Employability and innovative work behaviour in small and medium-sized enterprises

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to cross-validate HRM measurement instruments for employability (individual competence-based approach) and innovative work behaviour within the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) further. The sample consisted of 487 pairs of employees and their immediate supervisors who work in 151 SMEs. A multitrait-multimethod analysis was performed, and the results suggest that for both instruments, requirements regarding convergent and divergent validity have been met satisfactorily. Structural Equation Modeling was performed in order to confirm the factor structure of the instruments. Paired-samples comparisons showed that all of the inter-method correlations for the two-source (employee and immediate supervisor) ratings and for both instruments were significantly positive. As for the final part of the cross-validation, multiple regression analyses were performed to demonstrate predictive validity. Depending on the stage of innovative work behaviour, different dimensions of employability appeared to play a significant role, although the effect did not always veer towards the direction expected. Investing in employability enhancement appeared to contribute to innovative work behaviour. The measurement instruments of employability and innovative work behaviour can provide SME managers with effective instruments to be used for performance appraisals, assessments, and employee development tools.     

Price formation on clandestine markets: the case of the Paris gold market during the Second World War

Because of the scarcity of data, there are few quantitative analyses dealing with clandestine markets, despite their prime importance during wartime. This article exploits a unique database of daily prices of gold coins traded in occupied Paris in order to gain insights into the price formation on such a market. First, using data from Switzerland, we show that arbitrage took place, despite the costs and risks involved, and led to a gradual (but incomplete) convergence of gold prices. Furthermore, a study of price seasonality reveals that less strict borders controls during the weekends made the volatility of returns higher at the start of the following week. Second, on the basis of an event study, we provide evidence that laws related to black markets did not have a significant impact on the gold price, except for the most severe law passed on 8 June 1943 which greatly increased the sentences for involvement. Finally, we assess whether the so‐called coin premiums existed on this clandestine market, and show that the large price variations for one gram of fine gold contained in different coins were due to market participants’ preferences for specific gold coins.     

Spatial Linkages and Export Processing Location in China

This paper provides empirical evidence that spatial linkages matter for the localisation of global value chain activities. Relying on processing trade data for Chinese provinces during the period 1997–2008, we investigate whether a Chinese province's proximity to international suppliers and international buyers within an industry chain affects its attractiveness as an export processing location. We find that the upstream and downstream spatial linkages both have a strong and independent explanatory power. We also explore what factors explain the influence of these spatial linkages.     

Network brokers or hit makers? Analyzing the influence of incubation on start-up investments

Incubators are a prominent way to support technology based start-ups. Yet, it remains unclear to what extent these incubators enhance start-up performance, nor is it known through which mechanisms this would occur. In this paper we test two mechanisms to explain the relationship between incubation and the amount of investments raised by early stage start-ups as performance measure. The ‘hit maker’ mechanism refers to beneficial effects of the direct transfer of resources and organizational or business knowledge from the incubator to the start-up. The ‘network broker’ mechanism refers to the benefits that start-ups enjoy from being connected to external funding sources through the incubator’s networks. We test which of these mechanisms contribute to the performance of early stage start-ups. Our data comes from a unique survey from 935 entrepreneurs with early-stage technology based start-ups in Western Europe and North America. We find that incubators have a positive effect on (1) the amount of funding that start-ups attract and (2) the ability of start-ups to attract funding from formal investors and banks. Moreover, our results provide evidence for the network broker mechanism, but not for the hit maker mechanism.     

The impact of strategic dissent on organizational outcomes: A meta‐analytic integration

Research summary: Strategic dissent represents divergence in ideas, preferences, and beliefs related to ideal and/or future strategic emphasis. Conventional wisdom in strategic management holds that such differences in managerial cognitions lead to higher‐quality strategic decisions, and thus to enhanced firm performance. However, 4 decades of empirical research have not provided consistent findings or clear insights into the effects of strategic dissent. Hence, we analyze the relative validity of predictions about these effects from both social psychological theories of group behavior and information processing perspectives on decision‐making. Then, we conduct a meta‐analytic path analysis (MASEM) based on current empirical evidence. Synthesizing data from 78 articles, we put to rest the notion that strategic dissent leads to positive outcomes for organizations and estimate how negative its effects actually are. Managerial summary: Top management teams (TMTs) set the tone and direction for their firms in important ways. Top managers, however, often disagree over fundamental issues related to strategy. Such strategic dissent affects how important decisions are made, and thus how the firm performs. In more specific terms and contrary to popular belief, strategic dissent creates not only dysfunctional relationships among top managers, but also disrupts the process by which these managers exchange, discuss, and integrate information and ideas in making strategic decisions. In short, firms have not yet generated value through numerous perspectives, ideas, and opinions among their top managers. We discuss interventions that could prove helpful in efforts to benefit from having diverse cognitions in a TMT.     

Optimal growth when consumption takes time

This article analyzes a one‐sector growth model where the consumption takes time. When the consumption takes time, the consumption set is compact and we meet satiety. However, we prove that dynamic constraints are binding. This result is crucial to prove that, under well‐known assumptions in macroeconomic dynamic programming, the optimal path is monotonic and always converges to a unique nontrivial steady state as in the case where consumption is timeless.     

Do managers withhold bad news from credit rating agencies?

Research documents that managers, on average, withhold bad news and emphasize good news in their public disclosures. We ask whether the same is true in their private communications with credit rating agencies. We study how rating agencies anticipate and react to public information events as a function of their access to rated firms’ private information. We show that, in terms of ratings downgrades, rating agencies exhibit relatively more anticipation and less reaction to negative (compared to positive) public information events when they have more access to private information. Our results are strongest when firms are most optimistic in their public disclosures and are not due to rating agencies focusing their efforts on downside risk. Overall, we find consistent evidence that rated firms provide less optimistic information to rating agencies in their private communications and that this information is reflected in credit ratings.

     

An indicator of early school leaving per school: every pupil counts

Quality & Quantity - Reducing early school leaving was an important objective of the Europe 2020 strategy of the European Union. One of its recommendations to the Member States was to set up...     

Qualitative Disclosure and Changes in Sell‐Side Financial Analysts' Information Environment

We examine a routine and timely disclosure, earnings press releases, to determine the extent to which several novel qualitative elements of such disclosures are associated with changes in sell‐side financial analysts' information environment. Using a comprehensive set of GARCH‐based (generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity) proxies, we examine how disclosure readability's components, across‐document textual similarity, and within‐document lexical diversity alter analysts' information environment. We find that readability in the form of shorter sentences, textual similarity, and lexical diversity are strongly related to decreases in analysts' uncertainty. Further, shorter sentences and lexical diversity improve both public and private information precision, whereas similarity affects solely analysts' private information precision. While the GARCH‐based proxies allow us to alleviate concerns regarding potentially spurious inferences (Sheng and Thevenot 2012), we note as a caveat that such an estimation restricts our inferences to large, stable, and heavily followed firms. These findings should be of interest to analysts who may wish to explore the latent information contained within the qualitative elements of disclosure, regulators who direct the form and content of disclosure, and academics who study the use (and possible misuse) of various forms of information and its presentation.