Unemployment and employment offices’ efficiency: What can be done?

Regional employment offices provide placement services to job-seekers and employers and organize active labor market programs. In this paper, we carry out a quantitative evaluation of the employment offices’ performance in Switzerland based on production efficiency measures. We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to estimate the performance of all employment offices and then account for factors in the local operating environment that are outside managerial control. This approach, and the ranking of employment offices, may easily be interpreted by policymakers and provides guidelines for raising the efficiency of the public employment service. Our findings suggest that there is considerable room for improved efficiency in employment service, which could lead to a lower level of structural unemployment. We also find that differences in the external operating environment have a significant influence upon the efficiency of employment offices.     

The R and D/Marketing interface and single informant bias in NPD research: an illustration of a benchmarking case study

Analysing the performance of new product development (NPD) processes requires the reliable assessment of non-documented organizational characteristics. Based on key informant literature we discuss the difficulties of gaining reliable information from respondents and we identify potential sources for heterogeneous perceptions among different respondents. We assume that NPD research may be subject to response biases, if it is based on sole informants only. We apply an existing benchmarking approach for NPD processes in a comprehensive case study in order to illustrate sources and effects of single informant biases. We find that perceptions differ substantially among the individual respondents. In particular, we observe different functional perceptions between respondents from Marketing and Research and Development. The results are consistent with expectations from interface theory. These perceptual differences have a severe impact on the managerial conclusions drawn from benchmarking. There appears to be no single reliable source of information within an organization. Furthermore, variances among informants' assessments should be recognized and regarded as valuable information. It is our recommendation that multiple informants ought to be included in future NPD research and benchmarking studies.     

A meta‐analysis of the non‐monetary effects of employee health management programs

This study was undertaken to review the literature on employee health management programs (EHMPs). We explored the history and characteristics of systematic organizational efforts to improve workforce health and well‐being. We believe that a historical perspective provides some insight into the economic, political, and social factors that have influenced the trend toward organizationally sanctioned health‐promotion efforts. Further, we investigated the likely effects of these programs on valued‐behavioral organizational outcomes such as employee performance, employee satisfaction, absenteeism, and voluntary turnover. Our findings show that voluntary general‐focus programs are unrelated to job performance, and voluntary programs are negatively related to absenteeism, but effects on absenteeism wane when the program is not voluntary. Moreover, EHMPs are minimally related to job satisfaction and slightly related to turnover. These results, examining behavioral outcomes of EHMPs, question the ability of EHMPs to provide desired behavioral changes in employees, changes that organizations seek to maximize such as increased performance. Are EHMPs more than just socially acceptable programs that help individuals with health problems? © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Towards a General Managerial Framework for Performance Measurement: A Comprehensive Highway Maintenance Application

This paper describes the application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to a highway maintenance setting, using measures of inputs, outputs and outcomes reported by New Zealand local authorities. A general framework of performance measurement is developed and illustrated through application to the highway setting. The framework encompasses a performance pyramid embodying multiple-perspectives of the organisation with a structure of measures linking critical success factors to process drivers, methods of data analysis and influencing factors such as professional culture. Distinctions between measures of outcome, output and input enable finer partitioning of analyses into managerial notions of efficiency, effectiveness and economy. The impact of environmental factors on efficiency is explored through two approaches suggested in the literature.     

Comparing German and Italian Public Universities: Convergence or Divergence in the Higher Education Landscape?

In this paper, we examine and compare the efficiency of Italian and German public universities and its evolution in the period 2001–2007. This topic is particularly important because of two main reasons: (i) as the universities are funded through public money in both countries, it is necessary to assess whether it has been used efficiently; (ii) the comparison among (similar) European countries can stimulate a benchmarking exercise that can be useful for managerial and policy making purposes. The results show that German universities are more efficient than their Italian counterparts are, using data envelopment analysis. However, the latter are catching up: in the period 2001–2007, their efficiency has improved more rapidly. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Technology Gap and Managerial Efficiency: A Comparison between Islamic and Conventional Banks in MENA

Journal of Productivity Analysis - In this paper, we compare the technology gap and managerial efficiency between Islamic banks and conventional banks in 15 MENA countries. Using unbalanced panel...     

Performance change of managers in two different uses of upward feedback: a longitudinal study in Korea

Using longitudinal data collected over a seven-year period, we explored the effectiveness of upward feedback programs in changing managerial behaviors over time. We also examined the different impact of upward feedback programs used for two different purposes (developmental vs. administrative) on the performance (i.e. upward ratings) of R&D managers. We found that managers who initially performed poorly showed more performance improvement than those whose initial performance was good. We also found that managers' performance improved more when the upward feedback program was used for administrative purposes than when used for developmental purposes. We noted a significant performance improvement at the time when the purpose of upward feedback program changed from developmental to administrative. Herein, we discuss the practical and theoretical implications of integrating upward feedback programs into standard corporate practice.     

Net-zero emission targets and the role of managerial environmental awareness,customer pressure,and regulatory control toward environmental performance

To avoid the worst effects of global warming, countries agreed to limit warming below 2.0°C and ideally to 1.5°C preindustrial level. This requires countries to drop half of their greenhouse gas emission by 2030 and reach net-zero emission by 2050. In this regard, current study explores the role of green production as a mediator in the impact of managerial environmental awareness, customer pressure, and regulatory control on environmental performance. The data collected from 381 managers was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. Results indicate that customer pressure, regulatory control, and managerial environmental awareness play a pivotal role toward green production, whereas only managerial environmental awareness among them directly influences environmental performance. Green production fully mediates the relationship from customer pressure and regulatory control to environmental performance. However, it partially mediates the relation between managerial environmental awareness and environmental performance. Similarly, the importance of green production for environmental performance is highlighted.     

The influence of organizational context on the managerial turnover–performance relationship

This study performs a comprehensive examination of organizational context in the relationship between managerial turnover and organizational performance. Using theoretical frameworks of human and social capital, we focus on the moderating roles of entity size, employment system, industry brand, and location. To test our hypotheses, we worked with the company records of a multinational fashion retail group with more than 4,000 stores grouped into eight different brands and 100,000 employees in more than 31 countries. To estimate the causal contextual effects of the relationship between voluntary managerial turnover and organizational performance, we designed a quasi-experiment using propensity score matching analysis. Our results show that the dysfunctional side of managerial turnover is significant for stores that are large, for stores managed under a primary employment system, for brands operating with higher levels of service orientation, and for countries with more restrictive employment protection legislation. We discuss the implications of these findings for practice and for future research.     

The antecedents of SME innovativeness in an emerging transition economy

Understanding forces that contribute to the success of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is very important, as these enterprises are vital for both developed and developing economies. Since innovativeness is among the most important means through which such businesses contribute to economic growth, numerous research studies were conducted to determine which factors positively impact SME's innovative efforts. This is an even more important issue for developing economies, where SMEs are often faced with inadequate infrastructure. Since there is a lack of studies on SME innovation in developing economies, often policy in such countries is based on findings from developed countries.In this paper, we explore factors that drive innovation activities in SMEs in a small emerging transition economy (Croatia), and compare it with findings from developed economies. In addition to factors used in most previous studies, we consider market scope, firm's market orientation and presence of strategic, managerial and marketing changes. We find that most factors that were found to be important in developed economies are important in developing economies as well. In addition to that, market scope was discovered to be a very important factor in both product and process innovation. Implementing corporate changes has positive impact on radical product innovation while implementing new organizational structures has positive effect on incremental innovation. When investigating determinants of product innovation, we distinguish new products of low novelty from new products of high novelty, and show that they need to be supported by different policies. To gain additional insight in innovation efforts, we examine obstacles to innovation. We find that firms that report facing obstacles are not less likely to innovate less, which suggests that innovators are able to work around obstacles without damaging effects to innovation. This study is based on a postal survey of 448 SMEs in Croatia, which was performed in 2004.     

Intra- and inter-country bank branch assessment using DEA

Increasingly globalized financial markets with considerable activity in the multinational sector have created the need to understand inter-country bank branch performance. This topic is relatively unstudied, primarily due to the immense difficulty encountered in gathering reliable data. Fortunately, we have been able to obtain data on a group of banks operating in one geographical market area, but in different countries. In this paper we critically assess bank branch profitability and productivity in seven national branch networks owned and operated by a multi-national financial services corporation. The corporate head office (owner) imposes its management philosophy equally on all of its subsidiaries, thus removing executive managerial and corporate disparity. Results suggest that countries in which branch performance is quite consistent amongst domestic branches are less productive and less profitable when compared to other countries that have more disparity in their efficiency scores. In addition, we discovered that, surprisingly, branches do not have to be productive in order to be profitable and this led us to somewhat of a major breakthrough in inter-country branch analysis. Significant managerial advice may be derived from these results vis-à-vis trans-national benchmarking and opportunity for performance improvements both at the branch level and nationally as well.

In union lies strength: Collaborative competence in new product development and its performance effects

It is widely recognized that new product development (NPD) is a highly interdependent process, yet efforts to empirically model the interdependence and examine its effect on firm performance are scarce. Our study addresses this research gap. We model firms’ abilities to collectively collaborate with suppliers, customers, and internal employee teams in NPD as collaborative competence and examine its impact on project and market performance. Using responses collected from 189 NPD managers, we find empirical evidence for collaborative competence and its differential impact on project and market performance. Specifically, we find that collaborative competence has a direct impact on project performance, but its impact on market performance is indirect, mediated through project performance. The results have significant managerial implications; achieving superior market performance from inter- and intra-organizational involvement is contingent on achieving superior project performance, and companies that fail to achieve desired project performance outcomes will also fail in achieving market performance goals.     

The Influence of Managerial Ownership on Bank Market Value,Performance, and Risk: Evidence from Banks Listed on the Stoxx Global Index

We follow agency theory to assess the influence of managerial ownership on the market value, performance, and risk of 123 listed banks in 23 countries included in the STOXX Global Index in 2007 and 2010. After controlling for bank characteristics, regulatory restrictions, and macroeconomic conditions, our findings show a positive relation between managerial ownership and both market value (Tobin's Q) and performance (ROA and ROE). Moreover, we find a negative relation between managerial ownership and risk (EDF, NPL/L, and Z‐SCORE). Bank market value and performance is a non‐linear, inverse U‐shaped function of managerial ownership. The negative relation between managerial ownership and bank risk is also non‐linear and U‐shaped. Our results remain robust to reverse causality. In their effort to immunize the global financial system from systemic risks, central banks and practitioners should find our results relevant for regulation purposes.     

Determinants of fundraising efficiency of nonprofit organizations: evidence from US public charitable organizations

Using a translog stochastic production frontier and maximum likelihood estimation method, we estimate fundraising efficiency and examine the determinants of fundraising efficiency in public charitable organizations in the United States. Our study shows that organizational size has a positive impact on fundraising efficiency and government grants have a negative impact on fundraising efficiency. We also show that charities that allocate more resources on fundraising related labor, as compared with fundraising‐related materials and equipments, are more efficient in fundraising. These findings provide important managerial implications for public charities. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Manager impacts on worker performance in American football: Do offensive coordinators impact quarterback performance in the National Football League?

Ample research in nonsports labor markets suggests that managerial quality significantly impacts worker productivity; however, studies using sports data have been less likely to find such evidence supporting the importance of managers/coaches. We examine the impact of offensive coordinators on quarterback performance in football. While we find that various offensive coordinator characteristics have little impact on quarterback performance, we show that individual offensive coordinators do seem to play a role in quarterback development. Consistent with research on manager effects outside of sports, this suggests that elite and poor offensive coordinators do significantly impact the productivity of the quarterbacks they manage.     

Performance measurement and best-practice benchmarking of mutual funds: combining stochastic dominance criteria with data envelopment analysis

We propose a method for mutual fund performance measurement and best-practice benchmarking, which endogenously identifies a dominating benchmark portfolio for each evaluated mutual fund. Dominating benchmarks provide information about efficiency improvement potential as well as portfolio strategies for achieving them. Portfolio diversification possibilities are accounts for by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Portfolio risk is accounted for in terms of the full return distribution by utilizing Stochastic Dominance (SD) criteria. The approach is illustrated by an application to US based environmentally responsible mutual funds.     

Performance impacts of management in Korean schools: Testing the Meier and O’Toole model

This article investigates the impact of management on performance in Korean schools. Drawing upon the model of Meier and O’Toole, we test the linear relationships of internal management, managerial networking, and managerial quality with multiple dimensions of performance. We also examine the nonlinear relationships between networking and performance. The results show a general consistency in the positive link between management and performance, providing evidence to support the key arguments from the model. Still, there are noticeable differences in specific findings. As one of the first applications of the Meier and O'Toole model in Asia, this study illustrates the importance of the national context in management–performance linkage.     

National culture and the revenue-expense matching

Prior studies on the link between country-level cultural aspects and firms' arbitrary accounting practices are scant, and they show mixed results. To gain more insight about the impact of national culture on earnings characteristics, we exploit the matching concept between revenues and expenses, which well reflects managerial estimation and discretion in earnings quality. Using a large sample of 57 countries over the period 1989–2012, we find that (1) the economic association between revenues and expenses becomes stronger in firms from collectivistic and high uncertainty-avoidant countries, (2) the impact of these dimensions of national culture on the matching is more salient for firms from countries characterized by a higher level of accrual accounting, a greater proportion of special-items, and limited openness, and (3) the cultural impact on matching is mainly driven by the correlation between revenue and discretionary expense (i.e., selling, general, and administrative expense). These findings are consistent with the view that national culture plays an informal governance role to influence firms' discretionary accounting choices.     

Efficiency analysis of East European electricity distribution in transition: legacy of the past?

This paper provides a cross-country efficiency analysis of electricity distribution companies in the East European transition countries of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. We use common nonparametric efficiency measurement such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Free Disposal Hull (FDH) under different assumptions and apply recent developments of statistical inference in nonparametric frontier models to test our hypotheses. We discuss the empirical problems of cross-country benchmarking approaches, in particular the comparability of different structures of electricity distribution companies. Our results suggest that Poland’s distribution companies are still inefficiently small; the Czech Republic features the highest efficiency; and Slovakia and Hungary occupy the middle range. We also note that privatization has had a positive effect on technical efficiency in the four countries. We use the phrase “legacy of the past” to describe the four countries in comparison to the efficiency of electricity distribution companies we studied in Germany.

Managerial markets in transition in Central and Eastern Europe: a field study and implications

In this paper, we report findings from the first comprehensive study of managerial labour markets in Central and Eastern Europe, drawing on field data from 157 firms in six countries. Results indicated widespread and deep changes occurring in the region’s managerial markets. Despite differences among countries in reform and economic performance, we found these particular changes to be surprisingly common across the countries studied. They included rapid rises in salary and benefit levels, narrowing of some skill gaps, shifts to more sophisticated methods of recruitment and an overall move towards Western management practices. The study also revealed severe shortages of qualified managers in all the countries studied. The resulting tightness in the managerial labour markets was reducing only modestly, despite other improvements. Foreign and joint-venture firms were relying disproportionately on expatriate managers, and may not have been sufficiently developing locals. We argue that, partly because of this, the distortions in pay, promotions and performance resulting from these tight markets are likely to persist for some time.