Practicing managers see significant systematic principles in the world around them. They may not have accurate labels for the principles, and they may not appreciate fully the…
Abstract
Practicing managers see significant systematic principles in the world around them. They may not have accurate labels for the principles, and they may not appreciate fully the universality of their application. Nonetheless, the manager knows and feels these systematic principles in operation. The current vogue of referring to “the System” to describe nearly everything illustrates how well accepted the concept is.
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Examines the nature of the Web and its development pace. Against a background of some consumer uncertainty, the Web is growing according to predictions, but is still not a…
Abstract
Examines the nature of the Web and its development pace. Against a background of some consumer uncertainty, the Web is growing according to predictions, but is still not a consumer media format, and will not be until greater reliability, speed of access and ease of use arrive. Until then an elite of professional wired users is monopolising the Web, and they are likely to continue to do so, leaving others behind, until interactive digital television takes it into the living room and makes it a true consumer medium. It's difficult to predict what the rate of growth and final impact will be, as this is the first time a new mass medium has been introduced against the background of an old one: all previous ones were introduced into a vacuum of ignorance, whereas this one is heavily signposted long before most will use it. When it does arrive, however, advertisers will learn to exploit the global/local aspect of it to create a new layer of cultural diversity and individual, one‐to‐one consumerism.
Abdul Karim Kafoir and Emeka Raphael Agu
Traditional savings and credit associations, also known as ‘Osusu’ in Sierra Leone, are unions of individuals with common economic goals aimed at reducing poverty and economic…
Abstract
Traditional savings and credit associations, also known as ‘Osusu’ in Sierra Leone, are unions of individuals with common economic goals aimed at reducing poverty and economic vulnerability. The chapter examined the ecosystem of traditional indigenous savings and credit associations, their role as an emerging financial inclusion strategy, and contributions to the socio-economic transformation of business processes in the ecosystem of business operations in Sierra Leone. The chapter adopted the case study method to discuss the Tawoponneh model of ROSCAs in Sierra Leone. The institutional theory provided insight into why individuals join ROSCAs, as well as the resulting outcomes and benefits. Additionally, this chapter discusses the challenges associated with indigenous financial sustainability practices and provides actionable recommendations for joint private and government policy collaboration in supporting traditional entrepreneurial businesses.
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Few would argue with the proposition that socially, economically and politically, the United States is in a period of turbulence and uncertainty. We are navigating the rapids, and…
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Few would argue with the proposition that socially, economically and politically, the United States is in a period of turbulence and uncertainty. We are navigating the rapids, and white water is all around us. In the daily struggle to keep the boat afloat and on course, we have little inclination and less time to look ahead. Perhaps we fear that the future holds more of the same, that our present troubles constitute a new normalcy to which we must inure ourselves. In a remarkable turnaround from traditional American optimism, there is now a pronounced feeling abroad in the land that the present is worse than the past, and that the future will be still worse than the present.
Ostrander went to Chicago at the urging of his Williams professor Walter B. Smith who had studied with Frank Knight at Chicago in the early 1920s. He took four courses from…
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Ostrander went to Chicago at the urging of his Williams professor Walter B. Smith who had studied with Frank Knight at Chicago in the early 1920s. He took four courses from Knight: the history of economic thought, economic theory, current tendencies, and economics from an institutional standpoint (his notes taken in these courses have appeared in volume 22B and 23B in this series). At the beginning of the academic year in which he was a graduate student at Chicago, Ostrander’s major professor at Williams, Walter Buckingham Smith, wrote Knight introducing Ostrander to him. Ostrander did not know of this exchange of letters until he read a draft of this piece that I had sent him. The letters are useful in regard to Knight’s legendary pessimism and candor.September 30, 1933Dear Professor Knight:I am writing to tell you that we are sending you a graduate student named Ostrander from Williams. To a considerable extent he is coming to the University of Chicago on my recommendation. I particularly want him to work with you and with Professor Viner and with Professor Douglas. I’ll be interested to see what you do with him. In my opinion he has “promise.”Mr. Ostrander graduated here in 1932 and spent last year in Oxford. He seems to have survived a year at Oxford. Usually a year or two there is pretty hard for an American to get over. Ostrander, contrary to the usual rule, seems to have benefited rather than deteriorated under the direction of his English tutors.Ostrander is much interested in theoretical economics. My hope is that you will be able to do for him what I think you have a unique capacity to do. I hope that you can make him see economic theory not as a body of neat precepts nor as dogmas that one must learn but rather as a critical philosophizing about the categories. Needless to say, I’m not trying to tell you what you should teach your students. I’m merely telling you that I think that Ostrander is an intelligent enough person to understand you if you do in the class room what you used to do when I listened to you. He will understand; and he won’t reproach you if your lectures don’t enable him to get up a good note book.I spent the year before last in Berkeley at the University there and got very well acquainted with your brother M.M. Needless to say, that was one of the most valuable things that happened to me while I was there. I don’t understand why some eastern institution does not make M.M. a good offer and take him away from Berkeley where he is highly esteemed by all but sadly overlooked on pay-day.Do you ever come east? If you do we would be delighted to entertain you and Mrs. Knight here in Williamstown. I would like ever so much to be able to talk with you about economics. If you should come this way you may be sure that we would be very glad to see you.Sincerely yours,[signed] Walter SmithOctober 5, 1933Dear Smith:(I don’t know how I ought to address you, but can’t bring myself to “Professor” you, even though you did me.) I was just going to write you anyway when your letter came in the mail. Your man Ostrander arrived last week, and I had a couple of hours’ talk with him, business being slack on the first day of registration. He impressed me quite favorably. One thing he may have gotten in Oxford or in part from his eastern bringing up (we have a Princeton boy who is fully as bed [sic]) is an extremely deferential air which is embarrassing to me. I very much appreciate your comments, and I am, of course, quite set up at your sending him to us as against Harvard.By all means, any possible opportunity to get together and talk about economics. I am so depressed that it is really serious for my work. I have to fight the conviction that anything in any degree fundamental is impossible, hopeless. On one hand I agree very largely with the “rebels” that rationalistic economics doesn’t amount to a terrible lot, even if it were sound. But on the other hand the little that it does have to say about social relations and problems seems to me as peculiarly fundamental as it is limited in scope. But I suspect that man, in his well known capacity of “political animal,” is an inveterate romanticist, and will never see things in balance or perspective. He will either be a rationalist to the point of romanticism – the “Enlightenment” attitude – or else insist on scorning all fundamentals and transforming the world by wish[ful] thinking or some magic formula.I wonder what you think about current developments. I hope it may partly be due to a run-down physical condition, but actually my feeling is that we are seeing from day to day the “finish” of all we have educated ourselves to call the principal cultural fruits of western civilization. What gripes me is less this fact than the fact that I cannot rationally oppose the abolition of liberty and [the] establishment of tyranny. I feel that the regime of liberty has been a failure, or an experiment with negative results, that it has shown the incapacity of large masses of people to reach any sound conclusion by thinking and discussion – indeed the inevitability of their ending up by selling out to some hero-prophet. If this is the wrong view of events, I wish you would give me any possible help in reaching a view in which my own kind of person and of activity would have any place. I wonder if your failure to write may be based on a feeling similar to this one of my own, which is making it increasingly difficult for me to pretend to try to fan the wi[nd] of culture history into a new direction with a hen feather of words. Indeed, it is making it take an actual moral struggle a good deal of the time to open the door and go into an economics classroom and hold forth.Sincerely,Frank H. KnightNovember 24, 1933Dear FH:Thank you ever so much for your letter about Ostrander. You will be interested to know that Ostrander writes with the very greatest enthusiasm for your course. I am sure that you are doing him a lot of good. Before the year is over I would be interested to have your opinion of him and of his capacities to undertake the arduous job of being an economist. He has seemed promising to me. If this promise seems not to be fulfilled in your opinion, I should feel disposed to tell him so and urge him to resume his plans for going to the Harvard Law School.Your remarks about being depressed over the apparent disillusion of the existing economic order I very much sympathize with. Not only am I troubled about that but I am also very much troubled about the intellectual confusion and the lack of good sportsmanship on the part of the better trained economists these days. President Roosevelt seems to me to be willing to listen to reasonable and constructive suggestions and he has shown an extraordinary disposition to do some social experimenting. In the face of this extraordinary state of affairs it seems to me that the great body of well trained economists has contented themselves with growling quietly to one another and saying nothing in public. From the standpoint of maintaining one’s prestige that is in some ways the wise policy for it enables one to say “I told you so” when things in the world of business fact go wrong. It does seem to me, however, that under the circumstances economists ought to make their position known, that is[,] to point out where they think the existing policies are leading, the important and possibly conflicting goals of different lines of economic policy and certain long run changes in the set up of our legal economic structure. If the economists can’t do that much then it seems to be that they are confessing that their field is in such a state of intellectual confusion that it is practically worthless, or else they are confessing that they are a timid lot of thin-blooded academics who have no right to object if this country is run by the Babbitts.This letter comes to you to find out if there is any possibility of starting a movement or making the opinion of the economists heard. Personally I think we ought to speak out or else publicly admit that the study and teaching of economics is a racket.Sincerely yours,[signed] Walter Smith
Firoozeh Pourjavaheri, Farzad Mohades, Oliver Jones, Frank Sherkat, Ing Kong, Arun Gupta and Robert A. Shanks
This paper aims to use the solvent–casting–evaporation method to prepare new bio-composites with thermoplastic poly(ether urethane) (TPU-polyether) as the polymer matrix and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to use the solvent–casting–evaporation method to prepare new bio-composites with thermoplastic poly(ether urethane) (TPU-polyether) as the polymer matrix and reinforced with natural chicken feather fibre (CFF).
Design/methodology/approach
To produce the bio-composites, 0 to 60 per cent·w/w of fibres in steps of 30 per cent·w/w were added to the polymer matrix. The uniformity of distribution of the keratin fibres in the polymer matrix was investigated via scanning electron microscopy, and the results suggested compatibility of the TPU-polyether matrix with the CFFs, thereby implying effective fibre–polymer interactions.
Findings
Addition of natural fibres to the polymer was found to decrease the mass loss of the composites at higher temperatures and decrease the glass transition temperature, as well as the storage and loss modulus, at lower temperatures, while increasing the remaining char ratio, storage modulus and loss modulus at higher temperatures.
Originality/value
The investigation confirmed that waste keratin CFF can improve the thermo-mechanical properties of composites, simply and cheaply, with potentially large environmental and economic benefits.
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THE originality of the Escher Wyss airscrew, which has been adopted by the Swiss Air Force, is based on the fact that its conception has, since its inception, taken into account…
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THE originality of the Escher Wyss airscrew, which has been adopted by the Swiss Air Force, is based on the fact that its conception has, since its inception, taken into account all the requirements of a modern variable pitch airscrew. These conditions may be summarized as follows, that the airscrew must normally ensure automatic control at constant engine speed, adapting itself to every condition of flight, and that it should provide, when required, for operation as an aerodynamic brake, and be capable of being moved to the fully feathered position. The essentially mechanical problems, such as the anchorage of the blades in the hub and the design of the pitch control mechanism, must naturally find correct solutions to ensure reliability, together with that simplicity of control which is an essential property of all modern aircraft components.
James F. Gilsinan, Neil Seitz, James Fisher, Muhammad Q. Islam and James Millar
The purpose of this paper is to examine the legislative process, in order to determine the likely effectiveness of financial reform efforts in the USA.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the legislative process, in order to determine the likely effectiveness of financial reform efforts in the USA.
Design/methodology/approach
Case study of the legislative process, particularly the less visible parts such as rule making, that shaped the passage and implementation of the Dodd‐Frank Act and the failed Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) reform.
Findings
It is found that the process of financial reform legislation is structured in such a way as to thwart major reform, at least in the short run.
Practical implications
The passage of a particular piece of legislation may be the least important element in the process of reform. Rule making and the decisions as to how a law will be implemented, can advance or significantly defeat the quest for change.
Social implications
Much of what occurs in the legislative process is invisible, or appears arcane, to the ordinary citizen but can have major impact on their lives.
Originality/value
The paper provides a road map to understanding the least visible parts of financial reform efforts and suggests ways of achieving reform outcomes.