Continuous product and process improvement as keys to success: A case study

Dynamic customer expectations and increased competitive pressures require manufacturing organizations to continually improve both their products and processes. To gain a better understanding of this improvement process so that other firms might benefit from the lessons learned, an in-depth study of a relatively small electronics manufacturing firm was conducted. A review of the organization's product and process improvements over an extended period of time highlighted the importance of the following four “areas”: the firm's sensitivity to its external environment in motivating and guiding product and process improvements, the firm's sensitivity to its product and process strengths as well as the potential advantage these might provide in the marketplace, the firm's management stability and style in motivating and guiding product and process improvements, and the synergistic relationship between the firm's competitive strategy and its product and process improvements.     

Capturing Technological Opportunity Via Japan's Star Scientists: Evidence from Japanese Firms' Biotech Patents and Products

Using detailed data on biotechnology in Japan, we find that identifiable collaborations between particular university star scientists and firms have a large positive impact on firms' research productivity, increasing the average firm's biotech patents by 34 percent, products in development by 27 percent, and products on the market by 8 percent as of 1989–1990. However, there is little evidence of geographically localized knowledge spillovers. In early industry formation, star scientists holding tacit knowledge required to practice recombinant DNA (genetic engineering) were of great economic value, leading to incentives motivating their participation in technology transfer. In Japan, the legal and institutional context implies that firm scientists work in the stars' university laboratories in contrast to America where the stars are more likely to work in the firm's labs. As a result, star collaborations in Japan are less localized around their research universities so that the universities' local economic development impact is lessened. Stars' scientific productivity is increased less during collaborations with firms in Japan as compared to the U.S.     

经济法律责任独立性探讨

对法律责任划分标准的正确理解,是认识经济法律责任独立存在的前提条件。经济法律责任是以法律责任的部 门法性质为标准对法律责任进行分类的结果,且经济法律责任具有其独特性。独立的经济法律责任体制有利于 责权利效相统一原则的实现;更能体现经济法的"社会本位"性;充分发挥经济法作为独立部门法的作用;促进经 济法主体守法和执法。构建时,必须遵循经济法自身体系要求,体现经济法律责任自身特色,形式上可以与其他 部门法形式相交叉,可通过经济法中的民事责任、经济法中的行政责任、经济法中的刑事责任、经济法中的经济责 任的方式来实现。     

Undermining Gender Equality: Female Attrition from Private Law Practice

The number of women in the legal profession has grown tremendously over the last 40 years, with women now representing about half of all law school graduates. Despite the decades‐long pipeline of women into the profession, women's representation among law firm partnerships remains dismally low. One key reason identified for women's minority presence among law firm partners is the high level of attrition of women associates from law firms. This high rate of female attrition undermines efforts to achieve gender equality in the legal profession. Using a survey of 1,270 law graduates, we employ piecewise constant exponential hazard regression models to explore gendered career paths from private law practice. Our analysis reveals that, for both men and women, the time leading up to partnership decisions sees many lawyers exit private practice, but women continue to leave private practice long after partnership decisions are made. Gender differences in leaving private practice also surface with reference to cohorts, areas of law, billable hours, firm sizes, and career gaps. Notably, working in criminal law augmented women's risk of leaving private practice, but not for men, while taking time away from practice for reasons other than parental leaves, hastens both men's and women's exits from private practice.     

The welfare courts: A socio-legal analysis of risk management through modern strict liability

The aim of the essay is to offer an adequate theoretical framework for a socio-legal analysis of risk management by the legal system. Law and risk are the two most important concepts to be clarified. Unlike the law, whose function consists in the temporal stabilisation of normative expectations, the perspective of risk is characterised by the possibility of changing the criteria for decisions based upon the evaluation of the consequences of those decisions. In the context of a modern society, characterised by an increasing demand for protection for people injured by new technologies, one observes certain difficulties in the attempt to adopt a risk perspective within the legal system. The result of this process is the new law of tort based upon the modern principles of strict liability. While strict liability can be shown to be effective in managing conflicts relating to technological accidents, its most negative effects are the increasing instability of legal structures and interference with the activities of other subsystems of society, such as medicine and the economy.     

Due-care standards in a market setting with legal error

We consider a monopoly market setup with legal error, where social welfare is negatively related to a firm's expected liability costs. In this context, we investigate the optimal location of the due-care standard vis-à-vis any given desired care level. It is found that when both the due-care standard and the penalty multiplier are choice variables, setting the due-care equal to the desired care is unlikely to be optimal and conditions under which it should be made relatively lenient or stringent are obtained. Exogenous restrictions on the penalty multiplier may restrict the extent to which the due-care can be manipulated to improve welfare.     

Director’s liability and investor protection: a law and finance perspective

This article conducts an analysis of director’s liability in listed firms using modern finance theory. The paper describes how the use of special general clauses in Danish law regulates director’s liability. It is shown how risk and return combinations may assist in determining whether management has violated the business judgment rule. The analysis shows that this legal doctrine is optimal from an economic perspective. The article introduces the concept of “temporal relatively of the shareholder equality principle” which can be used to determine whether the interests of minority shareholders have been set aside. It is shown that the principle of shareholder equality must be subjected to both an ex ante, as well as an ex post assessment. Moreover, courts should be reluctant to interfere in situations where there has been an unequal distribution of gain (or loss) ex post. The theoretical arguments are illustrated by analyzing a leading Danish court case that involved the squeeze out of minority shareholders in the Danish telecom company. The paper also analyzes the incentive effects of derivate suits and suits commenced by individual shareholders. It is shown that the former creates a free rider problem whereas in the latter situation, shareholders are not fully able to internalize their externalities.     

略论涉外产品责任的法律适用

涉外产品责任是一种特殊的涉外侵权责任。在法律适用方面,各国的规定不尽相同,较具代表性的有侵权行为地法、政府利益分析法、最密切联系原则以及原告选择法律、海牙产品责任法律适用条约等,各有利弊。我国现行法规关于涉外产品责任的法律适用,存在较多缺陷,亟需完善。     

完善我国产品责任法之思考

产品责任法应成为我国社会主义市场经济法律体系的重要组成部分。尽管新《产品质量法》颁布时间不长 ,但我国现行产品责任法律制度无论在形式上还是内容上仍有必要依据保护消费者利益与促进生产发展并重的基本原则、严格责任与过错责任并用的归责原则及全部赔偿、限定赔偿和惩罚性赔偿并行的赔偿原则做进一步的完善     

Children's Participation in Family Law Proceedings: A Step Too Far or a Step Too Small?

The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 established children's rights to have their views considered in family law proceedings. These rights go further than elsewhere in the UK: in requiring parents to consult their children when making any ‘major decision’, in creating a range of mechanisms for children to state their views and through facilitating children becoming party to legal proceedings if they are legally competent. Such rights are not without controversy, either in abstract (Is it in children's best interests to be involved in court proceedings? Should children have such rights?) or in practice (Do children and parents know of these rights and accompanying duties? How do legal professionals judge a child's competency?). This paper explores such controversies, using findings from a feasibility study undertaken with children, parents and legal professionals.     

The Question Concerning the Common Frame of Reference

The many directives on private consumer law enacted in the last three decades have met with considerable neglect and resistance amongst domestic judges, legislatures and scholars, bringing about less legal unity and more ‘legal fragmentation'—to say it in the words of the Commission. The Draft Common Frame of Reference is one more attempt, on the part of certain strands of European private law scholarship, at imposing a formal break on, and at overcoming, such fragmentation. Presented as a ‘comprehensive and self‐standing’ document, its ambition is to definitively implement the Commission‐generated, market‐orientated agenda of private law reform, so much resisted at the national level. The article argues that the EU legislative institutions should not go ahead with the plan of incorporating the Draft's content in EU law, by adopting a CFR. A CFR would confer an unprecedented degree of authority on a range of contested directive‐generated rules, from the test of fairness to the risk development defence in product liability. In creating a climate in which CFR‐based legalistic arguments promote unity over fragmentation, a CFR would emasculate public debate by implementing, under the spell of legal necessity, exactly those partisan, Commission‐initiated policies that have been, and still are, openly opposed in domestic legal circles. The Draft embodies a grammar of imposition that should be questioned.     

We All Make Mistakes: A ‘Duty of Virtue’ Theory of Restitutionary Liability for Mistaken Payments

In contrast to the moral foundations of contract, tort, and the law of property, which are generally regarded as elements of Kantian ‘right’, the liability to return the value of mistaken payments is, it is argued, an example of the law's enforcing a duty of virtue, the legalisation of the duty of beneficence in a way similar (though not identical) to how the law might instantiate a duty of easy rescue. Accordingly, one of Birks's most cherished theses – that the law of unjust enrichment represents a distinctive element of private law – can be made out: it is distinctive in having an entirely different normative source: in virtue, not in right. But this result comes at a cost: (1) a legal system could function more or less justly without such a liability; (2) Birks's thesis that liability for mistaken payment is the archetype or paradigmatic case of liability for unjust enrichment would have to be abandoned; and (3) we would have to recognise that the ground of this liability is policy‐motivated.     

论服务责任--以消费者权益保护法为中心

现行的<消费者权益保护法>将服务责任与产品责任并列规定,但由于产品责任有<产品责任法>相配合,因此解释适用上没有什么疑义,而服务责任在构成要件、法律效果、抗辩事由等问题上并没有太明确的规范,尤其是在归责原则方面值得从立法政策上重新检讨,针对上述问题应重新审视我们现行的法律并做出相应的修正.     

The place of law in the leadership and management of schools

Change is a feature of life in all communities and results in heightened demands being made of individuals and organizations alike. In the school setting administrators and classroom teachers have to respond to a great variety of demands that change has brought. Accountability, in various guises, is one area where changes in societal attitudes have resulted in greater demands being exacted of all professions including that of teaching. In this regard legal accountability is of considerable concern to schools as legal matters increasingly impact on school policies, practices and procedures. In this article research into the relationship between the law and school leadership and management is explored. A brief overview of research into school management and principals as leaders is followed by a discussion of the need for knowledge of areas of law impacting on schools. The article concludes that in order to ensure a school's legal safety, a preventive legal risk management culture is needed.     

公司作为普通合伙人投资合伙企业引发的法律思考

相较于1997年《合伙企业法》,修订后的《合伙企业法》在制度上有许多调整,公司可以参与合伙并可以成为普通合伙人即是其中较为重要的创新之一。但是,公司作为法人成为普通合伙人参与合伙企业经营和管理,毕竟与自然人以普通合伙人的身份参与到合伙企业之中有着很大的区别,可能对公司、公司股东特别是小股东、公司债权人等造成不利影响。在实践中,公司作为普通合伙人所带来的诸多问题并没有引起实务界和理论界的关注。而这些问题的解决,有助于公司在利用合伙企业的投资优势的同时,能够建立适中的风险防范机能。     

争议与困惑:经济法中的法律责任研究述评

经济法学界对法律责任已有20多年的研究,在法律责任的一般理论基础上形成了多种学说。在这些研究中,经济法中的法律责任的称谓、独立性问题争议尚存;对经济法中的法律责任的特点形成了一定程度的共识;在具体责任形态方面,经济法通过直接和间接方式承继了传统法律责任,同时又以企业社会责任、缺陷产品召回、惩罚性赔偿、纠正性广告等形式展现了经济法中法律责任的特色。相关研究的争议和困惑反映了经济法学理论研究中较为普遍存在的概念术语范畴体系的矛盾冲突,这主要是经济法学非传统的新兴交叉学科特征所决定的,用"经济"一词在传统术语上贴标签式的研究进路值得反思。     

Liability and Risk Assessment in Student Activity Abroad—The UKCOSA Survey

Universities in England are required to assess risk in all activities they undertake. This enables proper procedures to be put in to place to provide effective delivery whilst at the same time minimising risk and potential liability. The individual components of the law involved in student activity abroad are essentially 'standard' but the total package of law and the procedures that it is advisable to follow is more complex. A survey of universities was carried out to ascertain what procedures they had in place and what their level of awareness was. The findings of the survey have been used to indicate what management procedures should be put in place in order to minimise risk in the form of answers to a series of Frequently Asked Questions (UKCOSA, 2002). The total elimination of risk is not possible, but use of information can reduce risk, minimise liability and enhance the quality of service provided.     

新加坡法下仲裁协议的效力研究

仲裁协议的效力由其所适用的法律决定,不同国家或地区的法律在认定仲裁协议的法律效力时所采取的标准亦有所区别.从新加坡有关仲裁协议的成文法规范出发,结合新加坡法院就仲裁协议法律效力争议所作的判例,在研究新加坡法院对“病理性仲裁协议”效力认定时所采取的基本原则后,认为新加坡法律具有“亲仲裁”特性.这是新加坡在国际商事仲裁和国际海事仲裁领域取得令人瞩目发展成果的重要原因之一.     

Understanding search engines: A legal perspective on liability in the Internet law vista

This contribution discusses the legal dimension of search engines in an Internet law context, through both a global lens and a Turkish perspective. This paper introduces search engine liability in the growing Internet industry and the role of search engines in distributing and disseminating information. Next, this paper considers a global perspective on the legal dimension of search engines from United States case law, United Kingdom case law, and other European courts and legislation. This contribution then discusses the liability of search engines in the Turkish legal context. The conclusion provides an overall evaluation of the current status of search engine liability and prospects on its potential development.