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Introduction There is little doubt that organisations wishing to survive in the increasingly competitive environment of the 1990s must have a clear plan for their acquisition and utilisation of human resources. The various activities carried out by the personnel function, such as selection, recruitment, development and assessment have a far greater impact on organisational excellence if they are part of a thought‐out human resources plan, rather than piecemeal, and perhaps disconnected outputs of the personnel department. Because of the realisation of the need for integrated planning, human resources planning (HRP) has become increasingly well accepted, but there is still a large gap between theory and practice in HRP. There is considerable lip‐service to the need for sophisticated HRP, but many practitioners continue to use simple HRP techniques and less frequently use the more powerful techniques that are available. This may be a function of the gap between theory and practice as practitioners are likely to prefer to work with the techniques that they understand and which they control, rather than having to make use of what they see as “sophisticated” planning models which typically require the help of a head office planning or computer department.

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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.

Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the topic remain disintegrated and because both lack a sophisticated account of how social structure and interdependencies among organizations affect decline. This paper develops a perspective which tries to overcome these problems. The perspective explains decline through an understanding of how social ties and resource dependencies among firms affect market structure and the resulting behavior of firms within it. Evidence is furnished that supports the assumptions of the perspective and provides a basis for specifying propositions about the effect of network structure on organizational survival. I conclude by discussing the perspective’s implications for organizational theory and economic sociology.

Although unproven, many researchers have assumed that firm strategies remain constant over time, but such conclusions have resulted in conflicting generalizations. This study further extends the use of interpoint distance methodology to compare factor structures of marketing strategies of entrepreneurial technology firms at two points‐in‐time – 1989 and 1998.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the topic remain disintegrated and because both lack a sophisticated account of how social structure and interdependencies among organizations affect decline. This paper develops a perspective which tries to overcome these problems. The perspective explains decline through an understanding of how social ties and resource dependencies among firms affect market structure and the resulting behavior of firms within it. Evidence is furnished that supports the assumptions of the perspective and provides a basis for specifying propositions about the effect of network structure on organizational survival. I conclude by discussing the perspective's implications for organizational theory and economic sociology.