Individualism and collectivism revisited: a study of black and minority ethnic women

This article seeks to add discussion of the intersection of gender and ethnicity to the debates on individualism and collectivism. In doing so, it challenges the prevailing view, in these debates, of the rise of individualism and the decline in collectivism. Through a study of black and minority ethnic women trade unionists, it shows how a differentiated workforce, rather than leading to individualism at work, may contribute to union renewal and inspire more creative forms of collectivism.     

Managing unofficial inventory: a piece of the materiel management foundation

The implementation plan will remain the same: target an area of opportunity, measure and document the amount and value of the unofficial inventory, establish PAR levels, implement the use of hand-held terminals to assist in inventory control, and integrate inventory control with the implementation of new programs that will impact ordering, receiving, distribution, and invoicing. It is anticipated that the inventory in the main OR alone can be reduced by $1.5 million if we move forward with a stockless JIT system. This would reduce the days of inventory on hand from approximately 100 days to between 7 and 14 days. This could also mean a holding cost reduction of $150,000. The merit of reducing unofficial inventory is evident. Managing unofficial inventory is merely one piece of the successful materiel management foundation. The other foundation pieces include contract compliance and price negotiations, systematic methods of ordering products, and timely distribution of products to the end user. PHS cannot effectively move forward to a new, innovative materiel system for the future until we first measure, analyze, and document the present conditions. Once the foundation is laid by improving present business practices, then the framework of the structure can be designed and constructed. The goal is to implement a system that utilizes the full potential of people, equipment, logistics, and information so that our customers, the patient caretakers, do not have to worry about anything except the delivery of quality care.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

A study of multiple-output production functions: Klein's railroad study revisited

Using two sets of U.S. railroad data with two outputs and three inputs, we estimated production function parameters via the system of derived input demand functions, and via the dual cost function. The results indicate increasing returns to scale, and a violation of required convexity for the production function.     

The part-period balancing algorithm and its look ahead-look back feature: A theoretical and experimental analysis of a single stage lot-sizing procedure

This paper investigates the discrete Part-Period Balancing (PPB) lot-sizing algorithm and its optional feature, the Look Ahead-Look Back tests. PPB is the most commonly used dynamic lot-sizing procedure in practice and it has also been tested extensively in simulation experiments. Although its overall cost performance, relative to other heuristics, have been fairly good, a fundamental flaw with the model has been noted in the literature. This deficiency leads to poor performance under certain conditions.In this paper a simple adjustment to the main algorithm is analytically derived under the assumptions of a constant demand rate and an infinite planning horizon. The adjustment leads to an optimal behavior for the PPB heuristic under the stated conditions. Subsequent experimental analysis through simulation of lot-sizing performance in environments with time-varying, discrete demand shows that the proposed adjustment leads to significant cost reductions.This paper also analyzes the Look Ahead-Look Back tests which is the distinguishing feature between the PPB procedure and the Least Total Cost algorithm. The tests were devised to improve the cost performance of the PPB heuristic by marginally adjusting each tentative lot-size. The effect of the Look Ahead-Look Back tests have, however, never been verified in the literature. The tests have undergone some changes over time, when they have been included in commercial software packages for inventory management. We suggest yet another modified version in this paper.In the last portion of the paper, the cost effectiveness of the Look Ahead-Look Back tests is confirmed through simulation. That is, when used together with the original PPB procedure, they lead to an improved cost performance. It is also shown that a combination of these tests and the adjustment to the PPB procedure mentioned earlier leads to an even lower average total cost. All cost improvements are statistically significant. It is finally noted that the Look Ahead-Look Back tests perform poorly in certain constant demand situations. Additional analytic and experimental analysis shows that these results stem from a dominance of the Look Back test over the Look Ahead test, leading to the former test being performed more often. This can easily be corrected, however, by checking for sufficient variability in the data before the Look Back test is employed.     

The sale of relational capital through tenure profiles and tournaments

In this paper, a specific form of human capital is analyzed, relational capital, which consists of matches between market parties. Search and information costs make these matches valuable to both parties. Its peculiarity is that the control over such matches is transferred within firms from those who initially control it to anyone who works with it for a period.This characteristic allows someone who approaches the end of his working life to sell his relational capital to junior partners. This sale can explain upward sloping tenure profiles and can result in tournaments if juniors are budget-constrained and perfect contracting is not possible. The need to keep the amount of relational capital constant implies a generational balanced workforce within each firm.     

The emigrant entrepreneur: a theoretical framework and empirical approximation

The present paper examines the concept of emigrant entrepreneur in relation to level of training and language skills. The study focuses on the relationship of both variables with business activity, motivation and the process followed by entrepreneur. The results show a trend in the relationship between the variable language skills and the type of activity developed. The variable “level of training” is revealed as the most influential factor affecting the business sector of activity, the level of turnover and the attitude towards entrepreneurship.     

江南清丽地——湖州

湖州山水清远 ,文人辈出 ,向为江南望郡 ,以“丝绸之府、鱼米之乡、文物之邦”而名扬海内外。从战国末期楚春申君黄歇筑下菰城至今 ,湖州已有 2 30 0多年历史。我国著名的“文房四宝”之一的湖笔 ,就是产自该地。元代著名诗人戴袁元“游遍江南清丽地 ,人生只合驻湖州” ,写的就是湖州这块水乡福地。湖州概况湖州位于浙江省北部 ,北濒太湖 ,南接杭州 ,东北与苏州、西北与无锡环太湖而相连 ,处江苏、安徽、浙江三省交汇处。现辖德清、长兴、安吉三县和城区、南浔、菱湖三区 ,总面积 5 81 7平方公里 ,总人口 2 5 5万人。其中市区面积 1 5 6 6平…     

Correction to: Entry regulations and optimal prize allocation in parallel contests

Review of Economic Design - A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10058-021-00250-x     

Pooling: An experimental study of alternative testing and estimation procedures in a two-way error component model

This paper considers a two-way error component model with no lagged dependent variable and investigates the performance of various testing and estimation procedures applied to this model by means of Monte Carlo experiments. The following results were found: (1) The Chow-test performed poorly in testing the stability of cross-section regressions over time and in testing the stability of time-series regression across regions. (2) The Roy-Zellner test performed well and is recommended for testing the poolability of the data. (3) The Hausman specification test, employed to test the orthogonality assumption, gave a low frequency of Type I errors. (4) The Lagrange multiplier test, employed to test for zero variance components, did well except in cases where it was badly needed. (5) The problem of negative estimates of the variance components was found to be more serious in the two-way model than in the one-way model. However, replacing the negative variance estimates by zero did not have a serious effect on the performance of the second-round GLS estimates of the regression coefficients. (6) As in the one-way model, all the two-stage estimation methods performed reasonably well. (7) Better estimates of the variance components did not necessarily lead to better second-round GLS estimates of the regression coefficients.     

Strategic paradigms as a frame of explanation of innovations: a theoretical synthesis

Innovation has mainly been analysed as a rather narrow phenomenon. This has been an obstacle to a more operationally useful understanding of innovation processes. Two main approaches to explain innovation exist, namely economic innovation theory and the theory of entrepreneurship. Both are criticized in the article, the economic innovation theory for being based on a technological reductionism, the entrepreneurship theory for being based on an individualistic determinism. The two theories have not been coordinated to form a more comprehensive synthesis. The concept of technological paradigm within the economic innovation theory and the concept of entrepreneurial networks within the entrepreneurship theory mark some improvement in establishing a broader understanding of innovation, but have not yet been synthesized. The idea of paradigms is used in the article for a broader, synthesizing conception of innovations as being determined by shifts in strategic paradigms. A theoretical model of factors causing shifts in the strategic paradigm is set up.     

Front-line responses to customer orientation programmes: a theoretical and empirical analysis

Programmes designed to strengthen customer orientation among front-line service workers represent one of the most common forms of culture change initiatives within service organizations. Despite their importance to contemporary management theory and practice, we know relatively little about how employees react to interventions of this kind, and why they react as they do. The paper aims to address this gap in the literature. It does this through an analysis of front line reactions to a major customer care initiative in one of the largest supermarket chains in the UK. Using data from a large-scale employee survey carried out in seven stores, we first propose a general typology of employee responses to customer care programmes. We then examine some typical employee profiles associated with the main types of response. The analysis is placed within a wider theoretical context consisting of a critical overview of the main theories which might help explain the nature of general and individual reactions to culture change programmes. To this end, we address and draw upon a variety of literatures and debates linked to various aspects of organization and management, industrial psychology, training and development and critical discourse analysis.     

Validation of a social cohesion theoretical framework: a multiple group SEM strategy

Social cohesion dates back to the end of the nineteenth century. Back then, society experienced epochal transformations, as are also happening nowadays. Whenever there are epochal changes, a social order (cohesion) matter arises. The paper provides a conceptual scheme of social cohesion identifying its constituent dimensions subdivided by three spheres (macro, meso, micro) and two perspectives (objective and subjective). The overarching aim is to test the validity of the operationalization of the social cohesion model provided. Firstly, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis introducing an approach implemented in Mplus named exploratory structural equation modeling that shows several useful characteristics. Afterward, through a structural equation modeling approach, we performed several confirmatory factor analyses adopting a multiple group SEM strategy in order to cross-validate the social cohesion model.     

Solomon's Dilemma: An experimental study on dynamic implementation

This paper reports an experimental investigation on two mechanisms for the so-called King Solomon Dilemma, where one of them fails to implement the social choice rule dynamically. We compare the two mechanisms in terms of their welfare, incentive and learning properties.Received: 9 October 2000, Accepted: 13 February 2003, JEL Classification: C70, C78The authors are grateful to José Agulló, Paolo Battigalli, Ted Bergstrom, Ken Binmore, Sandro Brusco, Antonio Cabrales, Francesco Feri, Leo Hurwicz, Raffaele Miniaci, Miguel Angel Meléndez, Juan Mora, Juan D. Moreno-Ternero and seminar participants at the universities of Alicante and Trento for stimulating comments. We also thank an anonymous referee for thoughtful comments and, in particular, for raising questions that led to run additional sessions that significantly improved Sect. 4.4. Usual disclaimers apply. The first version of this paper was written while Giovanni Ponti was visiting the Department of Economics at UCSB. He thanks the Department for providing hospitality, encouragement and funding to run some experimental sessions. Financial support was also provided by CICYT (BEC2001-0980) and by the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas (IVIE).     

Scale-free distribution as an economic invariant: a theoretical approach

The presence of power laws (scale-free distributions) in widely different economic and social phenomena is well established. Here we focus on three specific cases viz. wealth distribution, firm size distribution and the city size distribution. We present a common framework to explain the origin of this feature in such seemingly unrelated contexts. It is shown that the equilibrium configurations of some general economic mechanisms are consistent with a power law in general and Zipf’s law in particular, in size distribution and it is an attractor under some conditions.     

Household migration: theoretical and empirical results

A consumption theory of migration is developed which supplements the traditional job search models. Migration, seen as an equilibrating reaction to an initially non-optimal location, is analyzed using standard demand theory. When one groups goods into those that are traded between areas and those that are not (weather, racial discrimination, crime rates, etc.) it is clear that only changing demands for the non-traded goods will result in changing optimal locations (assuming supplies are fixed). Illustrating, an increase in family income might lead to an increased demand for the non-traded good “personal safety.” This might result, for example, in the substitution (through migration) of a lower crime suburban neighborhood for a higher crime central city neighborhood.An empirically testable implication of the model is that the probability of migration should be positively related to changes in the absolute value of those exogenous variables which lead to altered demands for non-traded goods. This and other hypotheses were examined using cross-sectional data in a nonlinear maximum likelihood (probit) regression analysis. The results strongly support the model and its implications.     

Accurate estimation of expected coverage: revisited

As noted in several studies (Batta et al., Transp. Sci. 23 (1989) 277), (Burwell et al., Comput. Opns. Res. 20 (1993) 113), (Daskin, Network and Discrete Location, Wiley, New York, 1995), (Marianov and ReVelle, Eur. J. Opns. Res. 93 (1996) 110), (Saydam et al., Socio-Econ. Plann. Sci. 28(2) (1994) 113), the accurate estimation of expected coverage is an important and open issue. Although the maximum expected coverage model is empirically shown to prescribe a robust set of “optimal” locations, earlier findings suggest that it could also over or underestimate the coverage by a significant margin. In this study, we present a genetic algorithm (GA) that combines the expected coverage approach with the hypercube model (Jarvis, Mgmt. Sci. 31 (1985) 235), (Larson, Comput. Opns. Res. 1 (1974) 67), (Larson, Opns. Res. 23 (1975) 845) to solve the maximum expected coverage location problem with increased accuracy and realism. Our findings suggest that the GA provides at least as good solutions 94% of the time making it a viable alternative to the two-step procedures stipulated earlier.     

Forgive or buy back: an experimental study of debt relief

In recent years, debt relief has once again been pushed to the forefront of political and economic interest. The general consensus is that with less debt burden poor countries suffering from debt overhang will be able devote more resources towards investment thereby promoting their own growth and thus benefit their creditors in the long run. An open question is which mechanism is best to relieve debt burden. In this paper, we adopt experimental methods to study the effectiveness and efficiency of debt forgiveness and debt buyback. We find that creditors tend to reduce more debt under Forgiveness than Buyback. Debtors under Forgiveness are not significantly more reciprocal than under Buyback. After controlling for the amount of debt relief, creditors are significantly worse off under Forgiveness whereas debtors are indifferent between the two schemes. From the viewpoint of promoting debt relief, debt forgiveness appears to be a more effective tool to achieve this goal. Nevertheless, if one is to maximize the overall efficiency, debt buyback is superior to debt forgiveness in making best of each relief dollar.     

An experimental study of signaling in auctions with a flexible reserve price

This paper presents the results of an experimental study of preemptive jump bidding in English auctions with a flexible reserve price. While one of the possible explanations for jump bidding is based on signaling arguments, the ability of the seller to adjust his decision to accept an offer based on the bidding history makes the existence of a signaling equilibrium questionable. This paper shows that the seller's ability to set the reserve price after observing the opening bid reduces both jump bidding behavior and the use and interpretation of opening bids as a signaling device.