James M. Carman

Transition, The First Ten Years: Analysis and Lessons for Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

flicts with the globality of the ecological crisis, and (10) the protection of the welfare state from changes. The ultimate question for Beck is how responsible globalization can be effected. It involves first a radical critique of the neoliberal ideology of globalism. He begins with international cooperation in keeping the TNCs under control. Also, a new definition of the relationship between state, business, and society must be established. Transnational states are created by alliances to develop regional sovereignty beyond the individual states. Thus, to increase their capacity to control, they must give up some individual power. Joint ownership of capital with workers sharing in ownership provides an antidote for increasing unemployment. This can be supplemented by education policies that create a knowledge society commensurate with global capital. Capital must be tied to place and then to products. This avoids capital flight and superfluous production. In addition, the politicization of consumption to constrain corporations would be an integral part of control. To compensate for decreasing industrial employment, new value in civil labor should be developed. He also argues for increased self-employment and an elimination of exclusion, particularly for income reasons. Globalism is irreversible through the efforts of any state, but a transnational structure as large a Europe might offer an opportunity to restore politics. This enables a reregulation of transnational business and an implementation of social and ecological policies. Balanced trade would then minimize the degree to which fewer and fewer get richer and richer while the majority foot the bill. It is clear from Beck’s sociological perspective that globalization is more than the internationalization of business. The book presents his perspective, which differs from the typical business approach to globalization. While it is hard to follow at times, appearing to be a collection of short pieces integrated into a book, it is well worth the effort of working through it. It is of particular interest to the macromarketing world because of the unique sociological perspective focusing on institutional change immanent in globalization. The book would be a good supplement in any graduate-level multinational marketing class but would be a bit daunting for undergraduates. It should be required reading for anyone who teaches in the international area as it would provide new dimensions and an alternative way of thinking about the globalization process including as it does, the political, cultural, and social dimensions of the process that marketing generally plays down or ignores. In combination with others, such as Giddens (1998), Wallerstein (1979), or Held (1995), the macro nature of the globalization process is inescapable as is the neoliberal philosophy that drives it in the quest to reduce the political and cultural to the logic of the world market. REFERENCES

Patient perceptions of service quality: combining the dimensions

Empirically investigates, using a conjoint methodology, the importance weights given to the attributes of quality for acute care hospital services. The study shows that consumers evaluated the technical dimensions of nursing care, physician care, and outcome as more important than the accommodation functions of hospital care, and there are significant interactions among the technical dimensions. Both sets of dimensions were important and significant, but technical quality evaluations were not influenced by the perceived quality level of the affective attributes. The relative importance of these attributes were quite stable among various subgroups of past patients.

Public Regulation of Marketing Activity: Part I: Institutional Typologies of Market Failure:

This is the first of a three-part article which provides a comprehensive typology useful in any analysis of how public policies are used to control the operations of market exchanges and marketing systems. The first part, presented here, provides a typology of market failures. The second and third parts, to appear in subsequent issues, provide typologies of regulatory responses and of regulatory failures.

Public Regulation of Marketing Activity, Part III: A Typology of Regulatory Failures and Implications for Marketing and Public Policy

This is the third part of an article which presents comprehensive typologies of market failures (Part 1), regulatory responses (Part II), and regulatory failures. A typology of regulatory failures is provided which examines why public actions intended to correct purported market failures fail to achieve their goals. Key questions that should be addressed in evaluating regulatory responses are discussed.

Public Regulation of Marketing Activity: Part II: Regulatory Responses to Market Failures:

This is the second of a three-part article which provides a comprehensive typology useful in any analysis of how public policies are used to control the operations of market exchanges and marketing systems. The first part (JMM, Spring 1983) provided a typology of market failures. The second part, presented here, provides a typology of regulatory responses to market failures. The third part, to appear in a subsequent issue, provides a typology of regulatory failures and discusses the implications of the three typologies for public policy and marketing decisions.

Organizational Transformations in Transition Economies: Hypotheses

This article employs new growth theories and resource advantage/dynamic capabilities research to explain how the process of economic liberalization in transition economies (TEs) redefines the bases of competition and engenders strategic and organizational change. The changes are described in terms of existing types of organizations and new firms emerging after economic liberalization. The manuscript draws a number of propositions concerning the drivers of competitive dynamics and of marketing innovation. The propositions center on overarching regularities in the dynamic interface between market-oriented institutional reforms and changes in marketing behavior across a broad spectrum of regions and income levels and thus transcend the traditional focus on development of low-income countries per se. The manuscript first explains, from a new growth theories perspective, how institutional reforms affect the TE environment. This is followed by resource advantage/dynamic capabilities explanation of firm-level responses and the relationship between those responses and subsequent institutional changes.

Theories of A1Truism and Behavior Modification Campaigns

Adam Smith wrote that it was self-interest, not benevolence, that caused the butcher, baker, and brewer to supply our dinner, yet we regularly observe examples of altruistic behavior within the marketing system. Indeed, society expects individuals to exhibit prosocial, altruistic behavior. Is the modern marketing system contributing to a decline in altruism? Is there a theory of altruism that helps explain the effect of the marketing system on altruistic behavior? This article attempts to answer these questions by integrating and unifying theories of altruism that come from sociobiology and from psychology, sociology, economics, and marketing. This theory is used to explain the lack of success of public behavior modification campaigns.

The limits of power in hospital markets.

. There has been much speculation on the matter. For most of the decade until 1987 oracles described a year-2000 situation wherein a small number of national health care conglomerates would dominate hospital and other institutional health care delivery (Johnson 1981; Abramowitz 1985; Elwood 1986). But in 1987, following downturns in the fortunes of several large chain corporations, the myth of national dominance was debunked and replaced by predictions of increases in local and regional integrations (Johnson 1987; McLaughlin 1987). The predicted increases

Private Property and the Regulation of Vertical Channel Systems

The roots and development of the rights of private property are traced from Aristotle to the end of the nineteenth century when the Sherman Antitrust Act was formulated. A concept of viewing injury to competition as an externality is offered as useful in determining when property rights and restraints in vertical channels of distribution ought to be restricted in order to achieve any stated set of social objectives. The concept appears useful in analyzing a broad range of macromarketing problems.

Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy

ceptual representations are perceptual once we acknowledge that we transform, reconstruct, interpret, fill in gaps, use prior knowledge, and are influenced by expectations in all our perceptions), (3) concepts are couched in “modality-specific codes,” that is, contained in representational codes specific to our perceptual (input) system. Concepts, in fact, are perceptual detection mechanisms that mediate between indicators and what is indicated. This does not mean concepts are picture-like entities that resemble their referents. Once an object is encountered and perceptually represented, the representation can be stored in long-term memory, otherwise recognition would be impossible. Concepts do not necessarily have sharp boundaries (consider the concept of persuasion versus the concept of manipulation). Prinz argues that concepts, as mental representations of categories, can be equated with “proxytypes” as they are proxies for the categories they represent. In thinking, we simulate the manipulation of real things by manipulating proxytypes of them in their absence. This is a very different picture of thinking than that presented by cognitive psychology, where thinking is viewed as analogous to computing with symbolic representations having a subject-predicate structure, manipulated by logical rules. As each proxytype of, say, a product is derived from a constellation of representations of that product, we are likely to have many concepts of that product, some of which are not shared by others. Thus, our proxytype of the president of the United States will be derived from many representations, and context will decide which proxytype emerges on any particular occasion. Prinz claims proxytype theory provides an appealing account of basic-level categorization. To the objection that many concepts cannot be identified with perceptually derived representations such as unobservable entities like attitude or intangible concepts like truth or mathematical concepts— none of which we see, hear, smell, taste or touch . . . Prinz replies that all these must, in fact, be amenable to perceptual representation on pain of vacuity. Thus, if the symbols of democracy receive their meaning from reliably detecting democracies, then democracies are perceptually detectable. Prinz rejects the rationalist view, often promoted by cognitive scientists, that the mind is innately equipped with many nonperceptual concepts while arguing things are changing as cognitive psychology borrows more and more from neuroscience that makes no such assumption. He also rejects what he regards as an absurd accusation that empiricists like him claim that nothing at all is innate, since how could a simple chunk of tissue learn anything at all? Prinz claims proxytype theory, as a version of concept empiricism, promises to satisfy the desiderata more than any of the other theories discussed. He makes a convincing case, but there may be different desiderata that may weaken his case. Furthermore, when not concerned with some overarching theory of concepts but concerned with a specific problem, it may be more fruitful to take the approach that is most useful than the approach that meets best Prinz’s desiderata. But I suspect that like most readers of this journal, it is not knowing the winner of the debate that is important but the amount we learn from this debate about categorization that applies to a whole host of marketing problems.