Information shocks and the empirical evaluation of training programs during unemployment spells

We study the role of notifications in the evaluation of training programs for unemployed workers. Using a unique administrative data set containing the dates when information is exchanged between job seekers and caseworkers, we address three questions: Do information shocks, such as notification of future training, have an effect on unemployment duration? What is the joint effect of notification and training programs on unemployment? Can ignoring information shocks lead to a large bias in the estimation of the effect of training programs? We discuss these issues through the lens of a job search model and then conduct an empirical analysis following a “random effects” approach to deal with selectivity. We find that notification has a strong positive effect on the training probability but a negative one on the probability of leaving unemployment. This “attraction” effect highlights the importance of accounting for notifications in the evaluation of active labor market policies.     

Leadership learning: Crucial conversations,next steps,and thoughts for consideration

Forty years ago, the questions most discussed among those who cared about leadership were “is leadership possible among those who don't have titles and positions?”; “what are the characteristics possessed by effective leaders?”; and “how do we find the people who are the best leaders and help them prepare for positions that will allow them to have an impact?” After many conversations, conferences, research studies, and books, the terrain has shifted among scholars. Now the conversations focus on questions such as “If leadership is a shared responsibility among members of groups, how can the full leadership potential of all be cultivated?”; “What role do collaborators play in empowering positive leadership and defending against those who misuse it?”; and “How can organizations cultivate cultures that support and encourage visionary leadership dedicated to benefitting all?” The shift in the questions that leadership educators now explore, coupled with the breadth and variety of the initiatives dedicated to nurturing it, demonstrate that leadership can be taught. More importantly, the practice of leadership demonstrates that many can pursue leadership and that they must if the opportunities of the 21st century are to be fulfilled. The conversations and the needs for leadership have both shifted and it is now incumbent on those who value leadership most to agree to unifying perspectives that can draw us together in common purpose. From your vantage point, what are the crucial conversations, next steps, and/or thoughts for consideration as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?     

Leadership: A journey of sustained performance

Forty years ago, the questions most discussed among those who cared about leadership were “is leadership possible among those who don't have titles and positions?”; “what are the characteristics possessed by effective leaders?”; and “how do we find the people who are the best leaders and help them prepare for positions that will allow them to have an impact?” After many conversations, conferences, research studies, and books, the terrain has shifted among scholars. Now the conversations focus on questions such as “If leadership is a shared responsibility among members of groups, how can the full leadership potential of all be cultivated?”; “What role do collaborators play in empowering positive leadership and defending against those who misuse it?”; and “How can organizations cultivate cultures that support and encourage visionary leadership dedicated to benefitting all?” The shift in the questions that leadership educators now explore, coupled with the breadth and variety of the initiatives dedicated to nurturing it, demonstrate that leadership can be taught. More importantly, the practice of leadership demonstrates that many can pursue leadership and that they must if the opportunities of the 21st century are to be fulfilled. The conversations and the needs for leadership have both shifted and it is now incumbent on those who value leadership most to agree to unifying perspectives that can draw us together in common purpose. From your vantage point, what are the crucial conversations, next steps, and/or thoughts for consideration as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?     

Entrepreneurship education as a new model for leadership education

Forty years ago, the questions most discussed among those who cared about leadership were “is leadership possible among those who don't have titles and positions?”; “what are the characteristics possessed by effective leaders?”; and “how do we find the people who are the best leaders and help them prepare for positions that will allow them to have an impact?” After many conversations, conferences, research studies, and books, the terrain has shifted among scholars. Now the conversations focus on questions such as “If leadership is a shared responsibility among members of groups, how can the full leadership potential of all be cultivated?”; “What role do collaborators play in empowering positive leadership and defending against those who misuse it?”; and “How can organizations cultivate cultures that support and encourage visionary leadership dedicated to benefitting all?” The shift in the questions that leadership educators now explore, coupled with the breadth and variety of the initiatives dedicated to nurturing it, demonstrate that leadership can be taught. More importantly, the practice of leadership demonstrates that many can pursue leadership and that they must if the opportunities of the 21st century are to be fulfilled. The conversations and the needs for leadership have both shifted and it is now incumbent on those who value leadership most to agree to unifying perspectives that can draw us together in common purpose. From your vantage point, what are the crucial conversations, next steps, and/or thoughts for consideration as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?     

The leadership labyrinth

Forty years ago, the questions most discussed among those who cared about leadership were “is leadership possible among those who don't have titles and positions?”; “what are the characteristics possessed by effective leaders?”; and “how do we find the people who are the best leaders and help them prepare for positions that will allow them to have an impact?” After many conversations, conferences, research studies, and books, the terrain has shifted among scholars. Now the conversations focus on questions such as “If leadership is a shared responsibility among members of groups, how can the full leadership potential of all be cultivated?”; “What role do collaborators play in empowering positive leadership and defending against those who misuse it?”; and “How can organizations cultivate cultures that support and encourage visionary leadership dedicated to benefitting all?” The shift in the questions that leadership educators now explore, coupled with the breadth and variety of the initiatives dedicated to nurturing it, demonstrate that leadership can be taught. More importantly, the practice of leadership demonstrates that many can pursue leadership and that they must if the opportunities of the 21st century are to be fulfilled. The conversations and the needs for leadership have both shifted and it is now incumbent on those who value leadership most to agree to unifying perspectives that can draw us together in common purpose. From your vantage point, what are the crucial conversations, next steps, and/or thoughts for consideration as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?     

Special issue on “The role of networks in entrepreneurial performance: new answers to old questions?”

The nature and extent of relationships between entrepreneurial networks and entrepreneurial performance are old questions. Scholars have explored the nature of entrepreneurial networks and have focused on their relationship with, and effects on, performance, which is viewed in this special issue in terms of the strategic development of established businesses and new ventures. However, while much is now known about the origins and effects of social networks there continues to a paucity of research on how social networks are used in various organizations, and when one or more networks are drawn upon for what specific purpose. Each article in this special issue addresses one or more of these questions in a range of industries and environments, namely poor village entrepreneurs who have to work in a highly challenging financial and social environment in Bangladesh, “early internationalizing small firms” in South Africa, high technology “early-stage ventures” in Hong Kong, 3-D technology ventures that operate with an “open” business model, and the “multi-rational” nature of networks in family businesses in and beyond the UK. In all, this collection of papers comprises a body of scholarship with fine-grained studies on how and when specific social networks are drawn on in various forms of organization. The subsequent discussion of these issues extends knowledge of the various ways in which entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial businesses advance their interests by leveraging familiar business and social networks.     

Pervasive myths in leadership development: Unpacking constraints on leadership learning

Forty years ago, the questions most discussed among those who cared about leadership were “is leadership possible among those who don't have titles and positions?”; “what are the characteristics possessed by effective leaders?”; and “how do we find the people who are the best leaders and help them prepare for positions that will allow them to have an impact?” After many conversations, conferences, research studies, and books, the terrain has shifted among scholars. Now the conversations focus on questions such as “If leadership is a shared responsibility among members of groups, how can the full leadership potential of all be cultivated?”; “What role do collaborators play in empowering positive leadership and defending against those who misuse it?”; and “How can organizations cultivate cultures that support and encourage visionary leadership dedicated to benefitting all?” The shift in the questions that leadership educators now explore, coupled with the breadth and variety of the initiatives dedicated to nurturing it, demonstrate that leadership can be taught. More importantly, the practice of leadership demonstrates that many can pursue leadership and that they must if the opportunities of the 21st century are to be fulfilled. The conversations and the needs for leadership have both shifted and it is now incumbent on those who value leadership most to agree to unifying perspectives that can draw us together in common purpose. From your vantage point, what are the crucial conversations, next steps, and/or thoughts for consideration as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?     

The Statistical Interpretation of Forensic Glass Evidence

When examining a sample of glass fragments recovered from a suspect in a forensic case, many questions arise: “Did this man break that window?”, “Are these fragments from the crime scene source?”, “Do the fragments recovered from the suspect come from more than one source?”, “How common is it to find glass on someone unrelated with crime?” etc. Such questions are usually answered with the help of statistical methods. This paper reviews some of the statistical solutions and problems encountered in the interpretation and evaluation of forensic glass evidence.     

Maximally representative allocations for guaranteed delivery advertising campaigns

There are around 400 advertising networks that match opportunities for “display” advertising, which include banner ads, video ads and indeed all ads other than text-based ads, on web pages and candidate advertisements. This is about a $${\$}25$$  billion business annually. The present study derives a method of pricing such advertisements based on their relative scarcity while ensuring that all campaigns obtain a reasonably representative sample of the relevant opportunities. The mechanism is well-behaved under supply uncertainty. A method based on the mechanism described in this paper was implemented by Yahoo! Inc.     

Cultural values and public policy: The case of international development aid

This paper investigates whether the quantity and character of aggregate expenditures on foreign aid by donor governments are related to the cultural values held by the people of the donor countries. In particular, we study whether any association exists between three measures of donors’ foreign aid expenditures and two dimensions of culture. We find that the shares of national income governments spend on aid, the proportion of total aid provided in the form of grants, and the proportion of aid directed to humanitarian relief are all related in statistically significant and quantitatively important ways to the location of the cultural values of people in the donor countries on two continua, one from “traditional” to “rational” beliefs about social organization and authority, and the other from “survival” to “self-expression” as the focus of individual aspirations. These results contribute to our understanding of the political economy of aid, and to a growing literature on how culture shapes economic policies, institutions, and performance.     

Go ahead,leap: Triads and their practical and theoretical import: In response to “To leap or not to leap: Triads as arbitrary subsets of networks of connected dyads” by Anna Dubois

We agree with Dubois that, as supply chain management scholars, the object of our interest is, ultimately, supply networks. However, what is this supply network? Where does it end and where does it begin? It of course depends on research interest—one could study a dyad or a triad or a network of suppliers that exist upstream to an automaker or an industrial network that is stretched out so vast its outer edges overlap with other industries. Different units of analysis allow researchers to tackle different research questions.Then, why the focus on triads? A triad is the smallest network unit where we can observe how a link affects a link or a node affects a link either directly or indirectly connected—the quintessential network dynamics that a dyad by itself cannot capture. Therefore, there is nothing arbitrary about studying triads. If we say that we study networks, we have to begin by studying triads. In this rejoinder, we will present the practical and theoretical significance of triads. Also, we will make reference to supply networks as a “complex adaptive system” to frame triads in the larger supply network.     

Mother–child interaction: a qualitative investigation of imprisoned mothers

In many countries, babies born to women in prison stay in prison with their mother and very young children may accompany their mothers in prison. Among these countries, Iran is one of those we do not have enough information about its prisoners especially mothers who have child(ren). This study aims to investigate imprisoned mother–child interaction by a qualitative method, Grounded Theory, in Iran. Two main questions of this research are: how is the interaction of mother–child in prison? What are the consequences of this interaction? Participants of this study comprised of 14 imprisoned mothers who were on leave, Iran. Being a mother and living with a child was the criterion of selecting the participants. All of the participants were in a separated unit. Data analysis yielded six categories and a core category. The categories are: “child as an emotional support of the mother; child as centre, prison as periphery; hope and will to favored future; mother unit as a family; rehabilitation; the other side of the coin: perceived risk for children.” Core category of the study is “imprisoned mother–child interactions: learning to live by hope and fear.”     

Tax expenditures and other programs to stimulate housing: Do we need more?

Discussions to aid the housing industry raise several questions. First, does stimulation of housing demand require new direct subsidy programs? And, second, are any programs to increase demand worth their costs to society? The results in this paper indicate that the answer to both questions is no: the existing subsidy to homeownership in the tax code is, when combined with mortgage instruments that offset cash flow problems, fully capable of generating large increases in demand at the cost of significant tax expenditures; and the social benefits of increased housing demand are shown to be worth only about 60% of their costs. Consequently, increasing housing demand can be readily achieved, but doing so will be costly to the government and inefficient for society.     

Monetary policy on twitter and asset prices: Evidence from computational text analysis

In this paper, we dissect the Twitter debate about the future course of monetary policy and trace the effects of selected topics of this discourse on U.S. asset prices. We focus on the “taper tantrum” episode in 2013, a period with large revisions in expectations about future Fed policy. Based on a novel data set of 90,000 Twitter messages (“tweets”) covering the debate of Fed tapering on Twitter, we use Latent Dirichlet Allocation, a computational text analysis tool, to quantify the content of the discussion. Several estimated topic frequencies are then included in a VAR model to estimate the effects of topic shocks on asset prices. We find that the discussion about Fed policy on social media contains price-relevant information. Shocks to the discussion about the timing of the tapering, about the broader economic policy context and worrying investors are shown to lead to significant asset price changes. We also show that the effects are mostly due to changes in the term premium of yields consistent with the portfolio balance channel of unconventional monetary policy.     

Differing behaviours of forecasters of UK GDP growth

The literature suggests that the dispersion of agents’ forecasts of an event flows from heterogeneity of beliefs and models. Using a data set of fixed event point forecasts of UK GDP growth by a panel of independent forecasters published by HM Treasury, we investigate three questions concerning this dispersion: (a) Are agent’s beliefs randomly distributed or do agents fall into groups with similar beliefs? (b) as agents revise their forecasts, what roles are played by their previous and consensus forecasts? and (c) is an agent’s private information of persistent value? We find that agents fall into four clusters, a large majority, a few pessimists, and two idiosyncratic agents. Our proposed model of forecast revisions shows agents are influenced positively by a change in the consensus forecast and negatively influenced by the previous distance of their forecast from the consensus. We show that the forecasts of a minority of agents significantly lead the consensus.     

The Effect of Follow-up Mailings on The Response Rate and Response Quality in Mail Surveys

Numerous experts have demonstrated that the increase in the number of contacts produces a “lengthening” of the field work, although this lag in the analysis of the data is “compensated” by the increase in the response rate that is achieved through this second, third, and successive “contacts”. However, can it be said that these interviewees respond with the same dedication as those who responded from the initial contact? Or could it be that they will try to respond “hastily” so as not to be “harassed” further? The aim of this study is to try to find some answers to these questions by giving the results of the first ever research carried out in Spain using the TDM of Dillman in mail surveys.     

Studying organizations as temporary

This article reflects upon the methodological pessimism that sometimes plagues students of organizations. In particular pessimism seems to strike us when we try to get to grips with the incessant transformations of organizations—transformations that seem to occur at such great speed. Our immediate reaction to Heraclitus’ statement that: “You cannot step twice into the same river” is that it has considerable methodological relevance. However, we contend that his metaphor in its orthodox version leads to too narrow a view. An elaboration of the metaphor could perhaps reduce the pessimism regarding organizational studies by promoting a focus on contextual aspects. Moreover, changes and transformations in themselves do not necessarily represent a stumbling block for the researcher. Rather studying crucial projects provides a means for studying the mechanisms at work in the host organization. The resulting approach—contextualization in a broad sense—relieves researchers of some of their pessimism, maybe even inspires optimism, by raising new questions: not only “what can be said?” (about the organization), but also “in what contexts?” and “about what manifestations in those contexts?” The article concludes with some remarks on the scarcity of the contextualization approach for studying organizations as temporary phenomena.     

Negotiating “best practices” in package software implementation

Package software is often marketed with the promise of offering cutting-edge “best practices”. However, questions remain as to how diverse groups in an organization arrive at a consensus about what constitutes as “best practices” in package software and how these “best practices” are appropriated to the specific local contexts. In this case study, we examine the incongruence in the technological frames of the diverse groups with respect to these “best practices” and trace how these groups implement specific political and discursive strategies to overcome and resolve these incongruent frames. We find that it is an intricate process that demands not only that management make a concerted effort to create and actively work to coax and sustain allies, but also champion, and advocate for the rhetorical justification behind these “best practices.” The negotiated frames of parties are eventually inscribed into the software itself.     

Adoption of information systems innovations by individuals: A study of processes involving contextual,adopter, and influencer actions

The extensive literature on the adoption of information systems (IS) or information technology (IT) innovations by individuals has primarily used a variance approach, focusing on individual, organizational, and technological factors that influence the level of adoption. Probably due to this focus on factors affecting adoption, little is known about the processes by which individuals adopt IS/IT innovations. Considering IS/IT adoption as an emergent process involving actions by the potential adopter, actions by individuals who might influence the adopter, and actions within the adopter’s context, we examined the ways in which these actions interacted with each other over time. We conducted optimal matching and cluster analyses using data from 27 interviews about the adoption of 30 IS/IT innovations.The emergent taxonomy includes three distinct processes by which individuals adopt innovations: Conscious Quest, Requisite Compliance, and Asserted Trial. The Conscious Quest process, which results in “full adoption,” seems to be driven by the adopter, with no social influence and no mandate. In contrast, in Requisite Compliance and Asserted Trial processes, both of which resulted in “partial adoption,” the adopter encounters considerable pressure, either from a contextual mandate (Requisite Compliance) or from influencers (Asserted Trial). Implications for research and practice are examined.     

Price and Money-Back Guarantees as Signals of Product Quality

Why is it so common for the seller to provide guarantees that say “Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back” along with the sale of a product? Newly introduced goods and mail-ordered products are usually sold with such guarantees. In honoring money-back guarantees, why is it a common business practice to pay back exactly the purchase price rather than a portion of it? In this paper we study the informational role and optimality of the common business practice of money-back guarantees in a signaling model with quality uncertainty and risk-neutral buyers. We find that money-back guarantees and price together completely reveal a monopoly firm's private information about product quality, Moreover, the private information is revealed at no signaling cost. Furthermore, we show that in terms of the level of monetary compensation specified by a guarantee, price is the profit-maximizing level of monetary payback in case of product failure.