Social protection and regional convergence in a European Monetary Union

This paper addresses convergence in social protection and GDP in a European Economic and Monetary Union. We evaluate the impact of recently proposed EC social minimum requirements on regional convergence within the EC. Subsequently, we analyze a system of differentiated social norms as a means of raising social protection in countries with lower social standards.     

Does salesperson's customer orientation create value in B2B relationships? Empirical evidence from India

Although value creation in business relationships has taken an important position in the literature, yet scant attention has been paid to the precise nature of creation or destruction of value in b2b customer-oriented selling. Moreover, very few empirical studies in the b2b customer value research have focused on emerging markets, especially the BRIC countries. This study carried out in the context of small and medium sized firms in India, empirically examines from the SOCO perspective (Saxe and Weitz, 1982), value creation in customer-oriented selling, and value destruction in sales-oriented strategies. We model value creation, relationship development, and customer satisfaction as direct and indirect consequences of salesperson's customer orientation. Based on a sample of 249 small and medium sized Indian firms, we show that salesperson's customer orientation directly leads to value creation and relationship development with customers. On the other hand, a sales orientation destroys value, although it may lead to relationship development in the short-term. We also found that customer satisfaction was unrelated to both types of salesperson's orientations. Our study has considerable impact for small and medium sized businesses in emerging BRIC markets such as India, as it throws light on how supplier firms can leverage their salesforce to create value creation with their customers.     

Resilience of sustainability‐oriented and financially‐driven organizations

To answer key questions concerning how negative and positive financial performance gaps motivate organizations to build more resilient systems, we develop a conceptual process model to reveal the process by which financially and sustainability‐driven organizations can translate these negative and positive financial performance gaps into organizational resilience. We specify the different modes of search behaviors that these organizations pursue when encountering negative and positive financial performance gaps. We then expand on group engagement model to theorize that vicarious search is likely to encourage limiting behaviors, whereas internal search is likely to foster promotion behaviors. Finally, we explain how both promoting and limiting behaviors can be helpful in improving organizational resilience. In this way, we hope to advance research that connects and integrates relatively disparate realms and, more specifically, to contribute to the sustainability, resilience, and performance feedback literatures.     

Why Divorce Laws Matter: Incentives for Noncontractible Marital Investments under Unilateral and Consent Divorce

The Coase Theorem suggests that married couples will divorceif and only if doing so increases their joint surplus, regardlessof the legal rules governing divorce. This does not mean, however,that divorce laws only affect the distribution of rents. Becausethe distribution of rents affects each spouse's incentives fornoncontractible investments, divorce laws can affect the jointwelfare of the couple. This article analyzes the effects ofthe consent divorce regime and the unilateral divorce regimeon incentives for selfish and cooperative marital investments.Using these results, the article demonstrates how endogenouschoice of marriage with noncontractible investments can explainsome recent empirical results concerning the effects of theshift from consent divorce to unilateral divorce. (JEL C78,D1, D23, J12, J18, K3, K36)     

Politicising the study of sustainable living practices

ABSTRACT

In studies of consumption, social theories of practice foreground the purchasing and use of resources not for intrinsic pleasure but rather in the routine accomplishment of “normal” ways of living. In this paper, we argue that a key strength of theories of practice lies in their ability to expose questions of power in the construction of normality, but that this has been largely overlooked. Since practice theories are leveraged in understanding urgent questions of climate change, we use ethnographic data of a sustainable community in England to examine the normative dimension of sustainability. Using Michel Foucault's approach to practice, we elucidate the social technologies operating in the community that govern sustainable practices in the absence of a singular cultural authority. We illustrate how shared understanding guiding normative sustainable practice was negotiated and maintained through collective ethical work, the paramount importance of interpersonal harmony, and the continual formation of ethical subjects.     

Right-to-Work Laws: New Evidence from the Stock Market

This article is an empirical examination of whether or not stockholder wealth rises in response to passage of a right-to-work law—a state law banning union security clauses from collective bargaining agreements. Stockholder wealth rose when Louisiana passed such a law in 1976 and when Idaho did so in 1985-1986. Presumably this occurred because investors anticipated higher future profits with weaker labor unions or a lower probability of future organization. This is new evidence that such laws are more than symbolic: They hamper labor unions.     

How leveraging human resource capital with its competitive distinctiveness enhances the performance of commercial and public organizations

Although scholars agree that complex relationships between organizations' actual human resources (i.e., human capital stock) and means of leveraging these resources may influence performance, little empirical work has tested such propositions directly. We collected two primary data sets from privateand public‐sector organizations in Israel. The multiplicative interaction between perceived human resources capital and distinctive value derived from that HR capital was significantly related to various measures of perceived and objective organizational performance. Having higher levels of human resources capital was strongly associated with performance only when top managers perceived that these resources provided distinctive value in terms of being highly valuable, inimitable, rare, and nonsubstitutable. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on strategic human resource management and the resource‐based view of competitive advantage, as well as for practical efforts to develop firm‐specific human resource capital that is inherently distinctive. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Choosing to Cofinance: Analysis of Project-Specific Alliances in the Movie Industry

We use a movie industry project-by-project dataset to analyzethe choice of financing a project internally versus financingit through outside alliances. The results indicate that projectrisk is positively correlated with alliance formation. Moviestudios produce a variety of films and tend to develop theirsafest projects internally. Our findings are consistent withinternal capital market explanations. We find mixed evidenceregarding resource pooling, i.e., sharing the cost of largeprojects. Finally, the evidence shows that projects developedinternally perform similarly to projects developed through outsidealliances.     

Communication skills in accounting education: Perceptions of academics,employers and graduate accountants

Communication skills are central to intellectual interaction between the providers and the recipients of information. The importance of accounting starts with the gathering and processing of information and ends with the communication of processed information. This paper examines the communication skills which employers, academics and graduate accountants consider necessary to the newly graduated accountant. It also identifies and considers the differences in perception which occur between these groups and suggests solutions to the communication gap. This study confirms findings from previous research that new graduate accountants experience communication-related problems in early employment. In addition, it provides evidence that the Australian accounting curriculum has contributed to the development of communication skills. However, the paper highlights the need for the reconsideration of an emphasis on communication skills in the accounting curriculum, a role which arises from the very nature of accounting as the processing and communication of information.     

Concentration,unionization and the distribution of income in Canadian manufacturing industry

An attempt is made to assess how the unionization of labor and the presence of buyers possessing monopsony power affects the distribution of income among the factors of production in Canadian manufacturing. It is found that these variables have a composite effect. They transfer income from factors of production in one industry to the factors in another. They also affect the distribution of income between labor and capital within industries.