Human resource strategies in post‐WTO China

China's rapid economic growth has presented numerous opportunities and challenges for foreign firms there. As firms have increased their presence in China, their concerns are increasingly focused on implementing successful human resource management (HRM) practices. To shed light on effective HRM for foreign firms in China, we conducted interviews with senior managers, private equity specialists, and management consultants there. Using a framework of human resources deliverables, we propose several keys to successful HRM in China. HRM is crucial for firms' success in post‐WTO China, and managing human resources there poses distinctive challenges to commonly held “Western” assumptions about effective HRM. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Idea Management: A Systemic View*

abstract Ideas are a central ingredient of organizational life and ideation is an essential faculty that propels every day management action. Yet, little is known about how ideation is manifested and managed. We employ the philosophies of transcendentalism, process and interactionism to provide insights into the empirical referents of idea management. We use these referents as a point of departure in our interpretations. Rather than studying idea management in terms of lists of categories, continua of characteristics, or details about process, we explore its systemic nature and investigate the inter‐relatedness of idea generation, problem solving and inquiry. Based on field interviews, we propose idea management archetypes that reflect managers’ dominant approaches and a model of idea management based on patterns of behaviour. The study validates the notion of idea management and demonstrates the strengths of grounded theorizing. We discuss implications for theory and practice and identify possible strategies for future research.     

Ethics and Law: Guiding the Invisible Hand to Correct Corporate Social Responsibility Externalities

Tokenistic short-term economic success is not good indicia of long-term success. Sustainable business success requires sustained existence in a corporation’s political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental contexts. Far beyond the traditional economic focus, consumers, governments and public interest groups alike increasingly expect the business sector to take on more social and environmental responsibilities. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the model in which economic, social and environmental responsibilities are fulfilled simultaneously. However, there is insufficient empirical evidence that demonstrates genuine widespread adoption of CSR in practice, and its underlying reasons. Though research in CSR has been rapidly growing, its commercial reality and implications need to be further improved if it is to inspire corporations to voluntarily adopt CSR. In the literature, Carroll’s four-dimensional (economic, legal, ethical and discretionary) CSR framework offers a theoretical basis for developing an empirically based model to explain why and how profit-motivated managers take up CSR voluntarily. Our study has developed a structural equation model to identify the key factors and their interactions that influence economically motivated managers to take on voluntary CSR, and validate Carroll’s four-dimensional construct. The results support Carroll’s four-dimensional CSR framework, with the exception of the link pertaining to the relationship between economic and discretionary/voluntary responsibility. This characterises the economic reality that financial market-driven economic responsibility does not automatically translate into social responsibility. Nevertheless, the empirical results demonstrate that corporations can be led to engage in more voluntary CSR activities to achieve social good when appropriate legal and ethical controls are in place.     

Cutting the hedge: Exporters' dynamic currency hedging behaviour

We use a dataset that includes all New Zealand merchandise export transactions to analyse exporters' dynamic currency hedging behaviour. We focus on whether exporters change their hedging behaviour (“selectively hedge”) when the exchange rate and/or forward points depart from historical norms. We find that hedging ratios for exporters' Australian dollar exposures vary systematically as the exchange rate departs from historical averages; this behaviour is more marked for larger relative to smaller exporters. Consistent with efficient markets theory, there is no evidence that selective hedging is a profitable strategy for exporters.     

Patent Standards Under TRIPS and the Pharmaceutical Industries in Brazil and India

The legal and economic environment of the pharmaceuticals industry is analyzed in the context of the development of national and international legal standards for the protection of intellectual property. Empirical studies on the relationship between intellectual property laws and economic growth are used to examine the actual outcomes under differing approaches to legal protections for the industry in two countries.     

The Overconfident Principles of Economics Student: An Examination of a Metacognitive Skill

Students in a large principles of macroeconomics class were asked to predict their performance on a regularly scheduled midterm examination. The author collected and analyzed data to examine the effect of various demographic characteristics, academic endowments, course preparation, and course performance variables on the accuracy of pretest expectations. A two-equation recursive model was estimated by the author to determine which factors influenced the accuracy of student expectations (predictive calibration). The results indicated that a pervasive degree of overconfidence existed within the sample. Although age and overall academic performance were found to temper overconfidence, students with credit in a previous economics course had a greater probability of reporting overconfident expectations. Overconfidence was found to be associated with lower degrees of predictive calibration. Misjudgments concerning the scope of the midterm were found to lower predictive calibration scores, ceteris paribus. These and other results indicate that unmet student performance expectations may be a root cause for the routinely observed student dissatisfaction within the traditional principles course.     

The need for speed: impacts of internet connectivity on firm productivity

Broadband access is widely considered to be a productivity-enhancing factor, but there are few firm-level estimates of its benefits. We use a large micro-survey of firms linked to longitudinal firm financial data to determine the impact that broadband access has on firm productivity. Propensity score matching is used to control for factors, including the firm’s own lagged productivity, that determine a firm’s internet access choice. Instrumental variables estimates are employed as a robustness check. Results indicate that broadband adoption boosts firm productivity by 7–10%; effects are consistent across urban versus rural locations and across high versus low knowledge intensive sectors.     

Do gender and nationality affect attitudes towards tourism and the environment?

This study examines whether gender and home economy influence attitudes towards tourism and the environment. Students enrolled in senior undergraduate and first‐year postgraduate tourism and hospitality subjects from eight economies are studied. Previous research on environmental attitudes has focused on either gender or home nationality, but has rarely examined the interrelationship between the two, and none has focused explicitly on attitudes to tourism and the environment. The study concluded that nationality mitigates attitudes among women much more than it does among men. The authors also conclude that general environmental attitudes are well formed, but tourism‐related environmental attitudes are often contradictory. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.