Turning Agents into Psychological Principals: Aligning Interests of Non‐Owners through Psychological Ownership

Principals who delegate tasks to agents face the perennial challenge of overcoming agency problems. We investigate whether feelings of ownership among senior managers in the absence of formal ownership can align agents' interests with those of principals, thus turning agents into psychological principals. Using a moderated mediation model, we find that psychological ownership is positively related to company performance through the mediating effect of individual‐level entrepreneurial behaviour. We also find that the effect of psychological ownership on individual‐level entrepreneurial behaviour and, ultimately, company performance is weaker for high levels of monitoring compared to low levels. These findings offer important contributions to agency, psychological ownership, and entrepreneurship literatures.     

Productive entrepreneurship and the effectiveness of insolvency legislation: a cross-country study

Small Business Economics - This paper studies the association between the effectiveness of insolvency regulations and entrepreneurship using multilevel modeling of about 300,000 individuals in 27...     

Populism: Root Causes,Power Grabbing and Counter Strategy

Intereconomics - The economic agenda of bringing jobs back and improving dynamics can sometimes work in the short run, if past fiscal prudence has left some space for higher government expenditures...     

Seasonality in macroeconomic time series

Recently, the seasonal characteristics of macroeconomic time series have drawn a lot of attention. It has been argued that the seasonal component of many macroeconomic time series constitutes a major part of the series measured as a proportion of the variance. In addition it has been found that the seasonal component of most macroeconomic time series is constant and best “explained” by seasonal dummies. Specifically it is often found that a Christmas boom is followed by a beginning of the year trough. Based on quarterly and monthly macroeconomic time series from a large number of countries this paper shows that many macroeconomic time series have seasonal components that are changing over time. Furthermore, the Christmas boom and especially the 1st quarter trough is not found nearly as often as one might expect.     

Book Reviews

A Bibliography of British Industrial Relations 1971–1979 G.S. Bain, J.D. Bennett Industrial Relations: an International and Comparative Bibliography John Bennett and Julian Fawcett Employee Relations Bibliography and Abstracts Arthur Marsh Innovation and the Auto Industry: Product, Process and Work Organization R. Whipp and P. Clark Trade Unions and Politics Ken Coates and Tony Topham Just Managing: Authority and Democracy in Industry Peter Cressey, John Eldridge and John MacInnes Women Managers: Travellers in a Male World Judi Marshall A Development Programme for Women in Management Mike Smith, Kay Smith Eddie Wood, Lynne Davidson, Sandra Langrish and Christine Mogridge The Social History of Occupational Health Paul Weindling (ed.)