The meaning of work,employment relations,and strategic human resources management in Israel

The paper deals with the meaning of work, employment relations, and strategic human resources management. First it shows that Israeli workers have become more individualistic and materialistic, and less collectively oriented, as instrumental achievements outweigh contributions to society. These issues apparently influence employment relations and organizational policies. Next, it deals with the corporatist employment relations system, based on tri-partite collective bargaining among employees, employers, and the state. During various times, the relative balance of power among the three parties swayed considerably, according to major political, economic and social events taking place in society. The final section on strategic human resources management focuses on the transition of Israel's Human Resources profession, from the traditional HR role to the new Strategic Human Resource Management role. These three spheres have gone through some significant changes in the last several decades, perhaps not parallel to most industrial nations.     

Real investment and risk dynamics

We ask to what extent the negative relation between investment and average stock returns is driven by risk. We show that: (i) the average return spread between low and high asset growth and investment portfolios is largely accounted for by their spread in systematic risk, as measured by the loadings on the Chen, Roll, and Ross (1986) factors; (ii) as predicted by q-theory and real options models, systematic risk falls during large investment periods; (iii) the returns of factors formed on the investment-to-assets, asset growth, and investment growth all forecast aggregate economic activities. Our evidence suggests that risk plays an important role in explaining the investment-return relation.     

Teaching International Business via Social Media Projects

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the outcomes of an experiential learning technique coupled with social media in an international marketing course. It was conducted among 155 students placed in groups that were assigned to develop a YouTube video for use as a country branding marketing tool. Measured evaluations of the students’ perceptions of the experience reveal that it was both beneficial and positive, and it helped to promote an understanding of the importance of teamwork and the uses of technology. Factor analysis grouped the perceptions and attitudes regarding the exercise into four categories.The differences in perception are evaluated based on gender, country of study, and level of education. The study highlights the importance of incorporating experiential learning pedagogies with social media to teach country branding.     

Investment with an arithmetic process and lags

This paper presents an explicit solution of a simple investment problem with entry lags and when the underlying stochastic process is arithmetic. It is shown that, without abandonment, the optimal investment plan is independent of the length of the lag. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Real estate franchising: The case of Coldwell Banker expansion into China

This article discusses the Chinese real estate market, with special reference to Shanghai, and depicts an interview with Taiwan's largest real estate company, which bought the master international franchising rights of Coldwell Banker for China. As China's real estate market only recently opened to foreign investment, and since franchising in China is in its infancy, this article provides a unique examination of international franchising into a new product market area in the country. In addition, the article highlights some practices that could be adopted by professional service firms in their international expansion and discusses post-WTO implications to real estate franchising in China.     

Global leadership success through emotional and cultural intelligences

Culturally attuned and emotionally sensitive global leaders need to be developed: leaders who can respond to the particular foreign environments of different countries and different interpersonal work situations. Two emerging constructs are especially relevant to the development of successful global leaders: cultural and emotional intelligences. When considered under the traditional view of intelligence as measured by IQ, cultural, and emotional intelligences provide a framework for better understanding cross-cultural leadership and help clarify possible adaptations that need to be implemented in leadership development programs of multinational firms. This article posits that emotional intelligence (EQ), analytical intelligence (IQ), and leadership behaviors are moderated by cultural intelligence (CQ) in the formation of global leadership success.     

International patterns of ownership structure choices of start-ups: does the quality of law matter?

The concentration of ownership of enterprises varies significantly among countries. In this paper we investigate the role that differences in legal systems among nations play in molding founders’ preferences with respect to the ownership structure of their start-ups. We develop an economic framework which articulates the impact that the quality of protection offered to shareholders and debt holders has on the supply of debt and equity financing and the incentives of the founders to recruit partners or opt for sole ownership. The theoretical analysis predicts that a positive relationship is likely to exist between the quality of the legal system and the ownership concentration of start-ups. This prediction is in contrast to the findings on relationships in large publicly traded firms. Using data obtained from the Adult Population Survey of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project from 2001 to 2004 about ownership preference patterns, we confirm the prediction.     

Sectoral analysis of foreign direct investment and growth in the developed countries

Empirical studies on foreign direct investment (FDI) and growth in developed countries have yielded conflicting results using cross-country regressions. We use sectoral data for a group of six country members of the OECD. Our paper is the first to identify the sector-specific impact of FDI on growth in the developed countries. Our results show that FDI has positive, or no statistically discernible, effect on economic growth directly and through its interaction with labor. Moreover, we find the effects seem to be very different across countries and economic sectors.     

Changes in services trade barriers in banking and their impact: the case of the ASEAN+3

Although there has been extensive research on the ASEAN+3 countries, which reveals a synchronisation of economic policies, including exchange rate management policies, research on the regional pattern of trade policies in the banking sector is limited. We evaluate the trade barriers in banking and their evolution, using data from three sequential surveys conducted by the World Bank and surveys by other international organisations. We find that the country dispersions in trade‐restricting policies are stable over time. Moreover, we find no evidence of moves in the direction of liberalisation in the sector. The economic modelling undertaken provides an indication of the real income gains and the cost increases of the policies adopted.     

Class Analysis and Earnings Inequality: Nested and Non-Nested Comparisons of Two Class Models in Israel

This paper demonstrates how nesting and non-nesting analytical strategies provide different answers regarding the comparative utility of theoretical models. This paper demonstrates this incompatibility by testing the empirical efficacy of Goldthorpe's and Wright's class schemes in explaining earnings inequality in Israel. These models are non-nested, because while they partially overlap each other conceptually and empirically, neither can be written as a parametric restriction of the other. As they are non-nested, we cannot test each model against the other by using the conventional sociological approach to hypotheses testing. For the sake of demonstration, however, we show results obtained from the conventional Ordinary Least Squares regression models with conventional Baysian Information Coefficient statistic, serving as criterion for a decision rule. Wright's model was found to be more significant in explaining earnings variations in Israeli society. Yet when we used two models of non-nested specification tests (the Cox-Pesaran model and the J test) to examine each model's unique contribution, neither of these models were able to reject the rival hypothesis. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.