Knowledge that Transforms

A review is presented of the book ?The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements,? by Dan Clawson.

We consider the role of government in the process of technological development, showing that the role of government regarding technological development varies over the development process. When a country is far from the technological frontier, the government can spur economic development through the centralization of economic and political control, but as the economy approaches the technological frontier, government's role must change considerably, political and economic freedom being necessary. In addition, domestic business groups can act as substitutes for governmental intervention, and multinational corporations can supplement governmental efforts.

I integrate social identity and impression management theories to capture the dual impact of personal characteristics and group affiliations on professional image construction. In so doing, I describe how and why individuals proactively negotiate their personal and social identities during interpersonal encounters. The model highlights the multilevel impact of credible and authentic professional image construction on intrapsychic, interpersonal, workgroup, and organizational outcomes.

Efforts to end sexual harassment that rely primarily on target reporting are unlikely to be successful because most targets do not report their experiences. Thus, we explore an alternative mechanism for controlling sexual harassment—observer intervention. We examine observer intervention in sexual harassment using the literature on bystander intervention for guidance. We describe the concept of observer intervention, develop a taxonomy of intervention types, and discuss factors promoting and inhibiting its occurrence.

The article reviews the book ?Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and National Institutions,? by Johann Peter Murmann.

The article reviews the book ?Wage Dispersion: Why Are Similar Workers Paid Differently?,? by Dale T. Mortensen.

I adopt a dyadic perspective to examine the role of social influence on individuals' fulfillment evaluation of shared psychological contracts. I address two research questions on individuals' referent choice and use of referent information and introduce a theoretical framework for categorizing promises. This framework, consisting of the domain and contestability of promises, is used to address the two research questions and predict the effects of referent information on individuals' fulfillment evaluation of shared psychological contracts.

We explore the relationship between discourse and interorganizational collaboration, arguing that interorganizational collaboration can be understood as the product of sets of conversations that draw on existing discourses. Specifically, we argue that effective collaboration, which we define as cooperative, interorganizational action that produces innovative, synergistic solutions and balances divergent stakeholder concerns, emerges out of a two-stage process. In this process conversations produce discursive resources that create a collective identity and translate it into effective collaboration.

A review is presented of the book ?Democratic Management: The Path to Total Quality With Total Liberty and Equality,? by Asim Sen.

Creating competitive industries has become one of the key tasks of governments. Different adaptation outcomes in industries across nations cannot be accounted for fully simply by an emphasis on firm-level capabilities, market-driven policies, or state-level policies. We propose an integrative framework that draws on both the strategic management and political economy literature to explain variations in national industrial competitiveness. We discuss differences with respect to institutional characteristics and capabilities, competitive outcomes, conditions of best fit, and who bears the cost of industry adaptation.