Choice of Distribution System in the New Zealand Life Insurance Industry

Using 1988–93 panel data drawn from the New Zealand life insurance industry, this paper examines empirically the notion that the choice of distribution system is an efficient contracting solution to incentive conflicts between owners, managers and sales agents in life insurance firms. Consistent with what was hypothesised, the empirical results suggest that choice of distribution system is distinguished by organisational form, firm size, and sales commission. However, contrary to expectations, the variables representing product diversity and asset specificity were found not to be statistically significant. The empirical results thus lend mixed support for prior predictions.     

Procedures for revising management judgments forecasts

Forecast improvement is often approached by attempting to find the “best” model for a given situation. Less attention has been paid to the possibility of examining past prediction errors for patterns that may suggest forecast adjustments for the future. This empirical study involves one firm’s management judgment forecasts for product sales and the attempts made to improve their accuracy by removing certain types of bias. In three of the five series examined, error reduction averaging close to thirty percent occurs as a result of the adjustment procedure. The other two series proved to be relatively free from bias and were therefore not in need of the correction method described.     

Market and institutional forces in industrial relations: the development of national collective bargaining, 1910–1920

This article reviews recent trends in the historiography of British industrial relations, and highlights a growing emphasis on the influence of employers and impersonal economic forces. In response, the article argues for a renewed recognition of trade unions as a proactive force in the development of industrial relations systems. This view is supported by analysis of the influence of market and institutional forces upon the spread of national collective bargaining. The conclusion is that commercial pressures on employers were relatively unimportant in a process driven by human agency, institutional forces, and wider economic pressures.     

Supply Chain Management Competency and Firm Financial Success

Supply chain management (SCM) plays a major role in creating (or destroying) shareholder value by influencing the three major drivers of firm financial performance: revenue, operating costs, and working capital. Yet, the relationship between SCM competency and firm financial performance is not well‐established. Drawing on the resource‐based view of the firm, this study assesses this relationship using Delphi‐style opinion data from AMR Research’s Supply Chain Top 25 rankings to assess SCM competency and Altman’s (1968) Z‐score statistic as the measure of financial success. The study findings show that firms recognized by industry experts for SCM competency have significantly higher Z‐scores than their close competitors and industry averages.     

The Emptiness of Peasant “Rationality”: “Demirationality” as an Alternative

This article discusses consumption as a social process that is part of social provisioning and is in an evolutionary interplay with other social processes. The analysis provides grounds for a context-specific research that explores consumption in the context of a culture-nature life process, and draws on material from various disciplines. The article seeks to contribute to the literature on social provisioning as an organizing concept in heterodox economics. The first section explains what is meant by social process and delineates its elements. The second section formulates a categorization of social processes, and locates a consumption process within a system of culture-nature life processes. The rest of the article delineates the elements of the consumption process, providing illustrations based on literature from various disciplines. Specifically, the third section discusses consumption activities. The fourth section discusses institutions and systems of provision of goods and services. The fifth section applies the concept of habits of life and thought to the consumption process. Finally, the article concludes that the formulated analysis transcends dualisms such as social-economic, cultural-material, society-nature, and micro-macro, and draws implications for heterodox economics.