Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and Evidence (Comparative Institutional Analysis)

Book Description

In Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa, Marcel Fafchamps synthesizes the results of recent surveys of indigenous market institutions in twelve countries, including Benin, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, and presents findings about economics exchange in Africa that have implications both for future research and current policy. Employing empirical data as well as theoretical models that clarify the data, Fafchamps takes as his unifying principle the difficulties of contract enforcement. Arguing that in an unpredictable world contracts are not always likely to be respected, he shows that contract agreements in sub-Saharan Africa are affected by the absence of large hierarchies (both corporate and governmental) and as a result must depend to a greater degree than in more developed economies on social networks and personal trust. Fafchamps considers policy recommendations as they apply to countries in three different stages of development: countries with undeveloped market institutions, like Ghana; countries at an intermediate stage, like Kenya; and countries with developed market institutions, like Zimbabwe.

Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa caps ten years of personal research by the author. Fafchamps, in collaboration with such institutions as the Africa Division of the World Bank and the International Food Policy Research Institute, participated in the surveys of manufacturing firms and agricultural traders that provide the empirical basis for the book. The result is a work that makes a significant contribution to research on the continuing economic stagnation of many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and is also largely accessible to researchers in other fields and policy professionals.

Fafchamps, Marcel. Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and Evidence.(Book Review) : An article from: American Journal of Agricultural Economics

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Fafchamps, Marcel. Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and Evidence.(Book Review) : An article from: American Journal of Agricultural Economics
Christopher B. Barrett
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000CC427I
Release Date: 2005-11-14

Book Description

This digital document is an article from American Journal of Agricultural Economics, published by Thomson Gale on November 1, 2005. The length of the article is 985 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Fafchamps, Marcel. Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and Evidence.(Book Review)
Author: Christopher B. Barrett
Publication: American Journal of Agricultural Economics (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 87 Issue: 4 Page: 1089(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and Evidence (Comparative Institutional Analysis)

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Market Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and Evidence (Comparative Institutional Analysis)
Marcel Fafchamps
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OQM79C

Knowledge Management and Organizational Design (Resources for the Knowledge-Based Economy)
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Not much new in this book

Knowledge Management and Organizational Design (Resources for the Knowledge-Based Economy)
Paul S Myers
Manufacturer: Butterworth-Heinemann
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0750697490

Book Description

The first in the readers' series called Resources for the Knowledge-Based Economy, Knowledge Management and Organizational Design is a unique compilation of articles and book excerpts that describe how the management of an organization shapes the levels of knowledge transfer, innovation and learning.

The collection draws on fifty years of management thinking and presents key issues facing knowledge-intensive organizations. The selections are concise, clearly written and present a rich framework of examples drawn from real management experience. Arranged thematically, the chapters discuss decision-making, organization structure, innovation, strategic alliances, managing knowledge workers and power relations. Represented in this volume are the ideas of influential academics including the late economist Frederick Hayek and French sociologist Michael Crozier, as well as world-renowned management thinkers such as Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Charles Handy.

A unique collection of activities and book excerpts selected for their insight into the relationship between organizational design and knowledge management.
The first compilation of its kind to draw together the work of leading economists, sociologists, psychologists, management thinkers and practitioners
Includes an introductory essay which synthesizes the various ideas presented throughout the volume.

Customer Reviews:

Not much new in this book.......2001-01-20

There isn't much new in this book.

Building the Knowledge Management Network: Best Practices, Tools, and Techniques for Putting Conversation to Work

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Does not mention wiki...note publishing date of 2002!!
Powerful book

Building the Knowledge Management Network: Best Practices, Tools, and Techniques for Putting Conversation to Work
Cliff Figallo , and Nancy Rhine
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Communications | Skills | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web
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ASIN: 047121549X

Book Description

A complete set of best practices, tools, and techniques for turning conversations into a rich source of business information
Many organizations are now recognizing that the untapped knowledge of their members can be used to benefit every aspect of their business, from making smarter and faster decisions to improving products and efficiency. This book offers a clear-cut road map for building a successful knowledge management system to capture and fully exploit the knowledge exchanged in conversations.
Written by two of the foremost experts in online communities, this book covers a set of best practices, tools, and techniques for using conversation and online interaction to provide affordable and effective knowledge-based benefits and solutions. With a unique and invaluable perspective, the authors offer guidance for collecting, capturing, and cataloging knowledge so that it can be used to improve efficiency and reduce costs in areas ranging from internal procedures through customer relations and product development.
This book provides step-by-step solutions for developing an effective knowledge network, including how to:
* Formulate strategies and create action plans
* Select the right tools for peer-to-peer networks, interactive communities, and events
* Work with legacy systems
* Train staff and stimulate participation
* Improve productivity and measurement criteria
The companion Web site contains templates, checklists, a discussion board, and links to software.

Customer Reviews:

Does not mention wiki...note publishing date of 2002!!.......2005-12-30

This is a good book on knowledge management. It provides an adequate historical reference and a succinct framework for the opportunities and incentives for KM but it is as of 2002. This book needs updating. It's not bad but is pre-wiki and web images are dated. Buy used...don't spend $40.00.

Powerful book.......2002-10-18

Review of Building the Knowledge Network: Best Practices, Tools, and Techniques for Putting Conversation to Work

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was written in a conversational tone, and pulled together all the different pieces I've been reading in many sources. It starts with a brief history of knowledge sharing/conversation/communications which I found fascinating (and I am not a history buff!). Nancy & Cliff compared the anti-conversational attitudes of the Scientific Management during the Industrial Age, showed how the Hawthorne Studies caused the shift from the organization to the worker, and information systems. With the emergence of computer networks, the knowledge explosion has shown no sign of abating.

They discussed how the lessons of the pioneers of early communities such as the WELL assisted communities of today to flourish. Trust became communities' foundation with open communications offering challenges to community managers/moderators/facilitators.

The authors' inclusion of quotes from the ideas of the "greats" in community building/managing and knowledge management (KM) such as Stephen Denning, Thomas Davenport, Etienne Wenger, Tom Peters, Michael Hammer and Howard Rheingold, among others offered powerful evidence to their premises. Throughout the book are helpful charts, checklists and other graphics.

A whole chapter was devoted to culture and the tools that enable differing cultures. They discussed the three relationships between people and content and the three dimensions of collaboration (the cornerstone of communities).

Another chapter was devoted to external stakeholders and customer relationship management (CRM). They touch on what new skills will be required to operate within online learning and knowledge sharing communities And they touch on what paths our technical future may take and how to integrate all these new technologies.

Book Description

Business enterprises are transforming their core practices in the digital age. The emerging imperative is to become super-flexible, in order to thrive, or, at least survive, in volatile environments. Super-flexibility refers to the ability to be agile and versatile, like an entrepreneurial company, coupled with the capacity to remain robust and resilient, much like an established company. Super-flexible enterprises move swiftly, manage for the moment, and ride successive waves of technological innovation, while providing a few enduring anchors of stability and cohesion.

This book details how knowledge enterprises can harness uncertainty by becoming super-flexible. Based on over 20 years of practical experience in Silicon Valley, the authors present conceptual frameworks, illustrative examples and practical lessons for strategizing, organizing and managing knowledge-based enterprises in turbulent settings.

Features

* Combines theoretical concepts with practical lessons

* Addresses the challenges facing the new generation of entrepreneurial, knowledge-based companies

* Details how established enterprises can learn from Silicon Valley in order to adapt to new realities and how they can harness emerging opportunities

* Distills 20 years of field research and practical experience with a diverse range of tech companies in Silicon Valley.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent in both style and substance.......2005-05-17

This is a crisply written, elegant book that analyses and describes the practices of silicon valley in a way that is at once readable, informative, and inspirational. In less than 200 pages, the authors describe (with entertaining and instructive examples interspersed) the silicon valley ecosystem. This ecosystem has been resiliant through the ups and downs of the past 20 years, and has been the engine behind the productivity of the US economy.

It is said that if you really know your stuff, you can describe it simply and clearly. Bahrami and Evans know their stuff. They have lived and breathed with the creators of silicon valley for 20+ years, and the book is peppered with insights and personal anecdotes, and quotes from personal conversations with some of the legends of silicon valley.

This is a book that would be equally applicable to the academic, the educator, and the entrepreneur. This is a must read for communities outside silicon valley that have wrestled over how to create entrepreneurial energy in their midst (European and Asian governments come to mind). The formula for success is spelled out (though how to get there is less clear).

I found the book to be particularly good at surfacing broadly applicable principles. The phrase they coin, super-flexibility, is expressive and right-on. The impressive bibliography shows they have done their homework.

This book is a good read: well-written, fast paced, analytical and anecdotally rich. It fills a real need. Though I have lived in silicon valley for almost 3 decades, I learned a lot by reading it, and would recommend it broadly.

A rigorous conceptualization.......2004-12-23

This is a mind-blowing book, bulit on the authors 20-years experience. I would recommend this book to those with a research orientation. Read it, and u will find it really offers an integrated view of flexibility better than any one else. The only drawback lies with weak applications of managerial mechanisms.

Inquiring Organizations: Moving From Knowledge Management To Wisdom

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Inquiring Organizations: Moving From Knowledge Management To Wisdom
John D. Haynes , and David B. Paradice
Manufacturer: Idea Group Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

MIS | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1591403103

Product Description

Inquiring Organizations: Moving from Knowledge Management to Wisdom assembles into one volume a comprehensive collection of the key current thinking regarding the use of C. West Churchmans Design of Inquiring Systems as a basis for computer-based inquiring systems design and implementation. Inquiring systems are systems that go beyond knowledge management to actively inquire about their environment. While self-adaptive is an appropriate adjective for inquiring systems, they are critically different from self-adapting systems as they have evolved in the fields of computer science or artificial intelligence. Inquiring systems draw on epistemology to guide knowledge creation and organizational learning. As such, we can for the first time ever, begin to entertain the notion of support for wise decision-making. Readers of Inquiring Organizations: Moving from Knowledge Management to Wisdom will gain an appreciation for the role that epistemology can play in the design of the next generation of knowledge management systems: systems that focus on supporting wise decision-making processes.

Information, Organisation and Technology - Studies in Organisational Semiotics (Information and Organization Design Series, Volume 1) (Information and Organization Design Series)

Average customer rating:

Goodbye KM... Hello, Organisational Semiotics

Information, Organisation and Technology - Studies in Organisational Semiotics (Information and Organization Design Series, Volume 1) (Information and Organization Design Series)

Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0792372581

Book Description

Organisational semiotics is a discipline that is concerned with the interrelationships between individuals and groups, and between humans and technology, functioning in organisations and society. Organisational semiotics opens up the prospect of theory-building and the development of new methods and techniques to gain insights into organised behaviour and enacted social practices, in the presence and absence of various technologies. It shares common interests with many other approaches to information and organisations, such as computer science, computational semiotics, organisational engineering, and language action perspective. The common vision shared by these approaches is to treat organisations and related information systems and technologies within a unified semiotic framework, with particular reference to the huge range of issues that elude many traditional disciplines. The analysis and design of information systems develops methods for solving the practical problems but offers no rigorous, theoretical foundation for them or how information functions within and between organisations. The semiotic perspective accommodates the individual and the social, the human and the technical, intra- and inter-organisational interactions, at a level of detail that is required in the study, modelling, design, and engineering of new and alternative organisational and technical systems. This perspective is outlined in the chapter presentations of Information, Organisation and Technology.

Customer Reviews:

Goodbye KM... Hello, Organisational Semiotics.......2001-12-13

Knowledge Management has been degraded to a technological speciality for many people. Organisational Semiotics explains when and why technology is not enough...even, sometimes, technology can be a real barrier to learning.

Reward systems for intra-organizational knowledge sharing [An article from: European Journal of Operational Research]

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Reward systems for intra-organizational knowledge sharing [An article from: European Journal of Operational Research]
D.J. Lee , and J.H. Ahn
Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is a journal article from European Journal of Operational Research, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Knowledge sharing is one of the most critical steps in knowledge management activities. To achieve effective knowledge sharing, it is important to encourage workers to share their knowledge for the best interests of the firm. However, successfully exerting this encouragement is very challenging. In this paper, we develop a formal model and analyze reward systems for intra-organizational knowledge sharing. Specifically, two common forms of reward systems are considered; individual-based reward which is based on the individual contribution of valuable knowledge, and group-based reward which is based on the contribution of the whole group through knowledge sharing to the firm performance. Through the analysis, we derive a simple optimal individual-based reward system which depends on the amount and the productivity of shared knowledge. The system balances the benefit from knowledge sharing of each worker with the costs related with it. Next, it is found that group-based reward is not only less efficient than individual-based reward, but it also subject to a potential productivity problem, in which workers with more productive knowledge do not participate in knowledge sharing. Finally, it is shown that several organizational factors can complement reward systems in increasing the performance of KM and can mitigate the productivity problem. Insights from our analysis could help managers to understand important considerations in rewarding knowledge sharing, and could provide them with guides to implement reward systems.

Man's Dominion: The Story of Conservation in America.
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Man's Dominion: The Story of Conservation in America.
Frank, Graham
Manufacturer: M Evans & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0871310759

Telecourse Student Guide for Cycles of Life: Exploring Biology
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Telecourse Student Guide for Cycles of Life: Exploring Biology
Gerald L. Kellogg
Manufacturer: Wadsworth Publishing Company
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Book Description

Do people starve in democratic politics? It is often claimed that since government must respond to public needs during times of crisis, democracy has reduced famine in India since independence. This book seeks to identify the processes which generate and perpetuate hunger in India, and what sort of interventions by public and private agencies are best suited to combat this problem. Drawing on fieldwork in the much publicized Kalahandi district, Bob Currie explains why problems of poverty and alleged starvation remain despite regular elections and extensive regional and national publicity.

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies, EC-Web 2007, held in Regensburg, Germany, September 3-7, 2007 in conjunction with Dexa 2007.

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Divorce and separation are hard for couples, but they're even harder on the children involved. Many kids are in emotional turmoil, uncertain about the future, and blame themselves for the bread-up, even though it's not their fault. Surviving Your Parents' Divorce fills the information gap, helping children to grasp and cope with the forces at work in a separation.

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