Effective Japanese leadership in China: co-operative goals and applying abilities for mutual benefit

In the global marketplace, managers and employees must work together even though they may have suspicions based on their different countries' historical rivalry. Social psychological research suggests that co-operative goals and applying abilities for mutual benefit can strengthen the leader relationship between Japanese managers and their Chinese employees. Working in Japanese enterprises in Shanghai, China, 100 employees in private Japanese companies in China indicated their goal interdependence with their Japanese and Chinese managers, their applying abilities for mutual benefit and their conclusions that their manager had valuable abilities and was an effective leader. Structural equation analysis suggested that applying abilities for mutual benefit mediates the relationship between goal interdependence and leader resourcefulness and effectiveness, especially when the manager is Chinese and less so when their manager is Japanese. These results, coupled with previous research, were interpreted as suggesting that co-operative goals and applying abilities for mutual benefit contribute to effective leadership even when managers and employees have different nationalities.     

Selection and Training for Integrated Manufacturing: The Moderating Effects of Job Characteristics

This study examined the conditions under which aspects of integrated manufacturing (e.g. advanced manufacturing technology, total quality management, just-in-time inventory control) lead to selection and/or training for technical and problem-solving skills of employees. Results from our study of 74 plants showed main effects of advanced manufacturing technology and total quality management on training for technical and problem-solving skills, but no main effects on selection. In addition, employee job characteristics were studied to examine the degree to which they might moderate the effects of integrated manufacturing. Several interaction effects were found as they related to staffing and training practices. In general, staffing was used less in response to integrated manufacturing when employees' jobs involved high levels of task uncertainty and interdependence. In contrast, the effects on training remained steady or increased under conditions of task uncertainty. Based on this, we conclude that staffing and training are emphasized under different circumstances and, therefore, should not be simply viewed as substitutes for one another in responding to the demands of integrated manufacturing. Our results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications.     

Antecedents of the international association for accounting education and research (1966–1983): A review of early initiatives to develop an international academic accounting association

Interest in this topic followed examination of new data discussing several antecedent proposals for establishing an international academic accounting association in the period 1966–1983, culminating in the 1984 formation of the International Association for Accounting Education and Research (IAAER). Relevant correspondence between several academics is now publicly available in the R.J. Chambers Archive at the University of Sydney. This enables justified statements to be made about the pre‐1984 antecedents of the IAAER, thereby filling a vacuum in our understanding of the history of the organization. We initially discuss Ray Chambers’ and others’ desire for, and attempts to promote an international approach to accounting research and practice. Chambers unsuccessfully attempted to organize an international think‐tank, beginning in the mid‐1960s with something like the International Economic Association of that time. He persisted, through participation in the Accounting Researchers International Association, an elite accounting society. Eventually, those proposals were discarded as he and others like Adolf Enthoven and David Solomons proposed an international confederation of accounting educators and researchers in 1977 and 1978. Efforts of other leading accounting academics of that time, in particular Norlin Rueschhoff and Seigo Nakajima, are also shown to have influenced the eventual formation of the simplified 1984 IAAER body with, initially, its individual‐based membership and objectives. Later, IAAER would become much more like the international confederation of accounting educators and researchers that Chambers had proposed in the 1997 Berlin International Conference on Accounting Education.     

Reassessing the Relative Power of the Yield Spread in Forecasting Recessions

In this paper, we replicate the main results of previous research showing that the use of the yield spread in a probit model can predict recessions better than the Survey of Professional Forecasters. We investigate the robustness of their results in several ways: extending the sample to include the 2007‐09 recession, changing the starting date of the sample, using rolling windows of data instead of just an expanding sample, and using alternative measures of the “actual” value of real output. Our results show that the Rudebusch‐Williams findings are robust in all dimensions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Strategic partnerships and relationship marketing in healthcare

Despite repeated government policies to introduce market-orientation and customer-focus into the UK National Health Service, there is still much anecdotal evidence of unsuccessful policy implementation. In this article we investigate the attitudes of healthcare managers to one recent policy initiative based on partnership working that is intended to provide integrated and customer-focused service to patients. While acknowledging the tensions and dilemmas inherent in private sector marketing concepts, we argue that relationship marketing has considerable potential in public healthcare contexts, based on its advocacy of building relationships between providers and customers and between providers and their suppliers. Using the framework of relationship marketing we identify healthcare managers' concerns about the motives, effects and benefits of implementing partnership arrangements in two regions of the NHS. Through a longitudinal research design our findings suggest that while respondents' attitudes to partnership working and customer focus had become more positive after two years of policy implementation, they remain centred on the service process rather than the customers it serves. We discuss what still needs to be done to transform public healthcare from what is still a predominantly supplier and product-driven service to one that is truly relationship orientated.     

Social welfare,corruption and credibility

Abstract

Economic development requires that investments by entrepreneurs are not subject to expropriation by government. Unfortunately, public agencies often serve as the instruments by which political elites engage in corruption and extracting rents from the economy. The question is how to design institutions that credibly commit to a stable system of guarantees of property rights and contract enforcement.

Principal agent theory and the new public management favor greater accountability of public managers to elected officials or eliminating public agencies through privatization. We argue for institutional designs that provide a degree of public agency autonomy. We show that public agency autonomy is a by-product of the competition between elites in democracies with multiple veto players. We show that transparency, professionalism, and legality help ensure that public managers do not engage in rent-extraction. The institutional design problem is how to induce public managers to serve the public interest without being fully responsive to elected political officials.     

资本市场与高等教育市场对接的现状、障碍与对策建议

首先阐述了高等教育市场化概念释义，分析了资本市场与高等教育市场对拱的可行性，重点研究资本市场与高等教育市场对接的现状与所存在的障碍，提出了资本市场与高等教育市场互动的风险防范与对策建议。     

Is real GDP per capita a stationary process? Smooth transitions,nonlinear trends and unit root testing

The aim of this article is to provide additional evidence about the order of integration of constant price GDP per capita in a selection of countries. It does so by taking into account the possibility of non-linear deterministic trends and of asymmetric adjustment towards equilibrium. We find evidence of a global stationary ESTAR process around a nonlinear deterministic trend in almost half of the selected countries. These results show that nonlinearities affect real GDP series. By neglecting them, one can draw misleading conclusions from unit root tests. Specifically, the article questions the so-called stylised fact of a near unit root which has so influenced macroeconomic thought over the past two decades.     

中国国有企业与民营企业的数量演进——基于种群生态学的仿真实验

本文运用种群生态学的仿真实验分析了1990年以来中国国有企业与民营企业数量的动态变化关系。实验显示,国退民进和国进民退的分水岭在2004年前后,2004年之前,中国民营经济稳步快速发展,此后民营企业数量增长率明显变缓,国有企业数量总体上也在逐步减少。根据国有企业和民营企业各自的相对优势——国有企业发挥实力、民营企业体现活力来设置不同的参数,发现市场经济中民营企业具有普适性,并预测出国有经济与民营经济将长期共存并推进中国经济发展。为此,在市场环境中,只有进一步发展民营经济才能释放强大的经济活力、优化产业结构、维护社会的公平正义。这种以国有经济为基础,国有经济与民营经济争高竞长、并驾齐驱的新型经济才是真正的中国特色社会主义市场经济。     

Swinging a double-edged sword: The effect of slack on entrepreneurial management and growth

Resource slack represents a double-edged sword, simultaneously fueling and hindering growth. Drawing on Penrose's growth theory and Stevenson's entrepreneurial management theory, we have developed and tested a conceptual model that provides a more nuanced account of the resource slack-growth relationship. Using a large dataset spanning six years, we have found that slack has a positive direct effect on growth but a negative effect on entrepreneurial management, and that entrepreneurial management has a positive effect on growth. Our empirical and conceptual findings are important to the development of firm growth theory and explicate causal mechanisms transforming slack into firm-level outcomes.