This study examines the effects of two major environmental jolts, the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks, on strategic change and performance in the U.S. air carrier industry. The sample includes the Major U.S. air carriers during two periods of time: deregulation (1974-1986) and 9/11/2001 (1997-2008). Data were collected from archival sources and analyzed using cross-sectional time series regressions with fixed effects. The results show that following both environmental jolts, the initial response of the airlines was emphasis on cost control. However, over the long run, there was a deceleration of the emphasis on cost control. Further, following deregulation, the long run response involved the acceleration of differentiation change. We also found a significant relationship between strategic change and firm performance. The results contribute towards a reconciliation of the conflicting predictions of the repetitive momentum hypothesis and the deceleration hypothesis.

This paper provides a comparative perspective of public procurement policies for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in the United States and Europe. Public procurement is increasingly recognized as a strategic function of public administration because of the huge amount of resources it consumes, as well as the important policy objectives it seeks to promote, including SME-related objectives. Progress towards meeting SME procurement participation goals, however, remains elusive on both sides of the Atlantic. Policy makers and administrators have little comparative research upon which to draw regarding the effectiveness of various policy approaches, a shortcoming this paper seeks to address. An institutional perspective is adopted which helps explain similarities and differences in U.S. and European SME policies.

This paper establishes a model for analyzing the dynamics of the host state-international oil company (IOC) bargaining relationship. Theoretically, the model advances our ability to investigate bargaining dynamics between host states, oil companies and other stakeholders in the oil industry. It is a sophisticated mechanism which identifies the complex array of relationships and bargains within which the host state-IOC bargaining relationship is nested. The model builds on and leverages the key contributions of earlier bargaining models. It enables us to integrate relevant ideas from existing scholarship on host state-MNC bargaining while also taking into account other actors and bargains at domestic and international levels that affect bargaining between an IOC and a host state. Practically, the model will help actors choose strategies more systematically, leading to higher relative bargaining power that may translate to preferable bargaining outcomes.

Buoyed by the success of two large-scale bingos in 1993 Alberta's First Nations initiated plans to construct reserve casinos to mitigate economic hardships. That year Alberta commenced with neoliberal reforms to slash the provincial budget. This paper explores how Alberta's acquisition of regulatory authority over First Nation's gaming led to the creation of a bureaucracy responsible for oversight of reserve gaming, the costs of which were borne by reserve casino revenues thereby resulting in no additional taxation of non-Native Albertans.

While the state remains the main unit of analysis in International Relations, the emergence of transnational actors and their integration into global governance have contributed to an opening of perspectives and issues. NGOs and multinational enterprises as well as their interaction in public-private-partnerships have become popular research objects. However, these partnerships are often assessed in terms of effectiveness which leads to juxtapositioning binding and effective versus non-binding and ineffective initiatives. Considering such an either/or-logic to be of limited insight, the article argues that current research on public-private-partnerships suffers from four conceptual difficulties: (1) an underspecified concept of effectiveness, (2) a missing discussion on the yardsticks chosen for assessments, (3) a tendency to (over-)generalize individual findings and (4) underlying yet seldom reflected actor assumptions. To help engage with these difficulties, the paper conceptualizes partnerships as social contexts. Within such contexts, dynamics influence corporate identity and action and create new awareness as well as new conduct. Such a perspective allows to go beyond weighing the effectiveness of binding versus the likelihood of non-binding initiatives. The argument is illustrated by analyzing the emergence, development, and impact of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights with respect to BP and Chevron.

The article investigates how major changes in national economic policies, and in associated forms of state-business relations, produce pro-business local governance arrangements. It places the emphasis on the politics of state-business relations that revolve around the distribution of public resources. It aims to explain, in particular, how these dynamics unfold in the developing countries where neoliberal reforms are implemented under conditions of political instability and weak policy capacity of the state. The article focuses on the political mobilization of the local bourgeoisie through local business associations, as the major force behind the rise of pro-business local governance. It indicates that the emergent form a pro-business local governance scheme, especially when led by local business associations, will depend upon a) the degree of political autonomy of the local bourgeoisie from the national political actors (i.e, their distance to party politics); b) the composition of its constituency/supporters (or the class coalition behind it); c) the degree of their dependency on public resources. The arguments are elaborated in the case of the city of Gaziantep, Turkey.