Public service motivation and public sector employment preference: Comparing Italian and British students

ABSTRACT

Previous research has suggested that an individual’s public service motivation (PSM) is positively linked to a preference for public sector employment. The authors explore this link using a sample of British and Italian undergraduate students. They found a positive relationship between PSM and public sector job preferences among Italian students but not with the British students. The UK has implemented more NPM-style reforms than Italy and this could be impacting on public sector recruitment. Implications for recruitment and retention the public sector are discussed.     

WHAT DETERMINES THE ELASTICITY OF SUBSTITUTION BETWEEN CAPITAL AND LABOR? A LITERATURE REVIEW

This paper provides the first comprehensive review of the empirical and theoretical literature on the determinants of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. Our focus is on the two-input constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function. We start by presenting four concise observations that summarize the empirical literature on the estimation of . Motivated by these observations, the main part of this survey then focuses on potential determinants of capital–labor substitution. We first review several approaches to the microfoundation of production functions where the elasticity of substitution (EOS) is treated as a purely technological parameter. Second, we outline the construction of an aggregate elasticity of substitution (AES) in a multi-sectoral framework and investigate its dependence on underlying intra- and inter-sectoral substitution. Third, we discuss the influence of the institutional framework on the extent of factor substitution. Overall, this survey highlights that the effective elasticity of substitution (EES), which is typically estimated in empirical studies, is generally not an immutable deep parameter but depends on a multitude of technological, non-technological, and institutional determinants. Based on these insights, the final section identifies a number of potential empirical and theoretical avenues for future research.     

Satisfied with red tape? Leadership,civic duty,and career intention in the military

We examine how the coerciveness of HR procedures and leadership behaviours affect job satisfaction (JS) and career intention (CI), and how civic duty (CD) mediates these relationships. Within the framework of the human resource management performance chain, we draw on leadership and motivational theories and test the proposed relations in a structural equation model with data from a survey of the Federal Armed Forces Germany (n = 1,331). The findings show that the behaviour of supervisors, rather than red tape, influences JS and CI. The results extend our understanding of the interplay between leadership behaviours and followership attitudes under high degrees of organizational coercion.     

There is power in a union? Union members' preferences and the conditional effect of labour unions on left parties in different welfare state programmes

This article studies the effect of labour unions on policy-making in six different parts of the welfare state (passive and active labour market policy, employment protection, old-age pensions, health care and education) in OECD countries after 1980 with a two-level strategy: At the micro-level, we investigate union members’ preferences. Ordered logit regression analyses indicate that union members favour generous social policies more strongly than non-members. Moreover, this effect is stronger for programmes closely related to the labour market than for programmes without a strong labour market link. At the macro-level, we investigate the conditional effect of unions on left parties expecting the former to push the left towards more generous labour market-related (but not towards less-labour market-related) programmes. Regression analyses essentially provide evidence for such a relationship. Overall, unions have been powerful in promoting their members’ social policy preferences via left parties in government but their power is recently vanishing.     

When Are Deliveries Profitable?

The paper aims to optimize the final part of a firm’s value chain with regard to attended last-mile deliveries. It is assumed that to be profitable, e-commerce businesses need to maximize the overall value of fulfilled orders (rather than their number), while also limiting costs of delivery. To do so, it is essential to decide which delivery requests to accept and which time windows to offer to which consumers. This is especially relevant for attended deliveries, as delivery fees usually cannot fully compensate costs of delivery given tight delivery time windows. The literature review shows that existing order acceptance techniques often ignore either the order value or the expected costs of delivery. The paper presents an iterative solution approach: after calculating an approximate transport capacity based on forecasted expected delivery requests and a cost-minimizing routing, actual delivery requests are accepted or rejected aiming to maximize the overall value of orders given the computed transport capacity. With the final set of accepted requests, the routing solution is updated to minimize costs of delivery. The presented solution approach combines well-known methods from revenue management and time-dependent vehicle routing. In a computational study for a German metropolitan area, the potential and the limits of value-based demand fulfillment as well as its sensitivity regarding forecast accuracy and demand composition are investigated.     

Assessing the Economic Potential of Electric Vehicles to Provide Ancillary Services: The Case of Germany

The Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) concept is a promising possibility for the integration of electric vehicles (EVs) into the power grid. This article presents an economic evaluation of EVs participating in the ancillary service market (primary, secondary and tertiary regulation) for the case of Germany, based on a price data set from 2011 and 2012. We examine the economic potential of nine general options to participate in the regulation market based on real-life EV specifications, connection powers and regulation energy prices. Results show that in the most profitable case a maximum average yearly profit of 730.31 € per vehicle is possible for negative regulation with payment direction TSO to provider in the secondary regulation market. Furthermore a sensitivity analysis is performed for all of the analyzed participation scenarios in order to identify crucial parameters for a possible V2G implementation. Major parameters for the successful implementation of V2G are the provided power per vehicle, the time an EV is available to the grid and the variable energy storage costs it incurs.     

Bait and ditch: Consumer naïveté and salesforce incentives

We analyze a model of price competition between a transparent retailer and a deceptive one in a market where a fraction of consumers is naïve. The transparent retailer is an independent shop managed by its owner. The deceptive retailer belongs to a chain and is operated by a manager. The two retailers sell an identical base product, but the deceptive one also offers an add‐on. Rational consumers never consider buying the add‐on while naïve ones can be “talked” into buying it. By offering the manager a contract that pushes him to never sell the base good without the add‐on, the chain can induce an equilibrium in which both retailers obtain more‐than‐competitive profits. The equilibrium features price dispersion and market segmentation, with the deceptive retailer targeting only naïve consumers whereas the transparent retailer serves only rational ones.     

Who promotes a value‐in‐diversity perspective? A fuzzy set analysis of executives’ individual and organizational characteristics

Diversity perspectives are philosophies of or approaches to diversity held by organizations, groups, or executives. They are important for organizations because they can determine the success or failure of diversity in the workforce. However, little is known about the predictors of diversity perspectives among executives. Using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, we analyzed 50 interviews with top executives in Germany to identify individual and organizational characteristics that predict executives' adoption of a diversity perspective, in particular of a value‐in‐diversity perspective. Specifically, we analyzed gender, age, education level, vocational background, and tenure (individual characteristics), as well as size, sector of organization, and competitive environment (organizational characteristics), as potential predictors. We found single characteristics did not predict adoption, but configurations of characteristics did. Drawing on the person‐situation‐interactionist perspective, we developed specific profiles of executives likely to foster a value‐in‐diversity perspective and identified characteristics of their work environments that support such an approach. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.