The effect of task experience on assessments of auditor expert potential

This paper proposes a model and methodology for studying the effect of experience on an auditor's expert potential. Expert potential is defined as an increase in the expected level of expertise at which an auditor will perform in an arbitrary future task. An auditor's behaviors during performance of a current task are treated as probes of that auditor's knowledge base. From an analysis of the responses thus obtained, inferences are made concerning the effects of task experience on the underlying properties of the knowledge driving task behaviors and on the probability of greater expert-like task behavior in the future. Application of the model is illustrated by evaluating the effects of experience on the expert potential of four first-year auditors who performed audit-related tasks in simulated auditing environments.     

Learning during audit tasks in the field: A model, methodology, and experiment

Learning during performance of auditing tasks in the field is modeled as a change in the state of an auditor's knowledge base that results from experience during performance of a task. Several hypotheses are proposed and, along with data obtained by means of behavior observation and concurrent verbal protocols, used to interpret the problem-solving behaviors of four first-year auditors who performed an unfamiliar but audit-related task in simulated auditing environments. Significant findings of learning during performance of the experimental task are reported. While the data show that the auditor-subjects continuously encountered new learning situations throughout the task, they are inconclusive regarding learning through improved knowledge content. On the other hand, significant evidence is found that the learning that did occur was manifest by a greater availability of the auditor-subjects' knowledge. The implications of these findings in terms of the nature of audit tasks and the development of more expert-like task behavior are discussed.     

知识领地行为、知识共享与个人创新关系模型研究

个体知识与领地意识结合引发的知识领地行为,为组织内知识共享与转移、个人创新能力等相关研究提供了新的切入点。根据国内外相关文献,梳理了知识领地行为的内涵与结构,在此基础上,对知识领地行为与个人创新的关系进行了理论推演,并引入知识共享这一中介变量,构建了一个完整模型,对知识领地行为、知识共享与个人创新的作用机理进行了初步探讨,为后续实证分析奠定了基础。研究发现,不同知识领地行为对于个人创新发挥的效用不同;知识共享在知识领地行为与个人创新的关系中发挥中介作用。     

基于老年人冬季健身行为特征的寒地城市健身场地可达性研究——以哈尔滨市南岗区为例

寒地冬季的严酷气候条件会对老年人口的健身活动及城市健身场地的可达性产生负面影响，选取哈尔滨市南岗区的18个街道，利用网络问卷调查和统计分析对参与冬季健身活动的寒地老年人口的基本社会属性、老年人冬季健身行为特征和健身出行特征三方面进行调查和量化分析。基于以上特征，利用网络分析和两步移动搜寻法对南岗区各街道进行健身场地可达性评价，结果表明：1)整体健身场地可达性仍然较低；2)健身场地分布不均衡；3)健身场地可达性分布与参与健身活动的老年人口需求不匹配。以此为依据，结合健身场地可达性的影响因素，为未来的寒地城市健身场地规划提供对策与建议。     

互依性、知识获取与员工创新行为关系研究：一个有调节的中介模型

信息化与知识经济时代,创新成为个体获得竞争优势的关键因素之一。以中国情境下上海319位企业成员为调查样本,基于资源依赖理论和知识管理理论,构建一个有调节的中介模型。运用结构方程模型,考察任务互依性、目标互依性、奖励互依性影响员工创新行为的机制路径,检验知识获取的中介作用和任务冲突的调节作用。结果发现：任务互依性、目标互依性、奖励互依性对知识获取有显著正向作用;知识获取对员工创新行为有显著正向作用;知识获取在任务互依性、目标互依性、奖励互依性与员工创新行为之间起中介作用;任务冲突在目标互依性与知识获取的关系中起调节作用;任务冲突调节知识获取在目标互依性与员工创新行为关系中的中介作用,在高任务冲突情境下,该中介作用更显著。研究结果拓展了中国情境下员工创新行为理论体系,能够为企业管理者寻求更多管理策略提供指导。     

Volunteering for heterogeneous tasks

We model the search for volunteers as a war of attrition. Every player is tempted to wait for someone else to volunteer for the tasks. When tasks are not equivalent, it may be optimal to volunteer quickly to perform an easy task. We analyze the trade-off between volunteering for an easy task and taking the risk of having to perform a more strenuous task in order to get the chance of avoiding all tasks. When the cost of waiting is borne by agents until every task has found a volunteer, we show that it may be optimal to volunteer for the difficult task even if an easier task is available, in order to speed up the process and reduce the costs of waiting.     

Strategic Delegation of Multiple Tasks

This paper studies both the owner–manager relationship and the union–firm relationship in a model of unionised duopoly to analyse whether a firm's owner delegates the task of wage bargaining to a manager along with the task of output determination. We also analyse the profit and welfare effects of multiple‐task delegation. It has been shown in the literature that, when there is only one delegation task – output determination – delegation of output decisions to managers leads to lower profits for owners than non‐delegation as pure profit‐maximisation. However, when there are two delegation tasks as in our model – output determination and wage bargaining – we show that owners are better off delegating both tasks than delegating only the output decision or not delegating at all. This result provides a rationale and managerial insight for strategically delegating multiple tasks to managers. Moreover, we show that union utility, consumer surplus and social welfare are all higher when owners do not delegate the task of wage bargaining than when they do. This result suggests that governments implement union contracts that require owners, rather than managers, to negotiate wages with unions in order to benefit unions and consumers and to improve social welfare as well.     

Relational Contracts, Multitasking, and Job Design

This article analyzes optimal job design in a repeated principal-agentrelationship when there is only one contractible and imperfectperformance measure for three tasks whose contribution to firmvalue is nonverifiable. The tasks can be assigned to eitherone or two agents. Assigning an additional task to an agentstrengthens his relational contract. Therefore, broad task assignmentsare optimal when the performance measure strongly distorts incentivesfor the two-task job. This is more likely to be the case ifthese two tasks are substitutes.     

嵌入社会心理的知识网络结构、行为与绩效关系仿真

知识网络的结构、行为与绩效之间存在相互作用关系,社会心理通过影响这些作用关系而对知识网络结构演化、行为激励和绩效实现产生影响。在文献回顾的基础上,剖析知识网络结构、行为与绩效的内涵与关系,研究社会心理对知识网络的作用机制。由此提出假设并构建逻辑框架模型,进而设计变量与参数,采用Matlab软件进行仿真试验,通过试验结果验证该提假设。仿真结果表明：知识网络的结构、行为、绩效相互影响,社会心理起调节作用。     

Educational upgrading,structural change and the task composition of jobs in Europe

We analyze the changes in the task content of jobs in 24 European countries between 1998 and 2015. We link the O*NET occupational data with the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU‐LFS), and use the methodology of Acemoglu and Autor ( 2011 ). We find that the intensity of non‐routine cognitive tasks grew in all countries, while the intensity of manual tasks declined. Workforce upskilling was the major factor contributing to these developments. The intensity of routine cognitive tasks grew in most Central and Eastern European countries, but it declined in Western European countries. This difference is attributed to the contrasting patterns of structural changes in these groups of countries.     

责任导向会促进年长员工知识分享吗？——基于主动动机模型

全球劳动力老化的严峻形势下,年长员工能否主动分享知识经验,对充分开发年长人力资本、促进企业可持续发展具有重要意义。基于主动动机模型,本文从责任导向视角探讨了年长员工知识分享行为的促发机制和边界条件。通过线性回归和蒙特卡洛拔靴法对200份40岁以上在职员工三时点配对数据进行分析,结果表明：责任导向会通过提升年长员工的建设性责任知觉进而激发其知识分享;反年龄歧视氛围感知对这一作用过程具有权变影响。本文丰富了年长员工知识分享行为的前因研究,对企业如何积极应对职场老龄化与年长员工知识传承具有启示意义。     

Stochastic Choice and the Allocation of Cognitive Effort

Data from a risky choice experiment are used to estimate a fully parametric stochastic model of risky choice. As is usual with such analyses, Expected Utility Theory is rejected in favour of a form of Rank Dependent Theory. Then an estimate of the risk aversion parameter is deduced for each subject, and this is used to construct a measure of the “closeness to indifference' of each subject in each choice problem. This measure is then used as an explanatory variable in a random effects model of decision time, with other explanatory variables being the complexity of the problem, the financial incentives, and the amount of experience accumulated at the time of performing the task. The most interesting finding is that significantly more effort is allocated to problems in which subjects are close to indifference. This presents us with another reason (in addition to statistical information considerations) why such tasks should play a prominent role in experiments. JEL Classification: C23, C91, D81     

Multinational firms,acquisitions and job tasks

We revisit the question how inward FDI and multinational ownership affect relative labor demand. Motivated by the recent literature that distinguish between skills and tasks, we argue that the impact of multinational and foreign ownership on the demand for labor is better captured by focusing on job tasks rather than education. We use Swedish matched employer–employee data and find that changes of local firms to both foreign and Swedish multinationals increase the relative demand for non-routine and interactive job tasks in the targeted local firms. Hence, in a high-income country, both inward and outward FDI have a task upgrading impact on local firms. The effect is primarily driven by wage effects leading to increased wage dispersion for workers with different non-routine and interactive task intensity. We also show that the effect is not the same as skill upgrading since dividing employees by educational attainment does not capture changes in the relative labor demand. Hence, our results suggest a new aspect of the labor market consequences of FDI.     

Technological area experience,experience diversity and innovation

One conclusion from the knowledge-based view is that firms develop knowledge from experience. This paper examines the conditions under which firms’ R&D experiences might have stronger or weaker effects on innovation capabilities. We posit that any potential benefit depends on the nature of this experience. In particular, we look at how technological area experience and experience diversity affects innovation capabilities. We further propose that, in order to leverage their experience, firms need to consider how the interactions of technological area experience and experience diversity affect performance. To test this model, we draw on a data set of 3034 drug development projects undertaken by 30 large pharmaceutical companies between 1980 and 2008.     

任务不确定性、工作控制与内部创业行为关系研究——工作繁荣的中介效应和心理资本的调节效应

员工内部创业行为是成就和保持公司创业的基础。基于工作要求-资源理论,构建以工作繁荣为中介变量、心理资本为调节变量的任务不确定性、工作控制与员工内部创业行为关系模型。实证研究结果表明：任务不确定性、工作控制对员工内部创业行为有显著正向影响;工作繁荣在工作控制与员工内部创业行为之间起部分中介作用;心理资本对工作控制与员工内部创业行为间关系有正向调节效应,员工心理资本水平越高,工作控制对其内部创业行为直接影响越大。这对企业正确认识任务不确定性、工作控制对员工心理和工作行为的影响,有效利用这两个工作特征因素促进员工内部创业具有重要指导意义。     

Changes in Occupational Tasks and Their Association with Individual Wages and Occupational Mobility

This study provides novel evidence on the relevance of task content changes between and within occupations to wage dynamics of occupational changers and stayers. I use individual‐level, cross‐sectional data featuring tasks performed on the job to compute a measure of proximity of job contents. Then, I merge this measure to a large‐scale panel survey to show that occupational changers experience a wage growth that is declining when the accompanying alterations in task contents are big. For occupational stayers, alterations in task contents generate a positive wage component, beyond tenure effect. However, the results are not robust with respect to the choice of proximity measure and over time.     

International Productivity Differences,Trade and the Distributions of Factor Endowments

This paper presents a model of task assignment and worker matching to explore how the distributions of labor endowments within countries influence aggregate productivity and international trade patterns. Higher moments of the skill distribution have complex relationships with the organization of the labor force. First, labor endowments skewed toward high abilities exhibit positive assortment of workers across tasks, while countries with distributions of ability skewed towards low abilities exhibit underemployment. Second, greater dispersion improves aggregate productivity in countries that experience underemployment, but worsens productivity where there is assortative assignment. Furthermore, the shape and size of factor endowments are shown to jointly determine a global pattern of comparative advantage. Countries are more likely to export their abundant factors when labor markets organize heterogenous workers effectively. These predictions receive empirical support from Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries using measures of diversity constructed from educational attainment.     

试析注册会计师职业责任的单方集体约定现象

注册会计师在与审计委托人的博弈中,因后者缺乏对审计惯例的了解,退出了对审计职业责任界定的谈判,出现了注册会计师对职业责任的单方集体约定现象.这种现象与签约双方的信息不对称、审计服务的被动性和诉讼成本的关注有关.重新界定注册会计师职业责任,需要一种司法力量的介入,在考虑审计报告使用者对审计职业责任预期的基础上,对审计职业责任的现行统一约定进行适当修订.     

Husbands,Wives, and Housework: Graduates of Stanford and Tokyo Universities

Barbara Bergmann argues that economic gender equity requires equity not only in paid employment, but also in household work. We examine the household task arrangements of a sample of married 1981 graduates of Stanford and Tokyo (Todai) Universities, about a decade after their graduation. No less than 43 percent of Stanford graduates shared household tasks about equally with their spouse, a much higher sharing rate than for the whole U.S. population. However, only 12 percent of Todai women and 8 percent of Todai men had egalitarian household task arrangements, a sharing rate about equal to that of the whole Japanese population. Holding other variables constant, Stanford men who did at least half of household tasks paid an earnings penalty of about 10 percent. Women who did more than half of household tasks did not pay an earnings penalty. Our examination of task arrangements among dual-career couples provides support for bargaining power theories of the division of household tasks, but suggests that societal ideology plays a critical role in defining the scope for bargaining.     

Core competencies,matching and the structure of foreign direct investment

We develop a matching model of foreign direct investment to study how multinational firms choose between greenfield investment, acquisitions and joint ownership. Firms must invest in a continuum of tasks to bring a product to market. Each firm possesses a core competency in the task space, but the firms are otherwise identical. For acquisitions and joint ownership, a multinational enterprise (MNE) must match with a local partner that may provide complementary expertise within the task space. However, under joint ownership, investment in tasks is shared by multiple owners and, hence, is subject to a holdup problem that varies with contract intensity. In equilibrium, ex ante identical multinationals enter the local matching market, and, ex post, three different types of heterogeneous firms arise. Specifically, the worst matches are forgone and the MNEs invest greenfield; the middle matches operate under joint ownership; and the best matches integrate via full acquisition. We link the firm‐level model to cross‐country and industry predictions and find that a greater share of full acquisitions occur between more proximate markets, in hosts with greater revenue potential and within contract‐intensive industries. Using data on partial and full acquisitions across industries and countries, we find robust support for these predictions.