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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.

Purpose – To find major determinants of access to legal services and consider an effective way of expanding access to lawyers.Methodology – (1) A survey of Japanese individuals between 20 and 70 years of age, conducted in 2005; (2) A survey of visitors at legal advice centers of Bar Associations, conducted in 2007 and (3) A survey of visitors at law offices, also conducted in 2007.Finding – The use of a lawyer for legal services is not affected by income or a general knowledge of the law, but by the past experience of using a lawyer and personal connections with a legal professional. Both lawyers and people have anxieties about each other. Thus, a lawyer wants to accept a client who is introduced by someone that the lawyer knows personally. People who seek legal advice also worry about the cost and the unapproachabilility of lawyers. Direct or indirect personal connections help to reduce such anxieties. This traditional pattern of legal access is found among visitors at law offices. However, visitors at legal advice centers do not have such experience or connections. Legal advice centers, rather than to law offices, could expand access to lawyers more effectively, because the former is easier for people without personal connections to get access to legal advice.Research limitations – The response rate of the office survey is very small.Value of chapter – It contributes to a current debate on what affects the use of a lawyer and suggests a policy for expanding access to lawyers in Japan.

This paper illuminates the distinction between individual and organizational actors in business-to-business markets as well as the coexistence of formal and informal mechanisms of coordination in multinational corporations. The main questions addressed include the following. (1) What factors influence the occurrence of personal contacts of foreign subsidiary managers in industrial multinational corporations? (2) How such personal contacts enable coordination in industrial markets and within multinational firms? The theoretical context of the paper is based on: (1) the interaction approach to industrial markets, (2) the network approach to industrial markets, and (3) the process approach to multinational management. The unit of analysis is the foreign subsidiary manager as the focal actor of a contact network. The paper is empirically focused on Portuguese sales subsidiaries of Finnish multinational corporations, which are managed by either a parent country national (Finnish), a host country national (Portuguese) or a third country national. The paper suggests eight scenarios of individual dependence and uncertainty, which are determined by individual, organizational, and/or market factors. Such scenarios are, in turn, thought to require personal contacts with specific functions. The paper suggests eight interpersonal roles of foreign subsidiary managers, by which the functions of their personal contacts enable inter-firm coordination in industrial markets. In addition, the paper suggests eight propositions on how the functions of their personal contacts enable centralization, formalization, socialization and horizontal communication in multinational corporations.

This paper provides an analytical theory of appropriateness judgments that introduces structural dimensions in the study of social rationality of organization members. This approach helps explore the coevolution of members’ relative position in structure and normative choices in their organization. Illustration of this approach is based on the study of controversial judicial decisions and dynamics of advice networks in a courthouse where lay judges have to choose between punitive and nonpunitive awards in cases of unfair competition in business. In this case, coevolution is facilitated by an endogenous process of centralization–decentralization–recentralization of advice networks over time, and by use of a procedural “weak legal culture” that helps align and homogenize conflicting normative choices among organization members. It is suggested that this approach to social rationality helps revisit our understanding of social processes, in this case collective learning and secondary socialization in organizations and flexible labor markets.

A policy of surveillance which interferes with the fundamental right to a private life requires credible justification and a supportive evidence base. The authority for such interference should be clearly detailed in law, overseen by a transparent process and not left to the vagaries of administrative discretion. If a state surveils those it governs and claims the interference to be in the public interest, then the evidence base on which that claim stands and the operative conception of public interest should be subject to critical examination. Unfortunately, there is an inconsistency in the regulatory burden associated with access to confidential patient information for non-health-related surveillance purposes and access for health-related surveillance or research purposes. This inconsistency represents a systemic weakness to inform or challenge an evidence-based policy of non-health-related surveillance. This inconsistency is unjustified and undermines the qualities recognised to be necessary to maintain a trustworthy confidential public health service. Taking the withdrawn Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NHS Digital and the Home Office as a worked example, this chapter demonstrates how the capacity of the law to constrain the arbitrary or unwarranted exercise of power through judicial review is not sufficient to level the playing field. The authors recommend ‘levelling up’ in procedural oversight, and adopting independent mechanisms equivalent to those adopted for establishing the operative conceptions of public interest in the context of health research to non-health-related surveillance purposes.

This chapter presents an understanding of the nature, peculiarities and factors that influence decision-making by executives and managers across the various sub-regions of Africa. Focusing on factors such as culture, faith, ethics, information paucity and institutions, the chapter examines the prevailing nature of decision-making in West Africa, East Africa, Northern Africa and Southern Africa. Interestingly, decision-making in these regions is characterised by unique features and peculiarities. The Ubuntu African philosophy was used to illustrate the traditional African lifestyle and decision-making practice. Drawing from both traditional and contemporary decision-making approaches, it identifies similarities as well as differences in the approach employed by decision-makers across the various sub-regions of Africa. To clearly articulate the similarities and differences, interviews and surveys were used to gather data from managers operating in these regions. Factor analysis enabled the description of underlying factors that drive decision-making within each region. The chapter further illustrates a framework for decision-making practice in Africa, which shows the dynamics and important features of decision-making among executives in Africa. The author describes decision- making as an essential competence for managers and posits that being cognisant of the factors that influence decision-making significantly improves organisational performance. In conclusion, it recommends suitable strategies that enhance the quality of decision-making for both managers and educators.

With digital spaces an increasing feature of our everyday lives, and the internet now a primary means of sourcing IPEDs and information regarding their use, this chapter seeks to understand how digital fitness forum communities shape the dissemination of culturally embedded harm reduction advice. Findings are drawn from two netnographic studies of fitness forums, which identify several key areas in which community norms and structures served to inform harm reduction behaviours. This included embedded forum reputation systems and the ways in which these shaped IPED access, including through elevating ‘expert’ users and encouraging informed discussion regarding product quality, to the emergence of steroid testing services from forums as a community harm reduction tool. Second, forums were observed to often encourage users to conduct research and inform themselves regarding safe use, though limitations to this norm were also documented in relation to poor-quality medical advice, highlighting the issues with IPED users' reliance on anecdotal advice in the contexts of prohibition. Finally, the role of digital fitness forums as ‘digital backstage’ is considered, examining both how this can be harmful to IPED users from excluded or ‘otherised’ groups, but simultaneously offers cultural participants the opportunity for airing vulnerabilities in a space where their masculine identity is not threatened in doing so, thus facilitating harm reduction among cultural ‘insiders’.