Predicting Organizational and Union Commitment: The Effect of Industrial Relations Climate

Research evidence from North America shows that employees can be committed simultaneously to both their union and their company. Moreover, a co-operative industrial relations climate has been seen to be conducive to the existence of higher levels of commitment to both organizations. This study utilized a sample of white-collar unionists in Australia to identify whether union and company commitment could be predicted by the same factors and whether positive perceptions of the industrial relations climate were related to dual commitment. The research found no evidence of dual commitment. Furthermore, company and union commitment were predicted by different factors, and employee perceptions of a co-operative industrial relations climate were associated with higher employee commitment to the company but lower commitment to the union.     

SHELTER STRATEGIES FOR THE URBAN POOR IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Rapid growth in many developing-country cities is strainingthe capacity of their shelter delivery systems. Governmentshave chosen a variety of implicit and explicit policies to amelioratethese strains. However, these policies are not always consistentwith their objectives, often because of a lack of knowledgeof how housing markets actually work and how policies affectand are constrained by market behavior. This paper reviews recentresearch on housing market behavior in developing countries,including the demand for housing and the pattern of housinginvestment across countries, the financing of housing by low-incomehouseholds, and the willingness to pay for secure tenure. Commonhousing policies are then examined, including public housing,sites and services projects, and slum clearance versus upgrading.Rent controls, measures to improve the supply of finance andinfrastructure, and building codes and standards are also discussed.      

Forecasting economies in transition: The case of Romania

Structural change is endemic in the Eastern European economies and the newly emerging Commonwealth of Independent States yet conventional econometric modelling techniques proceed under the assumption that there is a structurally stable true economy to be discovered. This paper extends the analysis of Hall (1993) by exploring the consequences of endemic structural change for forecasting and building structural econometric models. We propose a model formulation which makes the econometric model itself able to adjust its parameters in the light of economic change using the Kalman Filter.The paper then illustrates this approach by building a small model of Romania and investigating its forecasting properties.This work was presented at a meeting of the MEET II network funded by the ACE project, Econometric Inference into the Macroeconomic dynamics of East European Economies.     

Evolving Market Efficiency with an Application to Some Bulgarian Shares

With new technically advanced methods and computers at our disposal, the efficient market hypothesis is once again being debated. At the same time, we are witnessing an unprecedented growth in both existing and new financial markets. These new markets are often in economies which have just recently embraced free market economics; we term these stock markets infant markets. Such stock markets are obviously not efficient in allocating the supply of savings to productive capital. We do not test whether or not these infant markets are informationally efficient, but instead examine whether and how they are becoming more efficient. We propose modelling the excess returns of individual securities using a multi-factor model with time-varying coefficients and generalised auto-regressive conditional heteroskedastic (GARCH) errors. If the markets are becoming more informationally efficient or the agents are learning, we would expect this to manifest itself as the time-varying coefficients becoming more stable as time increases. We test our model using data on four Bulgarian shares. First, we estimate an AR(2) model and a GARCH-M(1,1) model for the shares. Then, we estimated our AR(2) model with time varying coefficients and GARCH type errors. We find varying levels of efficiency and varying speeds of movement towards efficiency within our sample of four shares. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The welfare cost of means‐testing: pensioner participation in income support

We estimate parametric and semi‐parametric binary choice models of benefit take‐up by British pensioners and use a revealed preference argument to infer the cash‐equivalent value of disutility arising from stigma or complexity of the claims process. These implicit costs turn out to be relatively small, averaging about £3–4 per week across Income Support recipients. Using the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke measure of poverty among pensioners, we find that allowing for implicit claim costs incurred by benefit recipients raises the measured degree of poverty by not more than 13%. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Explaining the Choice Among Regulatory Plans in the U.S. Telecommunications Industry

We investigate why different states in the United States choose different regulatory plans in their telecommunications industry. We present a simple theoretical model and an empirical analysis of the issue. We find that a state is more likely to replace rate-of-return regulation with incentive regulation when: (1) residential basic local service rates have historically been relatively high; (2) allowed earnings under rate-of-return regulation in the state have been either particularly high or particularly low; (3) the state's leaders tend to come from both major political parties, rather than from a single party; (4) the state's urban population is growing relatively rapidly; and (5) the bypass activity of competitors in the state is less pronounced.     

Transient Crowding and Crime:

A bstract . The effects on crime rates of the intrusion of large numbers of strangers into an area are investigated. The sensitivity of six different crime types ( murder, rape, assault, robbery, burglary , and larceny ) to density of strangers is estimated using a standard model of criminal behavior. The variables which reflect this density are measures of tourists, college students, shoppers from other areas, opportunities to consume alcohol , and the presence of interstate highway exits. The results suggest that an increase in the number of strangers into an area has a positive effect on the crimes of burglary, larceny, and robbery, but very little effect on assault, murder and rape. A significant finding is that "wet" counties have a higher incidence of each crime type than do "dry" counties. From a policy standpoint, officials who support economic growth in urban areas should keep in mind that an increase in the opportunity for illegal activity accompanies such growth and plan accordingly.     

Employee perceptions of corporate partnership: An affective-moral quid pro quo

An affective-moral quid pro quo model provided the framework to test the relationship between worker satisfaction, perceptions of employees' citizenship behavior, and corporate commitment to moral-ethical ideals. A total of 198 full-time employees from a wide variety of work settings anonymously completed questionnaires. More than half of the respondents held management or supervisory positions; the number of males and females was nearly equal. Participants who indicated high satisfaction with work, promotions, and co-workers, and who viewed employees in their work setting as altruistic, perceived their organization as committed to employee welfare, employee rights, product quality, and as good corporate citizens.     

Stock price effect of high-yield debt issues

This paper investigates the common stock price reaction at the announcement of the issuance of high-yield straight debt. The two-day announcement period abnormal returns are not different from zero for the 164 bond issues in the sample. No difference is found between announcement period abnormal returns of firms with bonds that default and firms with bonds that do not default. Results from statistical tests indicate that the announcement period abnormal returns are not explained by issuance year, bond-rate class, underwriter, issuance size, takeover activity or prior high-yield debt issuance experience. The findings are not consistent with the models by Miller and Rock (1985), Jensen (1986), Myers and Majluf (1984) and Krasker (1986). However, results indicate that existing stockholders are not harmed or helped by the issuance of the high-yield straight debt.     

TOWARDS A CRITICAL MANAGEMENT SCIENCE

This article examines the work of a number of writers who have attempted critical assessments of management science. Each writer has focused on specific areas that any critical management science would need to consider, viz. the origins of values, relations between organizations and society, the historical development of organizations, and the relationship between management science and developments in the capitalist mode of production. In addition these writers have declined to accept existing modes of organization as given, and have avoided the assumption that management science is inherently, or necessarily, manipulative. Each of the writers, however, has displayed several weaknesses in his analysis: thus Churchman fails to locate the management scientist in the society of which he is a part; Hales has no clear or viable alternative other than to call (in effect) for socialism, and makes the erroneous assumption that managerial strategies are necessarily effective; whilst Whitley too seems to have ‘divested management research of its practical dimension’. In conclusion it is pointed out that the actual effects of managerial strategies must be treated as problematic, since they may be modified by various forms of resistance and class struggle, and that developments in the production process may not necessarily be to the detriment of workers.