Naomi R. Lamoreaux and Kenneth L. Sokoloff, eds. Financing Innovation: In the United States, 1870 to the Present

This edited volume makes a large and welcome contribution toour understanding of the history of entrepreneurial financein the United States. The focus of the volume is on innovationby both corporations and entrepreneurs. It examines all theimportant forms of financing, including wealthy individuals(who we now call angels), venture capital, government financingand debt. Scholars of many disciplines, including economics,finance, entrepreneurship, business history, and organizationalnetworks will find this volume to be of interest and the essayscan be read either selectively or globally. Lamoreaux and Sokoloff's introduction is a significant chapterin itself, providing a rich historical analysis of the riseof the U.S. patenting system. The editors also provide a     

Determinants of retirement planning behaviour and differences by age

This paper presents the results of an investigation into the determinants of retirement planning behaviour and differences among three age groups: 21‐ to 39‐year‐olds, 40‐ to 59‐year‐olds and those aged 60 years and older. A national survey of 911 individuals from households with incomes of $75 000 or greater was conducted in the US. The significance of socio‐demographic variables, the ability to recover from loss, behavioural tendencies and perceived or actual personal control were investigated; together with their role in the prediction of maximization of retirement contributions and ownership in the personal individual retirement account (IRA) or Keogh accounts. The results identified several significant variables in the prediction of ownership in a personal IRA or Keogh, including age, sources of financial information, being an early investor and investor activity. The results also identified several significant variables in the prediction of the maximization of retirement contributions, including employment, income, savings activity, ex ante research, review of investment performance, early investor, investor activity, such as planning for financial future, setting up automatic deposits and reviewing financial information in the mail.     

The devolution of HR to the line: Implications for perceptions of people management effectiveness

The devolution of human resource responsibilities from human resource managers to line managers is both a growing and global trend. A number of authors has suggested that there are positive as well as negative consequences of devolution. The current study conducted a survey of US human resource managers to explore the effect of devolution on human resource managers' perceptions of people management effectiveness in their organizations. Results revealed a positive effect of devolution on perceived people management effectiveness. However, this effect was qualified by an interaction between devolution and line support. Contrary to expectation, this interaction revealed that providing line managers with training and support for their human resource responsibilities had a greater positive impact on perceived effectiveness in organizations that had not devolved (non devolvers) compared to those that had (devolvers).     

Understanding offshoring: A research framework based on disintegration, location and externalization advantages

We present an analytical framework explaining offshoring in this paper. We address the question: why do firms offshore their business functions? Given the growing prevalence of offshoring as a dominant business practice in the world of global business, this question merits further research attention. We propose that firms embark on offshoring when they perceive three sets of interrelated advantages: disintegration advantages (D), location-specific resourcing advantages (L) and externalization advantages (E). Theories from multiple disciplines form the foundation of Disintegration–Location–Externalization (DLE) framework. Implications for managers, government policy makers and recommendations for future research are explored.     

Impacts on travel behaviour of Greater Manchester’s light rail investment (Metrolink Phase 1): evidence from household surveys and Census data

Household survey data from 1990 and 1993 and Census data from 1991 and 2001 are used to detect some short and medium term impacts on travel of the Metrolink light rail services which opened in 1992. Particular attention is paid to research design issues to try to isolate Metrolink’s impacts from those of other influences on travel behaviour. In the short term a more marked decline in the frequency of bus use is found in the Metrolink corridor compared with conventional rail and ‘no rail’ corridors. Changes in the frequency of rail use are more prominent in the Metrolink corridor, both to the highest frequency use but also to lower frequency use. Higher frequency rail use tends to be associated with respondents who have limited or no car availability, who are in employment, who are of non-manual social class and who are aged 18–44 years. Metrolink appears to have attracted at least as many former car users as former bus users, but the former car users tend to use the light rail services less frequently. Census commuting data suggest that, in the medium term, Metrolink has increased rail’s share of trips, especially to the city centre, contributed to the declining share of bus trips and may have helped to restrain work trips by car.     

The Impact of Organizational Culture and Reshaping Capabilities on Change Implementation Success: The Mediating Role of Readiness for Change

abstract    It was hypothesized that employees' perceptions of an organizational culture strong in human relations values and open systems values would be associated with heightened levels of readiness for change which, in turn, would be predictive of change implementation success. Similarly, it was predicted that reshaping capabilities would lead to change implementation success, via its effects on employees' perceptions of readiness for change. Using a temporal research design, these propositions were tested for 67 employees working in a state government department who were about to undergo the implementation of a new end-user computing system in their workplace. Change implementation success was operationalized as user satisfaction and system usage. There was evidence to suggest that employees who perceived strong human relations values in their division at Time 1 reported higher levels of readiness for change at pre-implementation which, in turn, predicted system usage at Time 2. In addition, readiness for change mediated the relationship between reshaping capabilities and system usage. Analyses also revealed that pre-implementation levels of readiness for change exerted a positive main effect on employees' satisfaction with the system's accuracy, user friendliness, and formatting functions at post-implementation. These findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical contribution to the readiness for change literature, and in relation to the practical importance of developing positive change attitudes among employees if change initiatives are to be successful.     

机制砂的性能及其对混凝土性能的影响

以往对混凝土的研究,土木工作者把更多的注意力放在了水泥、水灰比、外加剂以及粉煤灰和硅灰等外掺材料上。集料也是混凝土的重要组成部分,在混凝土中占有很重要的地位。随着土木建设的日趋发展和完善,天然砂日益紧缺,我们应重新审视集料对混凝土性能的影响。本文就着手研究用机制砂取代河砂对混凝土性能的影响。     

知识密集型组织的不确定性控制

随着知识密集型产业的发展,越来越多的企业面临着传统管理技术无法控制的不确定性。从表现、来源、可测性3个角度对不确定性进行了分类,提出了3种控制不确定性的能力——信息能力、沟通能力、适应能力。由于边际效应的限制,在高度不确定条件下,所有不确定性均归于不可知不确定性,要求企业必须发展适应能力,但由于经济效益的限制,总是优先发展适应能力是不经济的。通过一个坐标象限图,提出了不同不确定组合下组织最优资源投入的选择。     

Wealth and the capitalist spirit

The wealth distribution in the U.S. is more unequal than either the income or earnings distribution, a fact current models of saving behavior have difficulty explaining. Using Max Weber’s [Weber, M. (1905). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Charles Scribners’ and Sons (1958 translated edition)] idea that individuals may have a ‘capitalist spirit’, I construct and simulate a model where individuals accumulate wealth for its own sake rather than as deferred consumption. Including capitalist spirit preferences in a simple life cycle model, with no other modifications, generates a skewness of wealth consistent with that observed in the U.S. economy. Furthermore, capitalist spirit preferences provide a way to generate decreasing risk aversion with increases in wealth without resorting to idiosyncratic rates of time preference.     

Building value through sustainable project management offices

Organizations' attempts to implement and gain value from investments in project management have resulted in the rapid growth and, in some cases, demise of project management offices (PMOs). The recent research literature on PMOs provides an ambiguous picture of the value case for PMOs and suggests the tenuous nature of their current position in many organizations. In studying project management implementations for the Value of Project Management project, we chose to use three detailed cases and comparisons with the remaining 62 organizations in the value project to study how PMOs are connected to value realization for organizations investing in project management. Specifically, we sought to understand how PMOs deliver sustained value to organizations. Using the theories of Jim Collins (Collins, 2001; Collins & Porras, 1994) as an interpretive framework, we explore these cases to understand how to create and sustain project management value through investment in PMOs.