Dimensions of uncertainty and their moderating effect on new product development project performance

In this study, we measure the dimensions of uncertainty, starting from the definitions constructed for and generally used in innovation projects. We then evaluate their direct and indirect effects on the performance of product and service development projects. Four dimensions of uncertainty are delimited with satisfactory validity and reliability, suggesting a differential moderating effect of the four types of uncertainty (technical and project uncertainty, market uncertainty, fuzziness and complexity) depending on the performance dimension (effectiveness and efficiency) and co‐moderator (project methods and human resource adequacy). Of the four dimensions explored, technical and project, and market uncertainty are true moderators and have the largest interactive effect, fuzziness has a strong direct effect on both performance dimensions whereas complexity weakly directly influences effectiveness. The latter two also influence the relations between performance and the factors related to human resources and project management methods.     

Beyond ideological cleavages: A unifying framework for industrial policies and other public interventions

This paper introduces a new framework to characterize the diversity of public policies and interventions to spur investment and growth. Going beyond ideological cleavages on this topic, we argue that two orthogonal features determine how much interventions depart fundamentally from neutral policies: (1) their degree of selectivity (in terms of sectors or other targeted categories of firms) and (2) the extent of price subsidies embedded in such interventions. These two characteristics of interventions respond to different types of justifications, and they do not necessarily need to go hand in hand, even if they often do in practice. Depending on their selectivity and/or the extent of price subsidies, interventions are shown to vary in their distortions, their benefits, and their opportunity costs. The framework is used to illustrate how different country characteristics affect these pros and cons of interventionism. In particular, we look at the effects of the initial state of the investment climate, the country's institutional capacity, its political economy context and the nature of the State-business interaction. Using the examples of poor countries with a small undiversified industrial base, we show that it is often in the situations where interventions may be the most needed, that the conditions for their success are likely to be the weakest, which does not mean either that some interventions cannot succeed in low-income countries.     

Looking Forward to Performance Improvement: A Field Test of the Feedforward Interview for Performance Management

This study examines the effectiveness of the feedforward interview for improving the job performance of employees relative to a traditional performance appraisal interview in a business equipment firm. Managers (n = 25) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. Employees (n = 70) who engaged in a feedforward interview with their manager were observed by an anonymous peer to perform significantly better on the job four months later than employees (n = 75) who received the company's traditional performance appraisal interview. The finding that the feedforward intervention increased performance relative to the performance appraisal indicates that the effect is a relatively enduring one. The results suggest that the feedforward interview should prove useful for human resource managers who are searching for ways to increase the performance of their organization's human resources over and above the traditional performance appraisal. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Analysis of Social Performance in the Spanish Financial Industry Through Public Data. A Proposal

Banking firms are becoming increasingly aware that their clients’ management of environmental and social risks may in term threaten their own business as lenders and investors. In addition, stakeholders are requiring banks to improve their social performance. As a result, some banks are developing corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and management systems to reduce potential risks and improve their performance. In the Spanish financial system, half of the banking firms are savings banks, most of which have always used some Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) criteria in their management. Private Banks have only recently started to integrate social aspects in their performance. However, no formal analysis has been carried out on the impact of CSR strategies. Various initiatives have been launched nationally and internationally to include the social dimension in management systems. The purpose of this research is to analyse the social performance of the main Spanish financial companies through public data such as social or sustainability reports and media sources. In order to do this, we need to determine which CSR criteria most greatly affect banking firms and to choose the most accurate quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure social performance.     

The impact of individual and managerial factors on salespeople's contribution to marketing intelligence activities

Although salespersons represent a unique and important channel of information, few of them contribute efficiently to marketing intelligence. This research aims to understand how salespeople's motivation and effort to gather and transmit marketing intelligence to management may be influenced by individual (organizational commitment, desire for upward mobility) and managerial (control system, participation in decision making, feedback, recognition) factors. The test of the proposed model shows that desire for upward mobility is the only individual determinant of behavior. Other than participation in decision making, all the managerial factors play influential roles in structuring both motivation and behavioral effort toward marketing intelligence by salespeople. The authors also discuss the limits of the model, some managerial implications, and future research opportunities.     

Employment comovements at the sectoral level over the business cycle

This paper implements the technique suggested by Den Haan (J Monet Econ 46:3–30, 2000) to investigate contemporaneous as well as lead and lag correlations among economic data for a range of forecast horizons. The lead/lag approach provides a richer picture of the economic dynamics generating the data and allows one to investigate which variables lead or lag others, and whether the lead or lag pattern is short term or long term in nature. This technique is applied to monthly sectoral level employment data for the USA and shows that among the ten industrial sectors followed by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, six tend to lead the other four. These six have high correlations indicating that the structural shocks generating the data movements are mostly in common. Among the four lagging industries, some lag by longer intervals than others and some have low correlations with the leading industries. These low correlations may indicate that these industries are partially influenced by structural shocks beyond those generating the six leading industries, but they also may indicate that lagging sectors feature a different transmission mechanism of shocks.     

An Introduction to the Patstat Database with Example Queries

This article provides an introduction to the Patstat patent database. It offers guided examples of 10 popular queries that are relevant for research purposes and that cover the most important data tables. It is targeted at academic researchers and practitioners who are willing to learn the basics of the database.