Is there a marriage between productivity and quality?

What we have been reviewing is a workplace ethic of excellence, a management philosophy that has at its core a creative orientation that encourages diversity of vision that drives risk taking, participation, and collaborative employee endeavors within the context of shared rewards. To achieve this ethic of excellence in an industry battered by socio-eco-political and ethical hurricanes, we need to be genuflecting at the altar of opportunity and engaging in brainstorming, not only about the future, but also how we are going to get there. We need to abandon the reflex of engaging in crisis management. Health care management must assume the role of coach, mentor, and visionary, thus shedding the inane propensity to move along the comfortable road of bureaucracy, cynicism, redundancy, and control. Our future lies in a proactive, organizationally integrated, customer-oriented, and enabling environment that delivers high quality standards that maximize productivity. Therefore, in a world of change, there must be a marriage between quality improvement and productivity through implementation of QIPP processes and culture.     

Growth and government: Is there a difference between developed and developing countries?

I examine the role of government in the growth of 64 industrialized and developing countries, considering both expenditure and financing aspects of government. Recognizing that there may be differences between the two country groups, I estimate both standard OLS and dummy variable regressions. The general conclusion is that although most fiscal variables are not significantly related to economic growth, the means of financing matters more than government spending. I find that seigniorage and the budget surplus are important for growth, but the LDCs is the group that drive the results in all regressions.     

Is There a Natural Rate of Crime?

Studies in the economics of crime literature have reached mixed conclusions on the deterrence hypothesis. One explanation that has been offered for the failure to find evidence of a deterrent effect in the long run is the natural rate of crime. This article applies univariate unit root tests to crime series for the United Kingdom and United States and panel unit roots to crime rates for a panel of G7 countries to examine whether there is a natural rate of crime. Our main finding is that when we allow for two structural breaks in the univariate unit root test and a structural break in the panel data unit root test, there is strong evidence of a natural rate of crime. The policy implications of our findings is that governments should focus on altering the economic and social structural profile that determines crime in the long run rather than increasing expenditure on law enforcement that will at best reduce crime rates in the short run.     

Is There a Winning Formula for Union Organizing?

Between 1995 and 2004, Kate Bronfenbrenner wrote several studies arguing that union organizing would be more successful if certain tactics were used. Bronfenbrenner’s methodology seemed unassailable and her opinions were influential among union leaders, but organizing outcomes did not improve. To understand why, this study asked highly successful union organizers for their views. Their responses point to an entirely different conceptualization of the organizing process. Rather than follow a certain recipe, respondents saw their first priority as building relationships of trust with workers. Then, organizers and workers together could develop tactics tailored to the particular situation. If organizing success most requires relation-building skills and creativity, then it is more important for unions to hire the right organizers than to employ a given tactical formula.     

Performance evaluation of retail banking services: Is there a trade-off between production and quality?

We propose a two-stage data envelopment analysis model to give an insight on the internal structure of the banking sector and study the important role of service quality in the production process. The first stage deals with the production performance and is related with the optimal use of resources to produce banking services, whereas the second stage deals with the service quality performance using customer-reported satisfaction and loyalty measures. This paper analyzes the efficiency and productivity of 36 branches of a single bank of Greece over the period 2016–2018. The results indicate the existence of a strong trade-off between production and service quality. Further insights of the study indicate that the branch size significantly affects the service quality and overall efficiency. Moreover, the employee assessments by the performance appraisal system of the bank are mainly associated with the service production and not with service quality. Finally, this study presents a managerial decision-making matrix and makes recommendations to help bank managers to improve the retail network performance.     

The Industrial Statistics Divide: Are Statisticians Really Relevant to Business and Industry?

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Will We Ever Meet Again? The Relationship between Inter-Firm Managerial Migration and the Circulation of Client Ties

A large body of research shows that the migration of managers from one professional service firm to another weakens the old employer’s relationship with its clients, because migrating managers remove their relationship-specific knowledge and expertise – i.e., human and social capital – from their old employers, redeploying it to their new employers. This study extends this research by introducing a bi-directional perspective of social capital in which both firms and managers may exploit these relationship-specific resources. We use theory on social capital to build arguments about how one form of manager mobility, manager migration between two service providers in a single market, can both lead and lag the movement of client ties between those providers, and signaling theory to hypothesize the conditions under which this is likely to occur. Analyses using longitudinal data on New York City advertising agencies generally support our arguments. Our findings contribute to theory and research on manager migration, social capital, and signaling, and raise new questions for how the portability of relationship-specific social capital shapes markets.     

How Does Open Innovation Modify the Relationship between Environmental Regulations and Productivity?

With increasingly severe environmental regulations, a pressing issue has been the need for firms to develop efficient strategies to achieve environmental protection and high productivity. Several environmental experts argue that firms can respond to environmental regulations through innovation; however, the question of how to innovate is unanswered in the environmental literature. Therefore, this study focuses on the open innovation strategy approach to respond to environmental regulations and maintain high productivity by incorporating the idea of innovation management. We first divide open innovation strategy into two modes of external technology acquisition: foreign and domestic. Next, we examine these modes' mediation effects on environmental regulations and productivity. In addition, we test the moderating effect of internal R&D on the relationship between external technology acquisition and productivity. Using data on 35 Chinese industrial sectors from 2001 to 2010, the empirical findings show that foreign technology significantly and positively mediates the link between environmental regulations and productivity, while domestic technology does not. Internal R&D investment, as an absorptive capacity, positively moderates the effect of foreign technology; however, it negatively moderates the effect of domestic technology on productivity. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Is there an inverse U-shaped relationship between pay and performance?

Given the increasing concerns about the escalation in executive compensation, this study aims to provide new insights into the link between executive pay and firm performance by empirically testing for an inverse U-shaped relationship. For this purpose, we re-examine the relation using a nonlinear model. Our results show a significant inverse U-shaped relationship between executive pay and firm performance. The finding provides support for both optimal contracting and managerial power theories with the former dominating at low level of firm performance and the latter dominating at high level of firm performance.     

Is your open-innovation successful? The mediating role of a firm's organizational and social context

Open firms are not equally successful. This is because, in order to benefit from external sources of knowledge, firms must be able to absorb such knowledge. The paper outlines a firm's context as a set of organizational and social features, which may be considered absorptive capacity antecedents. It explores the mediating role of such antecedents in the relationship – hitherto insufficiently researched – between the degree of openness and innovative performance. The use of a methodology combining both direct interviews and survey of Italian firms has allowed us to confirm the supposed mediating role. We also identify different modes for companies to open up their innovation process and, for each of them, the antecedents that are consistent with choices regarding the degree of openness.     

The R&D Investment–Uncertainty Relationship: Do Strategic Rivalry and Firm Size Matter?

This paper uses a real options perspective to augment a standard research and development (R&D) investment model and implement a firm‐level empirical analysis to assess the practical significance of market uncertainty and its interactions with strategic rivalry and firm size. We use a measure of firm‐relevant market uncertainty along with panel data and find that firms invest less in current R&D as uncertainty about market returns increases. The effect of firm‐specific uncertainty on R&D investment is smaller in markets where strategic rivalry is likely to be more intense. Furthermore, holding access to financing constant, the effect of uncertainty on R&D investment is attenuated for large firms. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Relationship between the Mean and the Constant in a Box–Jenkins Time Series Model

In some publications the mean is identified with the constant of a Box–Jenkins time series model. In this paper the relation between both terms is demonstrated. Furthermore, by means of an example, the errors which may be made if one does not use each term adequately are shown.     

Demographics and Business Cycle Volatility: A Spurious Relationship?

This paper replicates the estimation results of three studies on the impact of the age composition of the labor force on business cycle volatility and investigates whether they signal a meaningful long‐run relationship. We show that both the volatile‐age labor force share variable and the business cycle volatility measure exhibit non‐stationary behavior but find no robust evidence of cointegration. Hence the estimation results reported in the literature may be spurious. This conclusion is further supported by the finding that the strong relationship (i) disappears when cross‐sectional dependence is accounted for using the CCEP estimator and (ii) is highly sensitive to small changes in the composition of the sample, to data revisions, and to the exact definition of the volatile‐age labor share. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mutuality between selves and others in social entrepreneurship: Not a mission impossible?

The social entrepreneurship (SE) discourse habitually casts social entrepreneurs as heroic, creating economic and social value, whereas those whom they strive to assist are portrayed as disadvantaged and in need of interventions. This implies an implicit differentiation between knowing, agentic entrepreneurs and less-knowing, more passive beneficiaries. In this article, we seek to unfold the subtle ordering of relations in SE and problematize power-related aspects and ideological influences that potentially overshadow dimensions of mutuality and relationality inherent to SE. From an examination of two cases, we hypothesize that differentiations between knowing selves and learning others tend to disintegrate when entrepreneurs and beneficiaries enter into closer interaction. Adopting a postcolonial framework, we identify three forms of relations in SE: transactional, ambiguous/interactional and transcending.     

Revisiting the difference between mixed methods and multimethods: Is it all in the name?

The literature on mixed methods and multimethods has burgeoned over the last 20 years, and researchers from a growing number and diversity of fields have progressively embraced these approaches. However, rapid growth in any movement inevitably gives rise to gaps or shortcomings, such as “identity crises” or divergent conceptual views. Although some authors draw a clear and sometimes opinionated distinction between mixed methods and multimethods, for others, they are synonymous. The concepts underlying both terms therefore have become blurred and generated much confusion. The aim of this article is to explore the origins of the confusion, describe our view of mixed methods and multimethod studies, and by doing so, help to clearly delineate the two concepts. The authors have presented their opinion of how these terms and concepts should be distinguished and call for a constructive debate of the issues involved in the mixed methods and multimethod literature. This is a way truly to propel the field forward.     

Linguistics and Economics: Is Entrepreneurship Innate?

One of the great scientific achievements of the second half of the twentieth century was the advance in linguistics. Noam Chomsky was one of its foremost exponents. Chomsky and his followers claim that human beings have an inbuilt ‘language acquisition device’ which allows children to acquire language with extraordinary ease. Language is as much part of human nature as flying is that of birds. This paper argues that, like language, the propensity to trade is an inbuilt characteristic of human beings. Language permeates all human faculties including the ability to plan for the future. As a result human economic activity shares many important features with language, in particular its recursive and unbounded character. There is also evidence that the concept of property is innate. It follows that attempts to frustrate or limit the exercise of property rights and their use in trade works against the grain of human nature. Limits on the natural expression of entrepreneurship may be as damaging as other constraints on human flourishing.     

Does Public Service Motivation Mediate the Relationship between Goal Clarity and both Organizational Commitment and Extra-Role Behaviours?

Research has not considered how goal clarity can affect work attitudes through public service motivation (PSM). As a result, a model was developed to examine the relationship between goal clarity, PSM, and two employee work attitudes and behaviours (i.e., organizational commitment and extra-role behaviours). Several important findings emerged from the model. First, goal clarity was positively associated with PSM. Second, goal clarity was positively associated with both organizational commitment and extra-role behaviours. Finally, PSM was found to partially mediate the relationship between goal clarity and both organizational commitment and extra-role behaviours. The implications these findings have for theory and practice are discussed.     

Is There Any Ethical and Moral Consideration in the Theory and Practice of Global Business Social Darwinism?

Abstract

This article has revisited the interchangeable meanings of morality and ethics in today's global business practices. This article argues that in the theory and practice of the global business Social Darwinism, there is no room for ethics and morality because the competitive international business ideology promotes the “survival of the fittest.” Furthermore, the purpose of this article is to first define the distinction between morality and ethics and their application in the real world of today's business; second, to analyze the ideological foundation of the international business practices of Social Darwinism in relation to global production, consumption, profitability, and efficacy.