After the merger: now what?

The advantages of undertaking a linkage strategy are compelling; as more hospitals consider such, the material manager should be poised to capitalize upon strategic advantages afforded by such an occurrence and implement them. The very actions undertaken by this vital position within the organization could very easily determine the degree of success realized by a linkage strategy.     

Management is the solution: Now what was the problem? On the fragile basis for managerialism

This paper critically investigates the impact and meaning of managerialism in a pharmaceutical firm by exploring its shaky basis. Managers’ explanations of the failure in research leading to new products showed considerable variety. This reflects the absence of any shared understanding of research inefficiencies and difficulties to determine the roots of the problems. Despite this people blame bad management and put hope to improved responsibility of managers. The study highlights the ambiguity of causes of the research inefficiencies and how this is suppressed as well as exploited by the introduction of a vague managerialist agenda.     

Is the UK government pursuing the correct fiscal plan?

• The Autumn Statement saw the Chancellor reaffirm his objective of achieving a budget surplus in the next Parliament and he followed this by introducing a binding target to balance the structural current budget by 2017–18.
• But this places even more policy weight on the ‘output gap’ – a variable which cannot be measured with any certainty and which, as a concept for dictating policy, has serious flaws. If the OBR is too pessimistic on spare capacity, the outcome will be an unnecessarily tight fiscal squeeze.
• Meanwhile, a fiscal surplus requires that another sector of the economy runs a deficit. So committing to this objective implies more control over the public finances than governments actually enjoy.
• Returning the public finances to the black would be positive for fiscal sustainability. But it could have some undesirable consequences if the counterpart to a stronger fiscal position is, as expected, the household sector moving further into the red.
• Furthermore, our detailed analysis of the government's latest spending plans concludes that the scale of the planned cuts to departmental spending will be impossible to deliver, particularly given the commitments to protect spending on health, international development and parts of the education budget.
• As such, in a departure from our normal practice, our UK macroeconomic forecasts assume that the planned spending cuts will be reined back, regardless of who wins the next election.

     

Regionalism in the nineties: what effect on trade?

We apply a gravity model to 1980–1996 annual nonfuel imports data for 58 countries to quantify the effects of recently created or revamped PTAs on trade. We modify the gravity equation to identify separate effects of PTAs on intrabloc trade, members’ total imports and their total exports and to test for significant changes in trade patterns following the creation of trade blocs. We find no indication that ‘new regionalism’ boosted intrabloc trade significantly and we find trade diversion only for the EU and EFTA. The latter also exhibit ‘export diversion’, which could indicate their imposing welfare costs on other countries. Latin American trade liberalization in the 1990s had a positive impact on bloc members’ imports and, usually, exports.     

Innovation labs in the public sector: what they are and what they do?

This article is a first comprehensive attempt to globally map and analyse innovation labs (i-labs) in the public sector. The article analyzes theoretical reasons why i-labs are created in the public sector and tests these assumptions in practice. During the empirical study, thirty-five such organizations all over the world were identified. The research is based on a two-step approach: first, a comprehensive survey was carried out followed by an extensive in-depth interview with the managing figures of i-labs; eleven i-labs responded. The article finds support for the assumptions of external complexity, technological challenges, emulation, and legitimization as reasons behind the creation of i-labs.     

Do individual disclosure rules for parliamentarians improve government effectiveness?

The pros and cons of stricter disclosure rules for parliamentarians are hotly debated. Some argue that disclosure rules for parliamentarians increase transparency of the legislative branch, leading to lower levels of rent-seeking and corruption, increased citizen trust in parliament, and better quality of law-making. Others argue that disclosure rules endanger the privacy of parliamentarians, that their introduction would stop businesspeople and lawyers from running for seats, which would decrease the quality of law-making. This is the first attempt to empirically test these conjectures on the composition of parliament empirically. We find that the introduction of disclosure rules is usually not accompanied by a significant shift in the proportion of lawyers and businesspeople in parliament.     

Co-operation and conflict in industrial relations: what are the implications for employees and trade unions?

This article explores the effects on employees of co-operation and conflict the workplace, outlining six workplace types. A survey of union representatives UK steel industry reveals evidence of co-operative industrial relations linked to superior terms and conditions, employee involvement and health and safety outcomes. However, it fails to find evidence that co-operative industrial relations are associated a broader HRM package of workplace restructuring, high performance work teams security provisions. Nor is any association revealed between co-operation and a greater role for trade unions. These findings suggest workplace co-operation in this industry remains part of a traditional gainsharing package and an 'alliance of insiders' than an HRM partnership or union incorporation. This raises broader questions the ability of co-operation to deliver important aspects of organizational competitive advantage.     

Is the government in danger of inflating a housing bubble?

Despite very strong inflation prior to the financial crisis, the correction in UK house prices has been relatively modest and much smaller than those in countries such as the US, Ireland and Spain. The relative resilience of the UK market appears to be a reflection of very tight supply which has effectively put a floor under prices.…     

Small businesses and the environment: turning over a new leaf?

Previous studies on the environmental practices of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK and beyond have portrayed owner‐managers as laggards who underplay their firm's environmental impacts and resist environmental management due to its perceived cost. Yet a recent cross‐sector survey of 220 UK SMEs suggests that this intransigent stance may be slowly changing. Responses indicate a high percentage of owner‐managers actively involved in recycling, energy efficiency, responsible buying and selling, and efforts to reduce their carbon emissions. Owner‐managers saw it as their responsibility to help solve environmental problems and were reportedly willing to accept the costs of tougher environmental regulations and taxation. Business owners were motivated not just by the ‘push’ of legislation and environmental concern but by the ‘pull’ of potential cost savings, new customers, higher staff retention and good publicity for their firms. The survey also found that owner‐managers had resonance with the Stern Review's (2006) conclusions that the benefits of strong early action on climate change outweigh the costs, and that a transition to a low‐carbon economy will bring opportunities for business growth. This indicates that SMEs may be coming round to the idea that there is a business case for sustainability, although there is still some scepticism on the overall profitability of environmental action. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Does local government competition aggravate haze pollution? A new perspective of factor market distortion

Haze pollution has become a new threat to China's sustainable development, but it may be that local government behaviour can play an important role in the prevention and control of pollutants. A dynamic spatial autoregressive (SAR) model is used to study the relationship between local government competition and haze pollution. To further explore the indirect impact of factor market distortion on haze pollution and control potential endogeneity problems, a newly developed intermediary effect model that incorporates the characteristics of the generalized method of moments (GMM) is utilized to explore how factor market distortion indirectly affects haze pollution. The research results show that regional haze pollution in China is characterized by significant spatial correlation, and local government competition has a positive impact on haze pollution; that is, local government competition exacerbates haze pollution. In general, local government competition not only directly leads to an increase in haze pollution but also further intensifies it by distorting the local factor market, and the intermediary role of factor market distortion is approximately 7.04%. The results of the regional inspection found that competition among local governments in the eastern region did not lead to haze pollution, and distortion of the factor market did not exist as an intermediary effect. However, both direct and intermediary effects are significant in the central and western regions. Therefore, an official performance appraisal system that includes ecological constraints should be established to guide the benign transformation of local government competition, and an environmental management mechanism must be developed for joint prevention and control to reduce haze pollution. In addition, the free flow of factors and marketization are equally important.     

What do women want? Female suffrage and the size of government

The economic literature has attributed part of the increase in government expenditure over the 20th century to female voting. This is puzzling, considering that the political science literature has documented that women tended to be more conservative than men over the first half of the 20th century. We argue that the current estimates of this relationship are afflicted by endogeneity bias. Using data for 46 countries and a novel set of instruments related to the diffusion of female suffrage across the globe, we find that, on average, the introduction of female suffrage did not increase either social expenditures or total government expenditure.     

Should the government directly intervene in stock market during a crisis?

Unlike foreign exchange markets where central banks frequently intervene, the governments strive not to intervene in the stock markets since intervention transmit negative signals and carry market-related side effects. The main reasons often cited in support of intervention are to bring price stability and to restore investors’ confidence. During the recent economic turmoil, opportunities for the governments to intervene in the stock markets were mainly exploited in emerging and developing countries. We study the outcome of the Russian government's intervention in its major stock market between September and October 2008. This intervention was intended to reverse the sudden and swift declining trend in traded security prices by altering the market's expectations. By using a combination of event study and a multivariate GARCH model, our findings does not support direct government intervention in the stock market during a crisis.     

Weakening the glass ceiling: does organizational growth reduce gender segregation in the upper tiers of Danish local government?

ABSTRACT

The theory of representative bureaucracy highlights gender segregation in the public sector and its detrimental implications for public policy outcomes. Focusing attention on organisational responses to this protracted problem, we supply evidence on whether organizational growth provides potential for change in the upper echelons of the public sector. An evaluation of the relationship between new hires and gender representation within the management tiers of Danish local government reveals an association between the recruitment of additional employees and improved gender integration. This is particularly pronounced for public organizations that employ fewer women. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Are exchange rates less important for trade in a more globalized world? Evidence for the new EU members

We evaluate the effect of exchange rate misalignments on the balance of trade and the role that global value chain participation plays in this effect for 11 new European Union member states. Using heterogeneous panel cointegration methods, we first estimate the real equilibrium exchange rate and detect episodes of currency misalignment. We find asymmetric effects of real currency misalignments: overvaluation has a negative effect, but undervaluation has no effect on the trade balance. Additionally, we find that global value chain participation weakens the effect of currency misalignments on the balance of trade. Therefore, our results suggest that globalization reduces the role of exchange rates in stimulating the domestic economy.