Telling and selling the value of diversity and inclusion—External consultants' discursive strategies and practices

On the basis of a qualitative study of a subgroup of diversity professionals, external diversity and inclusion (D&I) consultants, we explore D&I consultants' discursive strategies and practices situated within organisational structures, relations, and interactions of power and knowledge. Theoretically, the research reveals how D&I consultants' own discursive strategies interact with existing organisational and societal discourses of diversity, incrementally shaping their continual evolution. A classification is developed, which sets out four approaches taken by consultants with regard to their discursive strategies in relation to clients. The findings suggest that HR practitioners need to work in tandem with external consultants to develop strategies to improve the status and legitimacy of diversity work if the field is to progress the organisational D&I agenda.     

Using Industry-Sponsored Game Nights to Educate About Risk and Insurance

As educators in the field of risk management and insurance, we see know- ledge of risk management and insurance as a core business function. However, some colleagues and students see insurance as cold-call sales or companies with a lot of money that continue to raise their prices. So we have to find ways to make our public aware of the usefulness of risk management and insurance in the business world and in private life and of the opportunities that having such knowledge presents to all business majors and business people. One method that is beginning to show dramatic improvements in at least our students' perceptions of the field and the major involves industry-sponsored game nights. While not an academic endeavor nor strictly risk management education, we believe the idea provides a useful tool for opening students' eyes to the need for knowledge of risk management and insurance and of the opportunities that are available in the insurance industry and its related fields. This article discusses the history of such an event at Appalachian State Univer- sity, the current status of the North Carolina Surplus Lines Association (NCSLA) event, and the benefits of the event.     

The Union Makes Us Strong? A Study of the Dynamics of Workplace Union Leadership at Two UK Manufacturing Plants

This paper draws on qualitative case study evidence to investigate the way in which union leaders involved in two workplace organizations deal with the process of managing their role within the employment relationship. In particular, the influence of their leadership style on the commitment and participation of rank-and-file members is considered. The paper highlights the dialectical relationship between local leaders and members in terms of trade union democracy and local leadership style.     

Long-term dependence in common stock returns

The efficient market, martingale model of security price movements requires that the arrival of new information be promptly arbitraged away. A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an arbitraged price is that statistical dependence among prices must decrease very rapidly. If persistent statistical dependence is present, the arbitraged price changes do not follow a martingale and should have an infinite variance. Using a technique for detecting long-term dependence, called R/S analysis, 200 daily stock return series are studied; many series are characterized by long-term dependence. Thus, in the presence of long-term dependence, the martingale model does not hold. Also, the distribution of security returns is non-normal stable Paretian as opposed to Gaussian.     

Residential location and the earnings of African American women

In comparing the earnings of African American women to three reference groups—white women, African American men, and white men—three principal findings emerge. First, African American women residing in the suburbs are worse off than any other suburban group. Second, central city African American women are worse off than any other group of central city residents. Third, while central city residence imposes a statistically significant earnings penalty on men of both races, no such penalty is found for African American or white women. Therefore, African American women will enjoy no earnings advantage if they move to the suburbs. This finding underscores the importance of including women in studies of residential location and the socioeconomic status of African Americans. A narrow focus on male data to inform policy is clearly insufficient.     

Immigration and Informal Labor

We develop state‐level proxies for informal employment using differences between measures of self‐reported employment and officially sanctioned employment. In construction and landscaping, industries associated with under‐the‐table labor, we develop proxies for informal work based on productivity per officially sanctioned worker. We relate each set of proxies for informal employment to changes in immigrant population and composition. We find some evidence that immigration is associated with informal employment generally and in the construction industry when prevailing wages are low. States with high concentrations of low‐skilled male immigrants have higher levels of informal employment in the landscaping industry.     

Symposium Overview

Journal of Productivity Analysis -     

Efficiency Measurement in Network Industries: Application to the Swiss Railway Companies

The persistence of increasingly high government subsidies in Switzerland’s railroads has led the federal and cantonal authorities to discussing the possibility of high-powered incentive contracts such as those based on cost efficiency benchmarking. Railways are however, characterized by a high degree of unobserved heterogeneity that could bias the efficiency estimates. This paper examines the performance of several panel data models to measure cost efficiency in network industries. The unobserved firm-specific effects and the resulting biases are studied through a comparative study of several stochastic frontier models, applied to a panel of 50 railway companies operating over a 13-year period.* The authors wish to thank Michael Crew and two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions. Aurelio Fetz provided an excellent assistance, which is gratefully acknowledged. Any remaining errors are the responsibility of the authors.This revised version was published in June 2005 with corrections in the author affiliations.     

Two Nested Constant-Elasticity-of-Substitution Models of Recreational Participation and Site Choice: An "Alternatives" Model and an "Expenditures" Model

Two demand models of recreational participation and site choice are developed: an alternatives model and an expenditures model. Both assume maximization of utility over the year, so allow for diminishing marginal utility. They do not impose the restrictive assumption that where one goes on a trip is independent of where one plans to go on other occasions. Estimation is with a nested constant-elasticity-of-substitution preference ordering: it is relatively easy to estimate because of global regularity, it allows sites to be complements, and it has the potential to be locally flexible. The application is to Atlantic salmon fishing.     

Does the Limit Order Routing Decision Matter?

We examine the impact deciding to route limit orders away fromthe New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has on three dimensions ofexecution quality with methodologies controlling for marketconditions and order submission strategies. Overall differencesin limit order execution quality between regional stock exchangesand the NYSE are small, suggesting that the order routing decisionmay not affect retail limit order traders substantively. Conditioningon the distance between the limit order's price and prevailingquotes, however, reveals systematic differences in executionquality. This implies that brokers can strategically route limitorders to improve retail limit order execution quality.