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Examines the relationship between competitive strategy and firm size in the UK estate agency industry, by presenting evidence from a recent empirical study of the industry in South West England. The analysis indicates that the industry is generally characterised by differentiation strategies rather than price competition and suggests that this may be attributable to a relative lack of economies of scale and the localised nature of the market. However, different types of firm place a greater emphasis upon different strategic positions. Suggests that small firms wishing to establish a long‐term position in a market in which larger firms are operating need to assess both the market environment and the market position of their rivals if they are to discover particular market niches in which they can develop competitive advantage.

Discusses how recent changes in the European defence market have forced leading defence companies to make significant changes to their corporate strategy. Examines these changes, reviews the existing literature on strategic change in the defence sector and provides a detailed case study of British Aerospace. Shows that the process of strategy formulation is complex and changing. Moreover, makes it clear that the defence market is restructuring at a European and international level and that the process of managerial collaboration is intensifying. Says that the future of the defence industry and the strategic focus of defence firms is thus unlikely to remain in the hands of national governments but will be determined at a European or global level.

Faith‐based activism in living wage campaigns is on the rise. Summarizes recent campaigns to enact living wage ordinances in US municipalities, underscoring the role of community‐church partnerships such as Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, and other local organizations in the struggle for wage justice. Explores the theological bases of this activism by tracing the evolution of the concept of a just, living wage in Christian social economic thought. To illustrate the historical and philosophical roots of living wage discourse, provides textual analysis of major Roman Catholic and Episcopal Church documents and briefly considers writings by US social economists in the first half of the twentieth century.

In response to major changes in the defence market in recent years, many firms have embarked on a process of diversification into civilian markets. Examines some of the impediments to diversification based on the results of a postal survey of defence contractors in Devon and Cornwall. The results imply that problems related to the economic recession, a lack of marketing expertise and the cost of market entry are major hurdles to diversification. A case study of a local firm which has successfully diverisifed indicates that a change in corporate culture throughout the entire production, supply and selling chain is an important ingredient to success. In conclusion, notes that diversification is no simple panacea for companies suffering from the effects of declining demand from defence customers.

Examines national, local and European policy responses to defence cuts by considering a case study of the defence‐dependent region of Devon and Cornwall. It is shown that in the absence of a coherent national government policy and the constraints on local authority finance, European programmes have played an important role in assisting the process of local restructuring. Moreover, the process of bidding for European funds has fostered local cooperation and generated a considerable amount of information concerning the local defence sector.

This essay raises the following question “Does economics have an ethical component?”. In this regard, Mayer finds that two distinct perspectives have unique and continuing significance: the instrumentalist and the personalist. The first, he says, traces its origins to the very beginnings of economics as a discipline, has dominated economic thought ever since, and denies there is a place for ethics in the science of economics. The second is of more recent origin, has been far less influential in shaping economic thought, and insists that economics indeed has an ethical component because economic affairs are human affairs. Mayer states that John Paul II has contributed to the development of the personalist perspective by insisting that humans are more than mere instrumentalities in the process of production. They are human persons first and foremost, with a moral agency which they bring with them to the workplace and the marketplace.

I want to suggest that as important as the number of jobs in the future is the type of those jobs, and I want to look a little more broadly at what is still the physical place of work for most of us — the organization — be it factory, office, or shop, places which I think are changing with all manner of unsuspected consequences even while we talk. If you even half believe me it adds up to quite a change; to put it more evocatively we are living through a social revolution, but what keeps one awake at night is the fact that half the people have not noticed and the other half do not seem to give a damn. Sometimes I think that the British people actually prefer to stumble backwards into the future, because that way they delude themselves that things are not changing too much after all.

The origin of “social solidarism” as a doctrine seems to be in France. Pierre Leroux (1797–1871) is credited with being the first who attached an ethical significance to the otherwise juridical expression of solidarism. Charles Gide, who himself belonged to the French solidarist movement, in his book (co‐authored with C. Rist), Histoire des Doctrines Economiques (1909), described the solidarist school as being influenced by the works of Leon Bourgeois, Pierre J. Proudhon, Charles Secretan and others.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.