A new game plan for C players

It's a big driver of business success, but one that executives are loath to talk about: upgrading the talent pool by weeding out "C" players from management. These aren't the incompetent or unethical managers whom organizations dismiss without a backward glance; C performers deliver results that are acceptable--barely--but they fail to innovate or to inspire the people they lead. The authors of The War for Talent have studied what it takes to upgrade an organization's talent pool. In this article, they explore the hidden costs of tolerating under-performance and acknowledge the reasons why executives may shy away from dealing decisively with C players. They recommend that organizations take an "iron hand in a velvet glove" approach to managing subpar performers. That is, companies should establish rigorous, disciplined processes for assessing and dealing with low-performing managers but still treat them with respect. The authors outline three ironhanded steps. First, executives must identify C players by evaluating their talents and distributing employee performances along an assessment curve. Second, executives must agree on explicit action plans that articulate the improvements or changes that C performers must achieve within six to 12 months. And third, executives should hold managers accountable for carrying out the action plans. Without such discipline, procrastination, rationalization, and inaction will prevail. The authors also emphasize the need for the "velvet glove." Executives must ensure that low performers are treated with dignity, so they should offer candid feedback, instructive coaching, and generous severance packages and outplacement support. The authors' approach isn't about being tough on people; it's about being relentlessly focused on performance.     

The existence of rational expectations equilibria in a large economy with noisy price observations

Non-revealing rational expectations equilibria exist in microeconomic pure exchange economies in which a continuum of uninformed agents have suitably distributed noisy price observations. Slight dispersion in the prices observed by the subset of uninformed consumers is the key condition for continuity (and smoothness) of aggregate excess demand, although individual demands are discontinuous. It leads to equilibria in which markets approximately clear in a strong sense. The equilibria are obtained by applying a fixed point argument to state-dependent excess demand functions.     

India and the Global Economy

India’s booming knowledge-based sectors demonstrate the power of globalization to transform developing economies. For India, however, these industries are just part of its contribution to the global economy. For a more nuanced picture of India’s international economic position, this paper places India in international and historical context, examines its links to the world through trade, labor, and capital, and outlines some critical challenges facing the country. What emerges is a more complex picture of India -- a nation with far more to offer than skilled programmers but which must address problems of poverty, infrastructure, and governance to achieve its potential. JEL Classification O530     

Social media's contribution to customer satisfaction with services

An important recent initiative in the effective transmission of healthcare services is the establishment of the patient-centered medicine (PCM) philosophy as a mechanism for enhancing customer satisfaction. Although the goals of PCM are important, there is less understanding of the means by which service providers can promote this philosophy.

This study examines the relationship between customers’ attitude toward and use of social media, PCM, and their satisfaction with healthcare services. Data were collected from a large, urban-based pediatric office in the northeast. The sample consisted of 234 respondents who were classified as ‘e-Patients’ – that is, they reported having access to the Internet and going online for health information. A three-stage regression analysis, conducted to establish the path coefficients for each stage in the model, shows that customers’ (patients’) attitude toward social media can be an effective method to enhance PCM and, ultimately, satisfaction. The findings contribute to theory in services by exploring the challenges of managing service delivery at the interface between customer satisfaction and the role and usefulness of adopting and effectively using social media.     

Strict rational expectations equilibria with diffuseness

For smooth static pure-exchange economies under uncertainty, it is shown that a diffuseness condition on the distribution of traders' characteristics as the state of the world varies permits one to use only a weak dimensionality restriction in the proof of the genericity of existence of strict rational expectations equilibria. A generic result on the amount of information conveyed by equilibrium price functions and comparisons with some examples of nonexistence are given.     

Capacity precommitment as a barrier to entry: A Bertrand-Edgeworth approach

Summary. With few exceptions, the literature on the role of capacity as a strategic entry deterrent has assumed Cournot competition in the post-entry game. In contrast, this paper studies a model in which the incumbent and entrant sequentially precommit to capacity levels before competing in price. Interesting deterrence effects arise because firms need time to build, that is, cannot adjust capacity instantaneously in the post-entry game. This approach produces a simple and intuitive set of equilibrium behaviors and generates clear predictions about when these different outcomes are likely to arise. Our model also departs substantially from the existing literature in concluding that sunkness of capacity costs is neither necessary nor sufficient for capacity to have precommitment value. Received: August 25, 1999; revised version: October 15, 1999