Why did so many fail to thrive? Is there an inevitable cycle of corporate growth, senescence, and morbidity? This is a salient question to pose three decades later. Why does the American corporate elite have such a lackluster record in perpetuating their preeminence? What accounts for the fact that companies with the wherewithal to hire the very best executive and technical talent available, and with the most money to invest in marketing, manufacturing, and R&D, have had so much trouble sustaining themselves at a lofty level?

Seeks to develop a model of different, contradictory, and even paradoxical, trends and approaches to management development (MD). Reviews current generic approaches to MD and offers a framework for the analysis of these approaches, based on Kolb’s work on experiential learning. Develops a four‐old analytical model which embraces both the practice and theory of MD in the UK and elsewhere. Makes brief mention of attempts to develop programmes for strategic managers, as opposed to more generic, usually operational manager‐oriented, programmes. Examines the relative paucity of advice on the development of strategic managers and whether there are qualitative differences between developing strategic and other managers.

Variable pay, defined as pay that is tied to some measure of a firm’s output, has become more important for executives of the typical American firm. Variable pay is usually touted as a way to provide incentives to managers whose interests may not be perfectly aligned with those of owners. The incentive justification for variable pay has well-known theoretical problems and also appears to be inconsistent with much of the data. Alternative explanations are considered. One that has not received much attention, but is consistent with many of the facts, is selection. Managers and industry specialists may have information about a firm’s prospects that is unavailable to outside investors. In order to induce managers to be truthful about prospects, owners may require managers to “put their money where their mouths are,” forcing them to extract some of their compensation in the form of variable pay. The selection or sorting explanation is consistent with the low elasticities of pay to output that are commonly observed, with the fact that the elasticity is higher in small and new firms, with the fact that variable pay is more prevalent in industries with very technical production technologies, and with the fact that stock and stock options are a larger proportion of total compensation for higher level employees. The explanation fits small firms and start-ups better than larger, well-established firms.