The road to cooperative supply‐chain environmental management: trust and uncertainty among pro‐active firms

The pressures on firms to improve their environmental performance have caused them to look outside their boundaries towards their supply chains. In such approaches, firms work with vendors to develop the environmental profile of supplied materials (for example) by reducing materials' toxicity or the amount of packaging used. While large firms can mandate that their suppliers comply with such initiatives, more cooperative approaches are generally likely to be more fruitful. This article presents the results from an exploratory, two phase study of the conditions under which firms engage in cooperative supply‐chain environmental management. First, the authors conducted interviews with 14 leading‐edge firms. In the second phase, the authors conducted a theoretical‐sample survey to examine a model of the antecedents of cooperative supply‐chain environmental management. The results suggest that inter‐firm trust, uncertainty and pro‐active environmental management most directly affect the extent to which firms engage in cooperative supply‐chain environmental management. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Domestic-Foreign Interest Rate Differentials: Near Unit Roots and Symmetric Threshold Models

This paper investigates the near unit root behavior of interest rate differentials across countries using a symmetric Band-TAR model that allows for a heteroscedastic error process. We find that the time series properties of monthly short-term interest differentials over the period 1974–2005 between the United States and Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom can be characterized by a symmetric Band-TAR process, which can explain its (near) unit root behavior reported in the extant literature. Results significantly reject a linear model in favor of the alternative hypothesis of a two-regime symmetric threshold model that exhibits significantly greater persistence within the threshold bands than when outside the threshold bands.     

The price elasticity of the supply of single-family detached urban housing

Past attempts to estimate the price elasticity of the supply of housing have erred by using aggregate data. Many houses are built in areas where the volume of residential construction is low. Consequently, the influence of observations from higher-volume areas where costs may be higher is diminished. This problem is eliminated by using cross-sectional data from 61 different American urban areas, for a total of 223 observations from 1976 to 1981, to estimate a translog cost function for housing. The supply elasticity is found to be infinite.     

Employee perceptions and their influence on training effectiveness

Studies of the benefits of human resource development (HRD) for organisations have assumed a direct connection between training strategy and a hierarchy of performance outcomes: learning, behavioural change and performance improvement. The influence of workplace practices and employees' experiences on training effectiveness has received little attention. This study investigates evaluation strategies designed to elicit greater training effectiveness, and explores the influence of trainees' perceptions and work environment factors on this. Drawing on detailed case study findings, the authors highlight the importance of management practices, trainees' perceptions of the work environment and systems of reward in explaining behaviour change after training.     

Do Federal Home Loan Bank membership and advances increase bank risk-taking?

Since the early 1990s, commercial banks have turned to Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLBank) advances to plug the gap between loan and deposit growth. Is this trend worrisome? On the one hand, advances implicitly encourage risk by insulating borrowers from market discipline. On the other, advances give borrowers greater flexibility to managing interest rate and liquidity risk. And access to FHLBank funding encourages members to reshape their balance sheets in ways that could lower credit risk. Using quarterly financial and supervisory data for banks from 1992 to 2005, we assess the effect of FHLBank membership and advances on risk. The evidence suggests liquidity and leverage risks rose modestly, but interest-rate risk declined somewhat. Credit risk and overall failure risk were largely unaffected. Although the evidence suggest FHLBank membership and advances have had, at best, only a modest impact on bank risk, we caution that our sample period constitutes one observation and that moral hazard could be pronounced if leverage ratios revert to historical norms.     

Agreement between top management teams and expectations for post acquisition performance

This paper addresses theoretical gaps in the relationships among decision maker agreement, social context, and performance. Agreement is considered a multidimensional construct that is embedded in a social context of intergroup relationships. Four dimensions of agreement are specified: (1) perceived agreement, (2) actual agreement, (3) accuracy, and (4) agreement with one's own organization. Understood this way, agreement is associated with success expectations. Empirical tests of hypotheses derived from this view are based on data concerning agreement on acquisition goals by the top management teams from two hospitals in the year following an acquisition. Results support a multidimensional view of agreement, the importance of the intergroup context, and the association of agreement and expectations for success.