Shifting Strategies: the Pursuit of Closure and the ‘Association of German Auditors’

Drawing on Weber’s [(1972). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie [Economy and society. An outline of interpretive sociology]. (5th ed.). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck] theories of social stratification and closure, and on Parkin’s [(1979). Marxism and class theory. London: Tavistock] development thereof, this paper contributes a case study of Germany to the literature on closure processes (rather than outcomes), and outcomes falling short of professionalization. It explores the early history of the first German association of auditors, the Verband Deutscher Bücherrevisoren (VDB), founded in 1896. The paper traces how closure was pursued, at various times, by different means and to different degrees, depending on the changing social, economic and political contexts and on changing perception of what would best serve the association’s interest. By thus focusing on the shifting aims and strategies of the VDB, the paper contributes new insights into the dynamics within professions and between professions and their environments, and the dynamics and conditions underlying failed professionalization projects. The paper shows that, while the VDB had a degree of success in creating many of the structure and processes of a modern professional body, its ambition to achieve market and professional closure was not fulfilled.     

Who Has the Time? Community College Students’ Time-Use Response to Financial Incentives

We evaluate the effect of performance-based scholarship programs for post-secondary students on student time use and effort and whether these effects are different for students we hypothesize may be more or less responsive to incentives. To do so, we administered a time-use survey as part of a randomized experiment in which community college students in New York City were randomly assigned to be eligible for a performance-based scholarship or to a control group that was only eligible for the standard financial aid. This paper contributes to the literature by attempting to get inside the “black box” of how students respond to a monetary incentive to improve their educational attainment. We find that students eligible for a scholarship devoted more time to educational activities, increased the quality of effort toward and engagement with their studies, and allocated less time to leisure. Additional analyses suggest that students who were plausibly more myopic (place less weight on future benefits) were more responsive to the incentives, but we find no evidence that students who are arguably more time constrained were less responsive to the incentives.

     

Strategic Dilemmas: How Managers Use HR Practices to Meet Multiple Goals

Contrary to the classic assumptions in the business and human resource (HR) strategy literatures, real‐world organizations often pursue multiple and potentially contradictory performance goals. They may adopt ‘hybrid’ strategies to maximize both differentiation and low cost — leading middle managers to face dilemmas in how to achieve different goals using the same HR practices. We link employee‐level surveys of HR practices to establishment‐level data on service quality, labour efficiency and profitability to examine the effects of HR practices on these outcomes. We find that establishments with greater use of high involvement practices have significantly higher service quality, which mediates the relationship between HR practices and profitability. Findings for labour efficiency are positive, but generally not significant. These findings also have implications for the quality of jobs.     

From the blogosphere into the parliament: The role of digital technologies in organizing social movements

In this paper, we present a process model exploring the roles played by digital technologies (DTs) in the organization of collective action (CA) of social movements (SMs) at different points in their lifecycles. The process model, which is based on an exploratory case study of the Italian Five Star Movement, relates the environmental conditions to the working logic, structure and use of DTs at three different stages of the SMs. We explain how these choices are adopted at each stage to address internal and environmental challenges and how they create further challenges to be addressed to pass to the next stage. We further explore the dynamics between the logic of connective and collective action and reflect on the growing need for structures and control. By so doing, our work addresses the need for a better understanding of the coevolution between DTs and organizational structures and of the ways in which DTs are used to mobilize people to sustain CA along the SM lifecycle.     

An anatomy of zero‐hour contracts in the UK

We present the first attempt to locate zero‐hour contract (ZHC) jobs—jobs that lack a guaranteed minimum number of hours—within theoretical frameworks of the employment relationship and occupational class and empirically explore their characteristics using successive UK Labour Force Survey. In line with these theories, we find this contentious form of employment to be strongly differentiated by the nature of occupational tasks and to overlap with nonstandard employment features (e.g. part‐time and temporary). They are also highly concentrated in a small number of occupations and sectors, with over half of ZHC jobs found in just 10 occupations. We further show that ZHCs are associated with indicators of inferior job quality such as low pay and underemployment. Although we find no evidence that ZHCs are a particularly pervasive feature of the UK labour market, further growth cannot be ruled out in certain occupations.     

The development trinity: How regional integration impacts growth,inequality and poverty

Developing countries today have become more active participants in regional trade agreements. This raises questions about how the benefits of integration are distributed, and the extent to which lower‐income countries are able to capture development gains. Historically, such impacts have been difficult to identify with precision. This paper seeks to address this gap by empirically analysing the impact of regional integration on development, particularly the effects on growth and welfare. Using both bilateral and regional integration measures, we show that the ability to capture gains from integration varies across developing country regional groups, with developing Asia benefiting on par with developed countries. The findings in the paper indicate that trade and trade policy play an important role in reducing inequality and poverty in developing countries. It also shows that regionalism can function as a channel to make multilateralism a more adept way of addressing national challenges.     

The impact of prudential toolkits on loan growth in Central and Eastern European banking systems

This paper examines the effects of prudential policy on loan growth in 11 Central and Eastern European banking systems, spanning the period from 2000 to 2015. Based on the measures taken by the authorities of our sample countries, we build several prudential indices. Additionally, we control for the effects of several country-specific factors and bank-specific characteristics. Finally, we test the homogeneity of these effects, accounting for cycle, ownership, and bank effects. Generally, the empirical findings reveal a negative correlation between prudential toolkits and credit growth, with a conspicuous impact for tools targeting lending activity. We see that the effects of a change in the lending framework on loan growth are heterogeneous when we account for crisis and cycle patterns. Furthermore, the interaction between ownership and crisis reveals that, in normal times, foreign banks recorded higher loan growth compared to domestic banks. The opposite is true in turbulent times. The analysis of interactions between credit-based measures and bank-specific variables show that the effects of prudential actions depend on the bank size and leverage.     

Citizen participation in public administration: investigating open government for social innovation

In recent years, public sector organizations have increasingly focused on citizen contribution by adopting instruments known from open innovation. By collaborating with the periphery and leveraging external knowledge, government institutions initiate social innovation and stimulate a positive change for society. This article examines the involvement of citizens in an ideation platform initiated by a local government and investigates the motivations affecting participation intensity. Drawing on self‐determination theory, we analyze what motivates citizens to participate in an open government platform and how these motivations influence participation quantity. Based on a survey among platform users and the analysis of usage data from the platform operator, we find that motivations of citizen participation in public administration greatly vary across forms of participation. Whereas, intrinsic motivation is positively associated with producing and consuming platform content, external and introjected regulation negatively relate to individuals’ active contribution. At the same time, external regulation is positively associated with evaluation behavior.