Bill Averaging Programs and Consumer Behavior: Theory and Evidence

This paper examines consumer behavior under "bill smoothing," a common pricing program for utility customers where monthly payments are equalized over a one year cycle.First, we offer a theoretical model and conclude that bill smoothing is beneficial to consumers, but leads to exaggerated swings in usage over the yearly cycle. Second, we provide statistical evidence on the determinants of voluntary participation in bill smoothing programs by consumers; financial distress and high usage are less important than generally supposed. Finally, empirical tests of our theoretical model find that (i) participation increases overall consumption; and (ii) bill smoothing leads to exaggerated usage peaks and troughs, a result that could have implications for load management programs and general energy conservation.     

Development planning in The Gambia: The gap between planners' and farmers' perceptions,expectations and objectives

This paper challenges the prevalent view that irrigation development largely depends on engineering, agricultural and managerial inputs and argues with reference to Gambian irrigation projects that new technologies may be adapted by farmers in ways that are incompatible with planners' objectives. The conclusion is that planners need to give greater attention to the organization and control of production and consumption within the household. This would require a change in attitudes among many planners, the recruitment of more social scientists into planning teams, and greater co-operation between planners, farmers of all socio- economic categories and extension agents.     

An optimal phased replanting approach for cocoa trees with application to Ghana

This study solves for the optimum replacement rate (ORR) and initial replacement year (IRY) of cocoa trees (Theobroma cacao) in Ghana to maximize net present value and achieve steady state by employing a phased replanting approach. The annual ORR is 5%–7% across the three production systems studied: Low Input, Landrace Cocoa, High Input, No Shade Amazon Cocoa, and High Input, Medium Shade Cocoa. The optimal IRY ranges from year 5 to year 9 as a function of cocoa prices, fertilizer prices, labor prices, and percentage yield loss due to disease outbreaks. Deterministic results project economic gains that exceed currently practiced replacement approaches by 5.57%–14.67% across production systems with reduced, annual income volatility. The method applied in this study can be used to increase cocoa yields and stabilize income over time, and facilitate substantial quality of life improvements for many subsistence cocoa farmers in Ghana and around the world.     

What Determines Employee Perceptions of HRM Process Features? The Case of Performance Appraisal in MNC Subsidiaries

Against the background of Bowen and Ostroff's ( 2004 ) human resource management (HRM) process theorization, this study explores influences on individual employee perceptions of the visibility, validity, and procedural and distributive justice of performance appraisal in subsidiaries of multinational corporations, and at what levels these influences reside. The study adopts an embedded, multiple‐case design with interview data from 33 managers and professionals in six subsidiaries of three corporations. The findings show that perceptions of the performance appraisal process are driven by a number of influences pertaining to the unit, relationship, and individual levels. Further, the study highlights differences and similarities of influences across four performance appraisal process features, and identifies overlaps and inter‐linkages between the process features suggested by Bowen and Ostroff ( 2004 ). For practitioners, the value of our study lies in the identification of steps that can be taken to increase the likelihood that HRM practices are perceived positively and as intended by the organization. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The influence of internal and external social networks on HRM capabilities in MNC subsidiaries in China

In this study we examine the influence of involvement in internal and external social networks on HRM capabilities. We distinguish between technical and strategic HRM capabilities and focus on the capabilities of the HR department relating to four HRM practices – recruitment and selection, training and development, compensation, and performance appraisal. The study is based on data from dual respondents, general managers and HR managers, in 66 European MNC subsidiaries located in China. The results indicate that contact with other MNCs in China regarding HRM issues is positively associated with both technical and strategic HRM capabilities whereas contact with local Chinese companies does not have any significant influence on either strategic or technical HRM capabilities. Contact with MNC headquarters is positively associated with strategic HRM capabilities.     

Socio-Political Evaluation of Energy Deployment (SPEED): An integrated research framework analyzing energy technology deployment

Stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases to reduce the risks of climate change requires a major transition in society's energy infrastructure; yet despite a growing sense of urgency, deployment of alternative emerging energy technologies has been slow and uncertain. This paper proposes a systematic, interdisciplinary framework for the integrated analysis of regulatory, legal, political, economic, and social factors that influence energy technology deployment decisions at the state level to enhance awareness of the interconnections and enable improved energy policy and planning and accelerated change in society's energy infrastructure. This framework, Socio-Political Evaluation of Energy Deployment, (SPEED), integrates analysis of laws, regulations, institutions and policy actors as well as varying regional perceptions and levels of awareness about the risks and benefits of emerging energy technologies to facilitate improved understanding of the complex interconnected components of state energy systems. While this framework has been developed with U.S. states as a model, the SPEED framework is generalizable to other countries with different sub-national structures. We present three research methods that could be applied within the SPEED framework that could be particularly helpful in understanding the integrated socio-political influences on energy technology deployment: (1) policy review and analysis, (2) media analysis, and (3) focus groups and structured interviews with key stakeholders. By integrating the fields of technology diffusion, environmental policy, comparative analysis of states, and risk perception, future empirical research conducted within this SPEED framework will improve understanding of the interconnected socio-political influences on energy technology deployment to enable energy modelers, policy-makers, energy professionals, state planners and other stakeholders to develop and implement more effective strategies to accelerate the deployment of emerging energy technologies.     

Talent responses to talent status awareness—Not a question of simple reciprocation

How to manage talent effectively is a key question in organisations. Yet we still know relatively little about talent's psychological reactions to their exclusive status. Based on psychological contract theory and research on status, this study analyses a sample of 321 employees identified as talent by their organisations, only some of whom were aware of their exclusive talent status. The results provide evidence that talent status awareness moderates the relationship between a range of employer inducements and talent obligations, such that it increases the importance of some inducements while diminishing that of others. The study contributes to the talent management literature by isolating specific effects of talent status awareness and calling into question extant evidence of its direct positive effects on talent attitudes. The findings also have implications for talent status communication, talent management, and future theorising of talent reactions to their exclusive status.     

Mixed signals: employee reactions to talent status communication amidst strategic ambiguity

Abstract

Given the sensitive nature of communicating talent status in an ‘exclusive’ talent management system and the complexity involved in simultaneously sending signals of exclusivity and inclusivity, some organisations avoid open communication and instead opt for ‘strategic ambiguity’ – intentionally maintaining an element of secrecy and information asymmetry. However, we know relatively little about the effects of this communication approach as a feature of the organisational context on the reactions of employees. Drawing on signalling theory, we examine the reactions of both talents and ‘B’ players on finding out about their talent status in the context of a company that adopts strategic ambiguity in its communication about talent. The data consists of 24 in-depth, qualitative interviews with individuals with experience of TM in a Finnish subsidiary of a large, US-based multinational corporation. The findings reveal that the contextual effects of strategic ambiguity in talent communication affected the reactions of talents and ‘B’ players in distinctly different ways, but had few long-term positive effects on the attitudes and behaviours of either group. These findings present important theoretical and practical implications for the role of communication and organisational context in employee reactions to talent pool inclusion and for talent management more generally.     

Representing pace in tourism mobilities: staycations,Slow Travel and The Amazing Race

This article examines the way popular representations of tourism make sense of pace within the context of Western modernity and asks how certain ethical and ideological values come to be associated with speed, slowness or stillness. In the typical story of modernity, speed is commonly associated with positive values such as ‘freedom’ and ‘progress’, while slowness and stillness are often seen as marginal or undesirable modes of mobility. The analysis presented suggests that paying attention to pace and the way pace is socially encoded in media contexts reveals a more complicated narrative of mobility and modernity. The article draws on an analysis of media representations of three popular modes of tourism – the ‘staycation’, a neologism invented to describe vacationing at home; Slow Travel; an emerging social movement that advocates travelling slowly and locally; and the television programme The Amazing Race – to argue that the way pace is socially encoded in these representations is central not only to a more nuanced story of modernity, but also to a ‘politics of mobility’.     

Examining the differential use of global integration mechanisms across HRM practices: Evidence from China

This paper examines how multinational corporations use different mechanisms to integrate four HRM practices in their foreign subsidiaries: financial compensation, performance appraisal, training and development, and recruitment and selection. Our analysis of 76 European-owned subsidiaries located in China reveal systematic differences in the use of integration mechanisms across the four HRM practices. The findings suggest that the usage of global integration mechanisms is contingent on the purposes of integration – headquarters control, and inter-unit coordination – as well as on the degree to which the mechanism is capable of responding to needs for local adaptation of the individual HRM practice in question.