Easier said than done: a review of antecedents influencing effective HR implementation

Abstract

Despite the importance of effective implementation of HR policies and practices for the achievement of HR outcomes, this remains an area of research to which HR scholars have paid limited attention, without a clear conceptualization of constructs and a lack of consolidation of research findings. Moreover, the field does not avail of an organized corpus of knowledge to guide how to accomplish the successful implementation of HR practices. As a response to this situation, the present study provides a review of empirically grounded evidences about antecedents that can influence effective HR implementation. With the results of the review, we generate a model that organizes the elements identified according to content, context and process, and that proposes relationships among them. The study also delineates much-needed avenues for further research on this topic, and constitutes a first step to claim attention for the phenomenon of HR implementation among HR scholars.     

Economic impact of cruise activity: the case of Barcelona

ABSTRACT

This article shows the methodology and the main figures of the local and regional economic impact generated by cruise activity. This article is pioneering in combining different issues: estimating the impact of the cruise port activity, presenting these impacts disaggregated at a sectoral level, using a rigorous methodology and carrying out extensive fieldwork. It is demonstrated that all sectors, not just traditional tourism-related sectors, benefit from cruise tourism. In order to test and apply our methodology we focus the analysis on the Port of Barcelona, which has become the leading cruise port in the Mediterranean area.     

Sustainable development and circular economy: The role of institutional promotion on circular consumption and market competitiveness from a multistakeholder engagement approach

The transition from a linear economy to a circular economy (CE) is a real challenge to achieve long‐term sustainability. To push CE in the market, institutional promotion could become a key driver to positively impact both circular consumption and the competitiveness of the market. This paper analyzes the influence that soft and hard initiatives have on circular consumption and market competitiveness. Based on a survey of 1,281 respondents from different types of stakeholders, structural equations modeling statistical analysis was run. Results show that soft initiatives support the achievement of both objectives, whereas hard ones only influence greater circular consumption. However, the perception of the different stakeholders considered is very heterogeneous. It is indicative that not all institutional promotion initiatives are effective. Thus, institutions should guide, in an adequate and differentiated manner, their efforts to promote CE and sustainable development depending on the stakeholder they are targeting.     

Proactive intelligence

The traditional role of intelligence services has entered into a period of crisis. For decades the main objective of the intelligence system has been (and still is) to detect the moment at which a potential risk becomes a genuine threat and to act when this transition occurs. The logic of this system is based on the same conception that dominated futures studies in its early times: the predictive approach. Essentially, this approach postulates that it is possible to predict the future if you have enough high-quality information; the equivalent to this in intelligence terms would be that you can predict a threat if you have enough privileged information.This approach has been successful for some time, but the changes that the world has undergone in recent years have rendered it obsolete. Globalization, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the emergence of new forms of terrorism are forcing intelligence services to develop new methods to keep pace. The doctrine of pre-emptive attacks could be considered an initial move in this direction, but this paper, which is the preliminary version of a forthcoming dissertation, will argue that a far more profound change is required. In short, the current demand is for a new kind of intelligence that has a far more transversal perspective, a systemic mode of operation and an anticipatory approach to risks and threats: proactive intelligence.     

Project selection and execution in teams

We use a mechanism‐design approach to study a team whose members select a joint project and exert individual efforts to execute it. Members have private information about the qualities of alternative projects. Information sharing is obstructed by a trade‐off between adaptation and motivation. We determine the conditions under which first‐best project and effort choices are implementable and show that these conditions can become relaxed as the team grows in size. We also characterize the second‐best mechanism and find that it may include a “motivational bias,” that is, a bias in favor of the team's initially preferred project, and higher‐than‐optimal effort by uninformed team members.     

Industry Characteristics and Anti-Competitive Behavior: Evidence from the European Commission’s Decisions

We analyze all the European Commission’s decisions on antitrust cases between 1999 and 2004 using a unique dataset that also contains information on all the cases that were filed for the Commission’s consideration but were never pursued. This data allow us to determine whether there is any type of bias in the selection process followed by the Commission when deciding which cases to pursue until a final decision is reached. We find that the selection of cases is not random and that it is quite efficient but not very significant. We also find that the economic literature criteria are important for the Commission’s decisions.     

Structural equality at the top of the corporation: Mandated quotas for women directors

We propose a concept of structural equality as a compromise between competing policy preferences of equality and individual liberty to address a stunning property of the governance of corporations, namely, the paucity of female directors on corporate boards. An argument for imposing a quota for women directors on boards is the need to disrupt structural impediments to permit endogenous mechanisms to sustain female recruitment beyond a critical mass. Using estimates from the Norwegian experiment, we apply an agent‐based model to American board data to show that modest numerical quotas generate well‐connected networks of women directors who attain equality in their centrality and influence. The analysis demonstrates the utility of computational social science for identifying policies that generate alternative and possible worlds of greater structural equality. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Growth Effects of Taxation Under Altruism and Low Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution

An increase in the tax rate on capital income may raise the rate of economic growth when the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is low and intergenerational transfers are absent. Since the strength of the bequest motive depends on tax rates, this paper provides conditions under which taxing capital income, and then reducing the labour income tax, is more growth enhancing than the classical policy of zero taxes on capital income, and vice versa.     

The Liberalisation of Telecommunications in the EU: Managing the Transition

This second article in our two-part feature on the inaugural report of a programme to monitor the progress of European deregulation summarises the report's policy recommendations. The programme is designed to be a "report card" on the process of liberalisation, starting here with telecommunications where new technology is leading to dramatic changes in the basic economics of the industry.     

Immigration and local spending in social services: evidence from a massive immigration wave

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between immigration and redistributive public spending by using the recent, massive arrival of immigrants in Spain. Specifically, we focus our analysis on the effect of 1998–2006 changes in local immigrant density on contemporaneous changes in municipal spending in social services. To address the potential endogenous location of immigrants, we adopt an instrumental variables approach that uses the distribution of rental housing in 1991 to predict the location of immigrant inflows. The results indicate that (per capita) social spending increased less in those municipalities that recorded the largest increases in immigrant density. We interpret our results as a reduction in natives’ demand for redistributive public spending.