American murder mystery revisited: do housing voucher households cause crime?

This paper reviews the current state of the housing market, particularly in the shadow of the foreclosure crisis, the collapse of the financial system, and persistent unemployment. The authors outline the policy priorities necessary to facilitate the recovery of the housing market in general and to encourage comprehensive revitalization of the hardest hit communities.     

SADC and the GCC: Shared regional challenges and potential links

This article assesses the prospects for a clearly articulated economic diplomacy approach in South Africa's foreign policy. It argues that while South Africa's foreign policy has been to a considerable extent normatively grounded, it has failed to develop a coherent economic diplomacy that is based on focused and distinctly expressed priorities. This is a crucial gap that limits the country's ability to respond to regional and global changes, in particular those posed by emerging powers. The article identifies a number of gaps in South Africa's foreign policy approach and highlights its oblivion to global developments and geopolitical dynamics in the African continent. It sets out possible policy outlines for developing a clearer and stronger economic diplomacy. The building blocks for such an approach include the identification of strategic foreign policy priorities; greater institutional co-operation among agencies dealing with economic and foreign policy development; synergies between corporate strategies and government's foreign policy objectives; and the need for South Africa to develop a stronger leadership ambition in the African continent, both to contribute to Africa's development and to pursue its own economic interests. This ambition will require awareness of South Africa's own limitations, thus focusing the better part of its foreign policy on a limited set of countries that match strategic priorities.     

Meeting the Information Needs of Older People: A Challenge for Local Governance

The challenge of the ageing population is not just to provide more services but to employ new strategies. One of these is the need to rethink the provision of information to older people and their carers. This paper makes four points. First, that information and access to information have become more critical issues. Second, that older people may place a much higher value on information than other citizen groups but their access is poor for a range of reasons. Third, that the processes by which older people seek information may be empowering. Finally, effective partnerships with creative older people can be a catalyst to changing governance cultures which is a vital step in modernising local government. The paper draws upon examples from the author's experience of working alongside older people under the umbrella of the Better Life in Later Life project in Newcastle upon Tyne.     

Transnational mobility,social capital,and cosmopolitan women traders in Ghana

Abstract

The dynamic economic power of Ghanaian women as traders in cloth and foodstuffs is well documented in the humanities and social sciences. This paper focuses on an emergent category of Ghanaian traders, women who are educated abroad and travel the globe to purchase consumer items, art, and cloth to sell on the Ghanaian market. The narratives of these women highlight numerous sociohistorical moments relevant to the global economy. As first- and second-generation immigrants in North America, these young traders are the children of the first-wave highly skilled African immigrants who sought educational opportunities in North America and Europe in the 1960s–1970s. The offspring of these educational elite now often speak of and act on a different set of desires and experience, to earn degrees in North America and Europe but return to Ghana in order to start entrepreneurial endeavors in art, fashion, and music. This new Ghanaian market woman earns a lucrative income using their cultural capital garnered through highly prized Western diplomas, the social history of women as formidable traders in Ghana, and the economic start-up funds garnered from transnational job opportunities and global family networks. In this paper, I examine the ways in which young women take advantage of global capital in order to achieve economic success in ways that question as well as challenge public policy and development programs in Ghana. Using a qualitative analysis based on ethnographic research conducted during 2009–2011 during which I interviewed 16 women ages 23–36, this paper examines how elite women progressively participate in and benefit from globalization in the ballooning informal economy of Ghana.     

The Politics of the Minimum Wage in Hong Kong

This article provides an account of the recent introduction of a minimum wage in Hong Kong in 2011. Traditional welfare state theories had their origins in rich democracies. We refine the theoretical arguments in accordance with the semi-democratic nature of Hong Kong. We argue that the legislation was initiated reluctantly by the business-friendly government under unfavourable economic conditions. Any subsequent concessions to labour were not attributable to labour strength or political oppositions, which were very weak. Instead, multiple miscalculations by the politically dominant business side allowed the labour movement to gain limited grounds throughout the struggle. We also apply our arguments to the case of Singapore, illustrating how welfare state theories can be adapted to less democratic systems.     

Parameters in a Successful Process Outsourcing Project: A Case From the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,Finland

The purpose of this article is to analyze the success factors of a critical business process outsourcing project (visa issuing) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in Finland. This has been done by mapping the success factors on the organizational “Star Model” of Galbraith (2002 Galbraith, J. 2002. Organizing to deliver solutions. Organizational Dynamics, 32(2): 194–207. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The reasons for success include strong employee participation, good communication, and, in particular, the commitment of the organization in St. Petersburg.     

Governed interdependence: Rethinking the government‐business relationship in East Asia

Analyses of East Asia's high‐performance economies have highlighted the advantages of a coordinated approach to market failures. With states dominating the process, both public and private agencies are increasingly involved. The recent literature sees public‐private cooperation as a limit to state capacity and thus a challenge to statism. Within an institutionalist framework, this paper proposes a fresh view of the government‐business relationship which avoids the statist premise of domination, but without relying on ‘weak state’ arguments. Through an examination of key organizational features of state and industry in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, the paper proposes a theory of ‘governed interdependence’ in which both state and capital are taken seriously; where both strong state and strong industry go hand‐in‐hand; and where the capacities of both are mutually enhanced. The article identifies four principal types of government‐industry cooperation in the East Asian experience — some apparently ‘state‐led’, others apparently ‘business‐led’ — all of which can be accommodated by the theory.     

Schumpeter's economic theory and the dynamic accounting view of the firm: neglected pages from the Theory of Economic Development

Abstract

The first English translation of some of Schumpeter's (1926) pages of the Theory of Economic Development is presented. These neglected pages are remarkable because they significantly add to Schumpeter's masterpiece on a number of issues concerned with accounting, law and economics of the firm. They show that Schumpeter considered understanding the firm, together with innovation, as important scientific problems. Schumpeter doubts the explanatory value of proprietary entrepreneurship and provides an early justification of the dynamic entity view of business activity generated by the firm as a becoming concern. He discusses its implications for understanding issues of economic organization and corporate governance, and suggests some theoretical insights concerning business capital and money under conditions of real dynamics and complexity. The doors opened by Schumpeter indicate that money and accounting are fundamentally coupled as complementary institutions in framing and shaping the economic and monetary process of the firm as an enterprise entity.     

Normative Stakeholder Theory in Local Public Services in Italy： Ethical Profiles and Effectiveness Management

It is well-known that stakeholder theory plays a unique role among management theories due to its focus on the moral foundations of business. Under this theory, managers should always act in the interests of the stakeholders, and their actions should reflect the liberal notions of autonomy, solidarity and fairness. Normative stakeholder theory is usually linked to philosophical ethics. Whereas some authors see stakeholder theory as applicable to the private sector alone, normative stakeholder theory has found its way into debate on the public administration, because a number of studies affirm that it can contribute to the effectiveness of public organization. On this basis, this work analyses local utilities that are now one of the areas where citizens can better assess government policy in terms of quality of life and the satisfaction of their basic needs by evaluating their ethical behaviour. Thus, it may well be interesting to analyse some of the behaviour patterns of local utility entities to verify the link between ethics and the efficient use of resources that assumes special significance in this context because the two elements have to coincide in order to obtain true fairness. Therefore, using a deductive-inductive methodological approach, the study begins by analysing the different normative concepts of stakeholder theory, to find the possible normative core best suited to this context. In the second part, it examines the ethical behavior of local utility entities to make a comparison with the previous normative stakeholder theory. This study will also be a useful starting point for future empirical research.     

经济全球化背景下女性国际商务人才培养与开发的路径

经济全球化和我国对外贸易的不断发展,使国际商务人才队伍不断发展壮大,尤其是女性国际商务人才更是异军突起。女性从事国际商务活动有着不可比拟的优势,据有关资料显示比例将达到60%以上。但是,在实际的国际商务活动当中,特别是在目前女性国际商务人才队伍中还存在许多亟待解决的问题。解决这些问题的有效方法是探讨出一条适合女性国际商务人才培养与开发的路径：一是加强高层次人才的培养;二是提高其综合素质;三是培养其开拓创新能力;四是培养其跨文化能力;五是培养其涉外形象。