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The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 created dangerous public health conditions which pressured governments and health systems to respond in a rapid and effective manner. However, this type of rapid response required many governments to bypass standing; bureaucratic structures of health sector administration and political governance to quickly take; essential measures against a rapidly evolving public health threat. Each government's particular; configuration of governmental and health system decision-making created specific structural and functional challenges to these necessary centrally developed and coordinated strategies. Most East Asian governments (except Japan) succeeded relatively quickly in centralizing essential disease control and treatment initiatives in a timely manner. In contrast, a number of European countries, especially those with predominantly tax-based financing and politically managed health delivery systems, had greater difficulty in escaping bureaucratic governance and management constraints. Drawing on data about these governments' early stage COVID-19 control experiences, this article suggests that structural changes will be necessary if low-performing governments are to better respond to a pandemic. This paper also summarizes other relatively successful strategies. By adopting such strategies, nations can help overcome structural bureaucratic and administrative obstacles in responding to further waves of COVID-19 or similar future pandemic events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to test the hypothesis of the existence of a single economic market for the international coal industry, separated for coking and steam coal, and lo investigate market integration over time. This has been conducted by applying cointegration and error-correction models on quarterly price series data in Europe and Japan over the time period 1980-2000. Both the coking and the steam coal markets show evidence of global market integration, as demonstrated by the stable long-run cointegrating relationship between the respective price series in different world regions. This supports the hypothesis of a globally integrated market. However, when analyzing market integration over time it is not possible to confirm cointegration in the 1990s for steam coal. Thus, compared to the coking coal market, the steam coal market looks somewhat less global in scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on `exit' and `voice' countries (Anglo-American versus continental European economies and Japan) points to performance differences between these two generic systems of innovation. However. little has been done so far to study differences among voice countries. This paper suggests that tour `voice' countries. Austria. Finland, the Netherlands, and Germany, with stable long-term trust relations between economic actors and a relatively consensual style of decision making. show substantial differences in innovative performance. I argue that this is due to both sector specialization and the institutional environment. This is because the capacity to escape from historical patterns of industrial specialization depends in pail on the set of institutions in a country. They provide important resources for innovation, such as capital and skilled personnel, indirectly, innovations are affected by the system of economic governance, which is more or less corporatist in these four countries However, a corporatist regime can he responsive or rigid, depending on the degree of exposure to external challenges and crises (regime cited). Furthermore, the same responsive or rigid regime can result in different types ot innovation, depending on whether firms have to operate in a competitive, highly exposed sector or in a sheltered one (sector exposure effect). The first tentative empirical results show that the regime effect dominates over the sector exposure effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is three-fold: first, it tests whether inter-industry R&D spillovers are positively associated with the likelihood of experiencing high growth episodes among R&D intensive firms in Europe, US and Japan; second, it tests whether such a relationship is conditional on their level of absorptive capacity (ACAP); third, it tests whether the acquisition of foreign patents, an additional channel to access external knowledge, trigger high growth episodes among a sub-set of R&D intensive firms. For the empirical analysis, we focus on R&D intensive manufacturing firms observed between 2002 and 2017, located in Europe, US and Japan. The empirical findings support the hypotheses suggesting that: a) inter-industry R&D spillovers are associated with the likelihood of experiencing high growth episodes; b) ACAP conditions the relationship between inter-industry R&D spillovers and the likelihood of experiencing high growth episodes and c) shares of foreign patents are positively associated with the likelihood of experiencing high growth episodes among high-tech R&D intensive firms. JEL codes: C41, L25, O33. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This case study examines in detail the factors responsible for the emergence of a highly successful South-east Asian brand – MK Restaurants. MK restaurants is a privately owned company that has grown from humble beginnings to a chain of over 250 restaurants in Thailand and tasted success in expanding into Europe and Japan. Our analysis suggest that MK Restaurants has built the brand from through living a set of brand values, astute positioning that appeals to a wide demographic and the global trend towards healthier eating, and a marketing communications budget that exceeds McDonalds and KFC in Thailand. Furthermore, brand extensions, a genuine customer centric philosophy that is practiced at all levels in the firm, an adherence to the service-profit-chain concept (i.e., happy staff are more likely to deliver better service quality, which in turn drives customer loyalty and repeat patronage), and a state of the art logistic and supply chain system have all driven brand success. Key lessons for other service brands are drawn and explicated in the paper’s final section. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the manufacturing performance and management practices of 71 automotive components suppliers located in Europe, Japan and North America. The research reports on the extent to which these plants have adopted `lean production' practices and tests the proposition that such techniques are linked with high manufacturing performance. The results support the contention that tight process control and closely integrated operations are more productive. However, the data do not support the notion that the work organization and human resource policies associated with the lean production model represent a universal `best way' for achieving high manufacturing performance. Rather, our findings emphasize the importance of context, specific plant characteristics and choice for understanding the performance of manufacturing organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edaravone has been used in patients with acute ischemic stroke in Japan for over 10 years but does not have marketing authorization in Europe or America. Either patients in Europe and America are not receiving an effective treatment, or those in Asia are being given a treatment which is not effective. Finding out which of these is true will require further clinical trials, and a better understanding of its efficacy in animal models may help inform the design of those trials so that it might be tested under conditions where there is the greatest prospect of success. We systematically reviewed the efficacy of edaravone in animal models of focal ischemia and summarized data using weighted mean difference DerSimonian and Laird random-effects modeling. We used stratified meta-analysis and metaregression to assess the influence of study design and methodological quality. We identified 49 experiments describing outcome in 814 animals; 30 experiments (519 animals) reported functional and 35 experiments (503 animals) reported structural outcome. Edaravone improved functional and structural outcome by 30·3% (95% confidence interval 23·4-37·2%) and 25·5% (95% confidence interval, 21·1-29·9%), respectively. For functional outcome, there was an inverse relationship between study quality and effect size ( P < 0·0017). Effect sizes were larger in studies where randomization or blinded assessment was not reported. There was no evidence of publication bias. Edaravone is a promising treatment for stroke. However, because of the methodological weakness in current animal studies, no sufficient preclinical evidence is available to optimize the study design of clinical trials. Higher quality animal studies are expected to inform further clinical study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study to evaluate the cross-cultural development of a stand-alone European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) measure of spiritual well being for palliative care patients with cancer. The study found that a provisional 36-item measure ready for Phase IV field-testing, the EORTC QLQ-SWB36 has been developed, with the items are comprehensible across languages and cultures. The need for Phase IV testing is highlighted.

Agrowing stream of environmental legislation enforces collection and recycling of used electrical and electronics products. Based on our experiences with producers coping with e-waste legislation, we find that there is a strong need for research on the implications of such legislation from an operations perspective. In particular, as a discipline at the interface of systems design and economic modeling, operations focused research can be extremely useful in identifying appropriate e-waste take-back implementations for different business environments and how producers should react to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fascinated by questions of curating, interdisciplinary and experimental art exhibitions, the function of the museum and the gallery, globalization, cultural memory, the visual and the non-visual, and the process of collaboration itself, the Swiss curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist is best known for the exhibitions he has organized in Europe, North America, Japan, and elsewhere, including `Cities on the Move', `Laboratorium', and `Do-it'. As well as curating, organizing and facilitating exhibitions in more traditional venues, Obrist has also coordinated many other events that have taken place in unorthodox spaces such as in houses, monasteries, libraries, an aeroplane and a hotel. Here Obrist speaks with Vivian Rehberg about these and other things. Towards the end of their conversation, they are joined by the Italian urban planner and architect Stefano Boeri who, along with Rem Koolhaas and Sanford Kwinter, co-curated `Mutations' with Hans-Ulrich Obrist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the importance of country-of-origin effects and of universal contingencies such as industrial recipes in organizational practices at the international level of multinational enterprises. This is based on a study comparing European (Finnish, French, German, Dutch, Swiss, Swedish, British), American and Japanese multinational enterprises. Although multinationals are highly internationalized by definition, our study shows their organizational control practices at the international level to be more than anything else explained by their country of origin. Universal contingencies such as size and industry, on the other hand, are more related to internationalization strategy. Internationalization strategy and organizational control are associated with different sets of variables; to this extent they appear more decoupled with regard to each other than the literature suggests. Multinationals appear to follow tracks of coordination and control in which they have become embedded in their country of origin. Nationally specific institutions and culture have to be interpreted as particularistic but universally practicable facilitators of internationally competing organizational practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the views of European Works Councils on the management of multinational companies (MNC) in Japan. Institutional characteristics of the Japanese MNC; Identification of the financial expenses as a burden for companies; Failure of the mismatch decentralized corporate structure to affect the corporate decision making.

The process is traced whereby crucially important, multiple denotations of classical sociology's key notion referring to social position—the Weberian German concept of Stand—have been stripped to create a simplified and inaccurate representation of social inequalities. Some historical material from central Europe is surveyed, with a brief look at Japan, to demonstrate validity problems created by blanket application of the culturally specific, streamlined notions of status/class. As an alternative, a notion of contingent social closure argues that relaxing the modernizationist assumptions of a single transition from estate to status/class increases the comparative-historical sensitivity of research on social structure, inequality, and stratification. A dynamic reading of Polányi suggests a reconceptualization of institutions as the “raw material” of social change. This might help to avoid the outdated contrast of the “West” vs. its “Others.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]