Suchergebnisse

As economic activities span the supply chain boundary, the effective use of technology as the medium for coordination (or integration) among and within organizations has received much attention. In the US manufacturing sector, IT usage is increasingly becoming a source of sustained competitiveness and an opportunity for improvement. And there is a growing demand to achieve conflicting performance objectives (revenue versus profitability versus efficiency, for example). This article explores the relationships between information technology investment, performance, and productivity. While management should continue to evaluate IT investments by any practical means that satisfies company needs, the development of IT competencies and investment policies so as to optimize the firm's performance seems to be a worthwhile goal. Our empirical findings clearly suggest that IT investment has a positive impact on market performance as a result of better coordination in the value chain, but that larger investments do not seem to lead to higher financial performance. Additionally, coordination productivity seems to benefit from increased investment by reducing, say, working capital requirements. Given the diversity of firms represented, we conclude that the way in which these firms compete may also have a direct influence on the extent of IT investment and competencies.

Some of the ways that have recently been discussed for increasing significantly the own resources of developing countries, or the amount or usefulness of the overseas aid that they receive, are potentially promising politically. This is because the obstacles that they face are those of inertia or prejudice or lack of appropriate institutional channels rather than any serious countervailing interest. Several of the most important candidates, and the institutional developments that might facilitate them, are explored.

AbstractThe paper considers various possible means, mooted as alternatives or supplements to a simple schedule of governmental contributions, of paying for global public goods and common purposes: use of IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs); the United Kingdom's International Finance Facility (IFF); globally coordinated taxes (on arms exports, deep‐ocean mineral rents, international air transport, greenhouse‐gas emissions, or currency transactions) and the tapping of private fortunes. There is discussion of whether the various possible methods might have political advantages over a schedule of governmental contributions; of their revenue possibilities and of equity considerations. Promising, the paper argues, provided what are essentially prejudices can eventually be overcome, are first a global tax on currency transactions, and second the regular issue of SDRs, with those that would according to the allocation formula go to the rich countries recycled for development purposes. There is more doubt about the IFF, even if it were to receive sufficient support from the donor countries. It would probably need to be modified if it were to have much chance of being both workable and acceptable. Private fortunes on the face of it offer a huge potential; attention needs to be given to providing the right incentives; and it may be that they can be increasingly tapped for international development with the help of the new 'global funds'. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Curbing (without banning) potentially environmentally‐damaging activities that have global, rather than local, effects raises challenges analogous to those faced by a community lacking legislative powers that has to restrict access to a common pasture in order to make its use sustainable. A local community achieves autonomy in a matter such as this by consensual cooperation. In the absence of a world coercive authority, global environmental problems (in which a measure of world autonomy is needed) have to be met similarly by consensual co‐operation among governments. The conditions under which local consensual cooperation have been observed to be successful may also be relevant to global consensual cooperation. In particular there must be clear rules, and devices for interpreting them; they must be acceptable to all parties; and monitoring of compliance is crucial. Even in such cases of quasi‐voluntary compliance, graduated sanctions for infringement, or analogous arrangements, are quite likely to play a vital part. In an international regime for reducing greenhouse‐gas emissions, it is essential that rules should be devised that will appeal as fair and practically tolerable to opinion in both rich and poor countries and to both high and low per capita emitters. This will rule out a regime of uniform percentage reductions without balancing compensation. It will also rule out a regime based on equal per capita claims to engage in the restricted activity. It is desirable that the rules also act to make the allocation of the reductions in the potentially damaging activity efficient. This will favour rules under which financial signals reflecting marginal costs or benefits play some part in the allocation of any target aggregates. It will probably be essential, given prevalent views of justice and differing valuations of environmental goals between rich and poor nations, that the arrangements involve transfers of resources from richer, higher‐per‐capita polluting countries to poorer, lower per capita polluting countries. Nevertheless, reducing emissions sufficiently through a system of tradable quotas summing to the targeted total of emissions – which might seem to meet both this requirement and the need for efficient marginal incentives – has, in its simple form in which the quotas issued are proportional to countries' populations, little chance of being acceptable to rich, high‐emitter nations. An attempt is made to explore solutions to these dilemmas, leading on from the arrangements made under the Kyoto protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.