Employer Policies and Organizational Commitment in Britain 1992–97

An important current of thinking in the last decade has emphasized the need for a shift from control to commitment as the central objective of management employment policies. This paper is concerned to assess whether there was a significant increase in British employees' commitment to their organizations in the 1990s, using comparative data from two large-scale and nationally representative surveys carried out in 1992 and 1997. It finds that there was no evidence of an increase in commitment over the period. As in the early part of the decade, employees had only a weak level of attachment to their organizations. The analysis examines a number of factors that have been seen as important determinants of such commitment: changes in the level of skill, task discretion, controls over work performance, and forms of employee involvement. While there were changes in some of these factors that encouraged higher commitment, these were largely cancelled out by a notable decline in the discretion that employees were allowed to exercise over their work.     

Optimal monetary policy using an unrestricted VAR

This paper proposes a simple benchmark for monetary policy. Assuming the true model of the economy is unknown, it is based on an unrestricted vector autoregression (VAR). The key result is that instead of deriving optimal policy using the original VAR equations as the constraint, when no restriction is placed on the correlation structure of the VAR disturbances, the constraint should be formed from a transformation of the VAR. This method is applied to the USA, 1964–2009. Significant welfare gains are found compared with actual policy and using a Taylor rule. Incorporating a zero interest rate lower bound lowers output and inflation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The integration of fuzzy sets and statistics: toward strict falsification in the social sciences

Whilst statistics take up a prominent place in the social science research toolkit, some old problems that have been associated there with have not been fully resolved. These problems include bias through the inclusion of irrelevant variation and the exclusion of relevant variation, which may lead to hidden and spurious correlations in more extreme—however not at all unthinkable—cases. These issues have been addressed by Ragin by building a case for the usage of fuzzy set theory in social science. In this paper, we take a complementary view, insofar as we incorporate fuzzy set theory in current statistical analyses. Apart from shedding new light on the main issues associated with (population based) statistics, this approach also offers interesting prospects for the falsification of theories—rather than single relations between variables—in the social sciences.     

International market selection strategies of manufacturing and services firms

This paper discusses the entrepreneurial landscape in Africa and locates a new generation of African entrepreneurs and their business networks within it. Unlike others in that landscape (i.e. micro- or small-scale informal sector vendors, and traditional or multinational large-scale formal sector firms), the ‘new generation’ entrepreneurs are business globalists who organized a system of business enterprise networks consisting of national, regional, and pan-African organizations. The study analyses interview data from 57 men and women network members from 10 countries (Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe). Some defining characteristics of these entrepreneurs are interactive social and business relationships, use of modern management methods and information technology, trust among fellow members, transparent business practices, advocacy on behalf of the private sector, and commitment to increasing intra-African commerce. Their mission is to improve the climate for private sector business in Africa and to promote regional economic integration. They pursue cross-national commercial ventures, maintain official observer status at established regional economic organizations, sign memoranda of understanding with multilateral agencies, establish venture capital funds, and help to change government policies. The paper identifies characteristics of the ‘new generation’ entrepreneurs, evaluates goals and achievements of their networks, and concludes that despite limitations, these entrepreneurs and their organizations have created intra- and cross-national networks that strengthen private-sector-led economic growth in Africa.     

Internationalization of private firms: environmental turbulence and organizational strategies and resources

Profiles of exporting and superior-performing private small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are presented. Multivariate regression evidence suggests that SMEs focusing upon an offensive and market differentiation strategy of product/service protection is associated with the propensity and the intensity of exporting. Exporting SMEs are also associated with younger and manufacturing firms as well as firms with product or service quality and/or technology resources. The perceptions by SMEs of external environmental turbulence were not significantly associated with the exporting-dependent variables. Most notably, variables associated with exporting SMEs are not the same as those associated with superior firm performance. Moreover, exporting firms did not report superior levels of performance. Implications for policy-makers, practitioners and researchers are discussed.