The Development of Tertiary Services in the Economy,Labour Market and Employment

The purpose of the present study is to examine the effects of selected antecedents on the service recovery performance of frontline employees using data from frontline bank employees in Turkey. The results of the path analysis indicate that trait competitiveness, intrinsic motivation, and role ambiguity are significant antecedents of frontline employees' service recovery performance. Results also suggest that the significant consequences of service recovery performance are job satisfaction and intention to leave. The results of the other hypothesised linkages demonstrate that intrinsic motivation, emotional exhaustion, and role ambiguity are significantly associated with frontline employees' job satisfaction. In addition, the current empirical findings provide support for the notion that role ambiguity and emotional exhaustion are significant predictors of intention to leave. Limitations of the study, managerial implications, and implications for future research are discussed.     

A Humean theory of choice of which rationality may be one consequence

For the reader who considers economic theory of choice as a special case of a more general theory of action, Hume's discussion of the determinants of action in the Treatise of Human Nature (1739?–?40), in the Enquiry on Human Understanding (1748) and in the Dissertation on Passions (1757) deserves attention. However, according to some modern commentators, Hume does not seem to have given any evidence that would favour what nowadays we would consider as the kind of rationality involved in modern theories of rational choice. On the contrary, this paper arrives at the conclusion that consistency between preferences and choice, like the usual properties of completeness and transitivity, may be considered as outcomes of a mental process, described by means of a decision algorithm that aims to represent Hume's theory of choice.     

A Stupidity‐Based Theory of Organizations

In this paper we question the one‐sided thesis that contemporary organizations rely on the mobilization of cognitive capacities. We suggest that severe restrictions on these capacities in the form of what we call functional stupidity are an equally important if under‐recognized part of organizational life. Functional stupidity refers to an absence of reflexivity, a refusal to use intellectual capacities in other than myopic ways, and avoidance of justifications. We argue that functional stupidity is prevalent in contexts dominated by economy in persuasion which emphasizes image and symbolic manipulation. This gives rise to forms of stupidity management that repress or marginalize doubt and block communicative action. In turn, this structures individuals' internal conversations in ways that emphasize positive and coherent narratives and marginalize more negative or ambiguous ones. This can have productive outcomes such as providing a degree of certainty for individuals and organizations. But it can have corrosive consequences such as creating a sense of dissonance among individuals and the organization as a whole. The positive consequences can give rise to self‐reinforcing stupidity. The negative consequences can spark dialogue, which may undermine functional stupidity.     

A Comparison between Dutch and German Retail Price Setting

This article examines the diferences between Dutch and German retail price setting. The study is based on an econometric approach in the sense that the estimates of the coeficients of a one-equation model explaining retail profit margins are compared. Extensive datasets are used for both the Dutch and German case, allowing a general comparison between the two countries to be made. An ex post interpretation of the differences in coeficients found is given.     

Who follows the crowd—Groups or individuals?

In games of social learning individuals tend to give too much weight to their own private information relative to the information that is conveyed by the choices of others (Weizsäcker, 2010). In this paper we investigate differences between individuals and small groups as decision makers in information cascade situations. In line with results from social psychology as well as results on Bayesian decision making (Charness et al., 2006) we find that groups behave more rationally than individuals. Groups, in particular, are able to abandon their own private signals more often than individuals when it is rational to do so. Our results indicate that the intellective part of the decision task contributes slightly more to the superior performance of groups than the judgmental part. Our findings have potential implications for the design of decision making processes in organisations, finance and other economic settings.     

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AN AFRICAN MIRACLE: STATE AND CLASS LEADERSHIP AND COLONIAL LEGACY IN BOTSWANA DEVELOPMENT. Abdi Ismail Samatar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999, 240 pp., cloth $59.95, paper $24.95. ISBN 0-325-0068-9. For credit card orders in the USA, call 1-800-225-5800. Reviewed by Anne Stringfellow.     

The Focus Efficiency of U.S. Hospitals

Hospital productivity has been a research topic for over two decades. Whereas much has been learned regarding cost, technical, scale, and allocative efficiency as well as the impact that weakly disposable inputs/outputs have on hospital behavior, we expand on this research by examining size and service offering, or focus, efficiency at the metropolitan area level for US hospitals. By using an extension of the Free Coordination Hull (FCH), we are able to determine whether hospitals in our sample could become more efficient if they provided more services (reduce inefficiency due to too narrow a focus) or fewer services (reduce inefficiency due to too broad a focus). Our results suggest that findings vary among the hospital markets. This approach could be used by policy makers and managers in order to reduce costs by sharing services, reducing services in hospitals, or expanding services in hospitals. Findings from a study such as this should aid reform programs by providing more information on the sources of hospital inefficiency.     

Ranking farms with a composite indicator of sustainability

The assessment of sustainability at farm level has been growing in popularity over the last few years. This article contributes to this line of research by building up composite indicators for different facets—social, economic, environmental, and global—of farm sustainability using a methodological approach that combines data envelopment analysis (DEA) and multicriteria decision making (MCDM) methods, and assigns common weights to each individual sustainability indicator. This approach is applied to a database of 163 farms located in the Campos County, a region belonging to the dry lands of the Spanish Northern Plateau, using 12 individual indicators of sustainability. Our findings show that both economic and environmental composite sustainability indicators are positively correlated, but that this is not the case for the social indicator. We also check the influence of a set of variables on farm sustainability using bootstrapping statistical techniques, and showing that increasing farm size, membership in agricultural cooperatives and farmers’ medium and upper agricultural‐specific technical education, all exert a significant positive influence on sustainability. These results provide clues for policy makers that intend to design sustainability‐increasing structural agricultural policies.     

Labor supply, child care, and welfare in Spanish households

This paper presents a household model in which both spouses work and care for their children, thereby obtaining a measure of household welfare. Applying this model to the Spanish case allows for drawing some basic conclusions. That is, the highest efficiency in caring for children is obtained when time is offered by the mother. Moreover, the time dedicated to child care by the father is considered as leisure time in a higher proportion than time dedicated by the mother. Also, a direct and strong relationship is detected between monetary income and welfare. Household welfare is greater when the children are older, and welfare increases when the father dedicates less time to work outside the home.The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper. The authors are also indebted to the Ministerio Español de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales for its financial support.     

El efecto Harrod-Balassa-Samuelson El caso de México

This paper discusses the Harrod-Balassa-Samuelson (HBS) effect in Mexico during the period 1970-2009. In so doing, we use an econometric model that incorporates structural changes. The results achieved in this research suggest that the HBS effect does not hold in the case of Mexico and the United States during this period, and thus it was not statistically corroborated that the different rates of productivity growth in the tradable and non tradable goods between these countries affected the real exchange rate.