Growth and Renewal in the United States: Retooling America's Economic Engine*

New research by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) examines the growth challenge facing the United States and explores how U.S. business and government can contribute to the economy's renewal by reinvigorating their drive toward higher productivity. As baby boomers retire and the female participation rate plateaus, the U.S. economy will receive significantly less lift from increases in the labor force and will have to rely increasingly on productivity gains to fuel growth. The report finds that the United States needs a 34% acceleration in productivity growth if it is to match the GDP growth rates of the past 20 years—and that this is possible. Three‐quarters of the necessary productivity growth acceleration can come from the efforts of private‐sector companies operating within the current regulatory and business environment. Even the best‐performing companies and sectors still have headroom to boost productivity by emulating the best practice of others and tapping into new innovations, and coming up with new innovations of their own. The remaining one‐quarter—and more—can come from government and business working together to address barriers that now limit growth. MGI lays out a seven‐point agenda for action to spur productivity.     

Interest rate differentials on short-term securities and rational expectations of inflation

This paper tests a theorem to the effect that the difference in nominal interest rates between two securities of the same maturity but different risk is an increasing linear function of the expected rate of inflation. When inflation is modelled in a way which is rational in the sense of Muth, the evidence is highly consistent with the theorem's inferences. Estimates are also obtained of the real risk premiums that certain types of securities generate over the three-month treasury bill rate (which is assumed to be risk-free). These range from three basis points for three-month finance paper to 16 basis points for three-month Eurodollar deposits.     

Testing the lawyer-induced litigation hypothesis in Europe

Utilizing a European panel dataset, we contribute to the scant empirical literature on the lawyer-induced litigation hypothesis. To address endogeneity problems that arise when estimating the effect of the number of lawyers on civil litigation rates, we use two strategies. We first estimate our model by means of the 2SLS procedure. Second, we exploit the instrumental variable approach based on the linear GMM estimator of Arellano and Bond. The estimations result in a positive and significant effect of lawyers that is robust across the different model specifications and estimation methods in which we address endogeneity. In criminal litigation, where lawyers cannot induce demand, we find no such positive relation between lawyers and litigation.     

HRM and front line managers: the influence of role stress

With front line managers (FLMs) being critical in the delivery of human resource management (HRM) we would benefit from a better understanding of how and why these managers execute their human resources (HR) responsibilities in the way that they do. Without such knowledge we cannot fully identify the factors that contribute to the known gap between intended and implemented HRM and mediate the relationship between HRM and organizational performance. Yet FLMs have been largely overlooked in many studies of line management-HRM with very few employing a role-theoretic framework. To address this, interviews were conducted with FLMs in the retail industry to examine the relationship between their work role stressors and their implementation of HRM. FLMs were found to experience role overload, role conflict and role ambiguity, and in accordance with process role theory, engaged in role-making as a response. This resulted in FLMs deviating from intended HRM whereby role overload and conflict often brought about a renegotiation of the more intangible or costly HR policies, whereas role ambiguity undermined their ability to consistently and confidently implement HRM. The paper concludes by arguing that FLMs and their experiences of role stress are critical to our understanding of the gap between intended and implemented HRM.     

Role conflict and changing heritage practice: ancestral tourism in Scotland

ABSTRACT

Developing mutually beneficial outcomes in service encounters can be challenging due to resource asymmetry within co-created experiences. Such encounters can result in role conflict for service providers. Limited attention has been paid to the effect on service providers of highly collaborative exchanges which require specific customisation. An example of this is ancestral tourism, a dimension of heritage consumption, in which visitors actively participate in the co-creation of experience at museums, archives and related heritage sites. These institutions, previously seen as repositories of historical information, now act as conduits for visitors to investigate their ancestral past. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between changing professional discourse in the cultural heritage sector, specifically ancestral tourism, and role conflict amongst staff. Through interviews conducted with professionals, the extent and outcomes of role conflict in complex and collaborative exchanges are explored.     

An Open Source Web-Mapping System for Tourism Planning and Marketing

Core retail management functions include defining market areas and profiling customers. For tourism enterprises, market areas are geographically dispersed with many customers residing beyond the immediate area surrounding the attraction. Visualization and analysis of these distributed market areas are significantly enhanced by the capabilities of Geographic Information System (GIS) technology and help to support management objectives. Unfortunately, many businesses are unable to utilize GIS due to its complexity and expense. This study develops a decision support tool for tourism planning and marketing that is customized and easy to use, employs open source software to reduce expense, and allows for broad accessibility via web delivery. Users can easily visualize and examine the spatial distribution of their own United States (US) client origins and visitation patterns along with relevant tourism-specific and general demographic information. This functionality can be beneficial in developing or augmenting business plans or marketing strategies, and for informing tourism theory.     

International franchising decision-making: An application of stakeholder theory

Stakeholder theory is used to provide a frame of reference to examine the decision-making process involved in international franchising agreements. An international hotel group was selected as a case. Previous studies focus on investigations of the franchising process after the decision to engage has been taken and contracts duly exchanged. The analysis presented here focuses on the pre-contracting level: on selection and recruitment. The findings emphasise the importance of managing business cultural incompatibility between potential partners and the franchisor and within the franchising company itself.     

Processing promotional travel narratives

While research exists which examines the use of tourism promotional communications (2 and 40), an investigation of how travelers process such promotional communications is lacking. In response, this study sought to investigate processing as well as perceived skepticism towards tourism promotional communications. The importance of understanding processing and perceived skepticism resides in the fact that both have been linked to overall message persuasiveness; and as such, both are essential to developing and implementing effective travel promotional communications. Specifically, this study sought to examine if participants differed based on their demographic characteristics in (1) the degree to which participants’ were able to be transported by a narrative (i.e. process), and (2) participants’ level of perceived skepticism concerning travel articles and travel brochures. To do so, Green and Brock’s (2000) Transportation scale and Obermiller and Spangenberg’s (1998) Skepticism Towards Advertising scale (SKEP) were incorporated.