The iron cage exposed: Institutional pressures and heterogeneity across the healthcare supply chain

The healthcare industry has been known to operate in a strong institutional environment (i.e. government regulations), and the implementation of inter-organizational systems (IOS) has followed an institutional process. Extending this perspective across different tiers in the healthcare supply chain, we investigate how organizations in different tiers in the supply chain (i.e. hospitals, distributors and manufacturers) respond to institutional pressures when implementing IOS. How institutional dynamics unfold across multiple tiers of a supply chain is an uncharted area of research, and we take the theory-building case study approach using data collected from ten organizations. Because organizations are embedded in their respective tiers, our within-tier analyses are equivalent to cross-organization analyses. In this regard, the cross-case analyses occur at two different levels: at each tier level (i.e. across multiple hospitals, multiple distributors and multiple manufacturers) and across the supply chain (i.e. across all three tiers). The study shows how different institutional pressures such as coercive, mimetic, and normative manifest across the tiers. It also demonstrates how a differential mix of endogenous and institutional pressures lead to mixed organizational responses across the tiers. The propositions developed from the study enrich institutional theory arguments within the information systems and supply chain management disciplines. They highlight how the IOS implementation dynamics within and across different tiers in a supply chain result in heterogeneous rather than isomorphic consequences, thereby exposing the “iron cage” of institutionalization.     

Justice As Subject and Object of Planning

Considerations of justice have moved to a central place in planning theory following Susan Fainstein's (2010) eloquent plea to elevate justice to the principal criterion for the evaluation of planning practice. Justice based on this understanding is the object of planning—the normative end that planning practice should strive to achieve. In this essay I explore the implications for planning theory and practice of making justice the subject rather than the object of planning. This formulation places justice at the center of rather than regarding it as the outcome of practice: what is of concern here is planning as the practice of justice rather than the justice of planning practice. The question for planning in this mode shifts from ‘Is this a just outcome?' to ‘What is justice in this situation?'. Based on John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy, this question transcends the dualisms between subject and object, and process and outcome, by understanding outcomes as already formulated (what Dewey called ends‐in‐view) in the process of their production. A planning process that takes justice as its subject is anti‐foundational and contextual rather than universal, anticipatory rather than retrospective, generative of solutions rather than evaluative of outcomes, culturally encompassing rather than project‐delimited, and inclusively democratic rather than expert‐driven. Examples from a variety of sources illustrate the practice of justice as the subject of planning.     

Henry George,Jane Jacobs,and Free Trade

Henry George and Jane Jacobs were both journalists and made a contribution to economics based on their commitment to the original version of free trade, as understood by 19^th‐century liberals, rather than the late 20^th‐century version. The distinctive concept of free trade, as originally understood, was as an instrument for small‐scale producers to break up entrenched monopolies and serve the interests of the ordinary citizen. That was how Cobden used it in the debates over the Corn Laws in the 1840s, and how Ruskin, Gesell, Chesterton, and other critics conceived of economic liberation. In debates over free trade in recent decades, that term has come to mean a defense of power and privilege, the exact opposite of the intent of 19^th‐century liberals. George and Jacobs sought to restore the original meaning by developing theories of development and distribution that would enable the market system to benefit everyone.     

Do Managers with Limited Liability Take More Risky Decisions? An Information Acquisition Model

Risk‐neutral individuals take more risky decisions when they have limited liability. Risk‐neutral managers may not when acting as agents under contract and taking costly actions to acquire information before taking decisions. Limited liability makes it optimal to increase the reward for outcomes relatively more likely to arise from desirable than from undesirable actions. The resulting decisions may be less, rather than more, risky. Making a decision after acquiring information provides an additional reason to those in the classic principal‐agent literature for using contracts with pay increasing in the return. Further results on the form of contracts are also derived.     

How Do Alphas and Betas Move? Uncertainty,Learning and Time Variation in Risk Loadings*

I employ a parsimonious model with learning, but without conditioning information, to extract time‐varying measures of market‐risk sensitivities, pricing errors and pricing uncertainty. The evolution of these quantities has interesting implications for macroeconomic dynamics. Parameters estimated for US equity portfolios display significant low‐frequency fluctuations, along patterns that change across size and book‐to‐market stocks. Time‐varying betas display superior predictive accuracy for returns against constant and rolling‐window OLS estimates. As to the relationship of betas with business‐cycle variables, value stocks’ betas move pro‐cyclically, unlike those of growth stocks. Investment growth, rather than consumption, predicts the betas of value and small‐firm portfolios.     

Strategic Experimentation in the Lab

This paper reports the results of experimental tests of the Nash equilibrium predictions in a one‐armed bandit game with information spillover. Players learn the probability that a risky prospect pays by either taking draws from the distribution themselves or observing the outcome of another player's choice. Our experiment is designed to learn whether players experiment strategically, anticipating the opportunity to free‐ride on others' information and doing so. While error rates exhibit a bias toward under‐experimentation, we observe a significant strategic effect. Structural parameter estimates suggest the lack of experimentation observed is due to decision error and somewhat pessimistic priors, rather than risk preferences or probability weighting. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multinational Exposure and the Quality of New Chinese Exports

We exploit information on the geographic, product and trader characteristics of China's 1997–2009 exports to examine how the evolving city‐industry presence of multinational firms influenced the quality, frequency and survival of new export transactions by private Chinese firms. Our results show that own‐industry multinational firm contact was associated with more frequent, higher‐valued, and longer‐lasting new trade transactions. These effects appear to arise from beneficial multinational spillovers, rather than selection effects due to increased multinational competition, as increases in own‐industry or other multinational presence were also associated with an increase in the number of trade transactions introduced by private Chinese firms.     

Towards an Agenda for Post‐carbon Cities: Lessons from Lilac,the UK's First Ecological,Affordable Cohousing Community

This article explores an agenda towards post‐carbon cities, extending and deepening established debates around low‐carbon, sustainable cities in the process. The label post‐carbon builds upon issues beyond those of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy conservation and climate change, adding a broader set of concerns, including economic justice, behaviour change, wellbeing, land ownership, the role of capital and the state, and community self‐management. The article draws upon a case study of an embryonic post‐carbon initiative completed in early 2013 called Lilac. Based in Leeds, Lilac stands for Low Impact Living Affordable Community and is the first attempt to build an affordable, ecological cohousing project in the UK. Its three aspects each respond to significant challenges: low‐impact living and the challenge of post‐carbon value change; affordability and the challenge of mutualism and equality; and community and the challenge of self‐governance. I conclude the article by exploring six lessons from Lilac that tentatively outline a roadmap towards post‐carbon cities: the need for holistic approaches that deal with complex challenges, prioritizing self‐determination rather than just participation, engaging with productive political tensions, adopting a process rather than an outcomes‐based approach, developing strategy for replicability, and finally, embracing a non‐parochial approach to localities.     

The Value Relevance of Foreign Income: an Australian, Canadian, and British Comparison

In this paper we examine the value relevance of geographical earnings disclosures for firms listed and domiciled in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. We find that foreign earnings in all three countries are valued differently than domestic earnings. The estimate of the association coefficient for foreign earnings changes with returns is positive in all three countries and statistically larger than the association coefficient for domestic earnings changes in Canada and the United Kingdom. Further tests show that this difference is related to relative growth opportunities of overseas operations to domestic operations. These findings are similar to results for foreign earnings association coefficients for American‐based multinationals found in Bodnar and Weintrop (1997). These results indicate that across countries the market perceives the results of foreign operations as value relevant and suggests that greater emphasis should be placed on the required disclosure of segmental data rather than on the concern that all countries prepare the segmental information using a common GAAP.     

Trade unions,collective bargaining and macroeconomic performance: a review

Coordination through collective bargaining is recognised as an influential determinant of labour market outcomes and macroeconomic performance. This article provides a systematic review of the empirical literature on the subject. What emerges from the review is that it is different types and coverage of bargaining coordination, rather than cross‐country variation in trade union density, that matter for economic performance. High levels of bargaining coverage tend to be associated with relatively poor economic performance, but this adverse relationship can be at least mitigated by high levels of bargaining coordination. In the absence of formal bargaining arrangements, economies often develop informal bargaining mechanisms whose effects are similar to those arising from formal bargaining provided they both operate at similar levels of coordination. The consequences of labour market coordination or absence thereof depend on the monetary policy regime as non‐accommodating monetary policy can eliminate some of the adverse unemployment consequences otherwise associated with industry‐level collective bargaining. Finally, bargaining coordination seems to matter most in times of rapid economic change rather than under more stable conditions. Overall, we conclude that it is the total ‘package’ of (formal and informal) labour market institutions that matters for the performance of the economy rather than unionisation as such or individual aspects of unionism.     

Resource balance, limited information and public policy

The U.S. Federal Government through its expenditure programs is having a major impact on all forms of pollution abatement. Total expenditures on Federal environmental programs amounted to $3.3 billion in 1972. A program of this magnitude can easily lead to waste and expenditures on conflicting goals unless carefully managed.

In a recent article in the Am. Econ. Rev. William Baumol examined the theoretical justification for and attacks on the Pigouvian tax and subsidy approach to controlling externalities. He concluded that while it is theoretically possible to control externalities through Pigou's procedure, the existence of multiple equilibrium and information requirements make it impractical. He proposes an alternate approach which changes the policy goal from maximization of social welfare to generation of acceptable levels of externalities. His goals differ drastically from those of the resource balance model presented by Kneese, Ayres and D'Arge of maximization of social welfare. This paper will combine the concept of resource balance with the goal of obtaining acceptable level of externalities at minimum cost in the presentation of a theoretical model that can be operationalized.

This paper proposes a general equilibrium method, utilizing the decomposition principle of linear programming, that will permit expenditures and regulations only on non-conflicting goals and includes a feedback mechanism for determining if a program is wasteful in relation to other programs. The model has five advantages over earlier proposals: (1) it is a general equilibrium rather than partial equilibrium model; (2) it is dynamic rather than static; (3) limited information rather than complete information is required for its implementation; (4) the model is heuristic rather than optimizing in the sense that policy decisions always increase the efficiency of pollution control, but because of the existence of uncertainty, they cannot be interpreted as maximizing social welfare; (5) the model incorporates multiple rather than a single policy tool.     

The Relationship Between Acculturation,Individualism/Collectivism,and Job Attribute Preferences for Hispanic MBAs*

ABSTRACT This research studied the influence of acculturation on the values of Hispanic MBAs in the USA and the effect these values have on job attribute preferences. As predicted, the less acculturated Hispanic MBAs had significantly higher collectivist values than either highly acculturated Hispanic or Anglo‐American MBAs. Surprisingly, acculturation was not related to individualism. As theorized, collectivistic, and not individualistic, values were significantly related to a preference for contextual job attributes. In contrast, individualistic, and not collectivistic, values were related to a preference for task‐related job attributes. The findings point to the importance of understanding an individual's level of acculturation and his/her specific values, rather than assuming differences based on ethnicity. In addition, the findings indicate that managers dealing with diversity within the USA or globally must understand their employees’ individualistic/collectivistic values before implementing any job design initiatives.     

Venture Capital Exit Rights

We investigate when and how venture capital contracts use exit rights such as drag‐along and tag‐along rights. Utilizing a data set of venture capital contracts from Germany, we find that almost all contracts allocate exit rights to the venture capitalist (VC) rather than to the entrepreneur. In our data set, the vast majority of exit rights deal with the sale of the entire company to a strategic investors rather than with initial public offerings (IPOs). We show that venture capital contracts include exit rights to mitigate potential hold‐up problems of the VC in the case of exit.     

基于SOA-BPM的物流信息系统集成平台设计与实现

SOA-BPM组合架构为第三方物流企业信息系统的集成提供了新的技术组合。给出了SOA-BPM组合架构在物流信息系统集成平台应用时的系统设计情况,平台的架构分为5层：系统接口层、SOA集成层、SOA-BPM映射层、BPM层、应用层。并以仓储管理信息系统为例描述了在平台中是如何实现业务流程处理的。     

World Vision case study of Sigma,an analysis tool based on the Alterian database engine

One of the major issues charities have been concerned with for many years is the inability to access donor records for marketing analysis purposes—donor information has literally been locked up. Charity database tools such as Raiser's Edge and Alms have been built to provide donor details on a record‐by‐record basis rather than to provide summary information across the entire base. These tools carry out this function very well and have the added benefit of providing data to call centre staff as they make or receive calls from donors. As each charity has to compete more intensely for their share of donor value, however, more detailed behavioural analysis of donor bases is required. To do this, access to the entire donor data is essential, not one record at a time, but structured in a way that allows ad hoc querying. This paper discusses the various technologies that can be used to access donor data for analytical purposes and explains the merits of a new database engine developed by Alterian that allows easy and fast access to many records across multiple data tables. It also shows how one organisation has used the engine to develop a bespoke analysis tool for the charity sector and how a leading relief and development agency, World Vision, is using this tool. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Firm Productivity and the Foreign‐Market Entry Decision

We use Japanese firm‐level data to examine how a firm’s productivity affects its foreign‐market entry strategy. The firm faces a choice between exporting and foreign direct investment (FDI). In the case of FDI, the firm has two options: greenfield investment or acquisition of an existing plant (M&A). If it selects greenfield investment, it has two ownership choices: whole ownership or a joint venture with a local company. Controlling for industry‐ and country‐specific characteristics, we find that the more productive a firm is, the more likely it is to choose FDI rather than exporting and greenfield investment rather than M&A.     

Residual income claimancy,monitoring, and the R&D firm: Theory with application to biotechs

This paper models the assignment of residual income claimancy to an R&D manager and applies the model to biotechnology firms. Residual income claimancy provides incentives for the manager to monitor the R&D process. Since the nature of R&D and of monitoring scientific effort is different, our model predicts stark differences in the residual income claimancy of managers and in other aspects of organization for innovative R&D firms like biotechs. In particular, R&D firms are expected to be more owner‐managed, more expert‐managed, and smaller in size. Cross‐sectional data on biotechnology firms is consistent with these implications. Additionally, longitudinal data indicate that as firms alter their focus on biotech research, their organizational structure changes as expected. Our approach suggests a process of firm and industry evolution related to technological maturity and points to the importance of incentives rather than risk sharing in determining organizational form, similar to the original analysis of franchising. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Global Market Segmentation and Patterns in Stock Market Reaction to US Earnings Announcements: Further Evidence

The purpose of this study is to investigate why the information content of US earnings announcements of non‐US firms cross‐listing in the US varies with the degree of capital market segmentation in the cross‐listing firms' countries of domicile. My evidence shows that indirect barriers to investing (i.e., accounting rules and liquidity differences) rather than direct investment barriers (i.e., investment restrictions) mainly account for this difference. After controlling for the level of accounting disclosure in a firm's country of domicile, I do not observe a systematic difference in the size of market's reaction to earnings announcements depending on the degree of market segmentation in the firm's country of domicile. This study contributes to the literature by providing evidence that accounting disclosure plays an important role in the integration of global capital markets.     

Analysing Misleading Discrete Responses: A Logit Model Based on Misclassified Data*

This study presents an alternative to direct questioning and randomized response approaches to obtain survey information about sensitive issues. The approach used here is based on a logit model that can be used when survey data on the dependent variable are misclassified. The method is applied to a direct survey of undergraduate cheating behaviour. Student responses may not always be truthful. In particular, a student claiming to be a non‐cheater may actually be a cheater. The results indicate that the incidence of cheating in our sample is approximately 70% rather than the self‐reported value of 51%.     

The Economic Consequences of Increased Disclosure: Evidence from Cross-Listings of Chinese Firms

In this paper, we investigate the impact of cross‐listings on information asymmetry risk, the cost of capital and firm value of a group of cross‐listed Chinese companies. Our paper is the first to examine the effect of cross‐listing on information asymmetry risk. Because cross‐listed firms are subject to increased disclosure requirements, increased regulatory scrutiny and increased legal liability, we propose that Chinese cross‐listed firms have lower information asymmetry risk, lower cost of capital and higher firm value than their non‐cross‐listed counterparts. We find in both univariate and multivariate tests that cross‐listed firms enjoyed lower information asymmetry risk in the domestic market compared with the non‐cross‐listed firms. We also find that cross‐listed firms have lower cost of capital in the cross‐listing market than non‐cross‐listed firms in the domestic markets. Finally, we find that cross‐listed firms are associated with higher firm value as measured by Tobin's Q. These results have implications for international investors and companies seeking cross‐listing opportunities.