A new era of metacompetition is arriving as firms develop the capability to use sophisticated information technology for strategic purposes. This means that the corporate…
Abstract
A new era of metacompetition is arriving as firms develop the capability to use sophisticated information technology for strategic purposes. This means that the corporate strategist's role is evolving from raising managerial awareness for the need for such systems, to mastering their competitive dynamics. Just a few years ago, the bulk of the strategic information systems (SIS) stories focused on the pathbreaking cases of American Airlines's computerized reservations system, SABRE; American Hospital Supply's electronic order‐entry application, ASAP; and Merrill Lynch's Cash Management Account. In those days, corporate innovators still had to sell their organizations on the potential strategic uses of information technology.
Charles Wiseman and Ian C. MacMillan
As the pace of competition intensifies in the 1980s, information systems will emerge as critical new weapons in the battle to gain an advantage over competitors. The authors show…
Abstract
As the pace of competition intensifies in the 1980s, information systems will emerge as critical new weapons in the battle to gain an advantage over competitors. The authors show how a business can use modern information technologies to create a competitive edge by adding value to present products and services.
Information technology and information systems already rate acronyms that are quite portentous— IT and IS. Both are creating remarkable opportunities for some companies, and…
Abstract
Information technology and information systems already rate acronyms that are quite portentous— IT and IS. Both are creating remarkable opportunities for some companies, and awesome risks for others. Strategic planners are struggling to anticipate how these new technologies can be linked to their firm's business activities in innovative ways that create sustainable competitive advantage.
Alexander W. Wiseman and Audree Chase-Mayoral
Neo-institutional theory has provided a productive perspective on comparative and international education phenomena since the 1970s. Yet, recent critical discourse about…
Abstract
Neo-institutional theory has provided a productive perspective on comparative and international education phenomena since the 1970s. Yet, recent critical discourse about educational phenomena investigated through a neo-institutional lens has been somewhat one-sided. The authors reexamine neo-institutional theory and its application to comparative and international education by demonstrating the ways that the theory frames both macro- and micro-level educational phenomena. The ability to shift the discourse about neo-institutional theory from a largely macro-level framework to one capable of investigating educational changes occurring at the micro level is vital to understanding the comprehensiveness of national educational systems and the ways that both world culture and individual agency contribute to these systems. Specifically, using the empirical application of neo-institutional theory to the intersection of information and communication technology (ICT) and internationally comparative educational data, the macro and micro levels of educational phenomena can be productively examined. In so doing, this chapter shifts the discourse on how and why neo-institutional theory reflects cross-national educational trends and micro-contextual effects on education worldwide.
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Craig Volden and Alan E. Wiseman
The field of nonmarket strategy has expanded rapidly over the past 20 years to provide theoretical and practical guidance for managers seeking to influence policymaking. Much of…
Abstract
The field of nonmarket strategy has expanded rapidly over the past 20 years to provide theoretical and practical guidance for managers seeking to influence policymaking. Much of this scholarship has built directly on spatial and “pivotal politics” models of lawmaking. While extremely helpful at identifying crucial targets for lobbying, these models treat all policymakers as identical in their abilities to advance legislative agenda items through various policymaking hurdles. We build upon these earlier models, but include policymakers who vary in their relative effectiveness at advancing measures through the legislative process. We identify how the implications of our model deviate from those of conventional (pivotal politics) analyses. We then present an empirical strategy for identifying effective Lawmakers in the United States Congress, and illustrate the utility of this approach for managers developing nonmarket strategies in legislative institutions, relying on the case of banking and financial services reforms between 2008 and 2011.
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Sociologists working within the institutional framework have revealed the extent to which shared cultural understandings concerning education as an institution have been a driving…
Abstract
Sociologists working within the institutional framework have revealed the extent to which shared cultural understandings concerning education as an institution have been a driving force effecting similar educational outcomes within diverse national settings. Worldwide models promulgated by international organizations and policy makers define and legitimate agendas, structures, and policies of nation-states as well as the movement of individuals into and through social institutions such as education, the labor market, politics, and the family. The ideological underpinnings of this overarching cultural framework have been documented and discussed extensively in theoretical as well as empirical work in this body of literature (see, e.g., Boli & Thomas, 1999; Meyer, Boli, Thomas, & Ramirez, 1997).
Alexander W. Wiseman, David P. Baker, Catherine Riegle-Crumb and Francisco O. Ramirez
Prior research shows that stratification of future adult opportunities influences stratification in the academic performance of students. This perspective is used to generate…
Abstract
Prior research shows that stratification of future adult opportunities influences stratification in the academic performance of students. This perspective is used to generate hypotheses regarding the sources of cross-national gender differences in mathematics performance. These hypotheses are tested using multivariate and multilevel analyses of adult opportunities for women and cross-national differences in mathematics performance by gender. This future opportunity perspective is expanded to take into account the historical incorporation of women in modern nation-states through institutionalized mass schooling emphasizing egalitarian ideals. Results indicate a cross-national shift in the direction of less gender inequality in overall school mathematics performance. However, gender inequality is more evident in the advanced 12th grade mathematics. The results of a more specialized analysis of the advanced 12th grade mathematics are compared with the earlier findings regarding mathematics performance.
The purpose of this paper is to address the ideological narratives which came to comprise a new welfare consensus in the USA and subsequently a welfare state which was more…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the ideological narratives which came to comprise a new welfare consensus in the USA and subsequently a welfare state which was more fiscally austere, demeaning, and coercive. It also explores the role of the political and financial restructuring which facilitated the implementation of retrogressive reforms.
Design/methodology/approach
Macro-level historical forces are investigated through various texts such as policy statements, journal articles, press releases, political addresses, congressional transcripts and testimony, archived papers, newspaper articles, and occasional sound bites and popular culture references pertaining to welfare and which have come to construct the common understanding of it.
Findings
The formation of this consensus was due in part to three factors: first, the growth of and increased influence of an elite policy planning network; second, welfare program administration and financing had been decentralized which allowed greater autonomy of state and local governments to implement their own retrogressive reforms; and third, there emerged an overarching discourse and paradigm for structuring policy and explaining the causes of poverty which emphasized individual behavior.
Originality/value
This paper focusses on the materialization of the contemporary welfare consensus during the 1980s and 1990s in terms of its ideological and political history and on its persistence which has affected the ensuing policy culture and which continues to constrain anti-poverty policy discourse as well as what can be accomplished legislatively. The paper is of value for for readers, fields, courses with work that encompasses an examination of political and social theory, ideology, social policy, power/hegemony, poverty, inequality, families, gender, race, and meaning making institutions.
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THE beginning of a new volume is necessarily a time for reflection. Our journal is now forty‐four years old and has appeared without intermission, always with the purpose…
Abstract
THE beginning of a new volume is necessarily a time for reflection. Our journal is now forty‐four years old and has appeared without intermission, always with the purpose, enunciated by its founder, James Duff Brown—to furnish librarians of all kinds and ages with a thought‐exchange and a medium of expression independent of any other control than the editor's conviction that what was published was sincere in intention and likely to be of use to the profession. This does not mean, as our pages to‐day witness, that matters of controversy or even of severe criticism of those who lead the profession officially are excluded. On the contrary, we believe that the best spur to advance is a critical vigilance. Thus it has occurred occasionally that our writers have been at variance with some current policy of the Library Association, some phases of its examinations or its conference policy. Occasionally, too, there have been criticisms of library authorities which an official journal might hesitate to make because those authorities may be in membership of the Library Association. Such criticism was never more necessary than now. The library movement has to be kept alive under the greatest strain in history; indeed, it should progress.
Naejin Kwak and Francisco O. Ramirez
Despite the impressive record of advancing toward higher education, women are substantially underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields compared…
Abstract
Despite the impressive record of advancing toward higher education, women are substantially underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields compared to men. Less is known about the factors that explain gendered patterns of participation in STEM in countries with dissimilar national characteristics and educational systems. To fill this gap in the literature, this study first examines the historical trends of female representation in STEM fields cross-nationally. Then, this paper explores the relationship between women’s and men’s enrollments in STEM with various structural, national characteristics. Recognizing that the relationship may vary by subfields of STEM, the study further investigates the association separately for natural science and for engineering. Using time- and entity-fixed effects panel regression models pooled between 1970 and 2010, the study’s analyses built on earlier studies on gender segregation across fields of study and gender inequality in higher education. The findings suggest that the common assumption of tight, positive linkage between societal development and participation in STEM holds for only men at an aggregate level under the period covered. The authors find a negative association between national economic development and women’s participation in STEM, especially for engineering. On the other hand, they find positive associations between men’s enrollment in STEM as well as women’s enrollment in other fields of study with women’s participation in STEM. Taken together, the results suggest the significance of the diffusion of an inclusive logic in higher educational institutions.