Climate for opportunity:: A conceptual model

Climate theory is integrated with justice theory and the values literature to develop a model of climate for opportunity. The climate for opportunity model is offered as a useful framework for organizations interested in managing diversity. The core of the model addresses the complex manner in which environmental factors, experiences, values, and cognitions create perceptions about fair treatment in the workplace. Antecedents at the organizational, work group, and individual levels are considered. Climate for opportunity's impact on individual, work group, and organizational level outcomes are also discussed. The model provides a practical framework for understanding the complexities of managing fairly and undertaking climate change interventions.     

Expatriate Adjustment:

The aims of this paper are to underscore the relevance of expatriates' racial background, sex, age, nationality and religion to their adjustment and to propose strategies for dealing with hosts' negative perceptions of expatriates' sociobiological backgrounds. The paper argues that the growing diversity of expatriates and the current nationalistic and ethnic conflicts in many parts of the world calls for the need to discuss,expatriates' sociobiological background explicitly. The strategies for dealing with hosts' negative perceptions are based on initiating contact, reducing uncertainty and being diplomatic and assertive rather than aggressive during intercultural interaction.     

Editorial introduction: HRM and performance: confronting theory and reality

This editorial introduction has twin purposes. The first is to make a wide audience aware of the new Dutch HRM Network. The second is to introduce a set of papers which make a contribution to the connections between HR policies/strategies and organizational performance. These purposes are linked by the fact that the papers come from the inaugural conference of the Network that was held in the Rotterdam School of Economics at Erasmus University at the end of 1999.     

N-kernel: A review

The package performs estimation and prediction in the context of time-series or cross-section nonparametric models. It is menu-driven and very easy to operate. The manual reads well. This version has some limitations, which can easily be corrected. Nevertheless it provides a useful pedagogical and research tool, even for people not familiar with nonparametric analysis.     

Corruption: A Review

As is increasingly recognised in academic literature and by international organisations, corruption acts as a major deterrent to growth and development. The aim of this survey is to organise and summarise existing theoretical and empirical work on corruption with a view to identifying opportunities for further research. The paper begins with a brief overview of key definitions of corruption, and then turns to a review of the factors that favour or deter the growth of corruption together with a brief look at related models. This is followed by an examination of the consequences of corruption for society, and the consideration of measures that might help to reduce corruption. The paper ends with suggestions for future research and includes summaries of data sources and key variables for use in this research.     

The London Business School with Gower Publishing: Forecast Release: THE GULF WAR: RECESSION AND RECOVERY

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait occurred at a time when many economies were in or heading towards recession. These trends were exacerbated by the Gulf crisis which had adverse effects on consumer and producer confidence. Now that the Gulf war is over, confidence is recovering but against the background of a relatively severe recession. In this Forecast Release we make use of a simple statistical tool to throw some light on how much of the downturn was due to confidence factors and thus to draw implications for the recovery. In broad terms we find that a large part of the US recession, in particular the downturn in consumer spending, was attributable to the effects on confidence of the Gulf crisis. In both the US and the UK, however, the effects on producer confidence were less marked, though here too the analysis suggests that, at its low point, producer confidence was also adversely affected by the crisis in the Gulf. The latest data show that there has been a full recovery in US consumer confidence but that producer confidence on both sides of the Atlantic remains well below pre-Gulf trends. On this basis, therefore, we would expect a further recovery in industry's confidence over the coming months.     

Correction to: Determinants of agricultural entrepreneurship: a GEM data based study

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - The original article has been corrected. The spelling of author name Amit Kumar Dviwedi was incorrect and has now been corrected to Amit...     

The Russian Crisis:

ABSTRACT Since 1992, the rhetoric of Russian economic reformers has been one of full-speed ahead to a free-market economy. The reality, however, has diverged significantly from this rhetoric at both a broad "rules of the game" level and specific "policy within rules" level. The resulting ambiguity of the economic environment and the lingering effects of the previous system which is supposed to be reformed has led to a continued deterioration of the Russian economy. This paper offers a modified defense of "shock therapy" as a path to a cure for Russia's economic malaise, as opposed to the cure itself.     

AUCTIONS: AN INTRODUCTION

Abstract. This is a detailed introduction to auction theory. It begins with a simple analysis of standard auctions and then uses a strikingly simple general solution of symmetric private values auctions to prove the payoff equivalence of many auction rules. The basic framework is then modified to admit risk aversion, multi-unit and repeated auctions as well as collusion. Then follows an introduction to optimal auctions, with and without stochastic entry, and to common value auctions and the winner's curse problem. The survey closes with a sample of applications, from the regulation of natural monopolies to price competition in oligopoly and the government securities market.     

Political Partisanship:

A bstract Analysis of the bases of political party choice in the United States reveals that social structural factors are more important than economic factors in determining patterns of partisanship. Among economic factors, moreover, differentiation in the realms of credit and consumption is more important than differences in relation to economic production. The absence of traditional class-conflict politics, however, does not lead to a state of political consensus, because new modes of economic differentiation have emerged, cleavages based on earlier economic cleavages have persisted after the basic economic issues have been resolved, and non-economic cleavages, particularly along racial lines, still await resolution.     

Coordination Through Contracting: Experience with the Estonian: out-of-hospital emergency medicine

Abstract

The article examines the effects of market-type contracting on the capacity of the government to integrate public service stakeholders and to assure coherence in service provision. The study focuses on the case of the Estonian out-of-hospital emergency medical care and analyses it through an analytical framework, concentrating on basic coordination mechanisms, coordination resources and their application in a specific policy field. It is found that effective market-based coordination presumes long-term learning and the use of various coordination resources that go beyond simple bargaining. In addition, contracting for service delivery has a significant influence on the capacity of the government to coordinate both policy-making and the interlinkages of different policies.     

Beyond Interaction: Theories

An interaction between two factors in their effects on a dependent variable is here modelled as (first) summation of quantities derived from the two factors individually, and (second) a nonlinear relation between that sum and the dependent variable. There are only a few possible nonlinear functions that need to be considered. The dataset used as an example is a 3 × 3 table showing crossover interaction. The proposed explanation uses a quadratic curve (which has a descending limb and an ascending limb) to achieve reversal of the effect of one factor for some categories of the other factor.     

Winecon: An Evaluation

This paper presents the results of an evaluation of the WinEcon computer-based learning (CBL) software released into the academic community in September 1995. The focus of the paper is the impact of continued and directed WinEcon use on students' learning as measured by their examination results. The subjects of the study were the 240 Leicester University students enrolled on the 1995/96 introductory microeconomics course who were categorised by their use of WinEcon. Using traditional regression and decomposition techniques, we show that directed use of WinEcon can enhance exam performance by a small but significant proportion, enough to improve the pass rate of the overall course.     

In pursuit of monopoly power: Recent quantitative work in industrial: Economics

This paper reviews empirical work in industrial organization devoted to the question of inferring the existence of monopoly power from data on observed market outcomes like profits and prices. The discussion covers inter-industry work long conventional in the area, newer developments in intra-industry analysis and case studies, and concludes with some remarks on a small but growing body of work assessing market dynamics. The wide range of studies reviewed all generally reveal that market power exists in many industries.     

University-industry innovation collaboration: Reconceptualization

This study investigates university-industry (U-I) innovation collaboration and proposes a renewed and empirically tested conceptual approach to analyse it. The motivation for the research emerged from the realisation that the majority of studies on university-industry innovation collaboration on organisational level present limited verification of why some seemingly similar collaboration projects fail while others thrive. Therefore, we aimed for reconceptualization of the way university-industry collaboration is analysed by developing the respective approach that was empirically tested via multiple case-study research of 12 cases. The approach combines elements of the U-I collaboration literature with a model of interaction from semiotics and boundary-crossing ideas from organisation theory. The novelty of this approach lies in explaining the heterogeneity and variation of U-I collaboration on individual level. The interaction model from the semiotics enables distinct U-I collaboration patterns to emerge. In a two-dimensional model it becomes clear that choosing the appropriate partner for potentially successful collaboration means matching the levels of preconditions between partners. The main contribution of this study is twofold: an interdisciplinary approach for analysing U-I collaboration using a multiple case-study research design and the explanation of relevant preconditions – individual rather than institutional levels of motivation and absorptive capacity – as critical aspects that determine the likelihood of the success or failure of such collaboration.     

Space–time economies under free mobility:: Competitive Equilibria and efficiency

In this paper, a space–time sequence economy with money, storage and transaction /transportation costs of mobile commodities will be considered. Conditions on technologies and households′ characteristics will be derived to establish the existence of competitive equilibria under locational choice. The notion of Pareto efficiency under costly trading will be discussed and the question of (in-)efficiency of equilibria examined using a separation theorem. The model extends earlier work of the author [Karmann (1981), Karmann (1982)] and others [see Schweizer et al. (1976), Castello-Ruiz (1978)] to include time and extends also the model in Kurz (1974) to include space.     

Causality: a Statistical View

Statistical aspects of causality are reviewed in simple form and the impact of recent work discussed. Three distinct notions of causality are set out and implications for densities and for linear dependencies explained. The importance of appreciating the possibility of effect modifiers is stressed, be they intermediate variables, background variables or unobserved confounders. In many contexts the issue of unobserved confounders is salient. The difficulties of interpretation when there are joint effects are discussed and possible modifications of analysis explained. The dangers of uncritical conditioning and marginalization over intermediate response variables are set out and some of the problems of generalizing conclusions to populations and individuals explained. In general terms the importance of search for possibly causal variables is stressed but the need for caution is emphasized.     

Commitment: A mathematical model

The concept of commitment has received ever-increasing attention from social scientists during the past fifteen years. Its usage occurs in several seemingly disjoint problem areas, but it is typically introduced when available explanations fail to describe the tendency for individuals to persist on a given course of action, once started, without obvious motive for doing so. Until recently its theoretical status has been as a primitive term, often appearing in ad hoc explanations, and accepted without question. In sociology, the first major query into the nature of commitment was Howard Becker's “Notes on the Concept of Commitment” (1960), a particularly influential article in stimulating research on commitment. However, most subsequent empirical work has dealt with the correlates and effects of commitment rather than with its genesis. Regrettably, what was once a problem in ad hoc theorizing has come to be matched by ad hoc operationalization of the concept. The present paper is a response to a perceived need for a formal model of commitment whose features might make the concept amenable to uniform theoretical and empirical usage. The purpose of this paper is to present a mathematical model of a general commitment mechanism which complements some extant ideas about the formal role of commitment in explaining certain types of behavior. The first part of the paper concentrates on extracting ideas from sociological and social psychological literature which provide the foundation for the intuitions to be formalized later. The second part presents a mathematical model of commitment. The third part discusses commitment in the context of a turnover model, and in concluding suggests some possible revisions and extensions of the model.     

Environmental auditing: Management strategy

A project was carried out to identify the external influences that affect participation in environmental audit programmes and the internal factors which may stimulate or modify reaction to these influences. The companies selected for the study were all in manufacturing or supply and with a potential to pollute the environment. The study was progressed by a questionnaire to the person responsible for environmental matters in 100 companies. There was a response rate of 48%. The questionnaire sought information on the company, the beliefs and experiences of the respondents, factors that had influenced the company and how the company had reacted to these. The responses to the questionnaire were analysed to try to determine areas where changes might profitably be made to the environmental management framework. Potential areas for change include a recommendation to establish environmental auditing as a fixed requirement to a fixed standard (BS 7750), with the company's policy and objectives being agreed with Her Majesty's Inspectors of Pollution on a regular basis and audited to achieve British Standard certification. The concept of the environmental crisis portfolio is introduced.