An integrative model for competency development in organizations: the Flemish case

The prominent role of competency development in enhancing the success of employees and organizations has drawn the attention of practitioners leading them to introduce competency development as a central part of their human resource practices. Unfortunately, this strong managerial interest has not been fully translated into the academic world, creating a gap between theory and practice. The main purpose of this study is to fill this gap by exploring the nature of competency development in 22 Flemish organizations through a longitudinal multiple case study design. By using a grounded theory approach, a framework has emerged mapping out the different steps of competency development in the participating organizations. As such, this study can be an important first step toward closing the gap between practice and theory concerning competency development in organizations.     

A coalitional game-theoretic model of stable government forms with umpires

In this paper a government form is modeled as an effectivity function scheme (EFS) i.e. a parameterized family of effectivity functions having admissible weight-profiles of assemblies as the relevant parameters. Working in a 2-jurisdiction outcome space we show that the existence of umpires is consistent with strong core-stability of both neo-parliamentary and semi-presidential government forms provided that the majority formation rule is collegial, namely there is one electorally fixed minimal majority coalition.      

不同组织间胜任力模型的差异

文章从权力动机与组织结构、成就动机与激励机制、决策风格与产品市场和关系偏好与组织文化四个方面分别予以分析,为胜任力模型的构建提供指导。     

Organization design for service excellence: A review of the literature

It is commonly accepted that service excellence can enhance the competitive advantage of a firm. Two critical success factors in this regard are evaluated in this article: First, how best to structure an organization in order to provide flexibility in satisfying customer needs, and second, how certain human resource practices help create and improve customer service. © 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

An optimization model for volunteer assignments in humanitarian organizations

One of the challenges facing humanitarian organizations is that there exist limited decision technologies that are tailored specifically to their needs. While employee workforce management models have been the topic of extensive research over the past decades, very little work has yet concentrated on the problem of managing volunteers for humanitarian organizations. This paper develops a multi-criteria optimization model to assist in the assignment of volunteers to tasks, based upon a series of principles from the field of volunteer management. In particular, it offers a new volunteer management approach for incorporating the decision maker's preferences and knowledge into the volunteer assignment process, thus allowing him or her to closely examine the tradeoffs between potentially conflicting objectives. Test results illustrate the model's ability to capture these tradeoffs and represent the imprecision inherent in the work of humanitarian organizations, and thus demonstrate its ability to support efficient and effective volunteer management.     

The impact of housing rehabilitation on local neighborhoods: the case of small community development organizations

Across the nation, nonprofit organizations located in poor and declining neighborhoods are promoting homeownership in the hopes that their efforts will stave off decline and contribute to neighborhood stability. A common homeownership strategy among nonprofits is to acquire boarded-up or deteriorated homes at a low price, rehabilitate them, and then sell them at an affordable price. As these programs continue, nonprofit organizations want to show quantitatively that neighborhood revitalization works—that the funds devoted to an area stabilize neighborhoods or, even more, that they initiate a surge of continued upward progress. But, unlike their larger counterparts, smaller community development organizations are usually at a disadvantage in undertaking such an evaluation. This study will help illustrate what might be done. It focuses on the case of St. Joseph's Carpenter Society (SJCS) in Camden, New Jersey and assesses the quantitative impact that SJCS has on its target neighborhoods. A three-tiered approach is adopted that ranges from a target and comparison area analysis, to regression analysis of SJCS's impact on local housing prices, and finally to an examination of the relative market performance of SJCS's houses. All told, the analysis suggests that SJCS's rehabilitation and homeownership education activities appear to have a positive influence on the neighborhoods in its target area.     

Pollution-related variable input-output model: The Tulsa SMSA as a case study

Regional planners face conflicting goals of promoting regional growth and maintaining a cleaner environment since such growth usually causes polluted air. To help understand this complex relationship, pollution-related variable input-output model is developed. An interesting feature of this model is its ability to respond to both income and substitution effects. The pollution may be created not only by an increase in final demand (income effect) but also by a change in input cost (substitution effect). The conventional pollution related input-output model ([2.]) fails to capture the pollution effect associated with the substitution effect. Using the Tulsa SMSA as a case study, the operational impact of entry of a bicycle industry in the area to observe the development potential of other industries and resulting impact on air quality is simulated. Industrial impact was measured in terms of industrial output, personal income, employment, and regional import and export. The pollution impact was measured in terms of particulates, sulfur oxides, hydrocarbon, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides. The simulation analysis of antipollution control measures emphasized the substitution effect of the pollution-related variable input-output model. As input cost is increased due to antipollution control measures, equilibrium prices are increased, and technical coefficients are changed as a result of substituting behavior of firms. A change in technical coefficients affects both the output and the pollutants.     

The insight-value-perception (iVP) model for user-centered design

Through an inductive, multi-case analysis of eight medical device firms, this paper maps user-centered design and development practices to product performance outcomes. First, the data highlight that designing products under variable use conditions enabled firms to optimize products for widespread use and to increase the predictability of product outcomes. Second, the study shows that product adoption relied on maximizing benefits for multiple product stakeholders with often-conflicting needs, while minimizing required changes in end user behavior. Third, the paper highlights that managing perceptions toward product use through performance data positively influenced product adoption among the cases studied to a greater degree than did market demand or regulatory clearance. Fourth, rival explanations for outcomes involving limited user involvement, indicate that competitive advantages were achieved through maintaining dominant financial and intellectual property positions. From these findings, the insight-value-perception (iVP) model for user-centered design was constructed. This model links design and development practices to outcomes, from a combination of consumer-oriented, technical, and financial perspectives. Although rooted in the experiences of device developers within early stage medical device companies, the iVP Model may be used as a theoretical framework to examine a range of complex systems involving an embedded network of product users and stakeholders.     

Core and competitive equilibria of a coalitional exchange economy with infinite time horizon

The core and competitive equilibria of a large exchange economy on the commodity space ?^∞${?}^{\infty }$ will be discussed. We define the economy as a measure on the space of consumers’ characteristics following Hart and Kohlberg (1974), and prove the existence of competitive equilibria and their equivalence with the core without assuming the convexity of preferences.     

List augmentation with model based multiple imputation: a case study using a mixed-outcome factor model

This study concerns list augmentation in direct marketing. List augmentation is a special case of missing data imputation. We review previous work on the mixed outcome factor model and apply it for the purpose of list augmentation. The model deals with both discrete and continuous variables and allows us to augment the data for all subjects in a company's transaction database with soft data collected in a survey among a sample of those subjects. We propose a bootstrap-based imputation approach, which is appealing to use in combination with the factor model, since it allows one to include estimation uncertainty in the imputation procedure in a simple, yet adequate manner. We provide an empirical case study of the performance of the approach to a transaction data base of a bank.     

The Firm as a Multicontract Organization

The firm is often considered as a nexus of contracts linking the management and its different stakeholders: claim-holders, workers, unions, customers, suppliers, and the state, among others. This paper surveys recent work in contract theory, the multiprincipal incentive theory, and the theory of side contracts, which provides some insights into the structure of those contracts and therefore into the structure of the firm. First, we discuss the incomplete contracting assumptions underlying these variations of the usual grand contract approach. Second, we explain how the theoretical lessons learned from this work—the distribution of contracting rights, the power of incentive schemes within organizations, and the design of communication channels—apply to the theory of the firm.     

Roles, resources and benefits of intermediate organizations supporting triple helix collaborative R&D: The case of Precarn

Triple helix collaborations involving academia, government and industry are believed vital to the success of regional technology development. However, due to differences in culture, organizational functioning and incentive mechanisms as well as the different objectives of the various actors involved, such collaboration is difficult to create and sustain. A case study of the organization called Precarn, a collaborative, which manages a program of triple helix projects, is used here to illustrate how an intermediate organization can help triple helix partnerships towards the successful commercialization of new technologies. The paper contributes to the literature on managing R&D collaborations and innovation networks using organization theories to explain why and how collaborative intermediate organizations can facilitate successful technological adoption and commercialization across innovation networks.     

The fundraising efficiency in U.S. non-profit art organizations: an application of a Bayesian estimation approach using the stochastic frontier production model

This article examines how efficient art organizations are in raising funds from private giving. We measure fundraising efficiency using a Bayesian estimation approach using the stochastic frontier production model. We show that fundraising efficiencies are generally quite low for art organizations in the U.S. when private giving is only considered as a fundraising output; however, when the effect of fundraising on ticket sales is considered, fundraising efficiencies improve substantially. We also show that government grants have a negative impact on fundraising efficiency and therefore partially crowd out private giving.     

Knowledge management technology as a stage for strategic self-presentation: Implications for knowledge sharing in organizations

This article explores why it is often difficult for organizations to capture, store, and share employees' individually held expertise. Drawing on studies of the social construction of expertise and theories of transactive memory systems and self-presentation in computer-mediated environments, we argue that knowledge management technologies are not simple containers for the storage of expertise, but that they are stages upon which individuals enact performances of expertise. Through a longitudinal study of the work of IT technicians we show that users of a knowledge management technology strategically craft their own information entries to position themselves as experts vis-à-vis their coworkers. The data suggest that proactive self-presentations enacted by a few actors early on may spur reactive behaviors of strategic self-presentation across the organization. We explore implications of these findings for theories of transactive memory systems and technology use in organizations.     

Studying purchasing specialization in organizations: a multi-agent simulation approach

This paper reports on a series of multi-agent-based simulation experiments. The purpose of these experiments is to investigate how factors like task-complexity, availability of skills and corporate policies determine the degree to which a firm may benefit from a specific, dedicated purchasing department. Particular attention is paid to the purchasing of non-product-related items and services. Among the factors investigated are: corporate purchasing policies, available information, capacity of organizational members and the nature of the various purchasing activities. Preliminary results suggest that most of these factors impact on the degree of involvement of a purchasing department as well as the quality of the purchasing activities carried out. The results show the limits of Purchasing's added value and the importance of organizational learning in that respect.     

A case study for a new metrics for economic complexity: The Netherlands

We present a new approach for the economic analysis of countries, which we apply to the case of the Netherlands. Our study is based on a novel way to quantify exported products’ complexity and countries’ fitness which has been recently introduced in the literature. Adopting a framework in which products are clustered in sectors, we compare the different branches of the export of the Netherlands, taking into account the time evolution of their volumes, complexities and competitivenesses in the years 1995–2010. The High Tech and Life Sciences sectors share high quality products but low competitiveness; the opposite is true for Horticulture and Energy. We analyze in detail the Chemicals sector, finding a declining global complexity which is mostly driven by a shift towards products of lower quality. A growth forecast is also provided. In light of our results we suggest a differentiation in policy between the country’s self-defined industrial sectors.