R&D professionals' reactions to the career plateau: Mediating effects of supervisory behaviours and job characteristics

A career plateau is defined as that point in a person's career which represents a cessation of both lateral and upward movement between jobs. The present study elaborates the idea that a fuller understanding of individual reactions to the career plateau can be achieved by considering supervisory behaviours and job characteristics as variables transmitting the influence of career plateauing to behavioural and attitudinal reaction measures. It is suggested that supervisors invest less attention and resources in plateaued employees and that plateaued employees are assigned to jobs with less motivating potential. Analyses of questionnaire data from 618 R&D professionals in 11 large West German firms show that there are significant differences between plateaued R&D professionals (i. e. those subjects with at least 10 years of job tenure) and a nonplateaued comparison group (i. e. respondents with not more than 6 years of job tenure) controlling for age as a potential confounding influence. Specifically, plateaued R&D professionals indicate less working hours, to be less satisfied with their career and their work, to be less involved in their work, and they tend to produce less publications and patents per year of company tenure. Furthermore, considerable differences are found between one's immediate supervisor's behaviours (e. g. provision of job-related performance feedback) reported by plateaued professionals and their non-plateaued counterparts. However, even after controlling the mediating effects of supervisory behaviours and job characteristics variables plateauing still had a small, but significant detrimental effect on 3 out of 6 reaction measures. Implications are outlined for organizational career management activities.     

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The usefulness of oil price forecasts—Evidence from survey predictions

This paper evaluates survey forecasts for crude oil prices and discusses the implications for decision makers. A novel disaggregated data set incorporating individual forecasts for Brent and Western Texas Intermediate is used. We carry out tests for unbiasedness, sign accuracy, and forecast encompassing, followed by the computation of coefficients for topically oriented trend adjustments and the Theil's U measure. We also control for the forecast horizon finding heterogeneous results. Forecasts are more precise for shorter horizons, but less accurate than the naïve prediction. For longer horizons, topically oriented trend adjustments become more pronounced, but forecasters tend to outperform the naïve predictions.     

COMPETITION IN PRODUCT DESIGN: AN EXPERIMENT EXPLORING INNOVATION BEHAVIOR

We experimentally investigate competition for innovations in a patent race scenario. Pairs of subjects compete as seller firms on a duopoly market, investing in risky search. Successful innovations resulting thereof are rewarded via temporary monopoly rents. Classifying investor types reveals that most of them invest according to objective investment criteria, such as probability of search success and cash flow, as well as to non‐pecuniary criteria, such as intensity of competition and relative performance. For a minority, however, no such correlation is ascertained.     

Standortwahl – Was signalisiert kommunale Wirtschaftsförderung?

Kommunen und Standorte stehen heute im globalen Wettbewerb um Unternehmensan siedlungen. Wie können sie ihre Standortqualität potentiellen Interessenten signalisieren? Welche Instrumente des Standortmarketing stehen ihnen zur Verfügung? Wie sind diese Maßnahmen aus finanzwissenschaftlicher und wohlfahrtsökonomischer Sicht zu beurteilen?Dr. Torsten Steinrücken, 32, ist Referent im Thüringer Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Technologie und Arbeit (TMWTA). Er gibt seine persönliche Meinung und nicht unbedingt die des TMWTA wieder; Sebastian Jaenichen, 31, Dipl.-Volkswirt, ist Mitarbeiter im Fachgebiet Finanzwissenschaft des Instituts für Volkswirtschaftslehre an der Technischen Universität Ilmenau; Dr. Björn Kuchinke, 33, ist wissenschaftlicher Assistent im Fachgebiet Wirtschaftspolitik desselben Instituts.     

Towards a Socio-Cognitive Approach to Knowledge Transfer

abstract    Dominant research streams in the knowledge transfer field, such as the positivist and social constructionist approaches, largely assume that knowledge transfer is accomplished through instructions and/or socially constructed practices. Underlying these views is the belief that texts and practices carry with them the codes necessary for their own decoding and therefore enable an unproblematic knowledge transfer. In contrast, we argue that the decoding of information into meaningful knowledge is always mediated by people's private and cultural models, which are created from the unique combination of their cognitive dispositions (i.e. acumen, memory, creativity, volitions, emotions) and socio-cultural interaction. The degree to which people apply these models reflectively and/or categorically (i.e. automatically) depends on the need for cognition as well as environmental demands and feedback. Therefore, knowledge transfer is always tentative, because it depends on the application of private and cultural models along the continuum that goes from reflective to categorical processing. We present first a critique of the positivist and social constructionist positions; then we introduce a socio-cognitive model that captures and explicates socio-cognitive processes involved in sense making during knowledge transfer. Finally, we explore future research streams and managerial implications.