The financial health of voluntary hospitals in interwar Britain

This article re–evaluates the gravity of the financial problems facing British voluntary hospitals in the interwar period. A relational database of statistics on hospital provision, finance (at both current and constant prices), and activity is used to derive consistent sets of hospitals for reporting purposes. The article presents novel analyses of the extent and pattern of hospital surpluses and deficits; of the capital accounts of selected individual hospitals; of trends in hospital expenditure; of the diversification of hospital income, emphasizing the declining importance of traditional philanthropy; and of the effect of these changes on hospital provision and utilization.     

Career Concerns and Resource Allocation in Conglomerates

We investigate resource allocation decisions in conglomerateswhen managers are motivated by career concerns. When divisionalcash flows are differentially informative about managerial ability,we show that it is in the managers' interest to overallocateunobservable intangible resources to the more informative divisions.Anticipating this bias, it is optimal for the firm's ownersto also overallocate observable capital to the more informativedivisions. The model provides rationale for corporate socialismand corporate hedging. It also highlights a cost of segmentreporting and tracking stocks, namely, that they allow managersto distort their perceived ability at the expense of investors.     

The Antecedents and Consequences of Affordable Value Innovations for Emerging Markets

Emerging markets offer tremendous growth opportunities for firms. While established multinational firms typically focus on premium segments in emerging markets, they often fail to leverage additional growth opportunities in so‐called good enough or low‐income segments in emerging markets. Customers in these low‐income markets have substantially different requirements and are very price sensitive. Theoretical and case‐based research suggests that innovating for these low‐income segments in emerging markets differs significantly from innovating for premium or traditional Western markets. We argue that tapping successfully into low‐income segments in emerging markets requires the development of new products that meet the low price expectations while at the same time offering also value to customers in these segments. We refer to these new products as affordable value innovations. We analyze the antecedents of affordable value innovation for emerging markets. We draw on institutional theory to derive three potentially relevant antecedents of affordable value innovation for emerging markets. These are bricolage, local embeddedness, and standardization. We test our hypotheses using multiple informant data from 47 multinational corporations involving 103 innovation projects that target low‐income customers in emerging markets. Our empirical analysis shows that all three antecedents have significant effects on the level of affordable value innovation: while bricolage and local embeddedness are positively related to the level of affordable value innovation, standardization has a negative impact. We also examine the relationship between the level of affordable value innovation and performance. We find evidence for our basic assumption that a firm's capability to develop and launch affordable value innovations is key to success in emerging markets. It indicates that a firm's investments in affordable value innovations for emerging markets pay off financially. Finally, a cross‐regional comparison of our data shows that the key findings on antecedents of affordable value innovation and its impact on performance do not vary across various emerging markets. Overall, our findings offer important implications for research on and the practice of innovation for low‐income segments in emerging markets.     

Caribbean Diversification and Development

Small Island Developing States generally adopt diversification as their primary development strategy, often with little success. Nevertheless, there is no empirical study specifically focusing on the pattern of diversification of these countries in relation to their development. The objective of this paper was to study the export diversification pattern by the intensive (a more equally spread export basket) and extensive (an increase in new export lines) product margin of 21 Caribbean countries in relation to their level of development using panel data. The results show that despite their limited ability to diversify, Caribbean countries, as has been found for other parts of the world, first diversify and subsequently respecialise though at a substantially lower level of income than other countries and that the intensive margin plays a greater role in this process.     

Why Developing Countries Have Failed to Increase Their Exports of Agricultural Processed Products

The article uses the case study of coffee, tea and cocoa to analyse whether tariff escalation constitutes a barrier to market access that thwarts diversification efforts of developing countries into exports of value‐added agricultural processed products. It also examines the extent to which non‐tariff barriers act as market access barriers that constrain developing countries from developing their exports of agricultural processed products. Our analysis shows that tariff escalation is not the main barrier; rather it is the prevalence of non‐tariff barriers (including domestic non‐tariff barriers) that limits the ability of developing countries to increase their agricultural processed exports. This has important policy implications in terms of the emphasis that trade negotiators and policy planners should place on addressing non‐tariff barriers.     

Experienced and Novice Investors: Does Environmental Information Influence Investment Allocation Decisions?

Economic Value Added (EVA) is a performance measure that is being used by an increasing number of companies, but academic research on EVA is limited. In addition, all prior empirical academic studies on EVA have used the firm as the unit of analysis. In this study, we examine the effect of EVA on the performance of individual managers. Specifically, we examine whether managers on EVA-based bonus plans outperform managers on traditional accounting-based bonus plans. We are able to test this because we have access to an EVA-focused company that has managers on both EVA and traditional bonus plans. Our results suggest that managers on EVA bonus plans who understand the EVA concept perform better than managers on traditional bonus plans. However, we find some evidence that the increase in performance results from increased consistency or congruence in the manager's evaluation–reward process rather than from superiority of EVA as a performance measure. Also, we find that the effect of EVA bonuses and EVA understanding differs depending on the area of the firm in which the manager is employed. This suggests that EVA may not be a universally appropriate base for reward systems. *Mohan Lal passed away 24 July 2002. This paper is dedicated to him.     

Key problems facing industrial distributors

This article reports on a survey of the problems faced by industrial distributors. Five major problem categories are identified and managerial implications are derived from the findings.     

Health Care Matters: Supply Chains In and Of the Health Sector

Providing health care involves a complex enterprise, and the trade‐off between quality and cost has been particularly stark compared to other industries. However, a recent focus on health sector supply networks is now producing significant innovations and improvements. This Special Topic Forum illustrates for the academic and practitioner community how health care supply chain research can benefit from our evolving understanding of supply chains and help push that understanding even further. We classify health care supply chain research into two broad categories—supply chain in health care and supply chain of health care—to set an agenda for future research.     

Internationalization and HRM strategies across subsidiaries in multinational corporations from emerging economies—A conceptual framework

The rapid rise of multinational Corporations (MNCs) from emerging economies has led to greater interest and urgency in developing a better understanding of the deployment and diffusion of managerial strategies from their perspective and without assuming the prevailing Western ethnocentric orthodoxy. This paper develops a conceptual framework of global HR strategies and practices in MNCs from emerging economies across their subsidiaries in both developed and developing markets. Using data from a pilot study of an Indian MNC, it provides insights and guidance into the motives, strategic opportunities and constraints in cross-national transfer of HR policies and practices in a multi-polar world.     

Agricultural Supply Response: A Survey

This paper surveys the literature on agricultural supply response to prices in developing countries. Empirical estimates of elasticities depend both on the methodology adopted and on country-specific factors relating to technology, economic structure and macro constraints. The paper seeks to establish some general conclusions on supply responsiveness within these limitations. Supply response to output prices at the aggregate and at the crop levels is considered first. Crop-specific acreage elasticities range between zero and 0.8 in the short run while long-run elasticities tend to be higher — between 0.3 and 1.2. Yield elasticities are smaller and less stable than acreage elasticities. Clearly, inter-crop pricing can be relied upon to effect shifts in the commodity composition of agricultural output. Evidence also suggests that supply elasticities vary systematically with such factors as price and yield risks, multiple-cropping, the importance of the crop, farm incomes, farm size, tenancy and literacy. The most controversial and important aspect of supply response is the effect on aggregate agricultural output of agriculture's terms of trade. Conventional time-series estimates range from 0.1 to 0.3. A major cross-country study reports an aggregate elasticity as high as 1.66. It is argued that cross-country estimates are apt to exaggerate aggregate responsiveness while time-series studies underestimate it somewhat. For LDCs, a tentative range of 0.4 to 0.5 seems plausible. Hence, the distributive effects of the terms of trade are likely to be more significant than the allocative effects. Asian evidence shows that only a third of the inter-country differences in fertilizer use can be attributed to fertilizer price policies. Provided new technologies and infrastructure are in place, fertilizer subsidies can help in technology diffusion and in overcoming credit constraints. The choice between price supports and input subsidies will depend on a variety of country- or situation-specific factors. Nevertheless, a significant general factor favoring price supports is that they can more easily be coupled with price stabilization goals than input subsidies. Though sparse, the available evidence on the response of marketed surplus suggests that price policy is not a reliable instrument for regulating inter-sectoral trade.