‘Nothing gets done and no one knows why’: PCS and workplace control of Lean in HM Revenue and Customs

This article examines the willingness and capacity of public sector unions to mobilise action against changes in the labour process in order to maintain some measure of control at the point of production. Taking as an instance an extended dispute in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs over the introduction and impact of Lean processes, it marshals evidence gathered from documentary sources, branch representatives and national lay full‐time officers to engage with the notion of a trade union bureaucracy. In taking a union with a left‐wing leadership and a section with 80 per cent membership with an expressed willingness to escalate industrial action, the article tests Hyman's 1979 contention that, rather than a concentration on a bureaucratic caste, a much better explanation for conservatism centres on the nature of social relations within the union that encompass a wider layer of representatives.     

Learning Business Ethics in Schools

Business ethics is a contemporary issue among business professionals. To enhance business ethics in the long run, educating future business professionals in colleges （i.e., college students） is one of the starting points. This paper aims to investigate students＇ perceptions on business ethics, such as their perceived importance of business ethics, knowledge of and interest in business ethics, their preferred method of introducing business ethics, and the perceived usefulness of learning business ethics in lessons. Focus groups will be used to collect feedback on these issues from students with different gender and seniority in colleges. This study will give insights into the students＇ perceptions on business ethics and suggest ways/methodology to increase the awareness of business ethics in colleges. Business professionals and educators can make reference to the findings to develop relevant materials on business ethics to their employees and students.     

New public management and organisational commitment in the public sector: testing a mediation model

This paper focuses on the attitudes of learning professionals towards New Public Management (NPM). In a survey of the UK further education sector (n = 433), NPM beliefs were found to be positively associated with both affective and normative organisational commitment. However, as expected, NPM beliefs were not found to be related to continuance organisational commitment. The results also show that although perceived organisational support mediates the relationship between NPM beliefs and affective organisational comment, it is only a partial mediator of the relationship between NPM beliefs and normative organisational commitment. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings, and potential directions for future research, are discussed.     

The research university,entrepreneurship and regional development: Research propositions and current evidence

The objective of this paper is to set a framework for examining the conditions under which a research university becomes more than a latent asset [Power, D., and A. Malmberg. 2008. The contribution of universities to innovation and economic development: In what sense a regional problem? Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 1, no. 2: 233–46.] in regional economies. The framework is comprised of four propositions used to identify drivers of change, evidence of change and evidence of impact. As an exemplar, we examine the University of Oxford's growing engagement in its local region. This paper shows that the convergence between the interests of the university and the local high-tech economy is particularly associated with broader technological trends and with the University's capacity to draw on national funding programmes designed to stimulate ‘third-stream’ activities, including entrepreneurship courses and regional networking activities.     

Leadership for Collaboration

Abstract

‘Leadership’ and ‘collaboration’ are integral to twenty-first century governance and management but, despite a growing literature, understanding about leadership for collaboration is hampered by a lack of specificity and nuance in theory and empirical research. This article responds to these limitations by working within an interpretive framework and employing Q-method to uncover different interpretations of leadership for collaboration operant among public managers in Wales. The article uses the concept of situated agency to explain why public managers offer diverse interpretations of leadership for collaboration despite working within the same governance framework, and to identify challenges to public managers in determining appropriate leadership for collaboration.     

Entrepreneurship and innovation in Ghana: enterprising Africa

This study adopts a multi-level theoretical framework to examine data from 496 entrepreneurs in Ghana. Seven types of innovation activity are analysed against three categories of variables: the characteristics of the entrepreneur, the internal competencies of the firm, and firm location. Across all respondents, the incidence of incremental innovation was far greater than novel innovation. The extent of innovation was related to the education level of the entrepreneur. Firm size and involvement in exporting were positively related to innovation, but firm growth is less systematically so. Innovation was greater in firms located in conurbations compared to firms located in large and small towns. We conclude with suggestions for policy to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in Ghana.      

Bidding asymmetries in multi-unit auctions: Implications of bid function equilibria in the British spot market for electricity

This paper introduces and tests Bid Function Equilibria (BFE) in the British spot market for electricity. BFE extend von der Fehr and Harbord's (1993) multi-unit auction model of wholesale electricity markets by allowing firms to have heterogeneous costs for different generating units. Pure-strategy equilibria in BFE predict asymmetric bidding by producers: a single firm (the “price-setter") bids strategically while other firms (“non-price-setters") bid their costs. We test for asymmetries in firms' bid functions in the British spot market between 1993 and 1995 and find strong empirical support for the theory. We conclude that BFE have important implications for the design and governance of electricity markets.     

Signaling,Financial Slack and Corporate Acquisitions

This paper shows that under certain conditions a firm's decision concerning the optimal medium of exchange to use in acquiring another firm is related to the decision of which source of capital should be used to finance long-term projects. An example of this type of interaction occurs when the firm's only source of financing a positive net present value project is an equity issue. In a Myers and Majluf (1984) world of asymmetric information the value maximizing strategy for the firm is to forego the public equity offering and instead use a stock offer to acquire a firm possessing financial slack. The process is modeled using an extension of the Myers and Majluf (1984) model and demonstrates how the acquisition alternative allows managers to separate the signals regarding the investment and financing decisions. Including net pension assets into our measure of financial slack, we provide empirical supports for the ability of the extended model to explain observed merger activity.     

The benefits of global teams for international organizations: HR implications

Abstract

In this special issue we aim to advance the theoretical, conceptual and empirical knowledge about the relationship between global teams and human resource management in international organizations. We argue that although the prevalence of global teams in international organizations is rapidly rising, simultaneously affecting the management of firms on global, regional and local levels, the response of firms and scholars alike to such changes has been slower, especially in the area of IHRM. The HR function in organizations could play a vital role in understanding, managing and leveraging the benefits of global teams to ensure that they contribute positively to the performance of firms, organizational units, and people. We demonstrate that there is still a disconnect in this respect and we highlight several areas in which the increasing use of global teams may challenge our conventional understanding of IHRM issues, and at the same time offer solutions for improvement in international organizations. The selected articles in this special issue provide both theoretical and practitioner implications by highlighting the need to explore the relationship between global teams and IHRM more generally and fully, as well as the need for HR practitioners and IHRM scholars to focus more on the ‘human’ and less on the ‘resources’ aspect. We trust that readers of this issue will agree that the articles all offer novel insights into key issues that open new avenues for further research in this nascent yet promising area.     

Bank lending margins in the euro area: Funding conditions,fragmentation and ECB's policies

In this paper we study the determinants of lending margins paid by euro‐area corporates for their bank loans. Across two separate groups of countries (distressed and non‐distressed) we examine whether lending margins have been affected by structural changes in the banking sector, the credit and liquidity position of banks and the costs of funding in the corporate and sovereign bond markets. The role of ECB policies with respect to narrowing down the fragmentation in the bank lending channel is also investigated through a structural panel VAR model for the period 2003:1 to 2014:12.