This paper explores leadership within organizations. Leadership is distinct from authority because following a leader is a voluntary rather than coerced activity of the followers. This paper considers how a leader induces rational followers to follow her in situations when the leader has...

Investment decision-making is modeled by means of a Kohonen neural net, where neurons represent firms. This is done in order to model investments in novel fields of economic activity, that according to this model are carried out when firms recognize the emergence of a new technological pattern....

The investment acceleration principle is a heuristic for modeling investment time series out of consumption time series. The model presented herein develops a disaggregated accelerator equation whose coefficients are the weights of a Kohonen neural net that represents firms' decision-making....

This article presents a model of the structure of the information flows that underlie the creation of production chains between thousands of small textile firms located in Prato, central Italy. Contrary to most textile industry of western Europe and north America, Prato did not die out once...

Because of the costs involved in such exercises, current productivity measures do not necessarily fully take into account changes in the quality of goods and services over time. This paper outlines the derivation of measures that lead to quantification of the “community preference for its...

This essay brings fiscal federalism theory into contact with the knowledge perspective to economic organization. The question addressed is: can a central government be justified in the context of fiscal federalism on grounds of economic organization? We point out that if one looks at the...

Previous research shows that both exporting and the use of advanced technologies independently enhance the performance of U.S. manufacturing plants in a variety of ways. The research presented below shows that plants that both export and use advanced technology outperform other plants in a...

After explaining why business executives and academics should consider thinking about a rigorous approach to e-business models, we introduce a new e-Business Model Ontology. Using the concept of business models can help companies understand, communicate and share, change, measure, simulate and...

This paper contains a model of waste elimination through design. It argues for the importance of managing design complexity in improving cost, quality, variety, and time--to--market performance variables. Management of design complexity is identified with creation, choice, and application of...