Unfolding the impact of leadership and management on sustainability performance: Green and lean practices and guanxi as the dual mediators

This study aims to empirically evaluate the predictors that influence sustainability performance among manufacturing firms. Leadership and management, green and lean practices, and guanxi were examined to determine whether these predictors are directly and/or indirectly affecting sustainability performance; 160 valid responses were collected and partial-least-squares-structural-equation-modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. The results showed that leadership and management positively influenced green and lean practices and green and lean practices positively influenced sustainability performance. Leadership and management also positively influenced guanxi. Interestingly, leadership and management and guanxi do not exert a significant direct influence on sustainability performance. The findings contributed to the development of the resource-based-view theory further by empirically exploring the significance of leadership and management coupled with green and lean practices as competencies and capability to drive sustainability performance. The testing of the dual mediators' effects further added value to this study.     

Adverse Selection and the Decline in Private Health Insurance Coverage in Australia: 1989–95

The decline in private health insurance coverage over the period 1989–95 is analysed using the ABS National Health Surveys. Individuals' health status and health risk behaviours are found to be significant determinants of their decision to purchase private health insurance. At a point in time, the pool of the insured is very heterogeneous, with a mix of both good and bad health risks. It is found that the decline in insurance coverage over the period 1989–95 coincided with an increase in the degree of 'adverse selection' within the insured population.     

Power and EDP departments: a case study

The productivity of white-collar workers in heavily computerized sectors of the economy has collapsed in recent years. This paper suggests that one reason for this involves inefficiencies generated by EDP departments, which have created systems of control enmeshing not only workers but senior management.     

Hard Times or Great Expectations? Dividend Omissions and Dividend Cuts by UK Firms*

This paper uncovers an increasing proportion of quoted UK companies omitting cash dividends. Using a large panel of quoted UK firms, we estimate panel data probit models for the incidence of dividend omissions and cuts as functions of financial characteristics including cash flow, leverage, investment opportunities, investment and company size. These variables account for most of the increase in omission since 1995. There is relatively little evidence to link this to the major tax reform of 1997 that abolished tax refunds on dividend income payable to tax‐exempt institutions. Significant persistence effects indicate companies are slow to adjust their balance sheets through their dividend.     

欧洲单一金融市场中的最后贷款人(LLR)

本文研究在欧盟单一金融市场中有效发挥最后贷款人功能所面临的挑战.简要分析了欧盟金融业的一些特点,这些特点可能增加欧盟系统性金融风险;讨论了预防和解决金融问题的欧盟金融稳定构架的复杂性(最后贷款人的运作也包括在这个构架之中);论述了当系统性金融风波影响不止一个欧盟成员国时,如何实现最后贷款人功能.最后提出了提高现有构架效率所面临的挑战和可行的途径.     

DESIGNING A MARKET STRUCTURE WHEN FIRMS COMPETE FOR THE RIGHT TO SERVE THE MARKET*

In many industries, a regulator designs an auction to select ex‐ante the firms that compete ex‐post on the product market. This paper considers the optimal market structure when firms incur sunk costs before entering the market and when the government is not able to regulate firms in the market. We prove that a free entry equilibrium results in an excessive entry when the entry costs are private information. Then, we consider an auction mechanism selecting the firms allowed to serve the market and show that the optimal number of licences results in the socially optimal market structure. When all the potential candidates are actual bidders, the optimal number of firms in the market increases with the number of candidates and decreases with the social cost of public funds. When the market size is small, as the net profit in the market decreases with the number of selected firms, entry is endogenous. As increasing competition in the market reduces competition for the market, the optimal structure is more concentrated than in the previous case.     

Fuelled Power: Oil,Financiers and Central Bank Policy in Nigeria

While the literature on business power and global finance has illuminated the ways in which financial institutions limit the policy autonomy of states in developing countries, we know much less about the circumstances under which the power of financiers is undermined. In this article, I advance explanations of these circumstances by arguing that state access to natural resource revenues reduces the power of financial institutions and enhances the capacity of the state to pursue central bank policies which violate the interests of major financiers. I employ a case study of central bank policy in Nigeria to probe this argument and find evidence that supports the claim that whenever the Nigerian government's access to resource revenues increased, the state's capacity to diverge from financiers’ preferred central bank policies and to advance its own preferences increased as well. The analysis provides the basis for broader propositions about the policy space of developing countries vis-à-vis financial institutions and the variability of structural power.     

Cultural Consonance in Leisure,Leisure Satisfaction,Life Satisfaction,and Self-Rated Health in Urban Taiwan

The purpose of this study threefold: to determine whether a shared cultural model of the importance of a set of leisure activities to a good leisure life existed in urban Taiwan, the degree to which cultural consonance in leisure mediates the relationship between leisure constraints and leisure satisfaction, and the degree to which leisure satisfaction affects life satisfaction and self-rated health. Results indicate that a cultural model of the importance of leisure activities to a good leisure life existed among sample members. Second, higher levels of self-reported participation in leisure activities that are culturally agreed upon as more important for a good leisure life are more strongly associated with leisure satisfaction than are activities culturally agreed upon as less important. Finally, leisure satisfaction strongly predicts both life satisfaction and self-rated health.     

Editorial: Opportunities for Cross-Cultural Comparative Research on Leisure

Cross-cultural comparative research on leisure is extremely rare in both the anthropological and leisure literatures. The opportunities for conducting such research are excellent, however. Ethnographic data archives, such as the Human Relations Area Files, are widely available and contain a trove of information on leisure in societies, both past and present, from around the world. Methods for cross-cultural comparative research have improved greatly in the past two decades. The purpose of this editorial is to urge leisure researchers to make use of both cross-cultural comparative methods and existing sources of data.