The transparent organization: leadership in an open organization

The impersonal approach to health care leadership is over. Specialization, hierarchies, and impersonal decisions have led the public to distrust health care organizations. The charges of unnecessary cardiac surgery and abuses led the public to question our integrity. Annison and Wilford (1998) note that the character of a person and the character of an organization lead one to trust or distrust. They note that openness is one of the most important characteristics upon which we judge the character of a person or an organization. As the operating framework of partnerships and transparency becomes one that our staff and patients expect, our ability to handle openness will be an important way in which we are judged.     

The measurement of entry rates: Reply

The purpose of this paper is to respond to the comment by James H. Love on our 1991 paper inEmpirica explicitly examining the impact that the two distinct methods used to measure entry rates have had in influences made from statistical analyses. While we generally concur with Love's extension of our original paper, we do suggest that both theecological approach to measuring entry rates as well as thelabor market approach has an important contribution to make. What determines which method should be used to measure entry is the fundamental question being addressed.     

Optimal supervision intensity, collusion, and the organization of work

Abstract.  The intensity of supervision, defined as the proportion of supervisors to bottom-rank productive workers, differs widely across organizations and nations. Analysing three monitoring systems that differ in their supervision intensity, I show that the possibility of collective shirking arrangements can impose a system-dependent limit on the range of implementable performances. This brings about a tradeoff in the choice of the monitoring system: the system that economizes on incentive costs may implement an inferior range of performances. Applications of the model generate work-disutility-, ethics- and job-characteristics-based explanations for variations in the intensity of supervision.     

The Nursing Home Industry: A Reply

I expand on the ownership-based approach to money and argue that core elements of conflicting commodity, state, credit, and ownership-based money views can be integrated into a theory of money through a framework based on claims to property and the associated categories of settlement assets and money of account. This new synthesis reveals that, in all major ownership-based societies, individuals have entered into economic dealings by issuing enforceable claims to their property on the basis of ownership and security. Claims to property historically emerged in two forms: (i) debtor-issued claims, including negotiable instruments and book accounts; and (ii) creator-issued claims, such as bank notes and bank deposits. Commodities, coins, and state instruments attain their monetary roles because they allow private claims to be finally settled. Eight archetypes of monetary arrangements, reflecting the historical evolution of monetary systems, are identified and compared. I demonstrate the role of property assets in money creation, the proper significance of money of account, and delineate the role of state-issued payment instruments.     

The Piketty-Kaldor paradox of growth: Reply to Medlen

Despite the yawning gap between their time horizons, there are a few interesting similarities between Piketty and Keynes. A graph of the Piketty-Kaldor paradox of growth (where a lower growth rate leads to a higher saving rate) is similar to the familiar graph of the Keynesian paradox of thrift (where a lower saving rate leads to higher investment). Keynes showed that cautious spending can lead to recession, and Piketty showed that cautious growth can lead to maldistribution.     

The Correct Conception of Capital: A Reply to Baldwin Ranson

This paper assesses the economic importance and the limits of using the Economic Freedom Index (EFI) to help explain and realize higher levels of per-capita income. Specifically, I elaborate on the need to disaggregate and place the EFI into a coherent and meaningful theoretical context in order to generate economically cogent analytical predictions as well as more reasonable public policy recommendations. As it stands, the EFI can produce highly misleading causal results with potentially disastrous consequences for public policy. Hereby, I make a preliminary attempt at constructing an alternative aggregate index to measure the importance of market-related institutions for achieving higher levels of per-capita income. This alternative index, termed here the Good Capitalist Governance Index (GCGI), better correlates with per-capita income and has a higher threshold value than the Economic Freedom Index. The GCGI highlights the importance of secure private rights, limited corruption, and sound money for the realization of higher levels of per-capita income. The evidence supports the hypothesis that good capitalist governance requires a well-working, but not minimalist government.     

The spatial organization of multinational firms

Abstract Using six years of firm‐level data covering 224 regions of the enlarged European Union, we evaluate the importance to a firm of locating its activities (production, headquarters, R&D, logistics and sales) close together. We find that, after controlling for regional characteristics, being closely located to a previous investment positively affects firm location choice. However, the impact of distance is dependent on the type of investment (production or service). The impact dies out faster for service activities. Finally, we show that a surprisingly positive effect comes from locating a new production plant close to an existing production investment, but in another country.