How Does Project Termination Impact Project Team Members? Rapid Termination, ‘Creeping Death’, and Learning from Failure

Although extant studies have increased our understanding of the decision of when to terminate a project and its organizational implications, they do not explore the contextual mechanisms underlying the link between the speed at which a project is terminated and the learning of those directly working on the project. This is surprising because perceptions of project failure likely differ between those who own the option (i.e., the decision maker) and those who are the option (i.e., project team members). In this multiple case study, we explored research and development (R&D) subsidiaries within a large multinational parent organization and generated several new insights: (1) rather than alleviate negative emotions, delayed termination was perceived as creeping death, thwarting new career opportunities and generating negative emotions; (2) rather than obstructing learning from project experience, negative emotions motivated sensemaking efforts; and (3) rather than emphasizing learning after project termination, in the context of rapid redeployment of team members after project termination, delayed termination provided employees the time to reflect on, articulate, and codify lessons learned. We discuss the implications of these findings.     

Education and saving:: The long-term effects of high school financial curriculum mandates

Over the last 40 years, a majority of states have adopted consumer education policies, and a sizable minority have mandated that high school students receive instruction on topics related to household financial decision-making. In this paper, we attempt to determine whether these mandates have had any effect on subsequent decisions. We exploit the variation in requirements both across states and over time to identify the effects of interest. The evidence indicates that mandates have raised both exposure to financial curricula and subsequent asset accumulation once exposed students reached adulthood. The estimated effects are gradual, probably due to implementation lags.     

Robust Poverty and Inequality Measurement in Egypt: Correcting for Spatial-price Variation and Sample Design Effects

The paper estimates inequality and absolute poverty in Egypt for 1997 with measures that are robust to sample design effects and corrected for spatial variation in price levels. Standard errors for inequality indices are calculated using a bootstrap approach which replicates the sample design. Standard errors for poverty indices are corrected for the design effects resulting from sample stratification and clustering. The authors use data from the Egypt Integrated Household Survey and follow the cost‐of‐basic‐needs methodology to construct region‐specific poverty lines. It is found that 15.7 million people were poor in Egypt in 1997, or 26.5% of the population. The estimates indicate a sharp sectoral difference with rural areas being significantly poorer, but significant differences in poverty were not found between Upper and Lower Egypt. This finding differs substantially from the conventional wisdom that Upper Egypt is poorer than Lower Egypt and results from the correction for spatial‐price variation.     

对企业拓展东南亚市场的建议

对希望在东南亚市场有所作为的企业,我想提几点建议：首先，要认识到在中国东盟自由贸易区的建设中还有很多困难。就是东盟本身的建设也有许多困难；比如，对现行《东盟自由贸易协定》的一些条款，马来歪亚和泰国之间就产生了争执。泰国表示．在马来西亚终止汽车进口许可制度前．泰国将不会降低马来西亚汽车的进口关税。     

Participative Leadership by American and Chinese Managers in China: The Role of Relationships*

abstract Developing participative leadership may be particularly challenging when managers are working cross‐culturally and in China. One hundred and sixty‐three Chinese employees from various industries in mainland China were surveyed about their relationships and the effectiveness of their participation with American and Chinese managers. Results, including structural equation analyses, support the hypotheses that cooperative, but not competitive or independent, goals helped Chinese employees and their foreign and Chinese managers strengthen their quality relationships as measured by supervisor–subordinate guanxi and leader–membership exchange; quality relationships in turn enhanced effective participative leadership as measured by the opportunity for joint decision‐making and the open‐minded discussion of opposing views (constructive controversy). Results suggest that cooperative goals and the Chinese value of guanxi may be important for overcoming obstacles and developing participative leadership within and across cultural boundaries.     

Projection properties of certain three level orthogonal arrays

Two orthogonal arrays based on 3 symbols are said to be isomorphic or combinatorially equivalent if one can be obtained from the other by a sequence of row permutations, column permutations and permutations of symbols in each column. Orthogonal arrays are used as screening designs to identify active main effects, after which the properties of the subdesign for estimating these effects and possibly their interactions become important. Such a subdesign is known as a ``projection design'. In this paper we have identified all the inequivalent projection designs of an OA(27,13,3,2), an OA(18,7,3,2) and an OA(36,13,3,2) into k=3,4 and 5 factors. It is shown that the generalized wordlength pattern criterion proposed by Ma and Fang [23] can distinguish between most, but not all, inequivalent classes. We propose an extension of the Es² criterion (which is commonly used for measuring efficiency of 2-level designs) to distinguish further between the non-isomorphic classes and to measure the efficiency of the designs in these classes. Some concepts on generalized resolution are also discussed.     

The social construction of positive choices

Positive studies of a manager's selection of accounting practices have focused on a small number of compensation, contracting and political variables to explain behaviour. These studies, by ignoring the embeddedness of managers in social relations, have unnecessarily assumed away many of the social factors that influence and constrain one's choices. This study considers the social construction of a manager's choices; in particular, the individual, institutional and societal influences on behaviour. The analysis and empirical illustration suggest that such a perspective provides a richer, more inclusive explanation of behaviour than is provided by positive approaches.