My Comments on the Values of The United States——Equality of Opportunity and Competition

In spite of the gap,these cultural values have played an important role in forming the basic characteristics of Americans and in American social life.     

Do Limits Matter? Evidence on the Effects of Tax Limitations on Student Performance

The goal of this research is to determine if limits on the revenue-raising ability of school districts translate into constraints on the ability of these districts to affect student performance. We use the recent imposition of property tax limitations on school districts in the Chicago metropolitan area to determine if these limits have translated into slower growth in student performance. We find only limited evidence that student performance in districts subject to the tax limitations has fallen relative to student performance in districts not subject to the limitations.     

The Effect of Import Competition on Firm Productivity and Innovation: Does the Distance to Technology Frontier Matter?

How does foreign competition affect growth and innovation in China? Using our unique measures of proximity of Chinese firms and industries to the world technology frontier, we find that despite vast sectoral heterogeneity, Chinese manufacturing industries have undergone rapid technological upgrading over the period of 2000–06. The distance to the world production frontier of firms and industries plays an important role in shaping the nexus between the competition pressure from foreign imports and domestic firms' growth and innovation behaviour. Our results support the theoretical predictions of Aghion et al. (2005, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, pp. 701–728) that import competition stimulates the domestic firms' productivity growth and R&D expenditure if firms and their industries are close to the world frontier, but discourages such incentives for laggard firms and industries. The two forces highlighted by the model operate for imports under the ordinary‐trade regime, for collective and private firms, and for imports originated from high‐income countries. Our findings are robust after controlling the influence of foreign investment, the reverse causality of regressors and the short‐term business cycle fluctuations.     

Does direct experience matter? Examining the consequences of current entrepreneurial behavior on entrepreneurial intention

Entrepreneurial behavior research has used intention models to explain how an individual’s beliefs shape the attitudes and motivations that influence entrepreneurial intention. Nevertheless, as entrepreneurship promotion initiatives become global, it becomes relevant to explore the consequences of being engaged in entrepreneurial behavior on entrepreneurial intention. We aim to shed light on whether the direct experience reinforces an individual’s entrepreneurial intention or reduces it. Building on an extended version of the planned behavior theory, we use the behavioral reasoning theory to propose a research design to study the influence of being currently engaged in entrepreneurial behavior on entrepreneurial intention. We introduce individual’s age as an additional moderator of the effects of directly experiencing entrepreneurial behavior. We use PLS-MGA to complete a multi-group SEM analysis for different groups of individuals (from a sample of 430), comparing groups based on their entrepreneurial activity and age group. Results of this research work evidence that current engagement in entrepreneurship activities produces significant differences in the intention to start a new venture between older and younger participants. The results suggest that engagement in entrepreneurial activity modifies entrepreneurial intention and that these effects are contingent to the individual’s age. This research work contributes to the extant call to explore reverse causality between actual behavior and an individual’s intention by introducing behavioral reasoning theory. These results provide support to initiatives to adapt entrepreneurship promotion efforts to the specific characteristics of the participants.     

Corporate Governance and the Environment: What Type of Governance Creates Greener Companies?

We build on a stakeholder–agency theoretical perspective to explore the impact of particular corporate governance mechanisms on firm environmental performance. Our empirical evidence shows that several important corporate governance mechanisms such as the board of directors, managerial incentives, the market for corporate control, and the legal and regulatory system determine firms' environmental performance levels. These results suggest that these different governance mechanisms resolve, to some extent, the existing divergence of interests between stakeholders and managers with respect to environmental activities.     

Is the Public Oversight of Auditors Effective? The Impact of Sanctions on Loss of Clients,Salary and Audit Reporting

This study examines the consequences of sanctions against individual Swedish auditors issued by the Supervisory Board of Public Accountants (SBPA). The results provide no support for individual auditor client loss after receiving a sanction. However, we find that Big 4 auditors have a lower salary after the sanction than before. Finally, we do not find that auditors become more conservative in their reporting after being sanctioned. Collectively, our results support that public oversight sanctions have relatively limited consequences for auditors of private companies.     

On credit and output: Is the supply of credit relevant?

The consensus that changes in the supply of credit were irrelevant to making monetary policy decisions existed among macroeconomists during the second half of the twentieth century. Transmission of shocks to the real economy through changes in the supply of credit, however, played an important role in the recent U.S. financial crisis. This paper explores the extent to which policymakers should consider changes in the supply of credit when making forecasts and monetary policy decisions. More specifically, it considers whether a measure of real credit balances offers consistent and stable information, beyond that of a real interest rate and real money balances, about future output gaps during the U.S. post-war era. Results yield evidence that changes in real credit balances are the only variable, among those considered, to provide consistent and stable information about future output gaps over the entire sample period. Each information variable, however, provides relatively little value added for forecasting future output gaps, beyond a simple autoregressive model. To improve upon forecasts and monetary policy decisions, policymakers therefore should consider a broader range of information variables and occasionally reassess the relative weightings assigned to each.     

Competitive and opportunistic behavior in a prisoner’s dilemma game: experimental evidence on the impact of culture and education

The experimental study presented in Cox et al. (1991) referred to henceforth as CLM, revealed that culture has a substantial impact on the cooperative or non-cooperative behavior of U.S.-born African, Anglo, Asian and Hispanic Americans in a Prisoner’s Dilemma setting. The present article complements CLM’s study in three ways. First, CLM’s experiment is replicated with a sample of Dutch undergraduates. This replication confirms the major finding of the CLM study that culture matters. Second, the role of uncertainty is included by introducing two different information regimes, indicating that uncertainty regarding the opponent’s future behavior facilitates cooperation. Third, CLM’s study is extended by analyzing the influence of education — particularly, knowledge of the competition or game theory of economics. It is found that knowledge of behavioral theories or “soft” economics does stimulate cooperative behavior, but that it has no impact on opportunism. The first point supports the claim in Holler et al. (1992) and Frank et al. (1993) that education plays a role in determining the cooperative or non-cooperative attitudes among managers and students, while the second underscores CLM’s observation that culture does matter.     

The Effects of Audit Committee Members’ Age and Additional Directorships on the Cost of Equity Capital in the USA

In this paper, we examine the associations between the cost of equity capital and two audit committee (AC) characteristics: (1) average AC members’ age and (2) average number of AC members’ other directorships. This study is motivated by the recent emphasis on the important role of ACs in overseeing financial reporting and audit processes, as well as the recognition of the critical role of capital costs in firms' operational efficiency and profitability. The empirical results show that the cost of equity capital is lower in US firms with higher average AC members’ age. We do not find any evidence that the average number of AC members’ other directorships is associated with the cost of equity capital. We also find that age could be another proxy for AC members’ experience. Our findings provide evidence that supports the call of the US Securities and Exchange Commission for greater board diversity (including age). Our study not only demonstrates the important role of ACs in corporate governance, but also enriches the literature by examining the two AC characteristics that are rarely mentioned in prior studies.     

What Do You Think of My Ink? Assessing the Effects of Body Art on Employment Chances

Using mixed design analysis of variance, this paper examines the effect of body art on job applicant hireability ratings. It employs the literatures on the social psychologies of stigma and prejudice, as well as aesthetic labor, to frame the argument. The results indicate that photos of tattooed and pierced job applicants result in lower hireability ratings compared to the control faces. The negative effect of body art on employment chances is, however, reduced for job applicants seeking non‐customer‐facing roles. In customer‐facing roles, the tattoo is associated with lower hireability ratings than the piercing. The results suggest that visible body art can potentially be a real impediment to employment. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Plugged In or Disconnected? A Model of the Effects of Technological Factors on Employee Job Embeddedness

Technology continues to play an ever‐increasing role in both our work and private lives. In parallel with this expanding reliance on technology has been a shift in how people now view their jobs. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide a theoretical model that bridges these two areas—technology and employee attitudes (more specifically, work‐related feelings of embeddedness). Within our model, we consider aspects of common work‐related technologies and key perceptual variables related to technology, and how both areas can influence embeddedness in one's job. We conclude the article by providing examples of how specific technologies that are commonly found in today's work environment may influence job embeddedness perceptions, and we discuss the implications of the model on both theory and practice. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Is the causal nexus of energy utilization and economic growth asymmetric in the US?

This paper re-examines the causal nexus of energy utilization and GDP per capita in the US. The novelty of the paper is to allow for asymmetry in causality by using a new test introduced by Hatemi-J (forthcoming). A bootstrap procedure is used with leveraged corrections that perform more accurately when the statistical assumptions for validity of asymptotic distributions are not fulfilled. This is especially the case for sample sizes as in the current paper. The estimation results reveal strongly that a negative energy consumption shock will cause a negative shock in the output per capita. That is, if the energy utilization per capita decreases then the output per capita will also decrease. Surprisingly, such a causal impact for positive shocks is not found. These empirical results might indicate that there is an optimal quantity of energy in the US that needs to be consumed as otherwise the economic growth will suffer. However, the consumption of energy beyond that optimal quantity will not necessarily result in an enhanced rate of economic growth.     

Does the Presence of Voice Imply the Absence of Silence? The Necessity to Consider Employees’ Affective Attachment and Job Engagement

Employer‐sponsored voice practices (ESVPs) are a tool used by human resource management to increase voice behavior and fulfill legal requirements for employee participation and consultation. Conceptual papers question the usefulness of ESVPs, arguing that they may promote selective expression at work in the way that employees who use ESVPs suggest work‐related process improvements (i.e., promotive voice) but still remain silent about issues that disturb smooth cooperation (i.e., cooperative silence). Prior research that treated voice and silence as being mutually exclusive cannot clarify how using ESVPs relates to voice and silence and under which conditions these links are particularly strong. Drawing from an employee survey in a UK branch of a multinational technology company, we apply a differentiated approach that treats voice and silence as separate behaviors and considers their specific motivators. Results from structural equation modeling show that even though employees use ESVPs and engage in voice, silence may still linger as a potential threat to performance and well‐being. Moreover, moderator analyses revealed that affective attachment to the organization increased and job engagement decreased the occurrence of this potentially dangerous coincidence. Our findings provide evidence for the usefulness of more differentiated approaches to employee voice and silence and indicate that factors that facilitate voice, be they formal procedures or pro‐organizational attitudes, might not suffice to overcome silence at work. We close with a discussion on ways to facilitate voice while reducing silence at the same time. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Is the doctor in? A relational approach to job design and the coordination of work

When designing jobs, the degree of specialization is a key consideration. Though functional specialization allows workers to develop deep areas of expertise, it also increases the challenge of coordinating their work. In this article, we propose the concepts of stage‐ and site‐based specialization and posit that together they can counteract the divisive effects of functional specialization. Taking advantage of a natural experiment in physician job design at a Massachusetts hospital, we explore the impact of stage‐ and site‐based specialization on coordination and performance outcomes. Building on recent interest in relational approaches to job design, this study is the first to link relational job design to relational outcomes such as coordination. Our findings have practical implications for job design in professional service settings such as education, consulting, and health care. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Is synergy always good? Clarifying the effect of innovation capital and customer capital on firm performance in two contexts

The resource-based view (RBV) posits that a firm can leverage the effect of existing capital on firm performance via capital configuration, complementarity, and integration, but little empirical research has addressed these issues. This study investigates the effects of innovation capital and customer capital on firm performance, whether their complementary interactions are important determinants of relative firm performance within the industry, and whether these effects considerably differ significantly between high- and low-technology manufacturing firms. Based on data collected from 312 high-technology manufacturing firms and 204 low-technology manufacturing firms in the Taiwanese manufacturing industry, the results of SEM analyses demonstrate that the main effects of both innovation and customer capital significantly and positively impact firm performance. The analytical results demonstrate that: (1) a significant interaction effect only exists in the high-technology manufacturing firms; (2) the main effect of customer capital is lower among high-technology manufacturing firms; (3) the main effect of innovation capital is the same for both high- and low-technology manufacturing firms. Additionally, this investigation also discusses the limitations of the current research, future research directions, and the theoretical and practical implications of the empirical analysis.     

Running on the spot? A review of twenty years of research on the management of human resources in comparative and international perspective

Research using a comparative and international perspective on the management of human resources is examined, drawing on articles published in leading human resource management, management/organizational behaviour and related social science journals between 1977 and 1997. In total a little under 2 per cent of the articles under review focused on the management of human resources in a comparative and international perspective. The largest group of these articles was comparative in nature (44 per cent), followed by those with an international perspective (35 per cent). A smaller number adopted a combined approach (17 per cent) and a few were separately classified as foreign national studies (4 per cent). Over time, there has been some progress made in terms of the number of articles published and the scope of topics covered. However, many of the articles displayed similar shortcomings to those noted in earlier reviews of cross-national management/organization studies: in particular, an over-reliance on a small number of primarily Anglo-Saxon countries, a lack of a longitudinal perspective, a loose specification of culture, an ethnocentric bias and a frequent failure to explain observed differences and similarities.     

Is good character good enough? The effects of situational variables on the relationship between integrity and counterproductive work behaviors

The literature on integrity testing in personnel selection has reported impressive validities for predicting counterproductive work behaviors (CWB), but has seldom taken into consideration the possible influences of situational variables once job applicants are hired. This study examined the main effects and interaction effects of two situational variables, employee engagement and security control norms, on the relationship between integrity and CWB admissions. Based on data collected from a census sample of job incumbents from a large international retail company, all three variables were found to be moderately related to CWB, incrementally valid when aggregated, and together led to a lower rate of false positives than that yielded by integrity alone. In addition, employee engagement and security control norms each moderated the relationship between integrity and CWB when integrity was low, but did not influence CWB when integrity was high. The implications of these findings on personnel selection methods are discussed.