The role of peer-to-peer voice in severe work environments: organisational facilitators and barriers

Encouraging and facilitating employee voice among frontline employees is important in organisations to draw out problems and issues that can potentially be addressed and mitigated by organisational policies and practices. Using Conservation of Resources theory, this study focuses on paramedics and the formal and informal voice mechanisms used to safeguard their well-being. We observe that paramedics are often unwilling to use formal support mechanisms, at least in the first instance immediately following exposure to a traumatic event, but they see informal peer-to-peer voice as critical in preventing resource loss and regaining resources for subsequent call-outs. We also found that without an awareness of the importance of this support mechanism, changes in work organisation can unintentionally and unknowingly limit their capacity to engage in this form of support. Losing peer-to-peer voice can lead to the build-up of stress that could otherwise be mitigated, resulting in diminished well-being.     

Panel Unit-Root Tests of OECD Stochastic Convergence

This paper uses three panel unit-root tests and finds that real per capita GDP for OECD countries and a European subsample converge stochastically for the period 1948–87 but not for the entire sample of 1900–87. For the postwar period, the differential in income gaps or speed of adjustment is eliminated at an annual rate of 4–8% for OECD economies, and 6–9% for European economies.     

Entry Strategies and Market Performance Causal Modeling of a Business Simulation

A key decision faced by marketing managers is the development of entry strategies for new markets. In addition to selecting which product market to enter, the manager must make decisions about the entry strategy itself. The entry strategy, whether managed actively or passively, affects the entrant's performance. In this article, Donna Green and Adrian Ryans discuss the three major components of an entry strategy: the timing of entry, the magnitude and areas of investment and the basis for competitive emphasis. They report that very little empirical research has focused on relationships between entry strategy and eventual product performance.     

On inferring standard deviations from path dependent options

Path dependent option prices are employed to derive implied standard deviations of the underlying security price process without recourse to numerical procedures. We empirically illustrate our methodology by inferring the volatility of gold prices.     

Trans-organizational innovation: a framework for research

Information and communication technologies, the evolution of a pattern of innovation based on technology fusion and the transition towards a knowledge-based economy are dominant trends. These trends support trans-organitational innovation, which typically involves the design of complex and technologically hybrid products. Trans-organizational innovation involves generating new knowledge out of knowledge inputs which are distributed across disciplines and organizations which may be geographically dispersed. This is critically dependent on management processes associated with learning. Learning is a contextually situated and interaction-intensive process, which during product innovation involves mutual interaction between characteristics of product and those of context. Such interactions continually evolve the designed form and functionalig of a product. Existing research has tended to neglect the complexities involved in trans-organitational innovation. A product-in-context framework for analyzing the trans-organitational innovation process is detailed in this paper. This framework can be used to examine the relationship between critical features at Product and context which mediate learning during trans-organizational product design and innovation and account for product design variation.     

EXAMINATION OF A PATH MODEL RELATING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE WITH FIRM PERFORMANCE

This article draws on the resource‐based view of the firm to investigate the mechanisms through which information technology (IT) impacts firm performance. Research suggests that the relationship between IT and firm performance may be both direct and indirect. In this study, a path model is tested that proposes a firm's IT infrastructure resources as having both a direct impact on organizational performance, as well as an indirect effect that is propagated through its impact on an intermediate organizational resource, a firm's logistics information system (LIS). The results suggest that positive firm performance may be derived directly from an organization's superior IT infrastructure, as well as indirectly, through its enabling impact on LIS's. These findings contribute to our understanding of the nature of the relationship between IT and firm performance by exploring the value of IT at both the process and organizational levels.     

Risk‐taking channel of monetary policy

One of the most robust stylized facts in macroeconomics is the forecasting power of the term spread for future real activity. We propose a possible causal mechanism for the forecasting power of the term spread, deriving from the balance sheet management of financial intermediaries and the “risk‐taking channel of monetary policy.” Monetary tightening leads to the flattening of the term spread, reducing net interest margin and credit supply. We provide empirical support for the risk‐taking channel.