The Suburbanization of Industry and Its Effects Upon Labor Force Participation Rates of Suburban Women

Post-World War II intrametropolitan dispersion of industry has been well documented in the literature on contemporary suburbanization. There has, however, been no empirical research conducted to determine the effect of the restructured metropolitan economy upon labor force participation rates of suburban residents, especially of suburban married women. The purpose of this study is to fill this research gap. The hypothesis tested is that increased employment opportunities in the suburbs will increase labor force participation of suburban married women, ceteris paribus . The research results show the hypothesized relationship to be correct. The variable developed in this study and used as a proxy for the degree of intrametropolitan industrial dispersion is statistically significant, albeit a bit weak, in explaining intersuburban variation in labor force participation rates of married women, husband present. Other variables (such as median school years completed) included in more traditional non-spatially oriented labor force behavior models are statistically insignificant in explaining areal variation in participation rates. The findings point up the necessity of recognizing the spatial complexities of the urban economy.     

Jobs and agricultural policy: Impact of the common agricultural policy on EU agricultural employment

This paper investigates the relationship between EU agricultural subsidies and the outflow of labor from agriculture. We use more representative subsidy indicators and a wider coverage (panel data from 210 EU regions over the period 2004-2014) than has been used before. The data allow to better correct for sample selection bias than previous empirical studies. We find that, on average, CAP subsidies reduce the outflow of labor from agriculture, but the effect is almost entirely due to decoupled Pillar I payments. Coupled Pillar I payments have no impact on reducing labor outflow from agriculture, i.e. on preserving jobs in agriculture. The impact of Pillar II is mixed. Our estimates predict that an increase of 10 percent of the CAP budget would prevent an extra 16,000 people from leaving the EU agriculture sector each year. A 10 percent decoupling would save 13,000 agricultural jobs each year. However, the budgetary costs are large. The estimated cost is more than € 300,000 per year (or more than € 25,000 per month) per job saved in agriculture.     

The role of new firms: Births,deaths and job generation

The contribution of both new and small firms towards economic recovery is now universally accepted as significant. What is still unclear, however, is the extent of that contribution, particularly with regard to the new firm. Despite this, governments at all levels, federal, state and county, have designed strategies for fostering entrepreneurial activity. With little specific knowledge of the target population, these strategies have been either general in nature or based on economic theory, and, as a consequence, little is known about whether they have been effective in affecting the natural process, and in what geographic locations. This research studied the whole population of new firms started in St. Joseph County, Indiana, between 1977 and 1982. It was concerned with both birth and death patterns, and the net jobs generated. The results confirmed the general findings of others that new firms play a significant role in job generation. Over the period, the number of jobs created by a new firm was a consistent 2.9 per cent of the total number of jobs in the industrial sectors studied. Moreover, this exceeded the 1.75 per cent of jobs lost through firms withdrawing from the labour market. Within this, activity in both firms and jobs was found to be centred in only a few SIC categories, and the results of this research suggest that simple tests of volatility and gain will help to focus strategic plans for aid on those sectors where the natural process is already generating the most new jobs.     

Why Do Employers Retrain At‐Risk Workers? The Role of Social Capital

Why are some employers willing to retrain workers who are at risk of layoff for new jobs in their organization, whereas others “churn” their workforce through layoffs and outside hiring? The question seems central to understanding why some employers and some jobs are “good,” whereas others are not and, more generally, for understanding employment security. The arguments herein use national probability data to examine this question and find that the retraining option is associated with preserving the social capital among current employees. Employers who make greater use of work systems that rely on social capital are more likely to retrain their workers. Alternative explanations—that retraining is an employee benefit associated with employee‐friendly policies or is part of overall strategy to invest in training—receive no support. These results extend our understanding of the role that social capital can play in organizations. They also suggest that being a “good” employer may have a great deal to do with other choices about systems of work organization.     

The Prevalence and Effects of Occupational Licensing

Our study provides the first national analysis of the labour market implications of workers who are licensed by any agency of the government in the USA. Using a specially designed Gallup survey of a nationally representative sample of Americans, we provide an analysis of the influence of this form of occupational regulation. We find that 29 per cent of the workforce is required to hold a licence, which is a higher percentage than that found in other studies that rely on state‐level occupational licensing data or single states. Workers who have higher levels of education are more likely to work in jobs that require a licence. Union workers and government employees are more likely to have a licence requirement than are non‐union or private sector employees. Our multivariate estimates suggest that licensing has about the same quantitative impact on wages as do unions — that is about 15 per cent — and that being both licensed and in a union can increase wages by more than 24 per cent. However, unlike unions which reduce variance in wages, licensing does not significantly reduce wage dispersion for individuals in licensed jobs.     

Developing end-use marketing teams

This article describes how a sales group in a highly competitive business transformed itself—and its business volume and profits—with the help of a new marketing strategy and a results-focused training and development process.     

Comparable Worth and Factor Point Pay Analysis in State Government

This study examines how factor point systems have treated state government jobs, which are held disproportionately by women, minorities, and union members. The findings indicate that female jobs may gain from comparable worth pay proposals, but the gains are dissipated in actual pay; unionized and minority workers tend to lose both proposed and actual pay; and the dispersion of points and pay is narrowed for jobs covered by collective bargaining agreements     

Making gigs work: digital platforms,job quality and worker motivations

Technology has driven new organisations of work and employment relationships, rendering changes that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago. The rise of digital platforms has not only enabled new forms of work activity but also transformed the way workers find new opportunities. This development, referred to as gig work, is distinct from traditional employment in that it is mediated through online platforms. While we can somewhat objectively designate traditional job characteristics as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, designating gig work itself as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ overlooks the fact that workers are inclined to evaluate the quality of their jobs according to their own individual needs, priorities, backgrounds and other circumstances—even if those jobs are objectively the same. Unlike previous scholarship on gig work, which has viewed job quality largely from a platform-focused perspective, this article takes a worker-centric approach and provides a typology of gig workers. The typology demarcates how gig work is used and indicates key attributes that differentiate how workers approach such jobs. Moreover, the typology reveals heterogeneity in gig workers’ motivations, characteristics and intentions. Consequently, platforms with ‘bad’ job quality characteristics can still offer work that some workers will see as ‘good’ and vice versa.     

New Product Portfolio Management Decisions: Antecedents and Consequences

This research employs organizational information processing theory to propose and examine the antecedents and consequences of new product portfolio management (NPPM) decisions. Understanding NPPM decisions is an important research area because these decisions affect firm profitability but are difficult to make because of limited reliable information. Recent survey results of Product Development and Management Association members and other NPPM professionals suggest nearly half of initial new product ideas are chosen to advance through the new product development (NPD) pipeline via informal processes. Thus, managers wield considerable influence in NPPM. Yet only limited research quantitatively examines how NPPM decisions impact performance and the role of manager dispositions. Using as the research context a marketing simulation exercise conducted with mid‐level managers, this research reveals important insights into the impact of the three NPPM dimensions—value maximization, balance, and strategic fit—on NPD and firm performance. The analysis suggests a critical role for the NPPM dimension of balance as it is the single dimension impacting performance. However, value maximization is relevant as a criterion for competing because, overall, managers see this dimension as important. At the same time, managers are cautioned in their use of strategic fit as it appears this dimension may constrain innovative choices. Furthermore, three manager dispositions proposed from organizational information processing theory—directive leadership style, need for cognition, and risk perceptions—all influence NPPM dimensions. Managers are recommended to consider the personality traits of managers involved in NPPM decisions to ensure thorough consideration of all dimensions.     

Exploring new product portfolio management decisions: The role of managers' dispositional traits

Product strategy links to new product development (NPD) through new product portfolio management (NPPM). This dynamic decision process addresses the strategy implementation questions of identifying which new product ideas to pursue and their relative priorities. Despite the importance of NPPM in implementing product strategy, firms exhibit substantial performance-affecting differences. We investigate one potential source for such differences by examining the impact of managers' dispositional factors as a possible explanation. Using a case study research method, we examine differences in NPPM strategies and managers' revealed dispositional traits across three divisions of a single conglomerate firm operating in different business-to-business markets. Based on our analysis, we offer propositions relating managers' dispositions to NPPM strategy: analytic cognitive style is associated with balance, ambiguity tolerance is associated with strategic fit, and leadership style is associated with the relative weights applied to each dimension.     

Employment effects of technological change

This article examines the debate about whether new technology creates or displaces jobs. It emphasises the occupational dimension, in order to assess some of the policies relating to education, training and income distribution. Finally, the role of technological change is examined in terms of the quality of the resulting job structure and the issue of income and skill polarization.     

The Relationships between Resource Configurations and Launch Strategies in Taiwan's IC Design Industry: An Exploratory Study

Within the last decade, the link between launch strategies and new product performance has been widely investigated. However, the relationship between resource configurations and launch strategies has received little attention. This study endeavors to fill that void by examining the relationships between resource configurations and launch strategy selections. In addition, this study investigates the moderating effects of market growth and competitiveness on the relationship between resources and launch strategies. Drawing on contingency theory and strategic studies, this study proposes that resource contingencies affect changes in launch strategies. This study also suggests that market characteristics play a contingent role in the relationships between the configurations of resources and launch strategy choices. Based on extensive studies reporting on market characteristics and their links to strategies, this study proposes that two market characteristics—market growth and competitiveness—are relevant for launch strategy decision making. Taiwan's integrated circuit (IC) design industry has been used as the analytical sample, as it has been identified as a promising sector for new product development. Based on the result of investigating 90 firms, four resource configurations are identified: (1) strategic and organizational abilities; (2) technological capabilities; (3) societal assets and goodwill; and (4) physical assets. Furthermore, two different launch strategies—innovative and product advantage and cost oriented—also are discovered. The results from a seemingly unrelated regression model reveal that technological capabilities and societal assets and goodwill contribute to the variation in the firms' choices of launch strategies. This study further conducted the simple slope analysis to observe the effect of the technological capabilities on the innovative and product advantage strategy under different levels of the market growth rate. The results interestingly showed that firms with technological capabilities demonstrated different degree of tendencies in employing this strategy in alignment with various market growth rates. The finding sheds some lights on the moderating role market characteristics play on the relationships between resource configurations and launch strategy selections. Academic implications and suggestions for practitioners also are provided.     

Project Selection in an Organizational Context

Abstract— Project selection is not a process which occurs at a particular instance in time and to which any single technique or even combination of techniques can be applied. It is an ongoing operation which requires inputs from the idea generation and creativity area and which raises questions about long-term planning and corporate strategy. This paper therefore considers the problem from an organizational point of view and draws upon a variety of research findings which help us to understand how the process might be improved and how some of the more formalized procedures which have been suggested in the literature can be of assistance.     

Towards an organic perspective on strategy

The strategy field's core issues—the concept of strategy, causal models relating strategy to other constructs, and models of strategic management and choice—have been previously addressed by two key progressions. The mechanistic perspective based on disciplinary‐based theories, the design model, and a view of strategy as a planned posture, has provided a unified view, but a narrow and increasingly less pertinent one. The advent of organic developments that included strategy process research, evolutionary and process models, and interactive and integrative views, has provided richness and pertinence, but not a unified perspective. These two progressions marked an epistemological shift from mechanistic to organic assumptions: from discrete to incessant time, from directional to interactive flow, and from differentiated to integrated constructs and models. Building on this shift, this paper proposes an organic perspective that combines the insights and coherence of the mechanistic perspective with the more relevant organic ideas. It makes use of the organic assumptions to advance a view of strategy as an adaptive coordination, introduce the Organization–Environment–Strategy–Performance (OESP) integrative theoretical model, and present an organic model of strategic management. The organic perspective provides a basis for an upgraded, more unified, and better‐attuned view on strategy's core issues. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Venture vogue: Boneyard or bonanza?

In sum, the rationale for new venturing can be diverse and is usually a combination of motives and forces. Success revolves around professional management in two key areas. The first is the process by which the sponsor— financial, industrial, independent or institutional — couples to the new venture. This coupling requires special know-how in order to balance the elements of sponsorship, organization, planning, evaluation, motivation, timing and control. The second is the moving management process itself and the different style required as the new venture evolves from the free-form R&D entrepreneurial stage to the rapid-growth, more quantitative stage in which the venture becomes institutionalized.Success stems from knowibng the particular significance of each ingredient at various stages of the new venture process.     

What determines the scope of the firm over time and around the world? An Asia Pacific perspective

“What determines the scope of the firm?” is a fundamental question in strategy research. We argue that a new generation of diversification research needs to address the extended question: What determines the scope of the firm—both product and geographic—over time and around the world? This article has three goals: (1) to increase awareness among researchers on the necessity to add the much needed but often neglected time and geographic dimensions by introducing a new typology in diversification research, (2) to review how Asia Pacific research, including articles in this Special Issue, has contributed to our global understanding along both dimensions, and (3) to advance an institution-based view on diversification strategies that has largely been propelled by Asia Pacific research.     

Metagame analysis of competitive strategy

The need for effective competitive strategy planning for a firm's survival and growth has long been recognized to be important. The identification and selection of good, or robust, market strategies must be based on the anticipation of the likely strategies of significant competitors, who should ideally be visualized as undergoing a similar process of assessing their own and other's goals and probable strategies. This paper reviews and evaluates the traditional economic and game theoretic approaches to competitive strategy analysis and presents an application of metagame analysis—an approach which has not previously been used in the strategic business environment. This approach, which appears to have some significant advantages over both economic and game theoretic approaches has been utilized and evaluated in a business firm (Dutta and King, forthcoming). An illustration of its use, which is based on a real-world application, is discussed.     

Using the Weapons You Have: The Role of Resources and Competitor Orientation as Enablers and Inhibitors of Competitive Reaction to New Products*

It is a well‐accepted notion that to respond to competitive attacks firms need the necessary resources to do so. However, the presence of resources may not be a sufficient condition to enhance competitive responsiveness. Following a managerial decision‐making approach, the present paper investigates how the availability of resources affects decision makers' assessment of a competitor's new product and their subsequent reaction to it. This study posits that competitive reaction follows from a decision maker's assessment of a competitive action. This assessment contains a motivation dimension and an ability dimension. The effect of three types of resources—financial, marketing, and technological—are examined. A quasi‐experiment with the Markstrat business game as an empirical setting provided 339 questionnaires containing information on 29 different new product introductions. The motivation and ability dimensions are confirmed as important antecedents explaining reaction behavior. The results show that resources possess a dual, and opposing, role in influencing competitive reaction to new products. On the one hand, resources enhance decision makers' belief that they are able to react effectively to competitive attacks, but the presence of resources also makes them less motivated to react. The paper introduces two explanations for this: the liability‐of‐wealth hypothesis and the strong‐competitor hypothesis. The addition of competitor orientation as a moderator allows us to discern between the two competing rationales for the existence of a negative effect of resources on the expected likelihood of success of a competitive new product introduction, supporting the liability‐of‐wealth hypothesis. The paper demonstrates the key role of competitor orientation and formulates implications from that.     

Short‐Time Compensation as a Tool to Mitigate Job Loss? Evidence on the U.S. Experience During the Recent Recession

During the recent recession only seventeen states offered short‐time compensation (STC)—prorated unemployment benefits for workers whose hours are reduced for economic reasons. Federal legislation passed in 2012 will encourage the expansion of STC. Exploiting cross‐state variation in STC, we present new evidence indicating that jobs saved during the recession as a consequence of STC may have been significant in manufacturing, but that the overall scale of the STC program was generally too small to have substantially mitigated aggregate job losses in the seventeen states. Expansion of the program is necessary for STC to be an effective countercyclical tool in the future.     

Differentiate with the 5th P: People

This article examines traditional marketing views of employees to develop a differentiated marketing strategy to gain a competitive advantage. Based on a suggested topology of employees, it is proposed that employees be recognized as a distinctive element of the marketing mix—people-power—and consequently as an integral part of marketing strategy. By managing its employees in terms of newly defined, customer-related roles, an organization can gain a competitive advantage by being perceived as distinctly different from its competitors.