Preconditions for public sector e-infrastructure development

Interoperability in e-government has been recognized as a key factor in the quest of administrations at national, local and international level to achieve the provision of one-stop services to citizens and businesses. Interoperability in e-government should enable efficient information exchange between applications from different agencies with the help of IT-services. Interoperability in networked IT-service delivery is accomplished by e-infrastructures. However, knowledge of how to develop e-infrastructures in the public sector is still limited. In this paper we report a design science case study of the initial stage of the design of a public sector e-infrastructure in the social welfare sector, especially addressing the bootstrap problem, i.e. the initial problem of starting-up the development of an e-infrastructure. Six types of preconditions for the development of the e-infrastructure are examined and explained: legal, economical, organizational and the installed base of the as-is e-infrastructure consisting of technical, informational and contractual preconditions. From a design and action oriented perspective we claim that a basic understanding of the design context, within which the six types of preconditions have to be analyzed and understood, are essential for e-infrastructure development in an e-government context. The paper highlights the fundamental role of regulations as a precondition for the design, and the fundamental role of lawyers as designers of e-infrastructures in the public sector.     

Was Keynes a Realist?

Lawson (1989a) has interpreted Keynes as a philosophical realist, adhering to the view that the economy has a constant inner structure. Against this it is claimed below that, although Keynes speaks about realism, it is not in this sense, but in the common sense way of referring to actually observable entities of an economic model. In addition, it can be shown that Keynes's views can be interpreted as instrumentalist—he emphasises characteristics such as usefulness and convenience, besides and instead of truth. Thus, truth and truthlike concepts do not, in Keynes's thinking, have the paramount position that they have in realist philosophy.     

A RARITY SHOW OF MODERNITY: Sweden in the 1920s

This paper redresses a gap in the study of travel literature. It explores a geographical area—Sweden—that has received little scholarly attention, particularly during the period that the paper focuses on; the interwar years. The paper uses ideas of dirt and cleanliness to examine tourist constructions of difference between themselves and other people, as well as to conceptualize modernity. Cleanliness and dirt are themes that have been much discussed in contexts of colonial discourse, but their meanings and functions in a non-colonial setting have not been adequately explored. This paper argues that tourist perceptions of cleanliness and dirt can be used to mediate modernity, race, and the authenticity of cultural experiences.     

Consumer@Protection.EU. An Analysis of European Consumer Legislation in the Information Society

The Internet and electronic commerce have emerged as the emblems of a worldwide virtual economy. Although it is yet difficult to grasp all the repercussions of the borderless world of the Internet, it is certain that to shop in this world is different from shopping in the world as we knew it ten years ago. Obviously, the new developments affect the traditional framework of European and national consumer law and the perspectives that underpin this body of law, for most consumer law was established at a time when the Information Society was an unknown phenomenon. Underlining the importance of this issue, the European Council asked the Commission to examine existing consumer law in the Community in the light of the new conditions created by the Information Society and to identify potential problems and loopholes. A report on background research for this examination was submitted to the Commission in August 2000. The present article is based on this report and provides an account of the main findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the report.     

Increased sorting and wage inequality in the Czech Republic

This paper makes use of a linked employer–employee dataset to examine the evolution of wage inequality in the Czech Republic during 1998–2006. We find evidence of slightly increasing returns to human capital and diminishing gender inequality and document sharp increases in both within‐firm and between‐firm inequality. We investigate several hypotheses to explain these patterns: increased domestic and international competition, decentralized wage bargaining, skill‐biased technological change and a changing educational composition of the workforce. Domestic competition is found to lower within‐firm inequality whereas we find no evidence that increased international trade at the industry level is associated with higher between‐ or within‐firm wage inequality. The key factors driving the observed increase in wage inequality are increased educational sorting and the inflow of foreign firms to the Czech Republic.     

Feedback and incentives: Experimental evidence

This paper experimentally investigates the impact of different pay schemes and relative performance feedback policies on employee effort. We explore three feedback rules: no feedback on relative performance, feedback given halfway through the production period, and continuously updated feedback. We use two pay schemes, a piece rate and a tournament. We find that overall feedback does not improve performance. In contrast to the piece-rate pay scheme there is some evidence of positive peer effects in tournaments since the underdogs almost never quit the competition even when lagging significantly behind, and front runners do not slack off. But in both pay schemes relative performance feedback reduces the quality of the low performers' work; we refer to this as a “negative quality peer effect”.     

What is the right profile for getting a job? A stated choice experiment of the recruitment process

We study the recruitment behaviour of Swedish employers using data from a stated choice experiment. In the experiment, the employers are first asked to describe an employee who recently and voluntarily left the firm and then to choose between two hypothetical applicants to invite to a job interview or to hire as a replacement for their previous employee. The two applicants differ with respect to characteristics such as gender, age, education, work experience, ethnicity, religious beliefs, family situation, weight, and health, but otherwise have similar characteristics as the previous employee. Our results show that employers prefer not to recruit applicants who are old, non-European, Muslim, Jewish, obese, have several children, or have a history of sickness absence. We also calculate the reduction in wage costs needed to make employers indifferent between applicants with and without these characteristics, and find that wage costs would have to be reduced by up to 50 % for applicants with some characteristics.     

The perceived usefulness of knowledge supplied by foreign client networks

The network surrounding a firm's foreign clients has large influence on its ability to act in the market. How firms can utilize the knowledge supplied by client networks is therefore of great importance to their business with clients. Many studies show the usefulness of foreign clients and suppliers, whereas less attention has been given to the usefulness of knowledge supplied by clients’ network, such as clients’ clients, clients’ supplementary suppliers and competitors to the firm. This study contributes to international business research on networks by investigating the knowledge supplied by client networks for a firm doing business with a specific foreign client on a sample of 494 firms. A LISREL analysis demonstrates that knowledge supplied by client networks is more useful the more experienced the firm. Client networks are also more useful the more knowledge the firm has of its client, the more the firm needs knowledge of its clients and suppliers, the higher the cost of the client relationship, and the more standardized the product. A major conclusion is that the client network knowledge is more useful the further a firm's collaboration with the client, presumably as a result of the new, and more embedded business that the firm develops with the client. Implications are that client networks are resources that can be important competitive advantages for the internationalizing firm.     

The interaction of the financing and investment decisions: Preliminary results in the Australian context

This paper investigates the presence of the interaction of investment and financing decisions in Australian firms. Using simultaneous equations incorporating the variables of investment, dividend, and new debt issue, interactive effects are found for two sub-periods.