External validation of the use of vignettes in cross-country health studies

Cross-country comparisons of subjective assessments are rendered difficult if not impossible because of sub-population specific response style. To correct for this, the use of vignettes has become increasingly popular, notably within cross-country health studies. However, the validity of vignettes as a means to re-scale across sample sub-populations critically rests on the assumption of “response consistency” (RC): that vignettes and self-assessments are evaluated on the same scale. In this paper, we seek to test this assumption by applying objective measures of health along with subjective measures and vignettes. Our results indicate that the assumption of RC is not innocuous and that our extended model relaxing this assumption improves the fit and significantly changes the cross-country rankings of health vis-á-vis the standard Chopit model.     

New human resource management practices, complementarities and the impact on innovation performance

In this paper, we take our theoretical point of departure inrecent work in organisational economics on systems of humanresource management (HRM) practices. We develop the argumentthat just as complementarities between new HRM practices influencefinancial performance positively, there are theoretical reasonsfor expecting them also to influence innovation performancepositively. We examine this overall hypothesis by estimatingan empirical model of innovation performance, using data froma Danish survey of 1,900 business firms. Using principal componentanalysis, we identify two HRM systems which are conducive toinnovation. In the first one, seven of our nine HRM variablesmatter (almost) equally for the ability to innovate. The secondsystem is dominated by firm-internal and firm-external training.Of the total of nine sectors that we consider, we find thatthe four manufacturing sectors correlate with the first system.Firms belonging to wholesale trade and to the ICT intensiveservice sectors tend to be associated with the second system.     

Optimal Strategy and Business Models: A Control Theory Approach

This study picks up on earlier suggestions that control theory may further the study of strategy. Strategy can be formally interpreted as an idealized path optimizing heterogeneous resource deployment to produce maximum financial gain. Using standard matrix methods to describe the firm Hamiltonian, it is possible to formalize useful notions of a business model, resources, and competitive advantage. The business model that underpins strategy may be seen as a set of constraints on resources that can be interpreted as controls in optimal control theory. Strategy then might be considered to be the control variable of firm path, suggesting in turn that the firm's business model is the codification of the application of investment resources used to control the strategic path of value realization. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.