Business and regulators partnerships: Government transformational leadership for constructive conflict management

Regulations are often thought to be impediments to collaboration between governments and businesses; however, governments and businesses are increasingly forming partnerships to help them negotiate regulation issues and more broadly work together. This study argues that governments, by exercising transformational leadership, lay the foundation for the cooperative approach, in contrast to the competitive and avoiding approaches, to conflict management that in turn results in effective partnerships. Findings from 146 pairs of government regulators and business support the hypothesis, though the evidence for the ineffectiveness of avoiding conflict was not statistically significant. Specifically, structural equation analysis results support the model that transformational leadership fosters cooperative approach to conflict and reduces competitive conflict management that in turn result in respectful, effective partnerships that develop industries.     

Linking Theory and Context: ‘Strategy Research in Emerging Economies’ after Wright et al. (2005)

Emerging economies provide a laboratory for investigating the interaction between firm strategies and local contexts. Mike Wright and colleagues have shaped this research agenda by creating legitimacy for this line of research, and by outlining how research in four types of strategy contexts can advance theories. We assess how this agenda has progressed in eight leading journals in the past decade, particularly during the five years following their review, with the aims to identify broad trends of theorizing, and to outline future research challenges. Emerging economy contexts challenge some of the assumptions of theories originally developed for markets that are relatively stable and efficient. Researchers have advanced several theoretical perspectives by addressing these challenges. Wright and colleagues focused on institutional theory as a major foundation for such work, and we find it continuing to be the most popular theoretical perspective. In addition, new perspectives have emerged, focusing on learning, relationships, real options, and spillovers as focal concepts for theorizing.     

Policy Determinants of School Outcomes under Model Uncertainty: Evidence from South Africa

In this paper, we assess the determinants of secondary school outcomes in South Africa. We use Bayesian model averaging techniques to account for uncertainty in the set of underlying factors that are chosen among a very large pool of explanatory variables in order to identify the subset of explanatory variables most strongly associated with the dependent variable. Our analysis indicates that the socio‐economic background of pupils, demographic characteristics such as population groups (Black and White), as well as geographical locations account for a significant variation in pupils’ achievement levels. We also find that the most robust policy determinants of pupils’ test scores are the availability of a library at school, the use of IT in the classroom as well as school climate.     

A dynamic perspective on the impact of process innovation upon competitive strategies

The paper lays the foundation for building a dynamic theory of the impact of process innovation upon competitive strategies. An innovation is tracked over two and a half decades to observe changing patterns in competition resulting from ongoing innovation development, emerging complementary technologies, and expanding use. The study finds that the innovation created competitive opportunities and threats for both firms that adopted it and those that did not.     

An Evaluation of Alternative Methods of Forecasting Australian Inflation

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the forecast of Australian inflation based on four alternative procedures: a univariate time series model, an interest rate model, an error correction model and a public survey of inflation forecasts. We derive estimates of expected and unexpected inflation from each of the methods and compare the out-of-sample forecasting results. Based on a range of evaluation criteria, the time series model dominates the other models, with the interest rate model, the error correction model and the survey forecasts following in that order.     

Conditions for invariance of the multivariate versions of grubbs’ test and bartlett’s test under a general dependency structure

Summary This paper generalizes a result by Stadje (1984) by deriving conditions for which a general dependency structure for multivariate observations, given in Pavur (1987), yields a positive definite covariance structure. This general dependency structure allows the sample covariance matrix to be distributed as a constant times a Wishart random matrix. It is then demonstrated that the maximum squared-radii test and a test for equal population covariance matrices have null distributions which remain unchanged when the new general dependency structure, rather than the usual independence structure, for the vector observations, is assumed. Moreover, under a general dependency structure for which the population covariance matrices are unequal, it is shown that the distribution of the test statistic for testing equal covariance matrices is identical to the distribution of the same test statistic when the population covariance matrices are equal and the observations are independent.     

Integrating the disabled into the work force: A survey of fortune 500 company attitudes and practices

Full participation in the work force continues to be an elusive goal for disabled individuals. One common explanation for this state of affairs is that employers tend to have negative attitudes about what the handicapped have to offer as employees and what is required to integrate them into the work force. Unfortunately, relatively little recent data is available about such attitudes. Thus, a survey of Fortune 500 companies was conducted to examine employers' attitudes toward the disabled. Employers' hiring and accommodation practices were also examined. Results were encouraging for the handicapped in some areas (e.g., performance perceptions) and a cause for concern in others (e.g., the perceived cost of making workplace accommodations). Level of exposure to the handicapped was also related to attitudes and practices. Limitations, research directions, and implications for corporations are discussed.     

The Determinants of the Cost Efficiency of Electric Generating Plants: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

This article provides a detailed analysis of generation plant operating cost efficiency over the period 1988-1997. I estimate a stochastic frontier cost function together with a model of plant inefficiencies to measure the operating efficiencies of individual plants and identify factors that are associated with variations in plant efficiencies. I find evidence that plant efficiencies are associated with capacity utilization of the plant, the number of plants under utility management, and ownership form. I also find that regulatory restructuring activity in certain states is associated with improvements in plant operating performance.