Sociometric Status and Peer Control Attempts: A Multiple Status Hierarchies Approach

We study a population of first year midshipmen within an elite military academy to explore the relationship between individuals’ sociometric status (e.g., status conferrals based on positive interpersonal affect and perceived competence, and status degradations based on negative interpersonal affect) and their attempts to directly control their peers’ behaviour over a year's time. Results show that multiple informal sociometric status hierarchies develop early in the organization's life and remain remarkably stable. Control attempts are driven by these status hierarchies: Lower competence status individuals and those who attract negative status degradations are targeted for control by more people early in the group's life, those relatively free of negative status degradations attempt to control greater numbers of others throughout the group's existence, while higher positive status is generally unrelated to control attempts. However, control attempts do not lead to higher future sociometric status, suggesting they are not status signals. Findings also show that individuals targeted for control by many others leave the organization entirely.     

Human Resource Controlling and Human Resource Management： Practice of Small and Medium-Sized Building Companies in the Czech Republic

The aim of this paper is to define the nature, present the possibilities, and discuss the problems of using human resource controlling in small and medium-sized building companies. This paper is based on the assumption that expedient human resource controlling is an effective human resource management tool that achieves the required performance of employees and expected competitiveness of a building company. This paper uses the results of a questionnaire survey conducted in November 2013 to analyze human resource management in building companies in the Czech Republic and specify the organization and conditions of human resource management. Some 81 small （less than 50 employees） and 66 medium-sized （50-249 employees） building companies operating in the Czech Republic took part in the questionnaire survey. The results of the questionnaire survey showed the lack of concept and random nature of human resource management in most small and medium-sized building companies. Of course, in terms of the present economic trend, it is above all important for small and medium-sized companies to develop their adaptability to the building market and to be able to deal with a variety of construction works. It is effective human resource management supported by expedient human resources that serves this purpose.     

Inclusionary Zoning and Exclusionary Development: The Politics of ‘Affordable Housing' in North Brooklyn

A key element of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's New Housing Marketplace program has been the use of voluntary inclusionary zoning, through which private developers have been offered tax breaks and density bonuses to develop affordable housing on newly rezoned land. While this program has failed to alleviate the housing affordability crisis in New York City, little attention has been paid to its political effects on community‐based struggles over housing. This article addresses this question by examining the 2005 Greenpoint‐Williamsburg Waterfront Rezoning, which combined a voluntary inclusionary zoning program with a tenant services contract intended to mitigate the residential displacement effects of the rezoning. I critically examine its design, execution and monitoring, based on two years of work as an organizer and administrator of the tenant services contract. I argue that technologies of consent and control have reshaped the politics of housing in North Brooklyn by replacing resistance to gentrification with amelioration of its effects, through the anticipated creation of affordable housing. The upshot has been an emergent politics of housing in which real estate‐led development is regarded not as a cause of gentrification but as its solution.     

Problems measuring the underground economy in transition1

An easy and popular method for measuring the size of the underground economy is to use macro data such as money demand or electricity demand to infer what the legitimate economy needs, and then to attribute the remaining consumption to the underground economy. Such inferences rely on the stability of parameters of the money demand and electricity demand equations, or at very least on knowledge of how these parameters are changing. We argue that the pace of change of these parameters is too variable in transition economies for the above methods of estimating the size of the underground economy to be applicable. We make our point by using Czech Republic and other transition country data from the financial and electricity sectors.     

FDI spillovers in the Chinese manufacturing sector

This paper uses a new longitudinal dataset of more than 15,000 manufacturing firms to analyse the heterogeneous responses of firms to foreign direct investment in China. Domestic firms operating in sectors where foreign firms are also active have higher total factor productivity. However, the magnitude of such horizontal spillovers depends on the structure and origin of foreign ownership, the export status of firms and the characteristics of the special economic zones firms are operating in.     

The effects of resupply flexibility on the design of service parts supply systems

We apply simulation optimization to determine the optimal design and stock distribution for a single item supply system with a one-for-one replenishment policy. We investigate both the effect of the number of echelons and the degree of resupply flexibility, considering single-echelon and two-echelon systems with either no resupply flexibility, lateral transhipments only or both lateral transhipments and emergency deliveries. We show that the implementation of an emergency delivery option allows an augmentation of the fraction of customers served by lateral transhipments and that increased resupply flexibility enables increasingly important cost savings.     

Social Relations of Landed Property: Gentrification of a Polish Enclave in Brooklyn

Despite the extensive literature on ethnic enclaves in American cities, the role of landed property in ethnic enclave formation and transformation has received no attention to date. Drawing upon nearly four years of work as a tenant organizer, I address this issue by examining how the social relations of landed property have been integral to the formation, transformation, and deterioration of ethnic ties among Polish migrants in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Specifically, I argue that the social relations of property among Polish migrants—what I call “enclave property”—have enabled the acquisition, maintenance, and improvement of landed property in and through the production of ethnicity. With the gentrification of the neighborhood, however, the social relations of immigrant housing that helped produce the enclave in the 1980s and 1990s have been strained, and rising property values have transformed relations of ethnicity among Polish migrants into mechanisms for property accumulation by dispossession. The upshot has been the “hollowing out” of the enclave, as Polish migrant tenants have been displaced from Greenpoint, leaving behind a co‐ethnic landlord class and their wealthier American tenants.     

On the role of sunk costs and asset specificity in outsourcing decisions: a research note

The accounting literature has argued that firms overengage in outsourcing because they tend to ignore the transaction costs involved in buying services from external suppliers. A field experiment with managers of health care organizations shows that decision makers are actually quite sensitive to the asset specificity associated with the “buy” option in an outsourcing decision. However, they also appear inappropriately sensitive to the sunk costs inherent in most real-life outsourcing decisions, and may actually underengage in outsourcing. Prior commitment to internal procurement systematically reduced the willingness to outsource, relative to a pure “make or buy” scenario.     

Why Taxpayer Support for R&D?

Taxpayers of OECD countries are made to support research and development by government and industry. Is R&D a public good that justifies taxpayer support because of its external benefits to society as a whole? Professor Palda of Canada contests yet another argument for state intervention io subsidise high technology.