Alternative balanced scorecards built from paradigm models in strategic HRM and employment/industrial relations and used to measure the state of employment relations and HR system performance across U.S. workplaces

This paper constructs alternative balanced scorecards based on high‐performance work system (HPWS) and employment relations system (ERS) models. The models are depicted and compared in diagrams and used as framework skeletons for building separate HPWS and ERS scorecards, intended to provide a detailed data picture of the operational health and performance of an organization's employment/HR system and its operations, processes, and inputs/outputs. The scorecards are filled in with nationally representative data from 2,000+ U.S. workplaces using more than 50 employment/HR indicators, as reported by separate panels of managers and employees. The indicators for each workplace are aggregated into an overall HR/employment system score, ranked from low‐to‐high, and graphed as frequency distributions. These distributions provide a unique snapshot picture of the mean and dispersion of the state of employment relations and HR system performance for companies across the United State. They also reveal that “models matter” since the HPWS and ERS scorecards provide distinctly different evaluation assessments.     

在衰退中成长

如今,全球都笼罩在经济衰退之中.如果下一个就要轮到贵公司,你该怎么办?当然你要尽力保证企业财务的稳定.但更重要的是,你还必须了解公司在衰退结束后的目标设计.如果你知道企业的发展方向和如何实现这一目标,那么衰退时期是改善公司相对战略地位的好时机.     

Countries and their products: A cognitive structure perspective

This research reports on consumers’ cognitive structures for countries and their products. In-depth personal interviews identified respondents’ knowledge, beliefs, myths, and other relevant cognitions related to a diverse set of 11 countries and their products. Derived cognitive dimensions were analyzed via correspondence analysis, and the 11 countries were subsequently grouped into five sets, or cognitive categories. In addition to the empirical findings, the article introduces the concept of country equity as a new way of thinking about global brands and discusses managerial implications related thereto. He has published in theJournal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, and elsewhere. His articles have appeared in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of International Business Studies, California Management Review, and others. He is the coauthor of two marketing research textbooks and has published in leading marketing and social psychological journals.     

Brands matter: An empirical demonstration of the creation of shareholder value through branding

This research responds to the attendant need for empirical evidence pertaining to how marketing affects firm performance. Using the Fama-French method, common in finance, and a leading marketplace measure of a brand’s financial equity value, the authors provide empirical evidence for the branding-shareholder value creation link. The results extend previous research by showing that strong brands not only deliver greater returns to stockholders than does a relevant benchmark but do so with less risk This finding holds even when market share and firm size are considered. Barclays Global Investors Thomas J. Madden is a professor of marketing and director of the Professional MBA/Executive International MBA programs at the Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina. His research focuses on the measurement of brand meaning, marketing metrics, and value-based marketing strategies. His research has appeared in theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Marketing, and theJournal of Consumer Behavior. Frank Fehle (frank.fehle@barclaysglobal.com) is the head of Europe Equity Research at Barclays Global Investors in London, United Kingdom. Previously, he was an assistant professor of finance at the University of South Carolina. His research focuses on empirical asset pricing, market microstructure, risk management, and derivatives. His work has appeared in theJournal of Financial Economics, theJournal of Futures Markets, theJournal of Economics and Business, theReview of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, among other journals and conference proceedings. Susan Fournier is an associate professor of marketing at Boston University. Her research focuses on branding and brand relationship marketing. Current projects explore person-brands, resonance as a moderator of the brand meaning → brand strength connection, the types of relationships consumers form with brands, and dynamic processes of relationship development and evolution. She served for 9 years on the Harvard Business School faculty and 2 years as a visitor at Dartmouth College. She consults with a range of companies to inform her teaching, case development, and research.     

The use of cycles? explaining employee involvement in the 1990s

Drawing on evidence from twenty-five case studies from different sectors and parts of the country, the authors challenge Ramsay's influential ‘cycles of control’ theory of participation as a managerial response to industrial relations pressures from below. Through a series of ‘ideal type’ scenarios, they indicate the range of management motives behind the new ‘wave’ of employee involvement schemes.     

Credit Supply and Demand and Business Investment

Abstract
The article explores the lending behaviour of financial intermediaries over the business cycle in the light of theories emphasising agency costs. During a credit crunch loans from financial intermediaries are unobtainable at any price, and so credit may have a causal influence over economic activity. Tests of this do not find evidence of credit constraints following financial deregulation. However, since both loan supply and demand are driven by forward-looking variables, business credit is a useful leading indicator of nominal investment .     

Openness and Wage Inequality in Developing Countries: The Latin American Challenge to East Asian Conventional Wisdom

The experience of East Asia in the 1960s and 1970s supportsthe theory that greater openness to trade tends to narrow thewage gap between skilled and unskilled workers in developingcountries. In Latin America since the mid-1980s, however, increasedopenness has widened wage differentials. This conflict of evidenceis probably not the result of differences between East Asiaand Latin America. Instead, the conflict is probably the resultof differences between the 1960s and the 1980s, specifically,the entry of China into the world market and, perhaps, the adventof new technology biased against unskilled workers.     

Knowledge spillover from other assurance services

We argue that services which are complimentary and closer aligned to the annual report audit provide greater insight about risk and are more likely to exhibit the existence of economies of scope (knowledge spillover) through a positive association with audit fees. Specifically, we consider the potential for knowledge spillover from the auditing of triennial Long-Term Plans (LTP) to the annual report audit for a large sample of New Zealand municipals over the period 2005–2013. We find the LTP audit fees are positively related to municipal annual report audit fees and other fees (audit of for-profit subsidiaries, non-audit services) are not. This suggests that knowledge spillovers are dependent on the nature of the additional services. We also find evidence of higher fees for private sector auditors for both the annual report and the LTP audit. The LTP (forecast) audit fee is associated with municipal size, complexity, and political competition.     

Payments for environmental services to promote “climate‐smart agriculture”? Potential and challenges

Payments for environmental services (PES) have gained wide popularity as approaches to promote environmentally friendly land use or agricultural production practices. Yet academics have also voiced concerns against seeing PES as a panacea. This article discusses whether PES is an appropriate and promising approach to promote so‐called “climate‐smart agriculture” (CSA) practices, which we define as agricultural production practices that contribute to CO₂ emission reductions and/or removals and provide benefits to farmers via increased productivity and profits and reduced vulnerability to climate change. PES appears most promising for the promotion of CSA practices in small‐scale farming contexts with low incomes. Effective design, however, requires solid estimates of cost and benefit flows from CSA adoption over time, accounting for differences in socioeconomic and ecological conditions, and addressing the risk of leakage. Funding for such PES will likely have to come from public sources, and seems most promising where synergies with other objectives such as agricultural development, food security, and climate adaptation or other environmental services exist. The potential of alternative approaches for CSA support such as taxation with rebates for CSA practices, CSA‐related investment support such as microcredits, and hybrid approaches such as conditional microcredit should be further investigated.