Multinational Corporations can contribute to reach the targeted poverty reduction goals – the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations. Linking the core business of a multinational with development goals can be found in the concept of Serving the Base of the Pyramid mainly pushed by C.K. Prahalad and Stuart L. Hart. In the “classic” development work, bottom up approaches, which give more power to the poor, are taking advance in the theoretical debate. This know how however, hasn’t found a systematic consideration in the BoP concept yet. Focusing on Multinational Corporations, the paper takes a closer look at bottom up development approaches and agues for the importance of integrating this know how in the BoP debate by highlighting the relation between the concepts.
We provide a critique of the development in organisation studies of the idea of ‘unlearning’ as allegedly imported from the psychology literature by Hedberg and understood to mean the manageable discard of knowledge precedent to and aiding later learning. We re-review the psychology literature and in contrast to Hedberg, find that this definition of unlearning is not empirically warranted. We re-examine a selection of highly cited articles in the organisational literature that claim to have conducted empirical research into the Hedberg model of unlearning. We find none provide evidence of its existence. Typically, under the label ‘unlearning’ evidence is provided of a conventional process of theory-change, the setting aside (not deletion) of an established understanding in favour of new understanding when presented with perceived new facts. In all cases that we examine, clear alternative and less problematic concepts should provide a better conceptual framework for the research, such as learning, theory-change, discard of practice and extinction. It follows that the unlearning literature is not in fact the independent, scholarly and scientific literature that many of its adherents believe it to be. We recommend that for concepts allegedly imported from other disciplines more frequent commissioning of cross-disciplinary reviews may encourage the critical works so obviously lacking in the unlearning literature.
When deciding between product alternatives, consumers have to compare the observed prices to their internal reference price to determine whether the offer is a good deal or not. For product innovations, for which no reference price has been established, it is unclear against which standard the observed price is compared. Despite extensive research on the use of reference prices, little attention has been devoted to the formation of an internal reference price for an unfamiliar product category. We suggest two mechanisms of how reference prices are constructed and find support for these in two experiments. Reference prices for an unfamiliar product category can either be formed through repeated exposure to incidental price information or through transfer of price information from a familiar, similar product category to an unfamiliar product category. Crucial is however that the product price-value relationship is consistent; a condition often not accounted for in product innovation testing.
Mainstream theorizing in management and economics is based on the assumption that business firms focus on profits only, while it is the task of the state system to provide public goods and to regulate the economy in such a way that business activities contribute to the common good. Business firms are conceived of as private actors and governments and their state agencies are considered the only political actors. We suggest that under the conditions of globalization the strict division of labor between private business and nation state politics does not hold any more. Many business firms have started to assume social and political responsibilities that go beyond legal requirements and fill the regulatory vacuum in global governance. Therefore, we advocate a paradigm shift in research on the role of business in society.
Given the rising importance of the global media and the relative unwillingness of democratic publics to accept casualties in war, decision makers have increasingly relied on the strategic dissemination of rhetoric in order to justify military engagements. They "talk intervention", that is, they justify foreign engagements in terms of an emerging global norm that finds the international community "responsible to protect". Adversaries of interventions, in contrast, emphasize the inherent uncertainties and risks associated with such undertakings, taking advantage of the "body-bag-effect". This book identifies prevalent foreign policy frames and analyzes their impact on individual attitudes towards foreign policy decisions. It argues that framing effects can be best understood as an interaction between message content and personal traits. A case study on Germany bolsters this argument, providing experimental evidence that interventionist talking and its counter-rationale exert some influence on the formation of political preferences. It also shows that the magnitude of this influence is very much contingent on the individuals' political sophistication and prior dispositions.
Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, inwieweit arbeitsrechtliche Regulierungen und insbesondere deren Wahrnehmung einen Einfluß auf die Gründungsneigung und damit vermutlich auf die tatsächlichen Unternehmensgründungen ausübt. Dabei kann einerseits gezeigt werden, daß junge Unternehmen aufgrund vielfältiger Ausnahmeregelungen in ihren personalpolitischen Handlungsmöglichkeiten de jure allenfalls sehr begrenzt eingeschränkt sind und daß sie andererseits freiwillig auf funktionale statt numerischer Flexibilität zurückgreifen. Darüber hinaus kann aber auch gezeigt werden, daß die Wahrnehmung arbeitsrechtlicher Regulierungen sehr negativ ausfällt und daß dadurch die Gründungsneigung signifikant negativ beeinflußt wird. Die vorliegenden Befunde legen dementsprechend nahe, daß es wichtig wäre, in der wirtschaftspolitischen Berichterstattung neben mehr neutralen Informationen auch mehr personalpolitischen Optimismus zu verbreiten.
