Improving the absorptive capacity through unlearning context: an empirical investigation in hospital-in-the-home units

The Spanish healthcare system has undergone important changes, particularly in the development of new homecare services. In practice, however, results have been mixed. Some homecare services have been successful, but implementation failures are common and the intended patients are frequently reluctant to use the homecare services. A possible explanation for efficiency and effectiveness gaps of services provided by hospital-in-the-home units (HHUs) may relate to the advantages and disadvantages of the knowledge processes that these units highlight as a result of their different structural properties. This study examines the impact of an unlearning (forgetting) context on the HHU's ability to challenge basic beliefs and to implement processes that are explicitly or tacitly helpful in the reception of new ideas (absorptive capacity). These relationships are examined through an empirical investigation of 54 doctors and 62 nurses belonging to 44 HHUs. The results show that the unlearning context plays a key role in managing the tension between potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity.     

Organisational rigidities and marketing theory: examining the US department store c.1910–1965

By analysing the US department store during the period c.1910–1965, this article deepens our understanding of the nature of the transition to phases of ‘maturity’ and ‘decline’ that are fundamental to models of retail change (retail wheel, retail life cycle). By employing a close reading of key marketing and management writing of the period, it finds that ‘lock-in’ to an organisational structure associated with a single downtown store posed significant obstacles to suburban branched expansion. Only partial organisational centralisation occurred with the formation of holding companies in the 1920s, which contrasted with chains of general-merchandise and some department store retailers that were efficiently structured and better able to exploit suburban growth. When major department store companies finally embraced branched expansion, they were forced to significantly revise their operational structures.     

The attribution of service failures: effects on consumer satisfaction

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of the attribution of service failures on consumer satisfaction. We analysed direct effects as well as indirect effects through cognitive processes and variables such as quality perceptions and overall quality evaluation. Basing the analysis on the attribution theories and information processing theories, four hypotheses are suggested. These are tested on a sample of 293 service encounters in which some type of failure is present (attributed to the firm or to some environmental factor). The results show that the attribution of the failure to the service firm causes a systematic reduction in all of the quality perceptions (even in service aspects not linked to the failure). But attribution also shows direct effects on satisfaction beyond the effect through perceptions. Attitude-based processes as well as attribute-based processes are affected by attribution.     

Product recall,brand equity,and future choice

Abstract

The number of major product-recall incidents involving established brands have increased markedly over the last few years. Although the direct costs have been evaluated in these cases (typically in the millions), the indirect costs to brand equity and subsequent loss of market share are harder to evaluate. This paper applies a simulated multistage choice-based experiment to assess the impact of hypothetical product-recall experiences on brand-equity measures and, importantly, future brand choice. Contrary to some evidence, we find that product-recall experience has greater negative impacts for established strong brands than weaker non-established brands. Additionally, attributes of product recall such as the seriousness of the recall problem and speed of recall announcement impact on pre- and post-recall differences in consumer evaluations of brand equity. Differences in brand-equity evaluations for the established strong brand significantly affect post-recall choice.     

The risk organisation: or how organisations reconcile themselves to failure

Over the last decade, the ideas, concepts and tools of risk management have colonised the way that organisations frame potential adverse outcomes associated with their activities. Intended as a means of optimising the tolerance, rather than elimination, of adverse organisational outcomes, risk management has been promoted as a means of challenging organisational practice, particularly in the context of heightened accountability pressures that can readily make organisations risk averse. Relatively little attention, however, has been paid to the extent to which risk ideas are able to challenge traditional organisational ways of understanding and responding to adverse outcomes. In this article, therefore, we examine the implementation of risk management practices in two contrasting organisational contexts; the UK Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the English university sector. Our studies suggest that risk management processes can be readily filtered and reinterpreted through a series of ideological, methodological and organisational mechanisms to reflect and reinforce organisational understandings and practices. We build on this analysis to point to what might tentatively be termed ‘Risk Organizations’, which are distinctive, at least in principle, by the way in which they seek to identify, but also come to terms with, failure. As such, rather than providing a means of organisational challenge, the systematic application of risk management practices tends to act as a conservative force of organisational continuity.     

Subjectivism,joint consumption and the state: Public goods in Staatswirtschaftslehre *

Abstract

On the basis of F.B.W. Hermann's Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen and of major German, Austrian and Swedish contributions to public economics, two specific claims with regard to the Germanic influence in the development of public expenditure theory are put forward in this paper. It is contended that the German achievements concerning the conceptual clarification of public goods are: (i) important as conceptual ingredients of the modern ‘micro-based’ theory of the public sector: (ii) less closely linked to some historical and intellectual German Sonderweg (culminating in historism, a collectivistic view of social entities and a mystical glorification of the State) than is often suggested.

It is argued that these achievements rather were to a large extent inspired by the more cosmopolitan tendencies in German thought. An important influence is Kantian liberalism. Kant construed a kind of foundational interdependence between the public and the private sector. This prepares the ground for a framework of complementary institutions instead of explaining public institutions in terms of a market failure-perspective based on non-excludability: the view developed in German Idealism gives non-rivalry the pivotal role: the explanation of public institutions systematically hinges upon the existence of goods, the benefits of which are necessarily universal and hence are necessarily made available in a non-rival mode.     

“柠檬市场”效应与担保圈风险

本文以Z市担保圈的大量调查材料为基础,从四个圈层逐步剖析了担保圈的生成与演变。研究认为:由于"柠檬市场"效应、道德风险、市场失灵等现象存在,造成了担保关系实质上的无效性。对此,本文从政府、银行、企业、监管等多方面入手,提出化解区域性、系统性担保圈风险的新途径。     

Bank Failure,Mark‐to‐market and the Financial Crisis

This paper is concerned with the allegation that fair value accounting rules have contributed significantly to the recent financial crisis. It focuses on one particular channel for that contribution: the impact of fair value on the actual or potential failure of banks. The paper compares four criteria for failure: one economic, two legal and one regulatory. It is clear from this comparison that balance sheet valuations of assets are, in two cases, crucial in these definitions, and so the choice between ‘fair value’ or other valuations can be decisive in whether a bank fails; but in two cases fair value is irrelevant. Bank failures might arise despite capital adequacy and balance sheet solvency due to sudden shocks to liquidity positions. Two of the most prominent bank failures cannot, at first sight, be attributed to fair value accounting: we show that Northern Rock was balance sheet solvent, even on a fair value basis, as was Lehman Brothers. The case study evidence is augmented by econometric tests that suggest that mark‐to‐market accounting has had only a very limited influence on the perceived failure risk of banks.     

New development: The role of benchmarking in supporting improvement in local government— Scottish and Welsh practitioners' perspectives

A primary leadership challenge facing central budget agencies is sustaining the respect of finance ministers. Lessons are drawn in this article from the corrosive effect that missed opportunities to take the lead on economic strategy and public service modernization had on the long-term respect commanded by the Irish Department of Finance, and from the strategic re-orientation the New Zealand Treasury undertook to correct its tendency to ‘over-reach’ itself in these areas following a process of capacity-building and cultural transformation in the 1980s.     

论会计信息管制的成本及分摊

文章认为实施会计信息管制是必需的。市场失灵是会计信息管制的重要依据。会计信息管制将耗费巨额成本,文章分别从直接成本和间接成本的角度对会计信息管制的成本作了分析。最后,对会计信息管制的直接成本在利益相关者之间的分摊作了尝试性的探讨。