bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Ethics of Constructivism
Authors: Price Richard
Published: September 2009

Social constructivism has increasingly been seen as one of the chief theoretical contenders in contemporary scholarship in international relations. As a research program, one of its main substantive contributions to the field has been to show that moral norms — and thus ethics — matter in world politics. In this very agenda itself, constructivist scholars have embodied ethical commitments — at its most basic level this most often has been one of challenging realist scepticism concerning the possibilities for progressive moral change. Yet the plausibility of such ethical positions has typically been defended by constructivists on rigorous empirical terms — showing that human rights norms or norms of warfare can matter, for example — rather than on comparably rigorous normative grounds (that such norms are ethically desirable). This article briefly outlines the trajectory of the constructivist research programme, arguing that its development and responses to its critics have now led it — and its challengers — centrally to explicit engagement with ethical questions. It then considers the extent to which constructivism can be said to entail a distinctive ethic at all, and outlines its potential contributions to addressing global ethical challenges.
Public and Private Management Compared
Authors: Rainey Hal G. , Chun Young Han
Published: September 2009

In spite of various claims about the importance of the public–private distinction, the clearly prevailing consensus among scholars and experts on management holds that the distinction is not worth much. Many scholars have argued that the “sectors” involve such vastly diverse sets of management settings that distinctions such as public, private, and non-profit become confusing and misleading. In addition, over the years, major organization theorists have proclaimed that public and private management show more similarities than differences. These proclamations reflect a “generic” orientation among many management and organization theorists, who take the position that managers face common challenges in most or all settings, such as leading, motivating, and decision making.
Whatever Happened to Public Administration?
Authors: Frederickson H. George
Published: September 2009

Concepts of governance as public administration reflect a long-standing theoretical debate in the field, the matter of distinctions between politics, and policy on one hand and policy implementation or administration on the other. Easy dismissal of the politics–administration dichotomy serves to focus the study of public administration, particularly by some governance theorist, on the constitutional and political context of the organization and management of the territorial state or jurisdiction. From this perspective governance becomes steering and public administration becomes rowing, a lesser phenomenon in the scholarly pecking order, not to mention a lesser subject in governance. Public administration, thus understood, is the work that governments contract-out, leaving governance as the subject of our study. Although the lines between politics, policy, and administration are often fuzzy and changing, and although there is not a politics–administration dichotomy, it is nevertheless important to understand the empirical distinctions between political and administrative phenomena.
Professionals in Public Service Organizations
Authors: Ferlie Ewan , Geraghty Keith J.
Published: September 2009

This article reviews the evolving literature on professionals in public service organizations. It then presents two contemporary, but alternative, narratives of public service reform, that of “New Public Management” and that of the “Governance Model,” considering implications for public service professionals. Examples are presented particularly from health care and higher education in different countries. These settings are selected because of their central role in many current reform strategies. The article outlines possible scenarios for the future and consider implications. More theoretical and empirical work is needed, but the emergent evidence points to more varied responses by professionals to public sector reform than often assumed.
Management Consultancy
Authors: Saint-Martin Denis
Published: September 2009

This article explores the key question: What accounts for the growing importance of management consultants in the public policy process? To do so, the article relies on historical-institutionalist theories emphasizing the interactions between processes of state formation (and transformation) and social knowledge. The approach used is both historical and comparative, looking at the role of consultants in public service reforms in various European and North American countries, and at how governments have used consultants since at least the 1960s with the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS) movement, whereas in the 1980s it was more linked to the “audit explosion” and more recently, to e-government. Whether the growing presence of consultants in government is the result of politicians who want to broaden their sources of policy advice, or of the lobbying efforts of consulting firms seeking to expand their activities in the public sector, is an open question.
Location, Competitiveness, and the Multinational Enterprise
Authors: Rugman Alan M. , Verbeke Alain
Published: September 2009

This article provides an overview of the key insights resulting from recent international business research on the interactions between location advantages and the competitiveness of multinational enterprises (MNEs). It consists of four main sections. First, the evolution of the location advantage concept in the international economics literature is discussed. Here, it appears that the international economics literature has substantially broadened its analytical scope in the last few decades. However, the field of international business research had gone even further in its analysis of the interactions between location and MNE competitiveness because of its in-depth focus on the actual behaviour of MNEs. The complex nature of location advantages for MNEs is discussed in more detail in the second section. The third section describes the intellectual foundations of a spatial analysis of MNE activities. Finally, the fourth section discusses the relative contribution of home country specific advantages (CSAs) and host CSAs to MNE competitiveness.
Unbundling the Institution‐Based View of International Business Strategy
Authors: Peng Mike W. , Khoury Theodore A.
Published: September 2009

Critics suggest that the industry-based view has the five forces framework and the resource-based view converges on the VRIO framework, yet what specific propositions or frameworks does the institution-based view of IB strategy have? This article addresses this important and legitimate question, by identifying and articulating the two core propositions underpinning the institution-based view: (1) individuals and firms act rationally according to formal and informal institutional structures; (2) when formal institutions fail, informal institutions regulate exchange relationships. In other words, this article endeavours to advance the institution-based view of IB strategy by unbundling the broad proposition that ‘institutions matter’. It leverages and extends contemporary research to illustrate the explanatory and predictive power of the two propositions underpinning the institution-based view of IB strategy.
Metrics for International Business Research
Authors: Morck Randall , Yeung Bernard
Published: September 2009

This article focuses on performance measures. It starts with the usual focus on profitability and market value as performance measures, followed by alternative performance measures based on firm productivity, growth and survival. It then discusses issues on survey data, and the problem of ex post reasoning in empirical work. There are several important themes in this discussion. First, it discusses the definitional and variable construction issues. Second, it addresses the analytical contents in these variables as performance measures. Third, it highlights the statistical and empirical difficulties in using these performance measures, especially in an international cross-country context.
The Influence of Organizational Politics on Performance Appraisal
Authors: Latham Gary P. , Dello Russo Silvia
Published: September 2009

Political behaviors in organizations consist of self-serving actions taken by an individual or group. They are directed toward the goal of furthering one's own self-interest without regard for the wellbeing of others in the organization. Such actions are informal and, as part of an organization's culture, regulate interpersonal relationships. The fact that the politics inherent in organizational behavior affect an employee's appraisal was noted more than a quarter of a century ago by behavioral scientists. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of systematic research on this subject. Thus, the purpose of this article is fourfold. First, the phenomenon of organizational politics is described. Second, studies on the relationship between political behavior and appraising employees are reviewed. Third, steps to minimizing its adverse effects on the appraisal of employees are outlined. Finally, a research agenda is suggested.
Fundamentalism(s)
Authors: Harris Harriet A.
Published: September 2009

Protestant fundamentalists regard the Bible as foundational for faith, and believe that if the Bible were found to be flawed, Christianity would collapse. They therefore also feel concerned at the prospect of more than one meaning to a biblical passage, for their foundation would then seem more like shifting sand than solid rock. Since the late 1970s, so-called fundamentalist movements have been identified across the world's faiths. The term ‘fundamentalism’ has now become so elastic that a core definition is difficult to retain. Within Protestant fundamentalism, notions of biblical authority must be understood in relation to the foundational status given to Scripture. Other religious resurgent movements around the world are foundationalist in some respect, and many select and absolutize particular interpretations of particular texts. This article analyzes fundamentalism as biblical or textual foundationalism to help illuminate points of comparison and contrast across the fundamentalisms of the world.
Mental Causation
Authors: Kim Jaegwon
Published: September 2009

The problem of mental causation is essentially coeval with the mind–body problem. Descartes arguably invented the latter when, in Meditation 2, he asked ‘But what then am I?’ to which he replied ‘A thing which thinks’, and then went on to argue, in Meditation 6, that ‘it is certain that this I is entirely and absolutely distinct from my body, and can exist without it’. As every student of western philosophy knows, Descartes's view was that minds and bodies constitute two disjoint categories of substance: minds are immaterial substances whose essential nature is thinking, while bodies are material substances located in physical space whose essence consists in being extended in space. Presumably, substance dualism of this form was not startling news to anyone at the time. However, Descartes, alone among the great rationalists of his day, urged a further view: minds and bodies are in causal interaction with each other, minds influencing bodies in voluntary actions and bodies influencing minds in perception and sensation.
What is the Physical?
Authors: Montero Barbara Gail
Published: September 2009

Addressing the question of what is the physical is important not only for understanding the general thesis of physicalism, but also for assessing the strength and significance of a number of the central arguments regarding physicalism and the physical nature of the mind. For example, debates over the possibility of zombies pervade the literature on consciousness. Zombies, in the relevant sense, are supposed to be creatures that are just like us in every physical respect yet lack consciousness. Are such creatures possible? Some have argued that while it is not conceivable, or logically possible, that there could be, say, H2O that is not water, it is conceivable that there could be worlds that are physical duplicates of ours yet populated by zombies rather than conscious human beings, and thus consciousness does not logically supervene on the physical.
The Normativity of the Intentional
Authors: Wedgwood Ralph
Published: September 2009

Many philosophers have claimed that the intentional is normative. (This claim is the analogue, within the philosophy of mind, of the claim that is often made within the philosophy of language, that meaning is normative.) The first two sections of this article give a brief clarification of what this claim that ‘the intentional is normative’ actually means. The third section considers a number of arguments that philosophers have advanced in favour of this claim; as the discussion reflects, many of these arguments are inconclusive at best. However, the last section gives a sketch of a different argument, which the author regards as a persuasive argument for this claim.
The Distinction Between Conceptual and Nonconceptual Content
Authors: Bermúdez José Luis
Published: September 2009

The terminology of the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction was originally introduced by Gareth Evans to clarify the relation between perceptual states and what Evans termed the ‘reasoning and concept-applying system’. Evans's basic idea that perceptual experiences represent the environment in a manner independent of the perceiver's conceptual repertoire has antecedents in Dretske's distinction between analogue content and digital content. This way of using the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction has been developed most systematically by Christopher Peacocke, who has argued that we need a notion of nonconceptual content in order adequately to explain the epistemological dimension of concept possession — an argument that, in turn, has attracted spirited critical discussion.
The Self
Authors: Strawson Galen
Published: September 2009

This article aims to give some sense of the conceptual geography of the notion of the self, and the article can do this without requiring the reader to accept any of its assumptions or conclusions. It talks about historical figures, but only because they provide by far the best, most direct, most vivid, and most searching discussions of the problem of the self.
Perspectives on Political Behavior in Time and Space
Authors: Rose Richard
Published: September 2009

This article studies the various perspectives on political behaviour in time and space. It presents an argument that political behaviour does not exist among isolated individuals; rather, it occurs within a three-dimensional space. It determines the right time to conduct a time-series analysis, and the importance of including various locations and contexts in order to gain a more scientific basis for generalization. The last section shows the various elements that can be studied in political behaviour, such as values, inputs, and outputs.
Race and Political Behavior
Authors: Saggar Shamit
Published: September 2009

This article presents a survey that aims to draw together several central themes found in literature pertaining to race and political behaviour. It attempts to evaluate the broad trends in this volume of research, despite the interests of researchers being clustered around some major topics and approaches. The topics covered in this article are comparative politics, conflict, electoral engagement, the behavioural frameworks of enquiry and understanding, race, and political behaviour.
The Personalization of Politics
Authors: McAllister Ian
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the personalization of politics, starting with a careful examination of the evidence that leaders are becoming more important. The role of electronic media in personalizing politics and politicians is examined, along with institutions and political leadership. The concept ‘political priming’ is introduced, which is the process where leaders are evaluated by voters based on the leader's performance on issues considered important to the voters. The consequences of the personalization of politics and the decline of electoral participation and parties are discussed in the last portion of the article.
Turnout in Elections
Authors: Blais André
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the turnout in elections. It first examines turnout from an aggregate perspective, and then compares the level of turnout across space and eventually, over time. It deals with ‘simple’ descriptive questions and establishes the basic turnout patterns. The article considers those who vote, before concluding with an examination of the factors that shape the decision of individuals to vote or not to vote. The most influential models that have been proposed to explain electoral participation are included.
The Spread of Protest Politics
Authors: Rucht Dieter
Published: September 2009

The article discusses the spread of protest politics, which was previously seen as an irrational outburst of the ‘dangerous classes’ that threatened the public order. The article briefly describes the different perspectives and theories on protest politics in the first part. This is followed by a presentation of the empirical findings on the patterns of protest, its determinants, and its effects. A summary of the main results is provided along with several concluding remarks.
Perspectives on Political Participation
Authors: Kaase Max
Published: September 2009

This article discusses certain perspectives on political participation, and highlights the cache of information on political science and politics that can be found in abstracts and political journals all over the world. The first section in this article begs the question: what have we learned? This is answered by looking at several topics related to politics, including social movements, protest politics, electronic government and the World Wide Web, and civil society. The latter half of the article is devoted to a discussion of the future visions and past achievements of political participation.
Research Resources in Comparative Political Behavior
Authors: Kittilson Miki Caul
Published: September 2009

This article presents a guide to the major cross-national survey research projects that address political themes. It provides a comparison of global and regional surveys, as well as a common set of dimensions. A brief overview of the most extensive national election study series from countries all over the world is also included. The article also covers some of the major national archives, and concludes with a section on the importance of standardizing procedures for sharing survey data. Comments on the future of cross-national survey projects are also presented.
Memory, Individual and Collective
Authors: Assmann Aleida
Published: September 2009

This article considers the relevance of individual and collective memory in political analysis. It proposes that there are four formats of memory and these are individual memory, social memory, political memory, and cultural memory. It argues for the existence of collective memory and explains that human beings do not only live in the first person singular, but also in various formats of the first person plural. It contends that each ‘we’ is constructed through specific discourses that mark certain boundary lines and define respective principles of inclusion and exclusion and suggests that to acknowledge the concept of collective memory is to acknowledge the concept of some collective identity.
Why and How Culture Matters
Authors: Thompson Michael , Verweij Marco , Ellis Richard J.
Published: September 2009

This article examines the importance of culture in politics. It explains that it is cultural to be political and this means that culture is not only contextual to politics but essential. Given that all political science deals with culture, this article investigates how culture can do this. It suggests that culture and behaviour are separate but not unconnected and proposes how to take valid account of culture in relation to politics. It also discusses the theory of constrained relativism and the cultures of climate change.
Does History Repeat?
Authors: Collier Ruth Berins , Mazzuca Sebastián
Published: September 2009

This article examines the repetition in history in relation to contextual political analysis. It attempts to determine how political science can explain outcomes in a way that does not contradict their fundamentally historical character given that repetition is often considered necessary for making general, explanatory statements in the social sciences. The article explains that history can usefully be seen as repeating and argues that even the most radical critics accept some forms of repetition, and these forms are not logically different from those they reject. It suggests that explanation does not require repetition because explanatory approaches that are usually seen as requiring repetition are those based on correlational arguments. It also considers how political phenomena can be seen as repeating, both in terms of description as cases of the same thing and in terms of common causal patterns.
Space, Place, and Time
Authors: Thrift Nigel J.
Published: September 2009

This article aims to review and synthesize work that is currently going on in human geography and other areas of social science which addresses the questions of space, place, and time as cultural processes of spatial and temporal formation. It addresses key questions that arise when space and time are treated as constitutive elements of the work of political relation and argues that treating space and time as active constituents of political relation points towards new kinds of politics which are not just derivative of political forces but represent new and vibrant political terrains and gains. It discusses the continuing importance of political invention and suggests that hat contextual political analysis is the only meaningful form of political analysis and that this principle should be engrained in the practices of political theory.
Organization Theory as a Positive Science
Authors: Donaldson Lex
Published: September 2009

Positive science applied to organizations seeks to build a body of knowledge that consists of general causal theories about organizations and their members. These theories are empirically validated through scientific methods. These theories are positive in that they explain how the world works, rather than being normative, that is, prescribing what ought to occur. In positivist organizational science, organizations are explained as being driven by the environment. Organizational science has made considerable progress to date through using the positivist approach. To the degree that organizational portfolio theory is corroborated in future research, it may shed light beyond that presently available from traditional, non-positivist analyses of organizational change. It could eventually help take practice beyond the more customary, ideationalist approach, of trying to change organizations by seeking ‘to change managerial thinking’.
Organization Theory as a Postmodern Science
Authors: Chia Robert
Published: September 2009

This article seeks to offer a comprehensive and critical exposition of the postmodern imperative and its implications both for the understanding of organization as a theoretical object and its consequences for organization theory as an academic discipline. The central argument made here is that postmodernism must not be understood as a cynical or nihilistic tendency in contemporary thought but as a subtle and complex attempt at reworking the metaphysical bases of modern knowledge. This article begins by examining the roots of Western metaphysics and the manner in which it has shaped modern scientific thought. It then identifies the key axioms and imperatives associated with the modernist impulse. Thus, the study of dominant modes of thought, processes of individuation and identity creation, strategies of objectification and institutionalization, the development of codes of behaviour, social mannerisms, rules of law, and disciplines of knowledge form a part of this extended field of inquiry.
Pluralism, Scientific Progress, and the Structure of Organization Theory
Authors: Knudsen Christian
Published: September 2009

The main purpose of this article is to define what intellectual structure best promotes the advancement of the field of organization studies. A conceptual framework is proposed to analyze different intellectual structures and appraise how they perform in promoting scientific progress. The term ‘intellectual structure’ refers to the distribution of activities within a scientific field at a specific point in time. This article focuses on the distribution between activities aimed at refining existing research programs, on the one hand, and activities aimed at searching for new theories, on the other hand. In accordance with studies of adaptive processes, it is argued that in order to make progress over a long period of time a scientific field has to secure a balance between the generation of new theoretical alternatives and the selection and retention of them.
Abortion
Authors: Harris John , Holm Søren
Published: September 2009

Abortion is one of those classic problems that has been discussed in all of the major ‘fertile periods’ of practical philosophy, from the flourishing of Greek thought, through the medieval period, in the Renaissance and from the start of modern applied ethics in the 1960s. This article begins with a brief historical overview of the discussion of the ethics of abortion, and then proceeds to a range of questions that have been prominent in the philosophical discussion about abortion since the 1960s. The two main areas of controversy have been how to understand the moral status of the fetus, and whether a right to abortion can be based in the mother's right to autonomy.
Immigration
Authors: Kukathas Chandran
Published: September 2009

This article addresses the ethical issues of immigration. It asks about the morality of admitting persons into (and out of) the state, for any of these reasons and under any of these conditions. Therefore, there may be no single answer about the morality of immigration — it will require taking positions on a number of different matters. What stance one takes will often depend upon — or shape — one's general views about the nature of the state.
Typologies: Forming Concepts and Creating Categorical Variables
Authors: Collier David , Laporte Jody , Seawright Jason
Published: September 2009

This article describes the categories and typologies as an optic for looking at concept formation and measurement. It also provides an overview of the multiple contributions of typologies and presents numerous examples from diverse subfields of political science. It gives a framework for working with multidimensional typologies, outlining the building blocks of typologies, and illustrating how the cell types constitute categorical variables. In addition, the role of typologies in concept formation, the source of the concepts and terms in the cells of the typology, and the role of ideal types are explained. Finally, it explores the contribution of typologies to mapping empirical and theoretical change and to structuring comparison in empirical analysis. It suggests norms for the careful use of typologies. Among the guidelines for careful work with typologies, a significant priority to keep clearly in view is their contribution to wider goals of formulating and evaluating explanatory claims.
Causation and Explanation in Social Science
Authors: Brady Henry E.
Published: September 2009

This article provides an overview of causal thinking by characterizing four approaches to causal inference. It also describes the INUS model. It specifically presents a user-friendly synopsis of philosophical and statistical musings about causation. The four approaches to causality include neo-Humean regularity, counterfactual, manipulation and mechanisms, and capacities. A counterfactual is a statement, typically in the subjunctive mood, in which a false or ‘counter to fact’ premise is followed by some assertion about what would have happened if the premise were true. Three basic questions about causality are then addressed. Moreover, the article gives a review of four approaches of what causality might be. It pays attention on a counterfactual definition, mostly amounting to a recipe that is now widely used in statistics. It ends with a discussion of the limitations of the recipe and how far it goes toward solving the epistemological and ontological problems.
The Neyman— Rubin Model of Causal Inference and Estimation Via Matching Methods
Authors: Sekhon Jasjeet
Published: September 2009

This article presents a detailed discussion of the Neyman-Rubin model of causal inference. Additionally, it describes under what conditions ‘matching’ approaches can lead to valid inferences, and what kinds of compromises sometimes have to be made with respect to generalizability to ensure valid causal inferences. Moreover, the article summarizes Mill's first three canons and shows the importance of taking chance into account and comparing conditional probabilities when chance variations cannot be ignored. The significance of searching for causal mechanisms is often overestimated by political scientists and this sometimes leads to an underestimate of the importance of comparing conditional probabilities. The search for causal mechanisms is probably especially useful when working with observational data. Machine learning algorithms can be used against the matching problem.
Structural Equation Models
Authors: Bollen Kenneth A. , Rabe‐Hesketh Sophia , Skrondal Anders
Published: September 2009

This article explains the use of factor analysis types of models to develop measures of latent concepts which were then combined with causal models of the underlying latent concepts. In particular, it offers an overview of the classic structural equation models (SEMs) when the latent and observed variables are continuous. Then it looks at more recent developments that include categorical, count, and other noncontinuous variables as well as multilevel structural equation models. The model specification, assumptions, and notation are covered. This is followed by addressing implied moments, identification, estimation, model fit, and respecification. The penetration of SEMs has been high in disciplines such as sociology, psychology, educational testing, and marketing, but lower in economics and political science despite the large potential number of applications. Today, SEMs have begun to enter the statistical literature and to re-enter biostatistics, though often under the name ‘latent variable models’ or ‘graphical models’.
Time‐Series Cross‐Section Methods
Authors: Beck Nathaniel
Published: September 2009

This article outlines the literature on time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) methods. First, it addresses time-series properties including issues of nonstationarity. It moves to cross-sectional issues including heteroskedasticity and spatial autocorrelation. The ways that TSCS methods deal with heterogeneous units through fixed effects and random coefficient models are shown. In addition, a discussion of binary variables and their relationship to event history models is provided. The best way to think about modeling single time series is to think about modeling the time-series component of TSCS data. On the cross-sectional side, the best approach is one based on thinking about cross-sectional issues like a spatial econometrician. In general, the critical insight is that TSCS and binary TSCS data present a series of interesting issues that must be carefully considered, and not a standard set of nuisances that can be dealt with by a command in some statistical package.
Cross‐Level/Ecological Inference
Authors: Cho Wendy Tam , Manski Charles F.
Published: September 2009

This article reports the main methodological approaches to the statistical problem. It describes the fundamental indeterminacy of the problem. It also provides a framework that coherently binds the variety of approaches that have been proposed to address this problem. Then, an overview of these various approaches and their respective contributions are mentioned. The ecological inference problem within the literature of partial identification and the recent work generalizing the use of logical bounds on possible solutions as an identification region for the general r × c problem are explained. It finally covers some admonitions about this fascinating problem that has enthralled decades of scholars from varied disciplines. The analysis by Duncan and Davis made clear that aggregate data only partially reveal the structure of individual behaviour. However, their contribution has largely been viewed as limited and an appreciation for the idea of bounds or an identification region has yet to fully emerge.
Case‐Oriented Configura‐Tional Research: Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Qca), Fuzzy Sets, and Related Techniques
Authors: Rihoux Benoît
Published: September 2009

This article investigates the tradition of case-oriented configurational research, focusing specifically on qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as a tool for causal inference. It first presents two analytic procedures commonly used by comparative researchers. A short description of the state-of-the-art of QCA applications is offered, in terms of discipline, types of cases, models, combinations with other methods, and software development. It then reviews different uses of QCA, as well as generic ‘best practices’. Some key recent evolutions are illustrated: on the one hand the development, beyond dichotomous ‘crisp set’ QCA (csQCA), of multi-value QCA (mvQCA), fuzzy sets, and fuzzy-set QCA (fsQCA), and on the other hand technical advances and refinements in the use of the techniques. Finally, the article gives some concluding reflections as to expected developments, upcoming innovations, remaining challenges, expansion of fields of application, and cross-fertilization with other approaches.
Borgs in the Org? Organizational Decision Making and Technology
Authors: Griffith Terri L. , Northcraft Gregory B. , Fuller Mark A.
Published: September 2009

Data warehousing and the development of the World Wide Web both augment information gathering (search) processes in individual decision making by increasing the availability of required information. Imagine, for example, that one wanted to buy new golf clubs. Thirty years ago, the cost of information gathering would likely have limited an individual's search process to geographically proximal vendors and the golf clubs they stocked. Today, a prospective purchaser can log onto the World Wide Web to find out what types of golf clubs are available anywhere; consult databases, chat rooms, and bulletin boards (e.g., epinions.com) to gather product information and user opinions; and compare prices across vendors around the world.
On The Implications of Behavioral Decision Theory for Managerial Decision Making: Contributions and Challenges
Authors: Shapira Zur
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the implications of behavioral decision theory to managerial decision making by looking at the contributions made and the challenges its findings pose in attempting to contribute more to decision making in and by organizations. This article does not survey behavioral decision theory because extensive reviews of the literature exist that describe the major findings of this research field. The heuristics and biases paradigm shows that in estimating probabilities and frequencies under uncertainty, people use heuristics (rules of thumb) such as availability, representativeness, and anchoring and adjustment. The use of such heuristics is natural for human beings because in many cases such as the prediction of future stock prices people do not have all the information needed to make proper estimates according to established quantitative models.
It's Not Just for Communists Any More
Authors: Marens Richard
Published: September 2009

The thesis of this article is that organizational theorists could gain a great deal of insight regarding the evolution, structure, and behavior of organizations by better understanding their social, economic, and historical context as analyzed by such Marxian theorists as Aglietta, Arrighi, and others. Marxian political economy is particularly useful because of its relative success in understanding the dynamics of capitalism as a largely self-contained system. This starting point obviates the need to rely on unpredictable exogenous shocks to explain changes in the broader social environment of organizations. Despite the failure of regimes supposedly committed to Marxist principles, Marxian analysis ‘remains a powerful critique of bourgeois and capitalist society…still useful in examining the events taking place’. Even politically conservative scholars have acknowledged the explanatory power of a Marxian approach for understanding social and economic change.
A Durkheimian Approach to Globalization
Authors: Hirsch Paul , Fiss Peer C. , Hoel‐Green Amanda
Published: September 2009

The work of Émile Durkheim, and particularly his theory of the division of labor, occupies a somewhat peculiar place in the pantheon of classical sociologists. This article extends Durkheim's analysis of Europe's transformations in the early twentieth century to suggest how his theoretical apparatus might be used to interpret subsequent developments in the twenty-first. In particular, it suggests that Durkheim's concern with solidarity—a key theme of his work—has been largely neglected in the current field of organization studies, which might be reinvigorated by a greater concern for issues of inequality in the global arena.
Parsons as an Organization Theorist
Authors: Heckscher Charles
Published: September 2009

Talcott Parsons was America's most influential sociologist in the 1950s and 1960s—bringing Max Weber's work to America, building a multidisciplinary social sciences approach at Harvard, and developing a highly integrated and complex theory of social action. Even before his death in 1979, however, his star had greatly dimmed; today his work is rarely read. And that, this article argues, is unfortunate, because he still has far more to say than anyone before or since on the core concepts of sociology: trust, values, commitment, and other ‘normative’ aspects of behavior. The article also argues, by using his model to think through the current growth of collaborative systems in business firms, that it still generates many fruitful avenues for organization theory.
Entrepreneurship, Self-employment and the Labour Market
Authors: Parker Simon C.
Published: September 2009

This article surveys the entrepreneurship literature as it relates to the labour market. The purpose of this article is to describe, from a mainly but not exclusively economic perspective, the principal theoretical methods and empirical findings in the field. Entrepreneurship intersects with labour markets in several other ways. For example, human capital theory can be used to help explain entrepreneurs' business performance; and labour supply models can be used to help understand their work effort patterns. Both topics attract policy interest, because policy-makers frequently express interest in promoting successful enterprises, and fostering an ‘enterprise culture’ in which hard work is encouraged and rewarded. Policy-makers also promote entrepreneurship because they believe it creates employment growth and reduces unemployment.
The Social Dimensions of Entrepreneurship
Authors: Licht Amir N. , Siegel Jordan I.
Published: September 2009

Recent years have witnessed an emergence of entrepreneurship research in mainstream economics, some of which relates to legal institutions. The current literature exhibits considerable methodological disarray, however. There is no agreed definition for entrepreneurship — for example, whether innovation is a necessary element or whether self-employment suffices, or whether self-employment and ownership of a small business firm are equally entrepreneurial. Likewise, there is often no clear definition of, and distinction among, various social institutions. This makes it difficult to compare and even relate studies to one another. This article adopts an institutional economics approach its basic analytical framework. Social institutions are thus defined as the written and unwritten ‘rules of the game’: laws, norms, beliefs, and so forth. This framework is enriched primarily with insights from cross-cultural psychology, the discipline that specializes in cross-national comparisons of culture.
Entrepreneurship in Transition Economies
Authors: Estrin Saul , Meyer Klaus , Bytchkova Maria
Published: September 2009

This article examines the opportunities and constraints for entrepreneurship offered by the evolving institutional environment and the characteristics of the people who stepped up to the challenge. It places the concept of entrepreneurship in a transition context, before identifying in the third section the unique features of entrepreneurship in transition economies. The article discusses the evolving business environment, and reports the scale and nature of entrepreneurship in transition economies. The personal characteristics and the business strategies of entrepreneurs in transition economies are also discussed. The article concludes by outlining directions for future work.
Strategic Management and HRM
Authors: Allen Mathew R. , Wright Patrick M.
Published: September 2009

This article aims to discuss this intersection between strategic management and HRM, what we know, and future directions for Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) research. It begins by briefly discussing the concept of strategy and the popularization of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm. Next it addresses its role in creating the link between HRM and strategic management including key questions that the RBV has raised in relation to SHRM. It then examines the current state of affairs in SHRM, the progress made, and key questions and concerns occupying the attention of SHRM researchers. Finally, it concludes with a personal view on future directions for SHRM research.
Policy Analysis for Democracy
Authors: Ingram Helen , Schneider Anne L.
Published: September 2009

This article suggests that the contexts for most public policies are experiencing rapid changes. This requires a focus on the democracy gap, which has previously been ignored by policy analysts. The article presents a brief discussion of the meanings of conditions for democracy, and conceives some possible linkages between democratic conditions and public policy content or design. These linkages are then developed as the subject matter for policy analysis which forms most of the article's discussion. The article concludes with a careful study of how the tools and purposes of contemporary policy analysts need to change in order to serve the democracy better.
Policy Analysis as Critique
Authors: Dryzek John S.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the concept of critique, which is treated rightly as basic to the entire enterprise of policy analysis. Critical policy analysis is also discussed in this article, along with two of its opposites, namely accommodation and technocracy. The article determines that critical policy analysis is a demanding vocation, due to the number of obstacles that stand in its way. However, it is slowly being incorporated into an emerging network society of decentralized problem solving. In the democratic world, critical policy analysis has the capacity to help realize the idea of a policy science of democracy.
Ordering through Discourse
Authors: Hajer Maarten , Laws David
Published: September 2009

This article discusses ordering through discourse, beginning with two sections on how to deal and understand ambivalence. The influence of different interpretative schemata in a crisis is highlighted in another section. The article briefly discusses three conceptual approaches to ordering. Beliefs, frames, and narrative and discourse are subsequently discussed. The final section of the article attempts to answer the question: how do policy makers know what to do?
The Politics of Policy Evaluation
Authors: Bovens Mark , 't Hart Paul , Kuipers Sanneke
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the politics of policy evaluation and approaches this in two ways, each with its own shortcomings and crucial strengths. The first approach looks at the roles and functions of policy evaluation and puts them in the wider politics of public policy making. The second looks at how the key schools of policy analysis propose to deal with the contested and inherently political nature of evaluation. The article ends with an original view of how policy analysis may cope with the challenge of ex post evaluation.
Distributive and Redistributive Policy
Authors: Sefton Tom
Published: September 2009

This article explains distributive and redistributive policy, focusing on social and welfare policies. The alternative forms of redistribution and the other aims of redistribution are examined in the first half of the article. This is followed by a detailed discussion of the various approaches to redistributive policy. The next part is devoted to looking at the effectiveness of redistributive policy.
The Impact of Electoral Laws on Political Parties
Authors: Grofman Bernard
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the impact of electoral laws on political parties. It focuses on empirical research, rather than on the implicitly normative foundations of different voting rules or on formal modeling results. The discussion presents comparisons of a limited number of polar electoral system types. The article lists forms of proportional election methods and plurality elections, which are considered to be two of the most important methods of voting. Finally, the article serves to report the results of one of the four main concerns of the field by observing the electoral system effects on the number of parties, etc.
Does Bicameralism Matter?
Authors: Cutrone Michael , McCarty Nolan
Published: September 2009

This article reviews and analyzes many arguments that are made on behalf of bicameralism. The tools used to make these arguments are the spatial model, the multilateral bargaining theory, and a game of incomplete information. The article attempts to distinguish the effects of bicameralism from the effects of other institutional features that often accompany it, such as differing terms of office and super-majoritarian requirements.
The New Separation‐of‐Powers Approach to American Politics
Authors: de Figueiredo Rui J. P. , Jacobi Tonja , Weingast Barry R.
Published: September 2009

This article aims to elaborate on the logic of the new separation-of-powers approach and draw its implications for American politics. The first three sections in the article discuss the new separation of powers as it applies to the bureaucracy, the courts, and the presidency. A survey of a series of works that emphasize the new separation-of-powers approach to American politics is provided in the article as well.
Pivots
Authors: Krehbiel Keith
Published: September 2009

This article discusses pivots and provides an overview of pivot theories. It also develops and illustrates a new form of comparative institutional analysis, which would serve as a means for discriminating between such theories. This article shows that pivot theories are rather flexible, and can be powerful tools of contemporary political economy.
Politics, Delegation, and Bureaucracy
Authors: Huber John D. , Shipan Charles R.
Published: September 2009

This article studies some of the recent models and associated empirical research on politics, delegation, and bureaucracy. It describes the four core theoretical arguments that constantly emerge from these models and the empirical tests that focus on patterns of delegation strategies. The article also reviews some of the recent theoretical models that are able to provide insights into the circumstances under which the logic of these theoretical arguments breaks down.