The Ethics of Blockchain in Organizations

Journal of Business Ethics - Blockchain is an open digital ledger technology that has the capability of significantly altering the way that people operations (i.e. human resource management)...     

The impact of purchasing strategy-structure (mis)fit on purchasing cost and innovation performance

The organizational design literature strongly supports the notion of “structure follows strategy”, and suggests that a misfit between the two has a negative effect on performance. Building on this line of argument, we examine to what extent the (mis)fit between purchasing strategy and purchasing structure impacts purchasing performance. We focus on cost and innovation purchase category strategies, and examine how the deviation from an ideal purchasing structure defined along three dimensions (centralization, formalization, and cross-functionality) impacts purchasing performance. Analysing data collected from 469 firms in ten countries, we demonstrate that a strategy-structure misfit negatively impacts purchasing performance in both cost and innovation strategies. We also find that purchasing proficiency is a mediator in this relationship between misfit and performance. Our findings aid managerial decision making by empirically validating the necessity of having the right purchasing structure for successfully executing different purchasing strategies.     

Coping with coopetition—Facing dilemmas in cooperation for sustainable development: The case of the Dutch smart grid industry

This paper is amongst the first to examine coopetition strategy for sustainable development at the network level. Companies who want to successfully implement complex innovative technologies that support sustainable development need to collaborate with other actors of the innovation ecosystem, including their competitors, so that they can develop standards, interoperable products, pool knowledge, and resources and bundle forces to compete against other technologies. Collaboration with competitors brings benefits, but also many risks. We investigated how firms cope with these risks when establishing an innovation ecosystem to implement a new technology in society. We conducted research in the Dutch smart grids sector and explored how these firms minimize inherent risks of coopetition. We found that system‐building actors in the Dutch smart grid field not only minimize inherent risks, but from the start of their collaboration they implement so‐called enablers to prevent these risks upfront.     

Human resource management practices and voluntary turnover: a study of internal workforce and external labor market contingencies

We tested relationships between employee quit rates and two bundles of human resource (HR) practices that reflect the different interests of the two parties involved in the employment relationship. To understand the boundary conditions for these effects, we examined an external contingency proposed to influence the exchange-based effects of HR practices on subsequent quit rates – the local industry-specific unemployment rate – and an internal contingency proposed to shape employees’ conceptualization of their exchange relationship – their employment status (i.e. full-time, part-time and temporary employment). Analyses of lagged data from over 200 Canadian establishments show that inducement HR practices (e.g. extensive benefits) and performance expectation HR practices (e.g. performance-based bonuses) had different effects on quit rates, and the former effect was moderated by unemployment rate. The effects of HR practices on quit rates did not differ between FT and PT employees, but a different pattern of main and interactive effects was found among temporary workers. These findings suggest that employees’ exchange-based decisions to leave may be less affected by the number of hours they expect to work each week, and more by the number of weeks they expect to work.     

Family firm’s management composition: the role played by family members’ age in TMT and supervisor levels

Quality & Quantity - Family firms (FFs) are the backbone of entrepreneurial fabric in many countries. Management of such businesses is complex because of their features: the overlap between...     

Commemorating the 50‐Year Anniversary of Ball and Brown (1968): The Evolution of Capital Market Research over the Past 50 Years

We commemorate the 50th anniversary of Ball and Brown [1968] by chronicling its impact on capital market research in accounting. We trace the evolution of various research paths that post–Ball and Brown [1968] researchers took as they sought to build on the foundation laid by Ball and Brown [1968] to create a body of research on the usefulness, timeliness, and other properties of accounting numbers. We discuss how those paths often link back to the groundwork laid and questions originally posed in Ball and Brown [1968].     

Cost comparison of continued anticoagulation with rivaroxaban versus placebo based on the 1-year EINSTEIN-Extension trial efficacy and safety results

Aims: The EINSTEIN-Extension trial (EINSTEIN-EXT) found that continued treatment with rivaroxaban for an additional 6 or 12 months (vs placebo) after 6–12 months of initial anticoagulation significantly reduced the risk of recurrent venous thromboembolism (VTE) with a small non-significant increased risk of major bleeding (none fatal or in critical site). This study aimed to compare total healthcare cost between rivaroxaban and placebo, based on the EINSTEIN-EXT event rates.

Methods: Total healthcare cost was calculated as the sum of treatment and clinical event costs from a US managed care perspective. Treatment duration and event rates were obtained from the EINSTEIN-EXT study. Adjustment on treatment duration was made by assuming a 10% non-adherence rate. Drug costs were based on wholesale acquisition costs. Cost estimates for clinical events (i.e. recurrent deep vein thrombosis [DVT], recurrent pulmonary embolism, major bleeding, clinically relevant non-major bleeding) were determined from the literature. Results were examined over a ±20% range of each cost component and over 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of event rate differences in deterministic (one-way) and probabilistic sensitivity analyses (PSA).

Results: Total healthcare cost was $1,454 lower for rivaroxaban-treated (vs placebo-treated) patients in the base-case, with a lower clinical event cost fully offsetting drug cost. The cost savings of recurrent DVT alone (–$3,102) was greater than drug cost ($2,723). Total healthcare cost remained lower for rivaroxaban in the majority (73%) of PSA (cost difference [95% CI]?=?–$1,454 [–$2,396, $1,231]).

Limitations: This study was conducted over the 1-year observation period of the EINSTEIN-EXT trial, which limited “real-world” applicability and examination of long-term economic impact. Assumptions on drug and clinical event costs were US-based and, thus, not applicable to other healthcare systems.

Conclusions: Total healthcare costs were estimated to be lower for patients continuing rivaroxaban therapy compared to those receiving placebo in VTE patients who had completed 6–12 months of VTE treatment.     

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.