Poachers and gamekeepers: processes of class-based organisational closure and usurpation in Sri Lanka’s emerging private sector

In a qualitative study based on 25 interviews, we examine highly skilled workers’ accounts of class-based closure in emerging occupational sectors in Sri Lanka. Our findings reveal holes in the entrance criteria firms demanded to secure their elite status. Highlighting how individuals who were excluded at junior levels negotiate entry at mid/senior levels, we show how ‘poachers turn into gamekeepers’, illuminating the dialectical relationship between exclusion and inclusionary usurpation. We contextualise organisational closure, highlighting the influence of wider societal effects on the process.     

What helps? Women engineers' accounts of staying on

We have considerable understanding of the obstacles that women engineers encounter and the reasons that they leave the field, but we know less about what enables them to remain. Adopting an interpretivist approach, this article examines how a group of British women engineers in two FTSE 100 companies account for “staying on” in their male‐dominated work settings. We delineate four specific forms of help that facilitate women's retention in the field. We argue that exposure to help leads to women developing a habitus that enables them to continue working in engineering. To conclude, we draw on our findings to outline HR practices that will facilitate supportive relationships in the workplace and pave the way towards developing more positive organisational climates.     

Is increasing airline denied boarding compensation limits the answer? Factors that contribute to denied boardings

There has been an increase in the number of involuntary denied airline passenger boardings in the US. A denied boarding is influenced by multiple factors other than compensation amounts, including the accuracy, magnitude, and variability associated with no-show forecasts, load factors, and carriers’ day of departure operating policies. We describe how these and other factors influence denied boardings, why they differ across US carriers, and why carriers have strong internal incentives to reduce denied boardings.     

Synergies and Internal Agency Conflicts: The Double-Edged Sword of Mergers

This paper investigates the interaction between synergies and internal agency conflicts that emerges endogenously in multi-division firms. A divisional manager's entrenchment choice depends directly on the specificity of her division's assets, because the specificity governs whether entrenchment activities reduce the likelihood of her division being divested. The presence of synergies, by modifying the difference between the value of assets in their current use and in alternative uses, may alter the divisional manager's entrenchment incentive. In "the double-edged sword of mergers," synergy and internal agency effects are of opposite sign and merger gains may not be increasing in expected synergies. We characterize when divisions should optimally stand alone and when they should be part of a merged firm. We predict an absence of diversifying mergers in industries plagued by misdeployed assets, offer a novel explanation for the cross-sectional variation in postmerger valuation, and explain why mergers may be valuable ex ante while leading to successful divestitures ex post.     

Economic Growth and Longevity Risk with Adverse Selection

We study the implications of adverse selection in annuity markets in a general-equilibrium model of the closed economy. Agents differ in their health type and invest their assets in the annuity market. Without informational asymmetries each agent would obtain an actuarially fair insurance. If the individual health types and total annuity purchases are unobservable to the annuity firms then there exists a pooling equilibrium in which all agents annuitize at a common rate. At this pooling rate unhealthy agents would eventually like to borrow but this would reveal their true health type. As a consequence, they rationally drop out of the market. Surprisingly, the welfare and growth effects of the informational asymmetries are rather small.     

Hospital nursing costs, billing, and reimbursement

Nursing intensity, estimated direct nursing costs, and daily billing were compared for 12 adult medical or surgical units at an academic medical center from January 1 to May 31, 2005 (22,649 patient days). Two main findings, nursing intensity and direct nursing costs, were highly variable within and across each of the study nursing units (mean 429 dollars, SD 160 dollars); direct costs of nursing care were significantly higher for private room rates compared to intermediate room per diem charges billed at a higher rate (441 dollars vs. 426 dollars, F 37.77, p < 0.001). The results demonstrate that the direct costs of nursing care are not aligned with current billing practices at this university hospital. The use of fixed room and board charges to account for nursing care in U.S. hospitals may be obsolete and an alternative nurse-centric costing, billing, and reimbursement model is proposed.     

Accounting for the social economy: the socioeconomic impact statement

Abstract ** :  Organizations within the social economy have unique characteristics, yet their accounting procedures do not reflect this uniqueness, and rather are designed for private‐sector organizations that exchange their goods and services in the market. We argue that conventional accounting creates a perception that social economy organizations are users of resources and separate from the private and public sectors, rather than creators of value and an integral part of our society (Quarter, Mook, and Richmond, 2003a). This paper addresses the accounting needs of social economy organizations by presenting a model of social accounting—the Socioeconomic Impact Statement—that may help bring out the impact of such organizations. The paper presents a demonstration project of the potential utility of the Socioeconomic Impact Statement .