Citation
Burgess, T.F. and Heap, J. (2017), "Editorial", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 66 No. 6, pp. 698-698. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPPM-05-2017-0114
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited
As we put this issue together, Donald Trump has managed to survive his first 100 days in office as the President of the USA. Depending on who you speak to, either he has had a very poor first 100 days, failing to keep many of his election promises … or he has laid the groundwork for major economic growth and repatriation of job to the USA.
One promise he has kept is to lower taxes for corporations and for the US middle classes. Like many of his policies this is controversial.
At IJPPM, our concern is with the effects of his policies on the US economy – and on American productivity. This concern stems from the size of the US economy and its “locomotive” effect on the rest of the world economy.
If – and it is quite a big “if” – US businesses choose to invest their tax savings in new capital equipment and/or on more R&D, we might see a mid-term increase in productivity and in economic performance. We might then hail Trump as a visionary, particularly if these increases deliver benefits to other countries’ economies.
Given our base in the UK, we are particularly interested in the UK. For the moment, the UK economy is bumping along nicely despite the Brexit fears and threats, but the underlying uncertainty suggests that businesses may be enjoying the temporary (?) mini-boom but failing to invest for the longer term.
UK productivity figures are not improving. One great virtue of measuring productivity is that it is a reasonable predictor of future economic performance – but prediction is certainly an imperfect science.
Often, we just have to wait and see what the future holds.
In the meantime, here is another selection of fine papers by the productivity and performance management research community. Enjoy.
Thomas F. Burgess and John Heap