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Cooperative is a business entity (economic organization) owned and operated by its members to fulfill the common interests in the economic field. Given the many benefits of cooperatives, recently, the old village community of Tanjung Gundap has just formed a cooperative. This cooperative is intended so that the old kampong community of Tanjung Gundap can improve its welfare economically. The community can become a member of the cooperative and benefit from the cooperative, the community can borrow funds from the cooperative with a low interest rate so that it does not charge too much in loan payments. Because the cooperative formed by the old village community of Tanjung Gundap is still relatively new. Therefore, it is necessary to provide guidance to the community in recording finance related to cooperative operational activities. So the pengabdi team chose the theme of accounting coaching at the tanjung gundap community cooperative RT 02 / RW 01 Tembesi Village, Sagulung District. This development is intended so that cooperatives managed by the people of Tanjung Gundap have a good and correct financial record.

In domestic studies on foreign experience of regional policy, the American system is often referred to, since the us experience in the sphere of socio-economic relations of the center (Federal government) and regions (districts, States, municipalities) includes measures to support the economic development of backward and depressed territories, and agricultural issues, and even actually economic zoning. In this paper, the authors tried to identify and characterize the interested participation of the us Federal government in the economic and social life of the country’s regions during the 50s–60s of the twentieth century. Despite the temporal and spatial features of the territorial and economic organization of American society, characterized by the model of decentralized (competitive) federalism, regional policy in the United States is no less interesting both in theoretical study and in practical terms.

Significant changes in university organisation over recent years have often ignored important challenges concerning the consequences for social and economic development. This paper explores different ways of organising universities. It examines a particular question: what should management education in a public university in the economic periphery entail? The paper relies on the literature on both economic organization and universities, and considers the case of the University of British Columbiai?½s Faculty of Management. It is partly based on the authori?½s reflections in action. The paper discusses the drawbacks of equating management education with the activities of typical business schools. The relevance of business schools, and the downsides of their tendency to serve and promote large, for-profit corporations as the drivers of a particular variant of free market economy, are both explored. Equating management and business fails to account for much of the diverse reality of organizing, managing and leading social and economic activity in practice, and constrains what might be imagined. It also fails the public interest. The paper draws on Deweyan analysis and advocates a journey of inquiry into what management education in a public university in the economic periphery should entail. It suggests a public interest forum in which diverse citizens, employees, entrepreneurs, leaders, managers, and consumers learn to inquire freely and openly about the future of management education. The paper thereby addresses how to begin planning and shaping the consequences of territory-sensitive university education more generally.

In this paper, we investigate the ways in which new forms of organization enabled by digital technologies, such as crowdsourcing and digital marketplaces, are allowing firms to circumvent and defy traditional knowledge constraints. This is part of the broader question of when and why these forms of organization are more efficient relative to alternatives, given that some firms simultaneously utilize crowdsourcing, marketplaces, and traditional forms of organization. We observe that an important cluster of these new organizational forms are able to circumvent knowledge constraints, because they combine elements of market and hierarchical organization in firm-designed hybrid arrangements. We further categorize these firm-designed markets into one-sided market arrangements (crowds) and two-sided market arrangements (marketplaces). To explain their efficiency relative to hierarchies and relative to each other, we take a knowledge-based perspective and review ways in which firm-designed markets reduce or remove both first-order (known unknown) and second-order (unknown unknown) knowledge constraints compared with hierarchies. Our argument hinges on the notion that firm-designed markets provide semidirected and undirected search and generativity mechanisms that allow firms to go beyond what is possible with centrally directed search.

Ground stone tools encompass a wide array of implements important in the economic organization of many prehistoric and early historic societies; however, functional analysis of ground stone artefacts has been relatively limited in comparison to chipped stone tools. The appearance of microwear on ground stone artefacts is normally more complex and complicated than on chipped stone artefacts, as the mineral and textural components of the raw materials chosen for ground stone artefacts often are more heterogeneous. Currently, the baseline principles for analyzing microwear on ground stone artefacts are primarily based on the studies of non-cutting tools such as grinding and abrading implements. Our research uses experimental ground stone shovels and hoes crafted from oolitic dolomite to understand the raw material's effect on microwear development and to distinguish the microwear patterns associated with varying sediment conditions in the Neolithic and Early Bronze archaeological sites in the Middle Yellow River and Lower Yangzi River in China. The research combines detailed petrographic analysis of the raw material, measurement of the worked material's physical properties, and careful examination of microwear using both high-power and low-power approaches. The results not only advance the methods for microwear analysis on heterogeneous raw materials, but also enrich the microwear dataset for understanding earth-working activities associated with ground stone tools. Applying our results to analysis of archaeological counterparts will add additional lines of evidence to evaluate the importance of farming and construction activities in Neolithic and Bronze Age subsistence systems.

Should policy makers rely upon firms motivated by profit and guided by the invisible hand of the market to promote public benefit or upon government agencies or nonprofits motivated by the compassionate heart? In this article we examine how the motivational assumptions implicit in these forms of economic organisation impact on their ability to promote the public good in key areas of the economy. We argue that in many circumstances it would be better to for policy makers to work with hybrid organisations: organisations that aim for both social and economic returns and whose stakeholders display the true complexity of individual motivation.

Human life and economic organization in urban areas must fundamentally rely on essential systems that provide water, health services, electricity, supply, mobility, and communication to the population. Any temporary or permanent disruption of these critical infrastructures has severe negative consequences that range from reduced economic productivity to the loss of human life.

Examinations of landscape-level resources, particularly lithic raw material sources, are generally associated with hunter-gatherer and mobile societies; the distribution and source locations of such materials are used as proxies for mobility and territorial ranges. The variable locations of lithic raw material sources also affect sedentary societies, influencing the economic role of these materials and the administration of the raw material sources. This paper addresses the effect of uneven resource distributions across the landscape in sedentary societies, specifically the Late to Terminal Classic Maya (670–890 CE), through a case study of chert resources from the Mopan Valley, Belize. This paper discusses the role of the localness and commonality of lithic raw material sources in influencing individuals' access to source areas and involvement in lithic production, illustrating that not only the local or non-local nature of the source area, but also the frequency of source areas within a region, influence the economic organization of lithic resource extraction and production.

Traditionally, the wide distribution of distinctive Chihuahuan polychrome ceramics has been interpreted as evidence for the extensive interaction sphere of Casas Grandes, or Paquime. The role of the major center of Paquime in the political and economic system is a crucial question in defining the nature and intensity of interactions in the Casas Grandes region and the extent of intraregional social and political integration. A large-scale, regional sourcing project using Chihuahuan polychrome ceramics provides new information on their production and distribution. It also demonstrates the limitations of ceramic sourcing analyses and presents a strong case for the fact that the underlying geology of a region determines the resolution at which ceramics can be attributed to production loci or resource procurement zones.

In order to comprehend the new policy directions regarding Macau’s participation in international organizations, this paper made the depth interviews and applied the text mining analysis to the interviewer’s responses. Through applying the 3D fruit fly optimization algorithm (3D FOA) and our modified 3D FOA model to make the classification analysis of interviewees’ keywords. The study concluded the modified 3D FOA model has the better performance in the optimization process, and the key points for our interviewees regarding Macau’s participation in international organizations include the Basic Law’s regularization and Macau’s participation in international economic organization.

Like studies of craft production, research on food production has significant implications for understanding the economic organization of past societies. This paper highlights the tools of maize (Zea mays) processing and cooking as a constructive avenue to examine aspects of food production at Teotihuacan during the Terminal Formative and Classic Periods (100 BC–AD 650). By analyzing the spatial distribution of comales, metates and manos recovered from the Teotihuacan Mapping Project, this study investigates the notion that edible maize products were produced through specialized labor. Two notable patterns are observed. First, the aggregation of comales along the Street of the Dead during the Miccaotli phase (AD 100–170) suggests that tortilla preparation fueled large public work projects, feeding the workers, their families, and other dependents of the state. Secondly, the spatial aggregation of grinding stones, manos and comales in seven concentrated areas within the Classic Period (AD 170–650) occupation of the city suggest that several apartment compounds, possibly entire barrios, may have specialized in the production of tortillas and other finished maize foods for exchange. Such a pattern may have resulted from the costly labor and materials required for the production of tortillas, favoring economies of scale. Several areas within the city conspicuously possessing low frequencies of maize processing artifacts suggest that some sectors were dependent on specialized labor from outside the household for daily needs. Together, these data suggest that food production was a specialized activity at Teotihuacan and increase our understanding of the economic organization of the ancient metropolis.

This article examines how the concept of New Zealand cinema is both constructed and complicated by video on demand (VOD) websites available in New Zealand. New Zealand cinema is markedly transnational in its economic organization and cultural constitution. Nevertheless, the concept of the nation continues to play an important role in the operations of the New Zealand Film Commission. This article considers how VOD sites available within New Zealand contribute to this set of relations, examining the degree to which the organization of these sites’ catalogues emphasize films’ national and/or transnational characteristics. This has implications for the importance that audiences may attach to New Zealand as a way of understanding cinema and themselves. It also has implications for the visibility of films that explore the national-cultural specificities of New Zealand. This article will consequently gauge the effects of any such emphasis upon, or elision of, the nation as a way of categorizing cinema, ...

Through its object of activity, an economic organization has the role to use efficiently the means of production that it possesses in terms of the full utilization of the production capacities, of a high quality of the products and of obtaining profit.Companies need in their human, material, financial, informational, human resources activities that they have at a certain moment in order to accomplish the mission and strategic objectives around which they rely on the whole activity.

Polymorphic xenobiotic metabolizing enzymes such as N-acetyltransferase 2 (NAT2) or glutathione S-transferase M1 (GSTM1) are known to modulate bladder cancer risk. As no apparent data were available from Hungary, a former member of the eastern European economic organization, a study was performed in Budapest. In total, 182 bladder cancer cases and 78 cancer-free controls were investigated by questionnaire. Genotypes of NAT2, GSTM1, GSTT1, rs1058396 and rs17674580 were determined by standard methods. Current smokers' crude odds ratio (OR) (3.43) and former smokers crude OR (2.36) displayed a significantly increased bladder cancer risk. The risk rose by a factor of 1.56 per 10 pack years. Exposure to fumes was associated with an elevated bladder cancer risk (23% cases, 13% controls). Sixty-four % of the cases and 59% of controls were slow NAT2 acetylators. It was not possible to establish a particular impact of NAT2*6A and *7B genotypes (15 cases, 8%, 5 controls, 7%). GSTT1 exerted no marked influence on bladder cancer (negative 21% cases vs. 22% controls). The portion of GSTM1 negative bladder cancer patients was increased (63% cases vs. 54% controls). The SLC14A1 SNPs rs1058396[AG/GG] and the nearby rs17674580[CT/TT] occurred more frequently in cases (79% and 68%) than controls (77% and 55%). The portion of GSTM1 negative bladder cancer patients is comparable with portions reported from other industrialized areas like Lutherstadt Wittenberg/Germany (58%), Dortmund/Germany (70%), Brescia/Italy (66%) or an occupational case-control series in Germany (56%). Data indicate that GSTM1 is a susceptibility factor for environmentally triggered bladder cancer rather than for smoking-mediated bladder cancer.

Cultural Man has been on earth for some 2,000,000 years; for over 99 per cent of this period he has lived as a hunter-gatherer. To date, the hunting way of life has been the most successful and persistent adaptation man has ever achieved. Ever since the origin of agriculture, Neolithic peoples have been steadily expanding at the expense of the hunters. Taking hunters as they are found, anthropologists have naturally been led to the conclusion that their life was a constant struggle for survival. In 10,000 B.C., on the eve of agriculture, hunters covered most of the habitable globe, and appeared to be generally most successful in those areas which later supported the densest populations of agricultural peoples. Many of the best-known studies of hunter-gatherers have relied on ethnographic reconstructions of situations that were no longer intact. Hunting and gathering refers to a mode of subsistence, and many of the conference papers discussed problems of ecology and economic organization.

Through its object of activity, an economic organization has the role to use efficiently the means of production that it possesses in terms of the full utilization of the production capacities, of a high quality of the products and of obtaining profit.

The potential of an economic organization may be known and analyzed using the indicators in the balance sheet drawn up. On the basis of the balance sheet data, the structure of the patrimony and the links between its elements can be established. In the asset side, the assets of the economic organization will be recovered as passive sources of financing.

Previous research has shown that there are many factors, such as vessel type, size, and function, producer skill, and market systems, that can influence pottery standardization/uniformity. In this paper, I use ethnoarchaeology to explore how the social and economic organization of the Gamo living in southwestern Ethiopia affects uniformity of pottery form and decoration. I compare uniformity at the community level to test our assumptions regarding potter specialization associated with potters who are full-time craft specialists living in a complex and highly stratified, caste society. In conclusion, I argue that distribution (i.e., market and patron-client) impacts the uniformity of pottery morphology and decoration.

Neste artigo, o autor analisa, à luz da teoria da dádiva, a evolução das instituições da economia social, confrontando as concepções que orientavam sua criação às constatações empíricas de seu funcionamento. Constatando, com Mauss, não haver um modo único de organização da economia que expresse uma ordem natural, mas sim diferentes formas de produção e de repartição que coexistem, conclui que, passar a um projeto democrático de mudança social implica levantar a questão das instituições em condições de assegurar a pluralidade da economia para inscrevê-la em um quadro democrático. In this article, the author examines, in the light of the theory of the gift, the development of social economy institutions, contrasting their early conceptions and their observed operation. Following Mauss, he notes that there is no single mode of economic organization that expresses a natural order, but rather different forms of production and distribution that coexist. Thus, in order to accomplish a democratic project of social change, it is necessary to raise the question of what institutions are able to ensure the diversity of the economy so that to inscribe it within a democratic framework.

This study analyzes how to support social economic organizations financially -with online donation system. Two methods of online donation system is compared that vouchers contribute to the creation of sound market in damaged area by giving options of selecting service of social economic organization to service beneficiaries while civil fund for these organizations create employment and improve cooperative relationship between givers and receivers through online donation system. It is important for Korean government to improve donation system not only for victim directly but also for social economic organization through voucher and civil fund method of online donation system.

The following article is an attempt by its Author to answer the following question: What are the reciprocal duties of the business executive and the State? After defining the State and pointing to the limits of State intervention, Professor Albregts indicates how government has been called to act more and more on the economic process, and what such a trend means to the business executive. He finally puts forward as a solution the "organic conception" of economic organization based on the Christian social doctrine.

The Williamsonian model of trust (Williamson, O. E. [1993]. Calculativeness, trust, and economic organization. The Journal of Law and Economics, 36, 453–486) makes the claim that the term ‘trust’ is regularly misused in social sciences research for behavioural phenomena which are better explained in terms of ‘calculativeness’. This essay explores the inescapably calculative nature of trust, organises the multiplex layers of calculative reciprocities and strategic preferences developed by trust parties and further explains how such individual and collectivised trust expectations and premises are ‘bullet-proofed’ into the self-referential and autopoietic process of the trust exchange. Humans are conditioned to calculatively trust for purposes of (economic) cooperation – a process that crucially requires the masking of calculativeness in their trust exchanges. Trust may therefore be best understood as double-blind calculativeness. Given the carefully shielded (self-)deceptive nature of trust relations – and ...

Oliver Williamson argues that a principal will only trust an agent when there are safeguards to ensure the agent has an incentive for trustworthiness (Williamson, O. E. [1993]. Calculativeness, trust, and economic organization. The Journal of Law and Economics, 36, 453–486). However, such circumstances are devoid of vulnerability and possibility for betrayal. Williamson claims that this is not trust at all. I argue that a principal can be calculative in his/her decisions to trust an agent but be genuinely vulnerable to betrayal as well. The key is in distinguishing between an environment of risk and one of uncertainty. Uncertainty creates vulnerabilities for principals because of the difficulty in identifying and erecting safeguards that fully assure agent trustworthiness. In such conditions, a principal will also need to rely on the moral disposition of the agent to refrain from engaging in opportunistic behaviour. However, a reliance on moral dispositions creates the possibility of real betrayal. Thus, ...

Ultrasociality, as expressed in agricultural, monetary, and fossil fuel economies, has spurred exponential growth in population and in resource use that now threaten civilization. These threats take the form of prisoner's dilemmas. Avoiding collapse requires more cooperative economic organization that must be informed by knowledge of human behavior and cultural evolution. The evolution of a cooperative information economy is one possibility.

The evolution of economic processes and phenomena occurs cyclically with occasional deceleration or acceleration. In general, this development is accompanied by all known phases of business activity. The article reveals a new evaluation mechanism of the achieved results of the business activity growth, based on the determination of the current economic organization structure generation, the criteria for economic needs and interests. This approach allows us to critically assess the growth limits, and to form the conditions for further progressive development.

This paper builds simultaneous equations model based on survey data of 2445 Chinese villages to do empirical analysis of the relationship among farmer economic organization, agricultural specialization and rural income. It finds that raising the level of agricultural specialization can improve rural income significantly, and the development of farmer economic organization is an effective way to raise the level of agricultural specialization; The factors, which affect whether farmers participating in farmer economic organization, are characteristics of farmers, situation of farmer economic organization and relevant policies promoting the development of farmer economic organization. Therefore, it has great significance to agricultural specialization and rural income growth for government to take measures to promote development of farmer economic organization.

This paper considers the problem of harmonization of economic interests in mutual relations between the employee and the employer of the economic organization through a prism of the economic theory of stimulus. Mutual relations between the employee and the employer in the economic organization are accompanied transaction costs and the control costs which combination and size define a choice of type of the contract which typology is presented in work. A condition of maintenance of long contract relations between the employee and the employer in the economic organization is construction of the stimulating contract which maintenance allows each participant to take the maximum utility in all admissible forms. On the basis of studying of interests of each party, conditions of the conclusion and base parameters, the model of the effective stimulating contract between the employee and the employer in the economic organization is developed

The aim of this concluding article is to bring together the ideas and arguments of the articles that make up this issue so as to present some conclusions and recommendations. The article emphasizes important lessons from this special issue, underlining how Europe has lost its way over recent years by imposing the market as the primary mechanism for social and economic organization. It presents some recommendations and priorities for future debates on the employment and social policy agenda. L’objectif de cet article de conclusion est de rassembler les idées et les arguments des articles qui constituent ce numéro spécial et de présenter ainsi quelques conclusions et recommandations. L’article met en lumière les leçons importantes que l’on peut tirer de ce numéro spécial, en soulignant comment l’Europe a fait fausse route au cours des dernières années en imposant le marché comme mécanisme essentiel d’organisation sociale et économique. Il présente également certaines pistes d’action et priorités pour des débats à venir sur l’agenda de l’emploi et de la politique sociale. Dieser abschließende Beitrag fasst die Ideen und Argumente der vorhergehenden Artikel zusammen und präsentiert einige Schlussfolgerungen und Empfehlungen. Der Beitrag unterstreicht wichtige Befunde dieser Themenausgabe und betont, dass Europa in den vergangenen Jahren vom richtigen Weg abgekommen ist, indem es den Markt als grundlegenden Mechanismus für die Sozial-und Wirtschaftsordnung durchgesetzt hat. Er unterbreitet ebenfalls Empfehlungen und Schwerpunkte für künftige Debatten im Bereich Beschäftigung und Sozialpolitik.

Knowledge-based approaches to the firm offer valuable insights into some of the central issues of governance and organizational design—especially into long neglected problems of coordination. I start from the assumption that the fundamental problem of economic organization is reconciling efficiency in knowledge development with efficiency in knowledge application. The paper extends the knowledge-based view of the firm and knowledge integration approach to organizational capability that I outlined in earlier papers (Grant in Strategic Management Journal, 1996a; Grant in Journal of Management Studies 7(4)375–387, 1996b) and draws upon subsequent contributions to the literature. From this basis, I derive implications for the relative efficiencies of alternative institutions of economic organization and for the design of firm structures.

This paper studies the effect of property rights regime on farm efficiency, using a high-quality representative sample from Ukraine’s agricultural sector. At the farm level, I find that a fully delineated and secure system of property rights leads to large positive gains in efficiency. In Ukraine, farms with a well-defined and enforced governance system have 20% higher level of productive efficiency and 9% higher level of technical efficiency as compared to farms with a contractual incompleteness. The ownership arrangement has profound effect on agricultural production in Ukraine.

Large gaps appear to exist between the evolving corporate governance practices of organizations and those of international joint ventures (IJVs). Some of these gaps might well be appropriate given some of the unique features of IJVs, while others might require new consideration and attention by organizations engaged in alliances. The expansive literatures on corporate governance and IJVs have developed separately from one another, and there are important opportunities to combine them. We argue that a need exists for a new generation of IJV governance research that considers IJVs' boards of directors as well as other dimensions of governance. We highlight some research opportunities that are illustrative for the research agenda that we are calling for that builds bridges between the literatures on corporate governance and IJVs.

Archaeologists debate the scale, degree of integration, and level of socio-political complexity of the polity centered on Chaco Canyon. The economic organization of the Chacoan system is fundamental to these debates, yet relatively little research has been directed at investigating agricultural potential, a basic variable. To add to a small but growing body of relevant information, we evaluated the agricultural potential of the Pueblo Pintado Great House community using earth science techniques. Geomorphic observations, pedological (soil) studies, and archaeological data suggest that the inhabitants practiced multiple agricultural techniques and farmed several settings as a strategy for reducing risk. Farming on the floodplain of Chaco Wash probably was particularly productive. Continued research of this type, both in the canyon and at outlying communities, could further illuminate which models of the Chacoan system are most plausible.

This article analyzes the past, the present, and the future of business institution in society in terms of its management approaches by using the framework of human evolution, and discovers a trend that explains three paradigms in business management that have been witnessed so far. Extending the trend, it projects another two paradigm shifts to take place in future, and establishes that the business management practice is going to evolve further where it will turn from its present status of ‘result-oriented management’to ‘process-oriented management’ in terms of its focus, or in other words, it will evolve from ‘professional management’ to ‘ethical management’ in terms of its underlying philosophy. As a result, the business enterprise will evolve from its present form of economic organization to a humane organization, and further up to a divine organization. Expressed the other way round, the business institution that had kicked off as an industrial organization has got transformed to a human organization by now; however, in the future, it will further evolve to its final level of a divine organization.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose demand‐supply chain representation as a tool to support economic organizing between original equipment manufacturers going downstream and customers considering how to better outsource maintenance and asset management.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is a presentation of a representation tool using a design theory template.FindingsThe concept of demand visibility point and requirements penetration point can be used to describe different ways of economic organizing as interaction between demand and supply. The proposed representation scheme supports the identification of visibility‐based changes in economic organization, such as vendor‐managed inventory and reliability‐based maintenance services.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper is conceptual and requires further empirical work.Practical implicationsThe representation tool can be used both by practitioners engaged in outsourcing maintenance and practitioners involved in the development of industrial service offerings.Originality/valueThe paper introduces demand‐supply chain representation to development of industrial service offerings and outsourcing of maintenance activities.

Unlike other public utilities, most water in the United States is supplied by publicly owned and operated waterworks. The predominance of the public sector in the supply of water was not always the case, however; private firms dominated US water supply throughout most of the 19th century. This article analyzes the puzzle of why water and sanitation systems were the only major utilities to become predominantly public by, first, reexamining historical accounts of the problems of contracting for water services in light of modern theories of economic organization and, then, evaluating hypotheses derived from those accounts using data on 373 waterworks serving US municipalities with populations over 10,000 in 1890. Among other results, municipal ownership is found to be related to the distribution of population and commerce within a city in ways that suggest that frictions between cities and private companies over system extensions and improvements played a significant role in the shift to municipal ownership. The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

Zusammenfassung Neue Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien haben tief greifende Auswirkungen auf den Tourismus. Diese betreffen sowohl die wirtschaftliche Organisation als auch die kulturelle Basis des Tourismus. Die tourismuswissenschaftliche Forschung der vergangenen Jahre hat in erster Linie die Auswirkungen auf die Tourismuswirtschaft betrachtet. Die Auswirkungen auf die kulturelle Basis des Tourismus sind dagegen eher vernachlässigt worden. Der Aufsatz stellt beide Forschungsperspektiven vor und macht insbesondere die grundlagenwissenschaftliche, aber auch die praktische Relevanz eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschungsansatzes deutlich.

This paper is concerned with the methods of mathematical modeling of the socio-economic development of regions. The objective of this study is to analyze and assess the socio-economic potential of the territory having regard to its individual socio-economic and economic-geographical characteristics. The territory's individual characteristics, in turn, are treated as invariant conditions of its development. The study territory includes regions and federal districts of the Russian Federation. An assessment of the regions' development potential is made from the perspective of analyzing their current socio-economic situation for the time interval 1999-2002 taken from official statistical handbooks. To accomplish this, a special-purpose mathematical model is developed in the form of a hierarchical fractal indicative function relating the generalized indicator characterizing the regions' development potential, or the “indicated” (that which is indicated versus indicator), to the particular socio-economic characteristics of the territory, or the development indicators of the local economy, via the model coefficients which is termed regulators. As a result, the economic-mathematical model is generated in the form of an indicative function characterizing the current socio-economic situation of the regions and federal districts of Russia on different levels of economic organization (from local and regional to national). It reflects appropriately and dramatically the specific character of the region's socio-economic potential by the example of the connection of investments with the volumes of production. The model permits the position of the regions and districts to be identified in the system of inter-regional and national socio-economic links and economic-geographical conditions of development. The results derived from modeling the socio-economic development potential of Russia's regions have been used to construct the control surface of the country's economy characterizing the changes in the development potential of the federal districts toward its decrease.

Systems consist of selected elements which are connected in particular ways, and their properties depend both on the elements which they contain and on the organization of these elements. There are many kinds of systems; formal organizations serve to develop and use knowledge, especially complex knowledge, which is itself structured. The ubiquity of organization may be explained by economizing and evolutionary principles. The microfoundations of formal organizations, and of overall economic organization, are to be found in the cognitive capacities and motivations of humans, which lead to the differentiation and integration of knowledge. This theme is explored by bringing together the work of authors spread over two and a half centuries.

This research is based on a longitudinal study of the organizational creation and evolution of a technology-based start-up. The study elucidates a “familial” sub-narrative. Although not typically described as a family firm, many references to the role of family, family ties, and the resources they provide are embedded in the story of the firm's founding. This research provides four main contributions. First, the important issue of the meta-narrative used in organizational research is raised along with the need to explore more subtle voices and sub-narratives. Second, the substantial role of family and familial ties in the venture creation process is clarified. Third, useful information about the origins of new firms is provided. Finally, the research represents an attempt to establish a broader conceptual model of the intersection between family and economic organization.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of regional responsibility and to provide a deeper understanding of customer‐owned co‐operatives and their social embeddedness.Design/methodology/approachFirst, extant conceptions of corporate social responsibility are discussed, concentrating on two approaches; the one employing stakeholder theory and the one employing resource‐based view of the firm. Second, co‐operatives as a form of economic organization that have a natural interest in engaging in regionally‐oriented corporate social responsibility practices are studied, including active participation in regional strategy processes and local and regional development. Finally, the concept of regional responsibility is illustrated by analysing qualitative data.FindingsRegional responsibility is in the core of customer‐owned co‐operatives' CSR. Co‐operatives are tentative to their customer‐owners, employees and other regional stakeholders. Regional responsibility also means the utilization of the region's resources and advocacy of local interests. In fact, co‐operatives may be considered as ‘flagship enterprises’ in their regions, promoting the businesses of the whole network of economic actors linked to them. Co‐operatives engage also in non‐business related activities to support the surrounding community.Research limitations/implicationsWhile this study helps to understand regional responsibility of customer‐owned firms, as such the findings are limited to the context of this study.Originality/valueThe paper analyzes co‐operatives' social responsibility from a regional perspective and introduces the concept of “regional responsibility”.

The 2004 antitrust reform is the most important change in the history of EU competition policy. It amounts to a major shift in both the mode of regulation (towards private enforcement) and the substance (towards the Anglo-Saxon model). These changes erode crucial elements of the Rhenish variety of economic organization. © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.