Informal conflict intervention: Advice and dissent

A disparity appears to exist between how managers are advised to handle conflict and the intervention methods that they utilize in actual practice. Normative advice tends to agree that managers should adopt a facilitative, mediatorlike role (e.g., Walton, 1987; Tjosvold, 1990), while the empirical research suggests that managers are much more controlling, often deciding how to resolve the problem on their own (e.g., Kolb, 1986; Sheppard, 1983). The present study focuses on two potential reasons as to why managers utilize the methods they do: (1) They treat choices instrumentally to achieve key goals and (2) they interpret or frame conflicts in a form that suggests directive action. One hundred and eighty managers were interviewed about a recent effort to intervene in a dispute at work. The results confirm that managers are very controlling when intervening in disputes and relates this to both interpretive frame and, to a lesser extent, managerial goals. A canonical analysis appears to emphasize the pivotal role that frame plays in influencing whether or not managers choose the solution. Implications of these results for managerial action are discussed.     

Bundling and quality assurance

With imperfect private monitoring, a firm selling two experience goods can increase both producer and consumer surplus by bundling. Bundling constrains consumers to buy two products, making consumers better informed and ensuring that they use tougher punishment strategies. Both increased monitoring and increased punishment benefit other consumers, so bundling overcomes a free‐rider problem. The social value of bundling is even larger if consumers cannot attribute a negative signal to the specific product that generated it, or if one of the two goods is a durable and the other is a complementary nondurable. Our results are robust to mixed bundling.     

There may be trouble ahead: exploring the changing shape of non-profit entrepreneurship in third sector organizations

This paper explores the challenges and benefits of managing non-profit organizations and social enterprise activities in an increasingly complex and difficult environment of austerity, reduced public sector funding, and higher competition for resources. It draws on the experience of women senior managers within the context of small/medium third sector organizations in Wales. Findings indicate diverse perspectives, but a consensus on the relevance of entrepreneurial behaviour to the third sector, and the importance of relationship-building and collaboration within gendered entrepreneurial practice.     

Shared Value Through Inner Knowledge Creation

The notion of shared value presents business with a challenge: to generate social benefit and profit simultaneously. This challenge involves resolving tensions/paradoxes inherent when integrating the apparent contradictory elements of social and economic values. Unfortunately, resolving such tensions is difficult due to the habitual, automatic nature of sensemaking. This paper offers a mechanism whereby individuals can, over time, begin to overcome habitual sensemaking and potentially resolve tensions inherent in shared value. The mechanism is labeled inner knowledge creation (IKC). IKC is described and its role in creating shared value for businesses is illustrated through a conceptual model. The model shows how IKC develops metacognitive capabilities, builds capacities to resolve tensions/paradoxes, and cultivates openness to others’ perspectives.     

The Determinants of Educational Attainment: Modeling and Estimating the Human Capital Model and Education Production Functions

This paper develops and estimates a theoretical model of an individual's high school graduation choice. The model incorporates the idea of a utility-maximizing youth responding to the economic incentives associated with incremental education, as posited by the human capital literature. However, it also allows for family, neighborhood, and school characteristics to affect the process of being educated, as posited by the education production function literature. Estimation of the model, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) supplemented with neighborhood and school data, indicates that indeed students respond to economic incentives in making education choices; however, most of the effects of background characteristics are working through the education process rather than affecting returns to schooling.     

Challenges Facing Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the Kyrgyz Republic, 1996-7

Based on high quality household survey data from 1996 and 1997, this paper analyzes the challenges facing non-farm household businesses in the Kyrgyz Republic. The non-farm businesses are small, concentrated in service activities, and rely on family labour. They are new enterprises established after the transition from central planning began, rather than state enterprises formed during the planning era and subsequently privatized. High taxes, low product demand, and high input prices are the three most cited challenges, while the problems facing small businesses do not include credit availability, capacity concerns, input availability, or labour costs. Frequent mention of licence difficulties and extortion, in addition to high taxes, indicates that the grabbing hand of the government is a major obstacle to private businesses. The government is also failing to maintain law and order; in 1996 a quarter of the businesses report violence among their three main challenges.     

Empirical foundations for the resurrection of Heckscher–Ohlin theory

We decompose the factor content of trade into Heckscher–Ohlin–Vanek trade and Ricardian trade. We measure factor content using only the United States' technology and also as Leontief advocated, using the local technology. In either case, differences in endowments are quite important in explaining the factor content of trade. If one uses raw estimated coefficients as a means of comparison, differences in endowments are ten times as important as differences in technology.     

The Dollar Exposure of Japanese Companies

The bulk of Japanese exports and imports are denominated in U.S. dollars rather than Japan's local currency, the yen. The consequences of dollar invoicing depend importantly on the extent to which Japanese companies hedge their dollar exposures. If they fully hedge their dollar exposures, then the choice of invoicing currency will not influence the yen profits of Japanese companies. This paper examines the degree to which Japanese companies hedge by estimating their exposure to movements in the dollar. Using Japanese stock market data and an international version of the CAPM model I estimate the extent to which Japanese company returns are correlated with changes in the yen–dollar exchange rate. The results suggest many Japanese companies are indeed exposed to yen–dollar movements and that dollar appreciations generally are positively correlated with firm returns. Since over the period 1984 to 1995, the dollar depreciated by 36% relative to the yen, it follows that the values of Japanese companies fell as a consequence of their dollar exposure.J. Japan. Int. Econ.Dec. 1998,12(4), pp. 388–405. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1220.Copyright 1998 Academic Press.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers F31, G12, F23.