Structuring On-the-job Training: Report of a Multiple Case Study

Structured on-the-job training (OJT) has gained the attention of the business world as well as of researchers. The project discussed in this article contains a series of case studies of on-the-job training programmes in seven Dutch firms. Several dimensions are found to be useful in discriminating between types of OJT activities and between ways of structuring OJT. Trainee activities are either of a preparatory nature or a real work character. Assignments may be focussed on skill application, individualised study, or experiential learning. Jobs may be broken down to a greater or lesser extent and supervisors may have either a directive or a coaching role.     

The impact of bank ownership concentration on impaired loans and capital adequacy

This paper examines the impact of bank ownership concentration on two indicators of bank riskiness, namely banks’ non-performing loans and capital adequacy. Using balance sheet information for around 500 commercial banks from more than 50 countries averaged over 2005–2007, we find that concentrated ownership (proxied by different levels of shareholding) significantly reduces a bank’s non-performing loans ratio, conditional on supervisory control and shareholders protection rights. Furthermore, ownership concentration affects the capital adequacy ratio positively conditional on shareholder protection. At low levels of shareholder protection rights and supervisory control, ownership concentration reduces bank riskiness.     

Scope of improvement in water usage efficiency in manual dishwashing: A multicountry study by questionnaire survey

Over recent decades, water conservation have become increasingly an utmost important issue for debate, and this includes the domestic sector. Reducing demand water by improving the efficiency of water use in domestic sector requires an understanding of how water is used and in what ways water savings can be realized. The focus of this global, web‐based, consumer questionnaire survey was to analyze individual consumer attitudes towards using water in manual dishwashing and understand the likelihood of a prospect of changing the daily manual dishwashing method resulting to a more efficient domestic usage of water. This study was designed to investigate the manual dishwashing technique used in the 5249 households of nine different countries ‐ China, Germany, Italy, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, India, South Africa and Argentina. Besides socio‐demographics, technical questions like cleaning steps, hygiene questions motivational question, environmental awareness questions, questions on payment for water and electricity, questions on information sources about household work were included in the study. It was found that the awareness to conserve water was common among the Asian participants but it necessarily was not practiced in the households as individual washing of dishes was found to be quite high. Among the many outcomes, important one was that ‘running tap method’ was found to be most prevalent (86%) among Russian participants, complimenting their detached approach towards conserving domestic water usage. In South American countries like Brazil (66%) and Argentina (51%), high occurrence of ‘running tap rinse’ was found to be a common practice, confirming the lack of conscious use of water in manual dishwashing in the subcontinent. Based on the overall responses, awareness of a new and efficient technique of manual dishwashing could be propagated through the most voted mediums of Internet (81%) and TV (69%).     

European Pension Funds and Sustainable Development: Trade‐Offs between Finance and Responsibility

Pension funds try to account for sustainable development in their operations. This mainly translates in responsible investing. We investigate how this interacts with the financial objectives. We use a survey of more than 250 pension funds based in 15 European countries. Multinomial logistic regression is used to find out how pension funds trade off sustainable development and financial objectives. Our findings suggest that pension funds that have not included responsibility in their strategy and investments have a clear priority regarding their financial performance. Pension funds who integrate sustainable development in their strategy can bring balance between finance and responsibility. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

The business of blacklisting

The omission of ideology from managerial discourse leaves unacknowledged the dominant influences that shape patterns of thinking and acting. The Cold War offers one such framework for analyzing the intersection of management and ideology. Specifically, the anti‐Communist blacklist in the United States offers a rich opportunity to explore the actions of business leaders and to test the assumptions on which those actions were based. Businessmen played a key role in creating and supporting the blacklist. This study suggests that enforcers of the blacklist distorted the nature of public response. The evidence suggests that businessmen were responding from an ideological rather than a pragmatic position and that, from a pragmatic perspective, they might have been well advised to ignore the blacklisters. Copyright © 2008 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cycles in basic innovations

Basic innovations are believed to be one of the drivers of economic growth. In this paper we examine if cycle periods found for economic data correspond with cycles in basic innovations. For an annual time series of count data on innovations covering 1764-1976, we fit a harmonic Poisson regression model. We find the presence of multiple cycles with periods 5, 13, 24, 34 and 61, and these show a remarkable resemblance with commonly found economic cycles.     

Providing incentives for private investment in municipal broadband networks: Evidence from the Netherlands

The paper examines the incentives provided by public–private partnerships (PPPs) to stimulate private market parties to participate in municipal fibre networks in the Netherlands. Although there has been a growing interest of Dutch municipalities in fibre technologies since the beginning of the 2000s, PPP models to implement these technologies developed rather slowly in response to changes in public policy, the legislative environment and experiences gained in early projects. In 2005, the viability of a cooperative PPP model called “Ons Net” Nuenen was tested in an experimental setting for the first time using government subsidies. In undertaking a techno-economic analysis of the PPP “Ons Net” in Nuenen, the paper examines its objectives, boundaries and viability. It shows that the experience of this PPP based on ubiquity, open fibre access and demand aggregation provided important incentives for companies to invest in (other) municipal fibre networks in the Netherlands. The paper concludes furthermore that mandating of open access will become a key task for (local) governments to foster competitive entry and to facilitate innovation in municipal fibre networks.     

The stocks at stake: Return and risk in socially responsible investment

We relate US portfolio returns, book-to-market values and excess stock returns to different dimensions of socially responsible performance. We find that socially responsible investing (SRI) impacts on stock returns by lowering the book-to-market ratio and not by generating positive alphas. Our result is consistent with the theoretical work suggesting that SRI is reflected in demand differences between SRI and non-SRI stock. It also explains why so few studies are able to establish a link between alpha’s and SRI.