The future of work and family: Critical trends for policy,practice, and research

Work/life “thought leaders” from 28 large corporations carried out an environmental scanning process with the objective of linking work/life policies and practices to critical business and environmental trends. Globalization, technological change, and organizational flexibility are trends that have been commonly identified in other environmental scanning efforts, but their relationship to work/life issues has often been ignored. Similarly, the relationship of changing family structures to business goals has not received the attention it deserves. Through this linking process, work/life advocates can demonstrate the value of their efforts to other corporate decision makers. Innovative corporate work/life initiatives that are responsive to these important trends are described. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

TRANSMISSION OF CONDITIONAL STOCK RETURN VOLATILITY ACROSS NORTH AMERICAN MARKETS: Evidence from Pre- and Post-NAFTA

There has been considerable interest in whether stock market volatility is predictable and the extent to which cross-market relationships exist. This article examines the transmission of conditional stock price return volatility across the U.S., Canadian, and Mexican markets. Using daily data over the period 6/2/92-10/28/99 we provide empirical evidence on the extent to which cross-market relationships exist in the pre- and post-NAFTA periods.     

Intellectual Capital and the New Wealth of Nations

If asked, few managers today would deny the importance of intellectual capital to successful performance. But organisational practice – for example performance measurement and accounting techniques – have not yet been adjusted to recognise the changing origins of wealth creation. The author of this article argues that firms and countries which lag on this issue do so at their peril. He identifies and examines some examples of best practice and indicates how they could be generalised.     

Common liquidity shocks and market collapse: Lessons from the market for perps

We show how a high degree of commonality in investor liquidity shocks can diminish incentives for intermediaries to keep markets open and lead to market collapse, even without information asymmetry or news affecting fundamentals. We motivate our model using the perpetual floating-rate note market where two years of explosive growth – in which issues by high quality borrowers were placed with institutional investors and traded in a liquid secondary market – were followed by a precipitous collapse when market intermediaries withdrew due to large order imbalances. We shed new light on the trade-off between ownership concentration and market liquidity.