Search results

Taken individually, powerful storms of change such as globalization, the democratization of governments and economies, and the mass digitization of information and commerce, each provide established companies with unique opportunities and emerging threats. However as these storms continue to mature and coalesce, something even more with more impact may be happening. This article considers the emergence of a “perfect market” and provides guidance to established companies as markets move toward perfection.

The article defines what is meant by a perfect market. Each of the three storms of change – digitization, democratization, and globalization – and their effects are examined separately. The emerging factors of the perfect market are described, and leading, differentiating strategies are presented that will help companies not only survive, but also thrive as markets become perfect. Supporting data, references and examples are provided.

Faced with the emergence of the perfect market, firm structures such as deep‐rooted organizations and inflexible operating models will be quickly toppled. Inertia caused by complacency, resistance to change and sheer size will be like anchors on sinking ships. Unbreakable supply chains and alliances will be like tethers. The perfect market will demand fluidity and agility, the ability to scale up or down in response to changes in demand, and the ability to form and dissolve business relationships at a moment's notice.

By considering the extreme conditions of the hypothetical perfect market, the article provides insight into what strategies may be effective as established companies deal with the powerful storms of change that are very real.

Though prosocial attributes are linked to positive outcomes among justice-involved adolescents and are a mainstay of numerous interventions, few measures have been specifically designed to evaluate prosocial functioning within this population. Although multiple instruments measuring aspects of prosocial behavior exist, these instruments were not designed to measure prosocial behaviors among youth in juvenile justice settings. This study aims to provide a preliminary validation of a new measure of prosocial attributes (the Prosocial Status Inventory – PSI), which was designed to comprehensively evaluate in greater depth the prosocial functioning of urban, justice-involved youth.

Youth (n = 51) were recruited as part of a larger study and were participants in a community-based mentoring program in a large, urban county in the Southern USA. Youth completed the PSI at baseline prior to their participation in the community-based mentoring program. The authors obtained follow-up data on recidivism from the county juvenile justice department.

PSI scores were positively related to a lower rate of recidivism and a decrease in offending frequency over a 12-month follow-up period.

The current findings complement previous work, suggesting that prosocial attributes are measurable and related to important outcomes among justice-involved youth and support the utility of strengths-based treatment approaches. Moreover, it provides preliminary evidence of the utility of a new self-report measure to assess these traits within a juvenile justice population.

In the periods, following the First and Second World Wars, colonial states across the British empire underwent waves of reforms that were geared toward improving human well-being, from enhancing social conditions, such as health and education, to expanding opportunities for economic and political engagement. The literature on the colonial state typically traces these state-building efforts to the agency of European colonial officials. However, evidence from a historical analysis of Trinidad and Tobago reveals a different agent driving state reform: the colonized. A local labor movement during colonialism forced the colonial state to construct a number of state agencies to ameliorate the economic, political, and social conditions in the colony, thereby resulting in an increase in state capacity. This study, therefore, provides critical intervention into the colonial state literature by showing that the agency of the colonized, as opposed to just the colonizers, is key to state-building, and specifying the mechanisms by which the subaltern constrained colonial officials and forced them to enact policies that improved colonial state capacity.

Businesses have increasingly been urged to shift their emphasis away from a purely profit-driven economic perspective to a more sustainable approach to growth that holistically captures people, the planet and profits. Indigenous businesses are well suited to creatively integrate sustainability principles within their internal culture. This enables them to cope with the dominance created by non-indigenous enterprises while also promoting long-term business success. The Triple Bottom Line (TBL) concept has been applied to explore how indigenous businesses in Uganda manifest their best practices by incorporating sustainability principles for lasting economic performance. A multiple case study approach was adopted, and three well-established female-owned indigenous businesses were investigated using in-depth interviews. Integrating sustainability in the business is a fulfiling process if done holistically by embracing a range of interdependent variables that include environmental, social and economic dimensions. The author contributes an innovative culturally sensitive sustainability scope that reflects practical insights on how internal sustainability efforts can be streamlined for long-term economic prosperity without compromising the wider social and physical environment.

Economic globalization is making Strategic Management researchers increasingly aware of the important extent to which international business strategies are shaped by national, regional, and international institutions — by differing business‐state and management‐labor regimes, industrial organization, and capital allocation systems, techno‐economic processes, etc. As yet, however, relatively limited attention to the “institutional embeddedness” of corporate strategy has developed within Strategic Management education. This paper seeks to encourage debate on incorporating analysis of the institutional shaping of corporate strategies by discussing four issues recommended to be systematically addressed in Strategic Management texts, lectures, and case work. The topics are: (1) the transition from the “Fordist” to “Post‐Fordist” global economy; (2) comparative business systems analysis; (3) political forces of the global economy; (4) global warming and environmental management.

This paper aims to conduct a historical study using both primary (archival data) and secondary sources to evaluate the social conditions of the community of employees at Hawthorne Works between 1907 and 1933.

This paper evaluates the historical and social context of the 1915 Eastland disaster, specifically, the effects of the Eastland disaster on the community and the company to improve understanding of the contextual background and conditions which influenced the Hawthorne studies. This will also serve as a case study of crisis management.

The findings of the paper argue that the Eastland disaster likely contributed to the expansion of welfare capitalism practices by Western Electric in the 1920s–1930s and established the social and communal conditions which made the Hawthorne studies (1924–1933) possible.

Rather than evaluating the Hawthorne studies themselves, this paper focuses on social factors which made the Hawthorne Works plant site and the community serving it an ideal locale to host the famous studies as part of Western Electric’s practice of welfare capitalism and a distraction from the traumatic event which scarred the community and urged the Western Electric company to react. This study also provides an early example of crisis management.

Cultures do not change easily for various reasons. This is particularly true of higher education that too often denies the existence of any systemic barriers to faculty advancement. While not confined to the academy, the intractable nature of institutional culture is particularly significant when related to the experiences of faculty women of color. It is the issues and challenges occasioned by this very cultural intractability on which the editors and contributing authors of this two-edited volume, Women of Color in Higher Education: Turbulent Past, Promising Future (Vol. 9) and Women of Color in Higher Education: Contemporary Perspectives and New Directions (Vol. 10), focus their conceptual and empirical work. Specifically, the chapters provide a broad overview of the characteristics and experiences of women of color (e.g., African American, Latina/Hispanic American, Native American, and Asian/Pacific American) whose increased presence in senior level administrative and academic positions in higher education is transforming the political climate.