Trust-opportunism paradox,relationalism, and performance in interfirm relationships: evidence from the retail industry

Building on recent theoretical work documenting that interorganizational relationships (IORs) are ‘multifaceted and multiplex’ we investigate, from the agent's perspective, the joint effects of trust and opportunism in fostering (or inhibiting) relationalism, which, in turn, is predicted to influence performance within interfirm exchange relationships. Based on longitudinal survey data on 409 catalog intermediaries affiliated with a large retail firm, we found strong support for most of the hypothesized relationships. Implications for future research are offered. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are Minimum Wage Effects Greater in Low‐Wage Areas?

Empirical work on the minimum wage typically estimates effects averaged across high‐ and low‐wage areas. Low‐wage labor markets could potentially be less able to absorb minimum wage increases, in turn leading to more negative employment effects. In this article, we examine minimum wage effects in low‐wage counties, where relative minimum wage ratios reach as high as 0.82, well beyond the state‐based ratios in extant studies. Using data from the American Community Survey, the Quarterly Workforce Indicators, and the Quarterly Census on Employment and Wages, we implement event study and difference‐in‐differences methods, estimating average causal effects for all events in our sample and separately for areas with lower and higher impacts. We find positive wage effects, especially in high‐impact counties, but do not detect adverse effects on employment, weekly hours, or annual weeks worked. We do not find negative employment effects among women, Blacks, and/or Hispanics. In high‐impact counties, we find substantial declines in household and child poverty. These results inform policy debates about providing exemptions to a $15 federal minimum wage in low‐wage areas.     

搜狐“上道”了吗

作为张朝阳手中两颗布局多年的“闲子”,视频和搜狗业务能否成为“再造搜狐”的新支点？     

The Impact of Living‐Wage Ordinances on Urban Crime

We examine the impact of living wages on crime. Past research has found that living wages appear to increase unemployment while providing greater returns to market work. The impact on crime, therefore, is unclear. Using data on annual crime rates for large cities in the United States, we find that living‐wage ordinances are associated with notable reductions in property‐related crime and no discernable impact on nonproperty crimes.     

The Purpose and Process of Science: Contrasting Understandings in UK Research Establishments

This paper is based on an ESRC-funded study into scientists' perceptions of management. Changes in the organisation, purpose and process of science were heralded with the publication of the White Paper (Cm2250 1993). However, to date there has been little empirical work into how research scientists understand such issues. Our research, based on qualitative interviews conducted with scientist/managers in seven government-funded research establishments, found that scientists' notions of scientific purpose varied, not just according to the nature of their work, but also evolved as careers progressed and the contexts within which they worked changed (in particular as the need to generate income through commissioned work has increased). The data also reveal a diversity in scientists' understanding of the relationship between discovery and applied science. Of central importance to R&D managers is the extent to which these scientists saw their aspirations as achievable within the changing context of public sector science. From the data we generate an Ideal Type model of approaches that may be taken to reconcile the imperatives of applied and fundamental research and develop an understanding of the key role of senior management in creating an effective interface with external stakeholders and the development of culture and vision within the laboratory that will enable effective synergy.     

Work and Volunteering: Longitudinal Relationships between Work‐Related Experiences and Volunteering Behaviour

This study examines the effect of work‐related experiences on employees’ engagement in community volunteering, using data from a British longitudinal panel of employees. Using a novel analytical approach that separates variation in volunteering due to within‐person changes in work conditions from variation due to between‐person work differences, we more robustly test existing and new hypotheses about the effects of work on volunteering. New to this literature, we find that commuting and satisfaction with job experiences are significant predictors of community volunteering, both the likelihood to volunteer and volunteering frequency. In turn, volunteering determinants previously explored with cross‐sectional data, such as managerial and professional jobs, employment sector and hourly paid contracts, are no longer statistically significant in the within‐person models. We discuss a number of important theoretical and practical consequences of these findings.     

Incentive and Redistributive Effects of Private-Sector Union Pension Plans in Canada

Using data for pension plans in the private sector for males in Canada, this paper examines flat benefit plans, which predominate in the union sector, documenting their work and retirement incentives, the extent to which retroactive enrichments redistribute wealth within union membership, and the impact of anticipated enrichments on the timing of early retirement decisions     

Is Good Work Good for Democracy? Work,Change at Work and Political Participation in Canada and England

This article draws on data from 750 Canadian and 450 English workers to systematically explore the implications of work for political participation, addressing whether ‘good’ work, and recent trends identified in work and employment, appear to be good for political participation. It finds that various aspects of work and of the work experience, many of which have been associated with recent trends, can have significant implications. However, these implications tend to differ for ‘passive’ and ‘active’ forms of participation and to be weak for the former. Moreover, characteristics that might be associated with ‘good’ work have negative as well as positive spillovers, suggesting contradictory effects and reducing the net positive effects of good jobs. Finally, there is some (albeit limited) evidence of cross‐national differences, especially with regard to the implications of union representation.     

Flextime and Profitability

Despite the well‐documented benefits of flexible work schedules (flextime), generalizable assessments of how flextime influences organizational profitability have proven elusive. Using a unique data set representative of organizations in Canada, we examine the effect of flextime in combination with organizational strategies to predict profitability. Using fixed effects and controlling for prior profitability, we find that flextime increases profitability when implemented within a strategy centered on employees but decreases profitability when implemented within a strategy focused on cost reduction.     

Productive efficiency and firm exit in the food sector

This work examines the effects of productive efficiency on the survival of firms in the Greek food sector. Technical and scale efficiency scores are computed within a data envelopment analysis (DEA) framework and are used as explanatory variables in a parametric (Weibull) survival model. High technical efficiency increases the median survival time and lowers the hazard rate of exit. As the scale efficiency of a firm operating either at increasing or decreasing returns to scale approaches one (1), its theoretically maximum value, the expected median survival time, is maximized for all types of exits. Developments in biotechnology, the evolution of alternative food supply networks, innovations in the food sector and competition policy are likely to affect technical and scale efficiency of food manufacturing firms. Results unraveling the effects of technical and scale efficiency on the survival of firms in the food sector are of particular relevance to food policy makers.     

Economic growth and broadband access: The European urban-rural digital divide

This paper estimates the regional effects of high-speed broadband coverage on economic growth in a panel of 1348 regions across all European Union Member States between 2011 and 2018. We distinguish between different connectivity speed levels by aggregating the available regional data across all existing broadband technologies, and investigate how regional differences in the contribution of broadband coverage to real economic growth can quantitatively explain the persistence of the European urban-rural digital divide. In order to make our results robust to endogeneity and disaggregated data availability issues, we employ a bootstrap-based bias correction for the dynamic fixed effects estimator. We find that expansions in the provision of lower-speed broadband access accelerated annual per capita growth in both urban and rural regions through diminishing returns to scale, but that the effects were weaker in those regions characterized by larger ruralization. High-speed broadband coverage, on the contrary, could only be significantly related to rural economic growth and had no impact within their urban counterparts. We find evidence that the costs of these high-speed rural connectivity expansions had not yet been offset, but that they exhibit increasing returns to scale with cut-off levels nearing full coverage. These results indicate that the high-speed digital expansion of rural Europe is a potential gamechanger for further rural development policies through its role as a general-purpose infrastructure, and consequently argue in favour of increased efforts to close the urban-rural digital gap.     

The Evolution of Earnings Volatility During and After the Great Recession

This paper explores how men's and women's earnings volatility evolved during and after the Great Recession, the most severe downturn of the postwar era. Using matched March Current Population Survey data, I find that earnings volatility rose considerably after the Great Recession began and, particularly for men, the volatility increase was as large as in the severe recession of the early 1980s. These findings update the evidence on the counter‐cyclicality of earnings volatility. I show that such counter‐cyclicality is due mainly to counter‐cyclical volatility in annual hours of work. In turn, the counter‐cyclical volatility in work hours appears mainly among workers who experience unemployment.     

Extreme Wages,Performance, and Superstars in a Market for Footballers

We study the determinants of superstar wage effects, asking whether productivity or popularity‐based explanations are more appropriate. We use longitudinal wage and performance data for workers (players) and firms (teams) from a particular market for sports talent: Major League Soccer (MLS) in the United States. We find evidence that the top earners, whose annual salaries are mostly not accounted for by their past MLS performances, when compared to other footballers, are paid more because they attract significantly higher stadium attendances and thus revenues. There is no evidence that higher residual salary spending by the teams affects their relative performance in football terms, or that the amounts the teams spend on actual talent affect attendances. Taken together, these results suggest that a popularity‐based explanation of superstar wage effects is appropriate among the top earners in this labor market.     

The state of food and agriculture in Islamic countries

This review of the state of food and agriculture in Islamic countries underlines the need for much greater public commitment to agricultural development. Within the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), 44 member nations, exibiting immense geographic and economic diversity, have come together recently to begin to cooperate on increasing food production. It is difficult to generalize about food production conditions in Islamic nations, but basically, within the OIC, total arable land increased from 159 to 167 ha in the 1970s, a small amount unevenly distributed over the group. Dry-land farming has not received enough public attention, and the dependence on cereals grown under rainfed conditions leaves the population vulnerable to fluctuation. Many of the poorer nations have not given the priority to land improvement that has been successful in Egypt, Pakistan, and some other countries. The economic burden of food imports has become lighter in some countries, although in all it continues to be serious. Net cereal imports to Islamic countries rose from 21 to 39 million tons from 1975-83. An overall increase in the per capita dietary energy supplies masks broad differences between the wealthier and poorer nations of the OIC, and between more and less priviledged populations within the societies. A small proportion of financial commitments to agriculture (15%) come from Islamic community donors; this is not a leading program priority. Often spending has been for large capital-intensive projects depending on imported skills and inputs. As a group, the OIC must plan to take advantage of their technical and environmental diversity, and work together to avoid inefficient dispersal of personnel and other resources. Tabular data show selected indicators of agricultural development (e.g. % of food imported, food production growth), average annual rate of food production change related to population growth, per capita dietary energy supplies, and external assistance commitments.     

高绩效工作系统对员工敬业度的影响机制研究——被调节的中介效应

本文以20家企业的467名员工为样本,运用层级回归分析方法和Bootstrap方法验证了个人-组织契合和心理契约破裂对高绩效工作系统和员工敬业度关系的影响。研究结果发现,高绩效工作系统能够显著提高员工敬业度;个人-组织契合在高绩效工作系统与员工敬业度之间起着部分中介作用;心理契约破裂在个人-组织契合与员工敬业度之间起着负向调节作用,即与高心理契约破裂水平相比,低心理契约破裂的情境下个人-组织契合对员工敬业度的影响更大;个人-组织契合对高绩效工作系统与员工敬业度的中介效应的强弱受到心理契约破裂水平高低的影响,即与高心理契约破裂相比,低心理契约破裂的情境下个人-组织契合对高绩效工作系统与员工敬业度的中介作用更强。     

Human Resource Management and Performance in UK Call Centres

Using data from a sample of 145 UK call centres, the authors test the core propositions of the strategic human resource management (SHRM) approach that: (a) there are coherent links through the SHRM chain from strategy, through operational requirements, to work design and human resource management, and (b) the fit between the human resource practices and market factors determines organizational performance. Little support for these hypotheses is found as only (a) a few direct relationships between the elements of the SHRM chain are found, and (b) direct relationships, rather than those moderated by market factors, are found between human resource practices and performance. But key operational requirements are linked to work design, which is itself related to a limited number of human resource practices. The direct effects of work design on key performance indicators are more pronounced than those of human resource practices.     

Cyclical variation in the profit-concentration relationship

At least 15 profit-structure studies using Federal Trade Commission Line-of-Business data have found either a significantly negative or no relationship between profits and market concentration when firm market share is included in the analysis. The findings reported here suggest that the FTC Line-of-Business data are for years in which cyclical factors seriously distorted the profit-concentration relationship. This hypothesis is supported by both annual cross-section regressions and pooled regressions for the period 1947–1990.     

Men at Work in a Land Down‐Under: Testing Some Predictions of Human Capital Theory

We use new training data from waves 3–6 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to investigate training and wages of full‐time men. We explore the extent to which the data are consistent with the predictions of human capital theory or with recent alternative theories based on imperfectly competitive labour markets. According to the raw data, most work‐related training received by full‐time private‐sector men is general, but it is also paid for by employers. Our fixed effects estimates reveal that this training is associated with higher wages in current and in future firms, and that the effect in future firms is larger and more precisely determined. These results are more consistent with the predictions of human capital theory based on imperfectly competitive labour markets than with the alternative of perfect competition.     

New Technology in West Germany: the employment debate

In view of high unemployment, one major issue of concern within the German population is the impact of new technology on the labour market. This article examines the problem of determining and predicting effects of technological change on employment and discusses the development of job structure, work organisation and skill requirements.     

Sickness Absence and Works Councils: Evidence from German Individual and Linked Employer–Employee Data

Using both household and linked employer–employee data for Germany, we assess the effects of nonunion representation in the form of works councils on (1) individual sickness absence rates and (2) a subjective measure of personnel problems due to sickness absence as perceived by a firm's management. We find that the existence of a works council is positively correlated with the incidence and the annual duration of absence. Further, personnel problems due to absence are more likely to occur in plants with a works council.