On planning and forecasting the location of retail and service activity

In countries with mixed economies, planning authorities cannot usually enforce micro location and travel decisions of urban activities, but are confined to forming macro location and transport policy, within which agents can operate according to the market. An attempt is made here to describe such multilevel behaviour of the planning authority, landlords, firms and customers, and to obtain non-cooperative equilibria in terms of the controls exerted by each group. The behaviour of the market groups is described via entropy maximization, while alternative modes of behaviour are ascribed to the authority. In addition, a Pareto-type solution is examined.     

Bayesian clustering of distributions in stochastic frontier analysis

In stochastic frontier analysis, firm-specific efficiencies and their distribution are often main variables of interest. If firms fall into several groups, it is natural to allow each group to have its own distribution. This paper considers a method for nonparametrically modelling these distributions using Dirichlet processes. A common problem when applying nonparametric methods to grouped data is small sample sizes for some groups which can lead to poor inference. Methods that allow dependence between each group’s distribution are one set of solutions. The proposed model clusters the groups and assumes that the unknown distribution for each group in a cluster are the same. These clusters are inferred from the data. Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are necessary for model-fitting and efficient methods are described. The model is illustrated on a cost frontier application to US hospitals.     

Testing inter-group ranking heterogeneity: do patient characteristics matter for prioritization of quality improvements in healthcare service?

In many research contexts, such as social science, marketing, education, psychology and medicine, it is frequently of interest to compare two or more groups of subjects (e.g. people of different gender, age or nationality), who are asked to rank a set of alternatives according to their personal liking or opinion, for investigating the presence of group effect. The common investigation aim is to detect customers with homogeneous preferences (or priorities) in order to serve each group as properly as possible. Several approaches have been proposed in the literature for testing ranking heterogeneity among groups of subjects. This paper focuses on an approach considering diversity as a generalization of the notion of variation and investigates the performance of a testing procedure for ranking heterogeneity based on the index of segregation power. The performance of the testing procedure has been investigated via a Monte Carlo simulation study under several scenarios, differing for group size, number of ranked alternatives and system of hypothesis. Furthermore, using a real data set, the testing procedure is exploited for investigating whether patient age and gender matter for patient prioritization of quality improvement in healthcare service.     

Management by objectives – an effective tool for teamwork?

In recent years many companies have introduced self-regulatory teamwork requiring changes in leadership behaviour and systems as well. Consequently a renewed interest has arisen in management by objectives (MBO) as a means for leading self-regulating teams. But how do MBO systems work and how effective are they? The MBO system of a company in the construction supply industry was analysed. This company had implemented MBO at team level five years ago. In order to explore the mechanisms and effects of MBO at team level a model for group goal setting was tested. One hundred and seventy-six employees in twenty-six teams participated in the study, but only twenty-one groups having objective productivity data were included in the analyses at team level. Group goal commitment and group goals moderated by task interdependence are supposed to influence group processes as a mediating variable for group effectiveness. Results do not consistently support this model. Group goals and goal commitment predict group productivity and job satisfaction but group processes mediate only the relationship to job satisfaction. The moderating effect of task interdependence could not be supported. The consequences for developing a model for MBO at team level and implementing effective MBO systems are discussed.     

Taxes and Benefits: Two Options to Cheat on the State

In this article we study the social norms to abstain from cheating on the state via benefit fraud and tax evasion. We interpret these norms (called benefit morale and tax morale) as moral goods, and derive testable hypotheses on whether their demand is determined by prices. Employing a large survey data set from OECD‐member countries we provide robust evidence that the demand responds to price proxy variables as predicted by theory. The main general conclusion of this article is that social norms (which are widely accepted as determinants of individual economic behaviour) are themselves influenced by economic factors.     

The Interaction of Top Management Group,Stakeholder, and Situational Factors on Certain Corporate Reputation Management Activities*

abstract This study examines when a firm's members are most likely to promote and defend its reputation. Building on past research in impression management theory and the upper‐echelons perspective, I argue that firms facing increased visibility among different stakeholder groups will increase corporate reputation management activities towards those groups and decrease activities towards other groups. I further argue that top management group characteristics will moderate these relationships, suggesting that certain top management groups are more attuned to the situational needs of reputation management. A set of hypotheses are tested using pooled cross‐sectional time‐series data on a set of Fortune 500 companies. Results indicate that firms generally directed reputation management activities towards their more visible stakeholders. However, the type and extent of reputation management behaviour varied. Specifically, for firms whose top management groups were more highly educated or output oriented, highly visible situations with the media were more likely to be associated with a higher use of press releases. Moreover, those same firms devoted more resources to mass media advertising under situations of high consumer visibility compared to firms whose top management groups were less educated or throughput oriented.     

COMMON SEASONAL FEATURES: GLOBAL UNEMPLOYMENT

Seasonal patterns in economic time series are generally examined from a univariate point of view. Using extensions of the unit root literature, important classes of seasonal processes are deterministic, stationary stochastic or mean reverting, and unit root stochastic. Time series tests have been developed for each of these. This paper examines seasonality in a multivariate context. Systems of economic variables can have trends, cycles and unit roots as well as the various types of seasonality. Restrictions such as cointegration and common cycles are here applied also to examine multivariate seasonal behaviour of economic variables. If each of a collection of series has a certain type of seasonality but a linear combination of these series can be found without seasonality, then the seasonal is said to be ‘common’. New tests are developed to determine if seasonal characteristics are common to a set of time series. These tests can be employed in the presence of various other time series structures. The analysis is applied to OECD data on unemployment for the period 1975.1 to 1993.4, and it is found that four diverse countries (Australia, Canada, Japan and USA) not only have common trends in their unemployment, but also have common deterministic seasonal features and a common cycle/stochastic seasonal feature. Such a collection of characteristics were not found in other groups of OECD countries.     

Estimation of a linear regression under microaggregation with the response variable as a sorting variable

Microaggregation is a popular statistical disclosure control technique for continuous data. The basic principle of microaggregation is to group the observations in a data set and to replace them by their corresponding group means. However, while reducing the disclosure risk of data files, the technique also affects the results of statistical analyses. The paper deals with the impact of microaggregation on a multiple linear regression in continuous variables. We show that parameter estimates are biased if the dependent variable is used to form the groups. Using this result, we develop a consistent estimator that removes the aggregation bias, and derive its asymptotic covariance matrix.     

Models with latent variables: LISREL versus PLS

Summary: LISREL and PLS are two different ways of modelling latent variables and their relations to each other within a set of manifest variables. These two models are contrasted with each other. In the special case of two groups of manifest variables the relations that exist between corresponding parameters and latent variables of both types of models are revealed.     

STRATEGY-MAKING IN CONTEXT: TEN EMPIRICAL ARCHETYPES

A more encompassing form of contingency theory is proposed to study organizations and their decision-making behaviour. Instead of looking at bivariate relationships between environmental, organizational, and decision- making style variables, it is suggested that researchers attempt to find a number of causal models which represent archetypal, or frequently occurring relationships amongst a broad host of such variables. In this manner, relationships are qualified by their context and a more complete picture of organizational functioning emerges. A methodology for isolating archetypes is presented and we discuss some findings which portray strategy making behaviour under different environmental and organizational states.     

The Development of Corporate Identity: A Political Perspective

abstract    A corporate identity denotes a set of attributes that senior managers ascribe to their organization. It is therefore an organizational identity articulated by a powerful interest group. It can constitute a claim which serves inter alia to justify the authority vested in top managers and to further their interests. The academic literature on organizational identity, and on corporate identity in particular, pays little attention to these political considerations. It focuses in an apolitical manner on shared meanings when corporate identity works, or on cognitive dissonance when it breaks down. In response to this analytical void, we develop a political analysis of corporate identity and its development, using as illustration a longitudinal study of successive changes in the corporate identity of a Brazilian telecommunications company. This suggests a cyclical model in which corporate identity definition and redefinition involve power relations, resource mobilization and struggles for legitimacy.     

Innovation and entrepreneurship in the academic setting: a systematic literature review

In the knowledge society, universities have assumed new missions and relations in order to contribute to economic and social development, while preserving their own sustainability. This article aims to explore scientific literature on innovation and entrepreneurship in the academic setting, describing how the field is organized, main terms and definitions, theoretical frameworks, and empirical models, in order to direct future research. A systematic literature review was conducted, in which articles indexed at Web of Science were initially submitted to a bibliometric analysis. Then, the content of a set of articles best fitting the objectives of the study was analyzed. Bibliometric analysis shows an increasing literature, with publications over more than 40 years. There are studies from many disciplines, with those in business and economics prevailing, mainly related to management and originating from the USA and Europe. Content analysis shows a fragmented literature, with definitions not showing a clear relationship between innovation and entrepreneurship, or their use within universities in coherence with their traditional definitions. Both theoretical frameworks and empirical models are very heterogeneous, but four groups of studies were identified based on their theoretical frameworks, and also based on their empirical models. With only a few exceptions, empirical models do not share many components and variables, and there are no clear boundaries between the different models. Despite the increasing literature, it is still fragmented and undertheorized, requiring more systematic and holistic studies, considering both the economic and the social aspects of innovation and entrepreneurship within universities.     

Identifying temporal relationships in educational planning

Planning is the first activity in the management of any organization or system. The whole process of planning is built around the specification of a set of key variables and the associated achievement levels. In any plan the target levels of the key variables are sought to be achieved by means of the provision of various inputs by the organization or system. One of the underlying fundamental aspects of planning concerns the temporal relationships between the key variables and the organizational inputs. These temporal relationships are important because the achievement of the key variables, within a specified period of time, depends on how well the organizational inputs are matched with these variables. Hence, identifying such temporal relationships becomes necessary. This paper describes the use of multivariate time series analysis in identifying temporal relationships in the planning of an education system. The implications of such an identification are also pointed out.     

From market failure to organisational failure

In this paper, we argue that environmental economists who have dedicated their attention to problems of market and regulatory failure have been remiss in ignoring the potential for failure in the one institution that actually manages environmental resources - the business firm. Traditionally the firm has been modelled as a unitary, rational, optimising persona ficta. There is, however, abundant empirical and theoretical evidence to suggest that the business firm is an imperfect institution in that there are systematic deviations between the environmental objectives of the firm's leaders (principals) and the actions of the firm's employees (agents) which determine environmental performance. In the paper, we draw parallels between the causes of market failure and public policy tools to correct them on one hand and the causes of organisational failure and the management tools suited to their remedy on the other. Although much of the paper is concerned with the interrelationship between public policy that promotes sustainability and business policy to fashion a sustainable enterprise, our work is relevant irrespective of the reason why a firm's principal may want to improve environmental performance. No matter what the reason, the principal must concern him- or herself with operationalising objectives in management systems. It is consistent with the precautionary principle to assume that employees will do what the firm measures and rewards, not what its principal says is important. We build a verbal model, based on the language of principal-agent theory, to analyse how different management instruments might be employed to improve the firm's environmental performance. The model is one of three decision makers in a vertical hierarchy. Each of the first two has various instruments at its disposal to influence the behaviour of the agents subordinate to it. In the end, the goal is to ensure consistency between social, economic, and personal objectives. The specific management tools we analyse, with reference to the formal modelling which has appeared in the literature, include the compensation system, quantification and monitoring of non-financial objectives, internal pricing, horizontal task restructuring, centralisation vs. decentralisation of decision making, and corporate sanctions of agents for negligence. We conclude the paper by reiterating that the corporate policy statements to the effect that the firm should respect the environment are insufficient to ensure that result. In addition, firms' principals must operationalise that goal in the systems of measurement and control which govern the behaviour of those who really matter - the employees.     

Exchange rate, inflation and unemployment in East European economies: the case of Poland and Hungary*

The aim of the paper is to model the impact of exchange rate on both inflation and unemployment variables in economies which are characterized by important structural changes, i.e. a transition phase moving from centralized economies towards market economies. This phenomenon, which is common to the East European countries, stressed different effects both for what concerns the behaviour of economic agents and for what concerns fiscal and monetary measures adopted by governments and aiming to keep under control the inflation–unemployment trade off. Time series relationships between these variables are investigated within an econometric model. Economic theory and the available data on the hypothetically relevant variables, along with the consideration of the main facts occurred in the period under study, characterize our information set. It is found that single equation analysis yields inefficient inference relative to the whole system analysis, and important structural changes are detected which reflect possible breaks in the structure of the economic system along with a change in economic policy.     

External workers’ perception of leadership behaviour – a study of Swedish temporary agency workers and contractors

The increasing prevalence of externalised work arrangements in industrialised countries has brought with it ever greater managerial complexity in the workplace. This article explores how leadership behaviour is perceived by internal and external workers within a public authority in Sweden. Questionnaire data from 505 temporary agency workers (TAWs), contractors and internal employees have been analysed. Multinomial logistic regression analyses indicate that external workers such as TAWs and contractors are more likely than internal employees to notice leadership profiles, including pronounced, task‐oriented leadership behaviour. These results hold true when controlled for demographic and socio‐economic variables and organisational tenure. A practical implication is that explicit attention should be paid to the need for leadership training in developing HRM strategies with regard to external employees.     

On Kin Groups and Wages in the Ghanaian Labour Market

A common feature of African societies is that individuals belong to kin groups which impose reciprocal obligations upon their members. In the modern economy, where large scale production is required, forms must employ multiple kin groups. In such cases kin groups will try to favour their own members in the assignment of good jobs. We analyze the effects of kin group patronage in the modern sector. We set out a model in which kin group favouritism is shown to give rise to a wage premium for the largest kin group. We then use an unusually rich data set from Ghana to test for kin group favouritism, empirically distinguishing it from 'taste for discrimination'. We find that in the private sector there is no evidence for kin group patronage and earning functions (corrected for selection into the various sectors) reveal that workers are paid according to their human capital attributes. By contrast, public sector workers are rewarded for their credentials and membership of the right kin group, not for their productive characteristics. The kin group premium is about 25 percent and is statistically robust to alternative specifications.     

Psychological profile of subjects facilitating responsible preventive behavior

In the tradition of the psychological investigation there are some antecedents dedicated to the evaluation of the dissonance between attitude and observable behaviour. Some works in ecology showed that only some subjects are able to maintain a favourable attitude towards the waste recycling and also to do it in an efficient form. The majority thinks that it is a good action but they do not exert it. From this concept, in this work we establish the idea of preventionist responsible behaviour to define those subjects that such cognitive dissonance does not exist and that they maintain favourable attitudes towards the prevention and at the same time they exert the behaviours derived from that attitude. We compare a group of preventionist workers with a control group with nonpreventionist behaviour in a series of psychological variables in order to establish a differential profile (case control study). Data were collected between October 2006 and January 2007. The results showed a clear profile in variables like control, neuroticism, monitoring rules, etc.     

Modelling and Forecasting Fiscal Variables for the Euro Area*

In this paper, we assess the possibility of producing unbiased forecasts for fiscal variables in the Euro area by comparing a set of procedures that rely on different information sets and econometric techniques. In particular, we consider autoregressive moving average models, Vector autoregressions, small‐scale semistructural models at the national and Euro area level, institutional forecasts (Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development), and pooling. Our small‐scale models are characterized by the joint modelling of fiscal and monetary policy using simple rules, combined with equations for the evolution of all the relevant fundamentals for the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact. We rank models on the basis of their forecasting performance using the mean square and mean absolute error criteria at different horizons. Overall, simple time‐series methods and pooling work well and are able to deliver unbiased forecasts, or slightly upward‐biased forecast for the debt–GDP dynamics. This result is mostly due to the short sample available, the robustness of simple methods to structural breaks, and to the difficulty of modelling the joint behaviour of several variables in a period of substantial institutional and economic changes. A bootstrap experiment highlights that, even when the data are generated using the estimated small‐scale multi‐country model, simple time‐series models can produce more accurate forecasts, because of their parsimonious specification.