In search of legitimacy: personnel management associations worldwide

In considering the development of the HR ‘profession’, there has been little exploration of the role of the professional association. This is particularly true looking across national boundaries, raising questions about the impact and extent of homogeneity of personnel management association activities. It is argued that professional associations have a legitimising role to play in establishing a specialist body of knowledge, regulating practice and providing a source of internal and external identity for practitioners. A recent worldwide survey of personnel management associations found that, although associations are active in these areas, there is a lack of mandatory control and regulation across the profession, diluting the legitimacy accorded by such activities. Association activities were also found to be largely generic across countries, resulting from inter‐association collaboration, although different contexts result in different outcomes.     

Perspectives on integrated rural development in peninsular Malaysia

Development strategies in the rural economy of peninsular Malaysia are examined in this article. Tactics used have included land settlement schemes, a guaranteed minimum price for paddy, input subsidies, grants, and agricultural credit at low or zero rates of interest. The number of development institutions has been multiplying. However, the author argues that the success of integrated rural development policies must be measured in terms of improved income for farmers. He concludes that Malaysian policy planners have yet to define their objectives clearly and to identify the priority target groups. The result has been little improvement in farm efficiency and rural poverty.     

Inventories and optimal monetary policy in a small open economy

We study how inventory investment affects the design of optimal monetary policy in a New Keynesian small open economy model. We find that under producer currency pricing, when the intratemporal elasticity of substitution is smaller than 1, optimal monetary policy in our model with inventories is similar to a standard model without inventories. However, when the intratemporal elasticity of substitution is larger than 1, inventory investment increases the importance of nominal exchange rate stabilization relative to a standard model without inventories. The importance of nominal exchange rate stabilization increases with the intratemporal elasticity of substitution.     

Management Guidance Pre‐ and Post‐Restatement

We examine whether the quality of restating firms’ management guidance differs in periods before and after restatement announcements. While characteristics of restating firms and the consequences of restatement have been a central topic in accounting and auditing research, the quality of management guidance around restatements is less well understood. We consider two competing characterizations of the link between management forecast accuracy and bias and restatement (an event that tends to signal poor financial controls): “Forecast–Opportunism Explanation” and “Forecast–Ability Explanation”. Under the Forecast–Opportunism Explanation, pre‐restatement weaknesses in financial controls enable managers to manipulate earnings toward forecasts and to meet or exceed opportunistically biased forecasts, and the post‐restatement strengthening of financial controls constrains opportunistic behavior. Under the Forecast–Ability Explanation, pre‐restatement weaknesses in financial controls impede managers’ ability to issue accurate forecasts, and post‐restatement improvements remove impediments so that the accuracy of forecasts improves; forecast bias remains unaffected. Evidence indicates that before a restatement, restating firms’ forecasts are more accurate and relatively more downwardly biased than control firms’ forecasts. Post‐restatement, restating firms have less accurate and less downwardly biased management guidance. Our overall results are consistent with the Forecast–Opportunism Explanation.     

Nurse managers as transformational and transactional leaders

Nurse managers demonstrating transformational leadership are more likely than transactional leaders to have committed staff nurse followers. Committed followers exert extra effort, thus improving unit performance and enhancing the organization's competitive advantage.     

Measuring the Transaction sector in the Australian economy, 1911–1991

Following Wallis and North's pioneering attempt to estimate the size of transaction costs in the United States over the period 1870 to 1970, we seek to augment this seminal study by applying their methodology to the Australian economy for the period 1911 to 1991. Broadly speaking, our results support the Wallis and North finding with comparable magnitudes and growth rates in both the private and public transaction sectors.     

Store environment and consumer purchase behavior: Mediating role of consumer emotions

This article presents a large-scale cross-sectional field study of the effect of store environment on consumer emotions and the resulting influence on aspects of consumer behavior with actual shopping behavior used as an example. Cast into a stimulus–organism–response framework, the results suggest that a consumer's emotions can be a mediating factor in the purchase process. In this study, we identify and explore how store environment and emotional states may influence various dimensions of purchase behavior. This research confirms that although cognitive factors may largely account for store selection and for most planned purchases within the store, the environment in the store and the emotional state of consumers may be important determinants of purchase behavior. This research has many pragmatic applications, because pleasure was associated with the amount of money spent and affinity for the store, whereas arousal was associated with money spent in the store, time spent in the store, and the number of items purchased in the store. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The mitigating effects of uncertainty on ‘e’ innovation propensity: some service sector evidence

This paper reports the findings of a study that sought to explore a range of technical, financial and social issues that the literature suggests influences e-innovation propensity. The research was conducted on a sample of knowledge-intensive business service SMEs in Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and New Zealand within a business-to-consumer context. Qualitative methodologies (in-depth interviews and projective techniques) were employed to investigate the research problem. The findings highlight a number of specific issues that call into question the value of an e-business strategy, such as uncertainties surrounding knowledge acquisition, disintermediation effects and sustainability of an e-business. These issues continue to negate e-innovation propensity. The paper proposes practical suggestions to alleviate the mitigating effects of uncertainty that are impacting on e-innovation propensity. The conclusions derived from this research, along with the modelling of the uncertainty factors extend existing knowledge and also set the precedent for further empirical research in other country and industry settings.