Should we let employees contract away their rights against arbitrary discharge?

This article argues that the moral right to be discharged only for good cause and like rights can be contracted away by employees in appropriate circumstances. It maintains that the rights in question are not inalienable, and that there is nothing irrational about an employee's wishing to deal them away. It also maintains that inequalities in bargaining power between employers and employees are insufficiently pervasive to justify a flat ban on the alienation of these rights. For a waiver of such rights to be valid, however, employees must have full knowledge of its terms.The question addressed here bears on several legal and policy issues affecting termination of the employment relation. If employees can contract away their right to a goodcause discharge, the American doctrine of employment at willmight find justification in the face of that right. In addition, the alienability of such discharge rights may be necessary to justify express disclaimers of wrongful discharge liability and the waiver provision of the new U.S. Draft Uniform Employment-Termination Act.Michael J. Phillips is Professor of Business Law and Chairman of the Business Law Department of Indiana University's School of Business. He is a former editor-in-chief of theAmerican Business Law Journal, and has authored numerous law journal articles.     

The R&D Effectiveness Index: A Metric for Product Development Performance

Measuring the overall success of product development efforts has been frustrating because there is no generally recognized metric to measure effectiveness. The R&D Effectiveness Index is introduced to address this need. It measures effectiveness by comparing the profit from new products to the investment in new product development. The article provides the details for calculating the index along with alternative interpretations. Michael McGrath and Michael Romeri report that this index was validated through a study of 45 electronic systems companies. They found a strong relationship between the R&D Effectiveness Index and other performance factors and believe that the R&D Effectiveness Index can be used to compare performance, measure improvement, and evaluate business units. Its application is illustrated in a case study.     

The Proactive Corporation: Its Nature and Causes

We argue that the stakeholder perspective on corporate social responsibility is in the process of being enlarged. Due to the process of institutional isomorphism, corporations are increasingly adopting organizational features designed to promote proactivity over mere reactivity in their stakeholder relationships. We identify two sources of pressure promoting the emergence of the proactive corporation -- stakeholder activism and the recognition of the social embeddedness of the economy. The final section describes four organizational design dimensions being installed by the more proactive corporations today -- cooperation, participation, negotiation, and direct anticipation.     

Supplier relations and management: A survey of Japanese,Japanese-transplant,and U.S. auto plants

This article presents the results of a questionnaire survey sent to a sample of automobile manufacturers in the United States and Japan (including Japanese-managed plants in the United States) during the spring of 1990. The data support observations that Japanese and U.S. practices tend to differ in key areas and Japanese suppliers perform better in dimensions such as quality (defects) and prices (meeting targets, reducing prices over time); and that Japanese-managed auto plants established in the United States have, in general, adopted Japanese practices and receive extremely high levels of quality from Japanese as well as U.S. suppliers. These findings provide evidence that Japanese practices and performance levels are transferable outside Japan and suggest that considerable improvements are possible for U.S. suppliers supplying U.S. auto plants. In addition, the survey indicates that U.S. firms have adopted at least some practices traditionally associated with Japanese firms, apparently reflecting some convergence toward Japanese practices and higher performance levels in supplier management.     

The impacts of Hong Kong’s Currency Board reforms on the interbank market

Among the economies with a Currency Board System (CBS), Hong Kong (HK) is probably the one with the largest and most developed financial sector, as well as the highest capital mobility. Hence, studying HK’s CBS is not only crucial to HK, but also important for the understanding of the modern CBS. This paper outlines the major monetary reforms in HK since the late 1980s. The impacts of these reforms and the 1997–1998 Asian Financial Crisis are then examined empirically. We focus on the differentials between the US and HK interbank interest rates. We assume the conditional-mean equation follows an autoregressive process and the conditional-variance equation follows a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity process. This model captures the time-varying level and volatility of the differential. In light of the empirical results we provide an assessment of the reforms in HK.     

The persistence of knowledge‐based advantage: an empirical test for product performance and technological knowledge

Resource‐based theory maintains that intrinsic characteristics of resources and capabilities, such as their tacitness, complexity, and specificity, prevent imitation and thereby prolong exceptional performance. There is little direct evidence to verify these claims, yet a substantial literature encourages firms to formulate competitive strategies around resources with these attributes. Further, work outside the resource‐based tradition suggests that these attributes can slow innovation, and it is not clear when this effect outweighs the benefits of inimitability. This paper seeks to clarify whether and how the complexity, tacitness, and specificity of a firm's knowledge affect the persistence of its performance advantages. We find that the complexity and tacitness of technological knowledge are useful for defending a firm's major product improvements from imitation, but not for protecting its minor improvements. The design specificity of technological knowledge delayed imitation of minor improvements in this study. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Economic Analysis of the UK Landfill Permits Scheme

The UK will introduce in 2004 a system of tradable permits for the landfill of municipal waste, in response to an EU directive setting limits on such activity. Tradable permits are becoming an increasingly popular method of dealing with some environmental issues — for example, sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions in the USA. This paper describes the background to the landfill proposals and provides an analysis of how the permit system might work. Estimates are made of the possible savings in compliance costs of a permit system compared with a conventional ‘command–and–control’ approach. These estimates are subject to a considerable degree of uncertainty, related to factors discussed in the paper.