The Relationship between Delegation and Incentives Across Occupations: Evidence and Theory

A large literature suggests that incentive pay and delegation of worker authority are positively related. Using data from a large cross section of British establishments, we show that the positive relationship found in the empirical literature masks a stark difference across jobs. Classifying jobs into two categories (complex jobs, including professional, technical and scientific occupations, and simple jobs, consisting of all other non‐managerial occupations) we find a positive relationship for simple jobs and a negative relationship for complex jobs. To explain this negative relationship, we develop a model where stronger incentives distort a worker's decisions towards low risk‐return tasks.     

An investigation of the personality traits of scientists versus nonscientists and their relationship with career satisfaction

Drawing on Holland's vocational theory, Schneider's Attraction‐Selection‐Attrition model, and the Big Five/narrow traits model of personality, the present study identified key Big Five and narrow personality traits that both distinguish scientists from members of other occupations and related these to their career satisfaction. A sample of 2,015 scientists had significantly higher levels of openness, intrinsic motivation, and tough‐mindedness, and significantly lower levels of assertiveness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, optimism, and visionary style than a sample of nonscientists (n = 78,753). Seven traits were significantly correlated with the career satisfaction of scientists: agreeableness/teamwork, assertiveness, emotional stability, extraversion, openness, optimism, and work drive. Based on these results, a psychological profile of scientists was presented. Findings were discussed in terms of the functional value and person–occupation fit of these traits for the work of scientists. Implications were described for the recruitment, selection, management, and promotion of scientists, as well as their training, development, coaching, counseling, and mentoring.     

Corporate social performance,analyst stock recommendations,and firm future returns

This study posits that security analysts heed corporate social performance information and factor it into their recommendations to general investors. In particular, as corporate social performance is often uncertain and ambiguous to general investors, analysts may serve as the informational pathway connecting corporate social performance to firm stock returns. Thus, we argue that analyst recommendations mediate the relationship between corporate social performance and firm stock returns. On the basis of not only a qualitative study with literature searches and interviews of stock analysts but also a quantitative study with two longitudinal samples of large firms, we find support for these arguments. Our findings uncover an information‐based underlying mechanism for the link between corporate social performance and financial performance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Highly Educated Immigrants and Native Occupational Choice

Economic debate about the consequences of immigration in the United States has largely focused on how influxes of foreign‐born labor with little educational attainment have affected similarly educated native‐born workers. Fewer studies analyze the effect of immigration within the market for highly educated labor. We use O*NET data on job characteristics to assess whether native‐born workers with graduate degrees respond to an increased presence of highly educated foreign‐born workers by choosing new occupations with different skill content. We find that highly educated native and foreign‐born workers are imperfect substitutes. Immigrants with graduate degrees specialize in occupations demanding quantitative and analytical skills, whereas their native‐born counterparts specialize in occupations requiring interactive and communication skills. When the foreign‐born proportion of highly educated employment within an occupation rises, native employees with graduate degrees choose new occupations with less analytical and more communicative content.     

The Kigyo Keiretsu Organization and Opportunism in the Japanese Automobile Manufacturing Industry

This paper contends that the distinguishing feature of the subcontracting system for the manufacture and distribution of auto-parts in the Japanese automobile manufacturing industry can be explained by the opportunism hypothesis of transaction cost theory. Opportunism may arise when the parts-supplier uses its information advantage to obtain more favorable contract terms with the manufacturer. It is argued that in response to this kind of informational opportunism, the automobile manufacturer institutes a special form of vertical arrangement, called the kigyo keiretsu group. The kigyo keiretsu group consist of an association of vertically related parts-makers held together by a high degree of sales and technological interdependence, by partial stock ownership, by interlocking boards of directors and by long-term contract. This study raises the possibility of mitigating opportunism among the kigyo keiretsu group firms throughout the core automaker's shareholdings of its parts-supplier.     

Give it to us straight (most of the time): Top managers’ use of concrete language and its effect on investor reactions

Research Summary : Building on the communications and linguistics literatures, we explore the language attributes managers use in interactions with investors and the subsequent reactions of investors. Specifically, we hypothesize that top managers’ use of concrete language attributes in communication with investors broadly associates with positive investor reactions. We further posit that this relationship will be moderated by the level of firm risk. Our results support our hypotheses and, thus, offer important insights to the impression management literature. First, subtle elements of managerial communication can have significant impression management consequences. More specifically, language concreteness is a key language attribute that generally induces positive investor responses. Finally, the effectiveness of language concreteness is conditional on the informational environment of the firm. Managerial Summary : How can managers communicate in a way that presents the firm more positively or reduces the negativity associated with perceived firm risks? Our findings indicate that choosing appropriate persuasive language features in interactions with investors can help a firm manage its impressions. Specifically, we find that top managers’ use of concrete language that provides details and specific information in communication with investors, in general, garners positive investor reactions. Further, the effectiveness of top managers’ use of concrete language depends on investor concerns. More specifically, we find that when a firm is seen as having a riskier profile, using concrete language helps induce a more positive investor response; while when a firm is seen as low risk, using abstract language may be more beneficial.     

Performance impact of middle managers' adaptive strategy implementation: The role of social capital

This article reconciles mixed findings about the performance impact of middle managers' strategy involvement. We propose that the relationship between middle managers' adaptive strategy implementation—through upward and downward influence—and objective business performance can be curvilinear and contingent on formal and informal structures. Applying a multilevel perspective to social networks, we empirically show that reputational social capital enhances the performance impact of middle managers' upward influence while informational social capital elevates the performance impact of their downward influence. The size of a business unit or region has differential moderating effects. The curvilinear effects of middle managers' upward influence and reputational and informational social capital on business unit performance reflect paradoxes. We discuss the implications of these findings for strategy implementation research and practice. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sex and Interoccupational Wage Differences in Israel

An examination of the influence of the sex identification of an occupation on earnings reveals that: (1) male occupations earn more than female occupations; (2) nonsegregated occupations tend to be more similar in earnings to female than to male occupations; (3) the majority of female occupations earn below the mean for occupations at each level of education; the inverse is true for male occupations; (4) men in female occupations earn less than they do in male occupations; and (5) women in male occupations do not consistently earn more than women in female occupations at comparable levels of education. Our data indicate that they tend to gravitate toward the lower earning male occupations. These findings support the hypothesis that in Israel, as elsewhere, occupational segregation is an important factor underlying earning differentials between women and men. Wage differentials are the result not only of differences in human capital resources, but also of unequal opportunities within the occupational structure. The division of labor by sex does not cause inequality—rather it permits the perpetuation of a system of social relations in which the work women do is allocated inferior status and economic rewards. The social forces which produce and sustain this reality are worthy of further investigation.     

Signaling valuable human capital: Advocacy group work experience and its effect on employee pay in innovative firms

Research Summary: The ability of innovative firms to create and capture value depends on innovations that are quickly and widely adopted. Yet, stakeholder concerns can establish important barriers to diffusion. We study the human capital aspect of this challenge and investigate whether innovative firms pay salary premiums to new hires with work experience from advocacy groups like Transparency International. We integrate strategic human capital with stakeholder theory and suggest that advocacy group experience creates signals for valuable human capital in terms of stakeholder knowledge and legitimacy transfers to innovative firms. Using matched data for 3,562 employees in Denmark, we find that new hires with advocacy group experience enjoy larger salary premiums at technologically leading firms, in occupations with direct stakeholder interaction, and for advocacy group top management. Managerial Summary: Innovation research is increasingly aware of the non-technological factors behind successful innovations. Users, regulators, or public opinion can be benevolent supporters or stingy opponents of innovations. Employees with an understanding of the needs and sensitivities of societal stakeholders should therefore be valuable to innovative firms. We find this to be the case when innovative firms hire employees from advocacy groups representing such stakeholders (e.g., Transparency International). Such employees receive higher salaries than an otherwise comparable reference group. These findings indicate that recruiting needs of innovative firms reward stakeholder experience, not merely technological expertise. They demonstrate how firms can create value in the pursuit of the public interest. Further, advocacy groups emerge as an important career stage allowing individuals to develop credible signals for stakeholder expertise.     

Re‐Examining Advances in Occupational Licensing Research: Issues and Policy Implications

Much has changed in the realms of occupational licensing since BJIR last ran a special issue on the subject in 2010. The number of occupations subject to licensing has been growing, the data available to investigate the incidence and effects of licensing have improved immeasurably, and the policy environment surrounding licensing has changed. This issue reflects these changes with eight papers from North America and Europe covering the incidence of licensing, and its effects on wages, inequality, employment, quality of service provision and rent extraction by the organizations who undertake licensing.     

Opportunities to reconsider decision making processes due to Auto-ID

This work aims at studying new opportunities held by Auto-ID technologies in the operation and logistic management. On the one hand, these new information technologies will speed up information flows, and on the other hand, doing the shop floor and the product flow more visible will allow reconsidering centralised decision making processes. In this paper, a quick presentation of the RFID technology is done, after what drawbacks of classical centralised control systems are pointed out. Then, we address a way to improve a classic kanban control system, by using kanban cards as an informational/decisional entity in order to enrich shop-floor information/decision.     

Progression in Technology Education in New Zealand: Components of Practice as a Way Forward

Understanding and undertaking technological practice is fundamental to student learning in technology education in New Zealand, and the enhancement of student technological literacy. The implementation of technology into New Zealand’s core curriculum has reached the stage where it has become critical that learning programmes are based on student progression to allow for a seamless education in technology from early primary to senior secondary. For this to occur, teachers and students need to focus learning on key features of technology education. This paper is based on research initiated in 2001 which explored the nature of progression of student learning in technology. It draws on findings from research undertaken in New Zealand classrooms in 1999–2000 that resulted in the development of the technology assessment framework (TAF), (as reported in detail Compton & Harwood 2003). The 1999–2001 research was funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Education. Findings from the 2001 research allowed for the identification of key features of technology education that are relevant across all age groups, contexts and technological areas. These key features were collectively termed components of practice. The three components of practice established to date are brief development, planning for practice, and outcome development and evaluation. This paper discusses the development of progression matrices for each of these and provides illustrative examples of student work levelled against the matrix indicators of progression for brief development.     

Long‐Run Patterns of Labour Market Polarization: Evidence from German Micro Data

The past four decades have witnessed dramatic changes in the structure of employment. In particular, the rapid increase in computational power has led to large‐scale reductions in employment in jobs that can be described as intensive in routine tasks. These jobs have been shown to be concentrated in middle‐skill occupations. A large literature on labour market polarization characterizes and measures these processes at an aggregate level. However, to date, there is little information regarding the individual worker adjustment processes related to routine‐biased technological change. Using an administrative panel dataset for Germany, we follow workers over an extended period of time and provide evidence of both the short‐term adjustment process and medium‐run effects of routine task‐intensive job loss at an individual level. We initially demonstrate a marked, and steady, shift in employment away from routine, middle‐skill, occupations. In subsequent analysis, we demonstrate how exposure to jobs with higher routine task content is associated with a reduced likelihood of being in employment in both the short term (after one year) and medium term (five years). This employment penalty to routineness of work has increased over the past four decades. More generally, we demonstrate that routine task work is associated with reduced job stability and more likelihood of experiencing periods of unemployment. However, these negative effects of routine work appear to be concentrated in increased employment to employment, and employment to unemployment transitions rather than longer periods of unemployment.     

Interorganizational Imitation and Acquisitions of High‐tech Ventures

Research summary: This article shows that there is a positive association between the changes in the number of prior acquisitions or the changes in the prominence of prior acquirers within the focal venture's subfield and the venture's likelihood to be acquired. Results are in line with the existence of frequency‐ and trait‐based imitation in acquisitions targeting tech ventures. More importantly, these positive associations are more pronounced when (a) exogenous technological uncertainty within the venture's subfield increases and (b) there are significant differences between the focal venture's and acquirer's technological resources. Our findings are in accord with the suggestion that uncertainty in the technology domain is an important boundary condition in moderating the extent of imitation in technology acquisitions. We also discuss alternative explanations and implications. Managerial summary: The findings of this article suggest that when deciding whether or not to acquire a technology venture (i.e., startup company in a high‐tech industry), managers infer information by observing other acquisitions in the venture's subfield to make assessments about the underlying value of the potential targets. We also find that receiving some informational cues from previous acquisitions would be more useful when there is high technological uncertainty in the potential target's subfield about which technologies will be dominant, and when the potential acquirer and the tech venture operate in dissimilar technological areas. This article shows that imitation can be one way to deal with decision‐making under uncertainty when making acquisition decisions in high‐tech environments. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effect of Computer Use on Work Discretion and Work Intensity: Evidence from Europe

This article studies changes in computer use and work discretion and intensity in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015. We document that while the proportion of workers using computers has increased from 40 per cent to more than 60 per cent, there remain significant differences between countries even within the same occupations. Several countries have seen a significant increase in computer use even in low-skilled occupations generally assumed to be less affected by technology. Overall, the great increase in computer use between 1995 and 2015 coincided with a period of modest deterioration of job quality in the EU-15 as a whole, as work discretion declined for most occupational and educational groups, while work intensity increased slightly for most of them. Our OLS results exploiting variation within country-occupation cells point to a sizeable positive effect of computer use on work discretion, but to no effect on work intensity. Our instrumental variable estimates point to an even more benign effect of computer use on job quality as measured by work discretion and work intensity. Hence, the results suggest that the (moderate) deterioration in the quality of work observed in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015 has occurred despite the spread of computers, rather than because of them.     

企业质量管理过程中信息的质量问题

在明确质量信息管理是质量管理的一个重要组成部分的前提下,指出了吉林石油集团有限责任公司内由上至下各环节的信息管理工作中存在的问题,指出了信息对质量管理具有特殊重要的意义,以及质量信息在质量管理中的重要作用,并给出了衡量信息质量的五项标准,提出了改善质量信息管理工作的五点措施.     

Direct Labor Market Effects of Unemployment Insurance

It has been established that relatively high income families receive a disproportionately large share of UI benefits. Little information on the distribution of costs by income class is available, but it is quite possible that the upper income groups may also bear a disproportionately large share of the costs. More empirical research is needed before the redistributive effects of UI can be known with any degree of confidence. There is little argument about the desirability on income mainlenance grounds of extending Unemployment insurance benefits in a recessionary period, all other things being equal. U1 is quite efficient as an income maintenance tool for covered workers. With respect to the unemployment problem, though, it is feared by some that the program goes too far in maintaining the incomes of covered workers, and as a result any extension of UI benefits will aggravate the unemployment problem. The evidence presented here suggests that fears of a major increase in unemployment as a result of such changes are largely unwarranted. However, extended UI benefits would appear to have some small, nontrivial adverse impact on unemployment. Finally, it seems that UI's income distributional impact has been portrayed unjustly as pro-rich. It may be that income is transferred through the UI system from the relatively well-to-do to the relatively poor. There is no scientific way of bringing these considerations to bear in deciding whether or not to restructure the unemployment insurance system. This question can be answered only by invoking fundamental value judgments to decide how sociely would be better off, and I would not presume here to offer my own. This paper will have served its purpose if it has provided the basis for a more informed decision.     

Industrial exhibitors' resource commitment to booth personnel: A study of select predictors and consequences

Within the context of industrial exhibitions, few researchers have explored how booth staffing decisions affect the booth personnel's reactions and conduct at trade shows. In the current study, Narver and Slater's market orientation dimensions are considered as the predictors of exhibitor's booth personnel commitment. Besides, this study explores the impacts of exhibitor's booth personnel commitment on booth worker's role clarity, goal acceptance, and work effort. Finally, the influences of work effort on three forms of booth staff's information behavior are tested. The data collected from five different B2B exhibits in Taiwan support eleven of the twelve hypotheses. Based on the analytic results, the present research adds theoretical and managerial implications to the existing literature of industrial exhibitions. In particular, it highlights three issues for exhibitors to consider, which include process ambiguity, interaction adaptation, and informational paradox.     

The kill programme: an ethnographic study of ‘dirty work’ in a slaughterhouse

It has been argued that ‘dirty work’ is characterised by strong occupational and workgroup cultures. This literature has mainly focused on direct workers, but this article largely attends to indirect ‘dirty’ workers, specifically meat inspectors, through ethnographic research conducted in a UK slaughterhouse. Four arguments are developed; the first is that ‘dirty workers’ may not all display group cohesiveness; indeed, individualisation may be more evident depending upon the technology used, internationalisation and employment conditions. Second, there is complexity and diversity within ‘dirty work’ and even single occupations can contain considerable variety, rendering generalisations problematic. Third, we argue that much greater attention needs to be given to the wider contextual issues affecting ‘dirty work’, specifically changing labour markets, itinerant labour, economic conditions and technologies. Finally, we argue that stigmatised work may become more so if it is equated with the low wage economy and/or undercutting conditions of employment through exploiting migrant labour.