Limits to effective leadership style and tactics in critical incident interventions

Leadership effectiveness takes many forms. Its impact on performance can be critical, but by no means does it stand alone, and hence cannot truly be evaluated in isolation. Nor can it be assumed that more of any one effective style is necessarily a good thing. In project management contexts, these issues are particularly salient. Here we study the impact of multiple leadership styles on project performance, as well as the joint role that intervention tactics in general play. Our empirical study demonstrates the benefit of moderate mixes of leadership style and the declining returns on active interventions in these settings.     

Singular mixture copulas

We present a new family of copulas??the Singular Mixture Copulas. We begin with constructing singular copulas whose supports lie on the graphs of two given quantile functions. These copulas are then mixed with respect to a continuous distribution resulting in a nonsingular parametric copula. The Singular Mixture Copulas we construct have a Lebesgue density and a closed form representation. Moreover, they have positive lower and upper tail dependence. As an application we fit the copulas to flood level data. As the results show Singular Mixture Copulas provide an alternative to elliptical copulas, e.g., Gaussian and t-copulas, in modeling strongly dependent random variables.     

Managing the right tension

Of all the competing objectives every company faces, three pairs stand out: profitability versus growth, the short term versus the long term, and the whole organization versus the units. In each case, progress on one front usually comes at the expense of progress on the other. The authors researched the performance of more than 1000 companies worldwide over the past two decades and found that most struggle to succeed across the three tensions. From 1983 to 2003, for example, only 32% of these companies more often than not achieved positive profitability and revenue growth at the same time. The problem, the authors discovered, is not so much that managers don't recognize the tensions--those are all too familiar to anyone who has ever run a business. Rather, it is that managers frequently don't focus on the tension that matters most to their company. Even when they do identify the right tension, they usually make the mistake of prioritizing a "lead" objective within it-for example, profitability over growth. As a result, companies often end up moving first in this direction, then in that, and then back again, never quite resolving the tension. The companies that performed best adopted a very different approach. Instead of setting a lead objective, they looked at how best to strengthen what the two sides of each tension have in common: For profitability and growth,the common bond is customer benefit; for the short term and the long, it is sustainable earnings; and for the whole and its parts, it is particular organizational resources and capabilities. The authors describe how companies can select the right tension, what traps they may fall into when they focus on one side over the other, and how to escape these traps by managing to the bonds between objectives.     

Collaboration in new technology-based product markets

In the context o f an apparently increasing contemporary interest in the phenomenon of collaboration, this paper reviews some of the major issues associated with such cooperative activity.Possible reasons for an increase in collaboration are suggested, as are the ofen neglected non-benifits of collaboration, before the variety of influences on the process of collaboration management are discussed. The authors adopt a critical stance towardsjnancial measures as indicators of 'success' and 'failure':arguing that such an approach is simplistic and neglects may of the more intangible benifits of engaging in collaboration. A model of the possible factors aJecting the process of collaboration is proposed and two case studies ofproduct development collaborations in new technolopbased sectors illustrate some of the issues discussed in the paper.     

Transparency of medicines data and safety issues–a European/US study of doctors’ opinions: what does the evidence show?

Over the past 10 years, European pharmaceutical regulators (especially the European Medicines Agency [EMA]) have enacted a wave of transparency policies. Since 2010, the overwhelming majority have focused on releasing more scientific medicines information online and providing open access to regulatory data. Amongst other benefits, EMA expects its policies to build public trust and provide outsiders with a better understanding of regulatory decision-making. Yet, few studies have empirically examined the EMA’s transparency policies, especially on the end users of ‘transparent’ information (e.g. medical doctors or patients). This paper presents standout findings from a November 2014 survey conducted in Spain, Germany, France and the United Kingdom with a sample of 1005 general practitioners and medical specialists treating either multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis or HIV/AIDS. The study found that 76% of respondents think it is a bad idea to release information into the public domain before possible safety issues have been investigated by the regulators and (relevant) pharmaceutical company. The results also suggested that medical doctors in Europe have a poor understanding of pharmaceutical regulatory activities. In particular, the majority were largely unaware of the current activities of the EMA, did not have good knowledge of how the regulators assess the safety of medicines (e.g. only 17% said they had good knowledge of how EMA assess the safety of medicines) and were unfamiliar with regulatory documents frequently used by regulators and industry to discuss the safety of medicines (e.g. in approving a medicine).     

From compromise to concept? – a review of ‘other comprehensive income’

This paper reviews how ‘other comprehensive income’ (OCI) entered financial reporting by tracing major Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB) and International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) projects that required direct entries to equity and describing recent efforts to make sense of the practice. It was the fixation on net income that brought about departures from all-inclusive income, which were repeatedly made over the years without decidedly devoting attention to developing a conceptual basis. OCI was used as a compromise to incorporate current values in the balance sheet, while retaining historical cost principles in the income statement. When the practice was labeled as OCI, it became institutionalized without a clear meaning. A sense-making of the practice then replaced the debates on the adequacy of using OCI and standard setters have realized that additional layers of theory became necessary to explain, for example, reclassification adjustments. Yet, the IASB has made clear in its recent Exposure Draft of a revised conceptual framework that it does not intend to pursue a fresh start in performance reporting that appears to be needed conceptually. Instead, practical considerations, primarily on International Financial Reporting Standards adoption in Japan, seem to lead to another ex-post rationalization of OCI, this time around a conceptually vacuous use of the relevance characteristic.     

Corporate conditions conducive to employee voice: A subordinate perspective

Employees' voice is conceptualized as a necessary condition for organizational success. A model of employee voice is proposed that encompasses employee predispositions, receptivity to employee voice in the microstructure, and affirmative norms for voice in the societal macrostructure. The model was examined by testing the hypothesis that subordinates' satisfaction will be greater when corporate conditions are receptive to employee voice and when the organization is perceived to be committed both to quality in product and quality of employees' work life. a study with 150 employees from a variety of organizations is reported. The results produced rather strong support for the research hypothesis.     

Cost-utility analysis of levodopa carbidopa intestinal gel (Duodopa) in the treatment of advanced Parkinson’s disease in patients in Scotland and Wales

Aims: To carry out a cost-utility analysis comparing the cost-effectiveness of levodopa carbidopa intestinal gel (LCIG) with standard of care (SOC) in patients with advanced Parkinson’s Disease (aPD) unsuitable for apomorphine or deep brain stimulation (DBS). LCIG is the only treatment option in this small, but clinically important, population.

Methods: A Markov model with 25 disease states based on disease stage and off-time status plus death. Patients enter the model with aPD spending >50% of their waking day in the off-state. Patients progress through the model in 6-monthly cycles for 20 years to approximate lifetime treatment and capture long-term costs and effects of therapy. Inputs are based on LCIG clinical trials for clinical outcomes and health state utilities, the literature for health state transitions and use UK-based input data wherever possible (drug costs, disease/adverse event management costs, discontinuation rates, mortality rates).

Limitations: Data collection can be challenging in this small, elderly population with advanced disease, therefore some model inputs were estimated, rather than collected directly. It was assumed that a reduction in off-time was the only benefit after the first year of treatment with LCIG; this is a conservative approach, since there may be additional clinical benefits.

Results: There is a considerable incremental gain in quality adjusted life years (QALYs) for patients treated with LCIG of 1.26 QALY with an associated incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of £52,110. If the impact on caregivers is included, the ICER reduces to £47,266.

Conclusions: In cases where there is an orphan population, with no alternative treatment options, HTA assessments have a broader decision-making framework and the ICER is interpreted in this context. In the setting of a very small population, with considerable unmet need, LCIG represents value for money, as reflected by funding approval across the UK.