Private Equity in the U.S.: Building a New Future

Despite the recent downturn, private equity firms still have an important role to play in the global economy. At the same time, many PE firms may need to rethink their strategies. Practices that have been worked in the past may not produce acceptable returns in a future, particularly given the current constraints on financing and leverage. One source of PE's comparative advantage, as demonstrated during the recent crisis, has been the ability of the best and most experienced firms to reorganize their portfolio companies when they get into financial trouble. But in addition to their financial management skills, specialized operating expertise has become more critical to success, and those PE firms that have not acquired it are especially likely to find that past success in raising capital is no guarantee of success in the future. The authors begin by providing a brief overview of the past three decades of global private equity to identify how the market arrived at its current position. Using the findings of academic research together with case studies and interviews with PE practitioners in the U.K., the authors suggest a number of building blocks for the future that reflect the considerable success of the most reputable and experienced PE firms in increasing the value of their portfolio companies.     

Organic Food at the Point of Purchase: Understanding Inconsistency in Consumer Choice Patterns

The organic food category, while still small in terms of world food production, has continued to grow in many markets in the developed world. This article focuses on understanding the barriers and facilitators to purchasing organic food at the final hurdle: the point of purchase (POP). A qualitative study has identified seven factors that influence buyer behavior at the POP, and these are consumer intention to purchase organic food when entering the retail outlet; habit; availability; false assumptions; visibility and access of organic food; visual and olfactory cues; and price. These can often be the final hurdle to consumers choosing (or not) organic food at the POP.     

Satisfaction and dimensions of control among call centre customer service representatives

This study explores the perceptions of HR managers on the strategic management of labour turnover in a selection of large hotels in Australia and Singapore. The main argument is that the effects of labour turnover can be mitigated with strategically managed human resources through the four key HR activities. The hotel industries in both Singapore and Australia revealed a comparable range of HR policies and practices being adopted, with an explicit recognition of the contribution an organization’s human resources have on the bottom-line. There was a clear convergence towards minimizing turnover primarily through the recruitment, selection and induction processes. This was despite fundamental social, economic and labour differences between Singapore and Australia.     

A comparative study of the contents of personnel and human resource management textbooks

The paper reports the results of a contents analysis performed on fifty personnel and HRM texts. It suggests that there is a common set of person-nel/HRM tasks across cultures. Within this common set there are differences in the priority accorded to particular tasks. British HRM texts give priority to organizational theory, American HRM texts prioritize corporate strategy, while personnel texts prioritize industrial relations and collective bargaining. The conclusion considers as possible explanations the divergence in the systems of industrial relations of the two countries and the markets towards which the texts are oriented. It argues that a more likely explanation derives from the differential cultural values which inform managerial research in Britain and America.     

Shifting models of equality? Union Equality Reps in the public services

This article explores how far the emergence of public sector Equality Representatives represents a departure from a distinct radical model of union self‐organisation generated by the collective mobilisation of politically conscious identities, towards a more inclusive liberal model of equality based on abstract notions of ‘fairness’.     

Contingent Valuation Versus Choice Experiments: Estimating the Benefits of Environmentally Sensitive Areas in Scotland

This paper reports results from a study of the economic value of the conservation benefits of Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESAs) in Scotland. The main novelty of the approach taken is in comparing two direct valuation methods, namely contingent valuation and choice experiments, to value these benefits. The Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) is well-established as a technique for valuing the sorts of landscape and wildlife enhancements associated with ESAs. The CVM experiment reported here uses a dichotomous choice format, and includes a new correction for part-whole bias. Choice experiments are much less used as an environmental valuation technique. We note several advantages of such experiments over CVM, and then report characteristic values and ‘programme values’ estimated using the method. This application brings to light some problems in applying the choice experiment method. Finally, we discuss the issue of benefits transfer in the context of these two approaches to valuation.     

Influence of strategies and heuristics on farmers' response to change under uncertainty

Hierarchical Decision Models of woolproducers' decisions provide unique insights into the impact of major price changes. Producers' lagged response in some contexts appear to be due to the ambiguous decision environment they face, their strategic goals and responses to that environment apart from lags caused by factors such as attitude to risk, expectations adjustment, adjustment costs and learning costs. Much of the response to major price changes comes from strategic decisions to change enterprises rather than marginal changes to existing enterprises. In ambiguous environments, methods may need to be found that incorporate simplifying behavioural rules and strategies.     

Exploring human capital: putting ‘human’ back into strategic human resource management

The field of strategic human resource management has seemingly rediscovered human capital with increasing research focused on human capital as a mediator in the relationship between HR practices and performance. In this paper we review human capital definitions and measurement approaches within this literature. We then identify some of the issues emerging with human capital research. Finally, we propose some future directions for research on human capital in organisations.