Building the dream team: don't make it a nightmare

This article covers the often overlooked area of team management concepts through a discussion of what many companies have done to implement these new concepts successfully. It describes the basics of how to and also explains why people resist the process of implementation. The main topics are (1) team formation, (2) pitfalls to avoid, and (3) team measurement.     

Borda's method applied — the right to make a proposal

Borda's vote method was used by the French Academy from 1796 to 1803 when Napoleon got it abolished. In the laws and regulations of the Academy there are stipulations regarding the election of new members. The practice is demonstrated by some examples from the protocols. In fact, Borda presented two vote methods which he showed would give the same conclusion. The method which has not been in the limelight proves to be the same one as is used for selecting the best player in chess tournaments.     

“Please don't make me a hero”: A re-examination of corporate heroes

Recent discussions of corporate heroes focus on benefits without examining costs. Although our perceptions are not entirely negative, we have discovered several reasons to be cautious about corporate heroes. We present some of the potential problems associated with creating heroes, and another set of dysfunctions occurring once heroes have been created. Our intention is not to debunk heroes, but to attach a cautionary note to their use in organizations. We fully expect the natural emergence of heroes in many organizations, but also propose that managers can accomplish as much, and often less hazardously, by working on perspective, praise, and trying to influence daily practice in their organizations. This approach is both more explicit and direct in infusing organizations with the same benefits of motivation and meaning derived from having heroes. Moreover, it can lay a foundation of values that ultimately determines what kinds of individuals emerge as heroes.     

PLANNING BY CONTRACT: THE LEASEHOLD FOUNDATION OF A COMPREHENSIVELY PLANNED CAPITALIST LAND MARKET

Hong Kong has used a system of planning by consent that predates planning by edict. By selling long leases on a contractual basis, the government has an incentive to provide the contractual terms, obligations and rights to the leaseholder that maximise the value of the land. This system has been effective in generating fiscal revenue and producing good planning outcomes in a resource-poor economy.     

New attitudes and technologies make now the right time to create a "virtual" association

The World Wide Web has become a convenient tool for research, communication, and even commerce, but a recent survey of foundations and corporate giving programs reveals that grant makers are not making full use of computer and Internet capabilities that might benefit them.     

Wage mobility: do institutions make a difference?

This paper checks empirically the assertion that strict labour market regulation leads to low wage mobility, addressing an apparent puzzle. Indeed, most economic reasoning links a combination of regulations in the labour market to low wage flexibility and mobility, but the scarce empirical evidence available challenges that view. I focus on Portugal, one of the most regulated labour markets in Europe. The evidence gathered indicates that an aggregate view—of minimum wage enforcement, unionisation rates and extension of collective bargaining contracts—provides a misleading idea of the actual constraints imposed by the institutional framework on wage setting. Instead, micro conditions at the firm level play a major role shaping wage mobility in Portugal. Some comparisons with the UK, traditionally pointed out as a flexible labour market, are provided. Remarkable similarities in mobility level and trend are detected between the two countries, further suggesting that a regulated institutional framework does not necessarily reduce individual mobility in the wage distribution.     

In-kind giving: it's a good thing ... but don't be naive

In-kind giving is of great importance to fund raisers, but it raises many red flags. This article explores in-kind giving on both sides of the table, with corporate givers and charitable takers, and suggests new ways of looking at these gifts.     

如何成为标准的创造者——经典案例的启示

目前,关于下一代DVD的技术标准之争愈演愈烈。不仅有索尼阵营的蓝光DVD格式、东芝阵营的HD-DVD格式,还有中国信息产业部的推荐标准(不是强制标准)EVD格式等。不仅如此,还有MP4、CDMA、数字电视等等的标准之争,正处在剑拔弩张的竞争状态。为何会出现这样的情况呢?因为一流企业卖标准,二流企业卖品牌,三流企业卖产品,这已经成为人们的共识。在经济全球化进程中,技术标准愈显重要,技术标准的创造者可以获取超额利润。卖产品处在最低层次,进入门槛低,竞争者多,利润薄,拼的是成本、质量和价格。卖品牌处在中间层次,提高了客户认知度,增…     

Shared values make a difference: An empirical test of corporate culture

Is the recent popular management literature on corporate culture and cultural values just a passing fad or is it highlighting some fundamental organizational realities? The results from a recent nationwide survey of American managers shows, we are convinced, that clearly articulated organizational values do make a significant difference in the lives of employees, as well as in their organization's performance. This article is an effort to integrate this broad-based data on individual managers' values with the reported experience of successful organizations that pay careful attention to their culture. It also offers ideas on how human resource managers can facilitate the alignment of personal and organizational values.     

Do anti-ticket scalping laws make a difference?

Ticket scalping is the practice of buying tickets at one price and reselling them at a higher one. The practice is controversial and currently almost half the states regulate the resale of tickets to one degree or another. As with other laws that regulate economic activity, the question immediately arises: ‘Who benefits from the law?’ Economists typically view transactions between willing buyers and willing sellers, such as ticket scalping, as welfare improving. They also view any interference with free market transactions as suspect and as possible evidence of rent harvesting. In an attempt to quantify the economic impact of anti-ticket scalping laws this paper presents a regression model of ticket price determination for National Football League teams and uses it to test the proposition ‘Do anti-ticket scalping laws make a difference?’     

The difference a manager can make: organizational justice and knowledge worker commitment

The quality of the employment relationship is argued to be central to knowledge workers' commitment, which in turn supports knowledge creation. Given the high levels of discretion enjoyed by knowledge workers, managers' decisions over work distribution, content and resources become more critical for commitment and knowledge creation. However, little research has explored how justice perceptions shape the quality of the employment relationship and the consequences for commitment. Using a sample of 429 R&D workers from across six science and technology-based firms this paper explores the three-way interaction of procedural and interactional justice with the psychological contract to predict knowledge worker commitment. We found that when employees simultaneously perceived high levels of procedural and interactional justice this moderated the relationship between psychological contract breach and knowledge worker commitment. Furthermore, where there was contract breach, positive perceptions of procedural justice moderated the relationship with commitment. However, in the context of contract fulfilment, low perceived levels of interactional justice predicted lower comparative levels of commitment, regardless of the level of procedural justice.

The results suggest that the perceived quality of the relationship between knowledge workers and their manager can make a positive difference in the context of breach of the psychological contract and this in turn can help maintain levels of commitment important for knowledge creation.     

The intraurban spatial distribution of employment: which government interventions make a difference?

An annual panel of employment at the census tract level for the Atlanta region is used to estimate the change in a tract's share of regional employment as a function of a variety of tax incentive programs, different transportation infrastructure investments, and crime. The results show that neighborhood-based property tax abatements, job tax credits, and highway improvements increase a tract's employment share. Higher crime is found to reduce employment share.     

着力构建以人为本的企业文化

以人为本是对人性基本规律和人的发展客观规律的尊重,符合当今时代发展的要求,也是实现企业管理最优化的必然要求。在新的历史时期,加快企业发展,构建和谐企业,应该全面建设和践行以人为本的先进文化,充分调动员工的主体力量,有效促进企业的发展和     

Global wages: we don't (yet) have lift‐off

• ? Policymakers, most notably in the US, have been expecting wage growth to pick up for some time as job markets tighten. But the data over the last six months have shown few indications of wage lift‐off. Our review of the latest evidence suggests that although labour markets are, on the whole, still tightening, we see increased downside risks to our forecasts for faster global wage growth in 2018–19.
• ? Rates of “churn” in labour markets – a possible precursor to faster wage growth – have continued to rise in the US and parts of Europe.
• ? But other structural factors may still be holding wages down. A recovery in prime‐age participation in the US may be helping to cap wage rises, as may a pool of “underemployed” workers in the US and UK (though this pool is shrinking fast).
• ? Productivity growth also remains weak, running at a 0.5%–1% annual pace in Q1 2017 across the US, UK, Germany and Japan. This compares with a G7 average pace of 1.5% per year in 1985–2006.
• ? Overall, the risks to our baseline forecast of faster wage growth in the major economies in 2018 look skewed to the downside. We expect wage growth to firm in 2018 by 0.5–1 percentage points in the US, UK, Germany and Japan. We would give this modal forecast a probability of around 60%, but with a 25% chance that wage growth is somewhat slower than this and only a 15% chance that it is higher.