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Pulls from extensive research and experience to provide commentary and insight on a range of management issues in the information technology world. Draws a picture of the issues associated with successful management of the distributed systems environment, and waxes literary about management behaviours around electronic commerce.

Provides commentary and insight on a range of management issues in the information technology world. Hypothesizes on the future of paper in an electronic world; and takes a position on the emerging classes in an increasingly technologically‐oriented society.

Draws on extensive research and experience to provide commentary and insight on a range of management issues in the information technology world. Presents a picture of the evolving composition of commercial relationships resulting from the emergence of the Internet and new modes of enacting trade among businesses.

Argues that the personal computer is dead as a workplace phenomenon. Suggests that the financial pay‐off associated with using personal computers to increase knowledge and worker productivity is no longer viable; and that leading‐edge organizations are in transition between the close of the PC era and the accession of the new age of value‐on‐demand interpersonal computing. Highlights failings of the personal computer paradigm including points such as: focus on the individual and the desktop is misplaced; and the PC paradigm is flawed because the world which spawned such thinking no longer exists. Concludes by providing an action plan for conquering the interpersonal computer interregnum.

Presents the case that traditional return on investment (ROI) as an approach for justifying and measuring the value of IT investments is no longer appropriate. Argues that measures of financial return need to be supplemented or replaced by disciplined spending behaviours that are sensitized to calendar, infrastructural, temporal, security, knowledge, accountability and connectivity issues. Concludes that organizations that fail to redefine their value targeting and resource allocation processes will end up engaging in dysfunctional management practices.

Defining the role of a chief information officer (CIO) cannot be comprehensively dealt with in one article. Offers an “A‐Z” of suggested primary functions/objectives; which could be a useful aid to self‐appraisal for all CIOs.

Examines the strategic implications of a retailer engaging in the in‐house sourcing of its products (vertical integration). A contextual model for the make‐or‐buy decision is developed. Through the use of case material concerning a vertically integrated manufacturer/retailer, Thorntons, the article explores how the model might explain the pattern of vertical integration adopted by a specific organization and the strategy’s implications for competitiveness and strategic development. Problems are identified, including those of maintaining a retail focus, resource leverage and possible difficulties in responding to longer term market developments.

The chapter first emphasizes the aspects which Steuart (1767), Thornton (1802), Tooke (1844, 1838–1857), and Keynes (1923) have in common about the relation between the exchange rate and the short-term rate of interest: they all considered a temporary unfavorable foreign balance caused by an asymmetrical exogenous shock, which called for a discretionary policy favoring international short-term capital inflows to overcome the consequences of the deficit. These aspects draw an unorthodox genealogy on this issue between the four authors, contrary to the tradition originating in Hume and developed later by the British monetary orthodoxy. Secondly, the chapter shows that there was an analytical progress from Steuart (1767) to Keynes (1923), which however faced a limit: if it reinforced an unorthodox genealogy, it did not integrate the modern idea according to which international short-term capital movements may themselves be a source of external disequilibrium. The origin of this limit was probably in the question raised, which was the adjustment to an exogenous asymmetrical shock.

Although scholars increasingly use institutional logics to explain macro-level phenomena, we still know little about the micro-level psychological mechanisms by which institutional logics shape individual action. In this paper, we propose that individuals internalize institutional logics as an associative network of schemas that shapes individual actions through a process we call institutional frame switching. Specifically, we conduct two novel experiments that demonstrate how one particularly important schema associated with institutional logics – the implicit theory – can drive individual action. This work further develops the psychological underpinnings of the institutional logics perspective by connecting macro-level cultural understandings with micro-level situational behavior.

For approximately a century and a half after their dramatic deflation, the South Sea and Mississippi Bubbles of 1710–1720 had discredited finance. With the exception of government bond markets and a few chartered companies, the rapid rise and fall of fortunes associated with the South Sea Company, in Britain, and the Mississippi Company in France, had made the joint stock system of corporate finance almost synonymous with fraud and financial debauchery. (The most authoritative account of these schemes is given in Murphy, 1997.) The joint stock system of finance was seen as seriously flawed, and an indictment of the theories on credit money of the schemes’ instigator, John Law. During those one hundred and fifty years, classical political economy rose and flowered. Not surprisingly finance then came to be considered for its fiscal and monetary consequences. This pre-occupation left its mark on twentieth-century economics in an attitude that the fiscal and monetary implications of finance, eventually its influence on consumption, are more important than its balance sheet effects in the corporate sector. This attitude is apparent even in the work of perhaps the pre-eminent twentieth century critical finance theorist, John Maynard Keynes.