Quality evaluation and preferences of healthcare services: the case of telemedicine in Sardinia

Quality & Quantity - This paper explores preferences towards cardiological e-health services, assessed on a representative quota sample of potential users in Sardinia, Italy. By a mixture model...     

Hiding an inconvenient truth: Lies and vagueness

When truth conflicts with efficiency, can verbal communication destroy efficiency? Or are lies or vagueness used to hide inconvenient truths? We consider a sequential 2-player public good game in which the leader has private information about the value of the public good. This value can be low, high, or intermediate, the latter case giving rise to a prisoners? dilemma. Without verbal communication, efficiency is achieved, with contributions for high or intermediate values. When verbal communication is added, the leader has an incentive to hide the precise truth when the value is intermediate. We show experimentally that, when communication must be precise, the leader frequently lies, preserving efficiency by exaggerating. When communication can be vague, the leader turns to vague messages when the value is intermediate. Thus, she implicitly reveals all values. Interestingly, efficiency is preserved, since the follower does not seem to realize that vague messages hide inconvenient truths.     

Microfinance Traps and Relational Exchange Norms: A Field Study of Women Entrepreneurs in Tanzania

In interdependent social groups, microfinance traps occur when conflicts arise between borrowers’ affective ties related to family needs and instrumental ties related to obligations toward their loan group. Thus, the social capital that facilitates microfinancing can lead to conflicting obligations toward business needs and economic obligations toward family. Building on an inductive field study among female entrepreneurs in Tanzania, we conceptualize microfinance traps. By using relational contract theory to interpret the qualitative data, we argue that microfinance traps can be reduced by balancing role integrity, preserving norms and reciprocity, and harmonizing the social matrix toward the family and loan group.     

Evaluation of elderly households’ financial standing in Central and Eastern European countries

The purpose of the paper is to analyse and evaluate the financial situation of elderly households in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Current demographic trends simultaneously with reforms of pension systems in the CEE region may lead to an increasing number of elderly households being exposed to poverty risk. In this study, Ward’s method and the method of standardised sums were applied to classify and order the examined countries according to the financial standing of elderly households. The obtained results allow us to identify countries with similar financial situations for elderly households in 2007, 2010 and 2013, and changes in clusters and ranking over the analysed period. The main findings show that the financial situation of the elderly in CEE countries is very differentiated and changeable, however over the analysed period the financial standing of the elderly seems to be most similar in Poland and Slovakia as well as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.     

Paying Our Way in the World? Visible and Invisible Dangers of Brexit

The UK economy has long been associated with a weak balance of payments, reflecting an underlying growth model reliant on private household consumption. A deficit in goods trade, chiefly with the EU, has been offset by surpluses in services trade and foreign investment earnings. The Single Market provided wider markets for the UK, but did not fundamentally alter Britain's structural weaknesses. The Brexit vote took place against the background of Britain running its largest peacetime current account deficit. Financing Britain's external position represents a key challenge post-Brexit. Post-Brexit models for Britain partially address this. Any emergent model will critically depend on the nature of the Brexit deal with the EU, not least in terms of the impact on financial services and on supply chains. This paper sets out the recent evolution of the UK's current account position, particularly in relation to the EU. It then highlights particular areas of potential disruption from Brexit and sketches out scenarios of possible evolution of the Britain's external position in response to this.     

Emergent directions for human resource management research in Latin America

Research in this special issue converges around important HRM challenges that will shape the direction of academic research in the future. We argue that the nature of these challenges, such as balancing global and local HRM approaches, focusing on people while aiming at performance and, in general, managing in a hybrid cultural and economic system, requires reframing strategic HR in terms of social contract theories. Such theories consider multiple stakeholders and focus research on the employment relationship as unit of analysis, which fits well with the pre-eminence of person-centred management over merely profit-centred goals. We propose theoretically anchored research to guide strategic HRM practices, taking into account Latin America's culture-specific humanistic approach and its labour market institutions.     

Developing and testing a global model to explain the adoption of websites by users in rural tourism accommodations

This article analyzes the factors determining the intention to use the websites of the rural tourism accommodations to search for information and to make online reservations. Based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), a model is developed to explain the intention to use the websites, incorporating as explanatory variables the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use (basic variables of the TAM) and the following key attributes of tourism websites: information, interactivity, and navigability. The results of a sample of 1083 users indicate that (1) the perceived usefulness is the main direct antecedent of the intention to use the websites to search for information and make online reservations, and that (2) information on the accommodation and destination positively influences the perceived usefulness, whereas both the interactivity and navigability have a positive effect on the perceived ease of use of the websites.