Gaining competitive advantage through human resource management practices

Critical to a corporation's growth and prosperity is gaining and retaining competitive advantage. Although corporations may pursue many paths to this end, one that is frequently not recognized is capitalizing on superior human resource management. Currently, many companies recognize the growing importance of their human resources, but few are conceptualizing them in strategic terms—in ways to gain a competitive advantage. As a result, many companies forego the opportunity to seize competitive advantage through human resource practice initiatives. However, there are a few companies that do not forego the opportunity. We use them as examples to show how to systematically develop such advantages via a “target/thrust matrix.” The end results of this matrix have significant implications for both corporate strategy and personnel and human resource management.     

Error analysis of some normal approximations to the chi-square distribution

The chi-square distribution is one of the most widely used probability distributions; thus many functions have been advanced as approximations to the chi-square cumulative distribution function. One measure of the quality of an approximation is the maximum absolute error of the associated error function. This paper investigates the error functions for three normal approximations to the chi-square cumulative distribution function, those offered by Fisher, Wilson-Hilferty, and Kelley. In particular, a technique is developed for each approximation to find the maximum absolute error for fixed degrees of freedom. The maximum absolute error for each approximation and certain degrees of freedom is tabled.     

Monopoly aspects of political parties

Conclusions The standard economic model of a natural monopoly offers a useful conceptual means to examine some of the characteristics of political parties. The declining cost curves for producing political products are attributable to the indivisible nature of the majority asset. In the absence of subsidies, political parties can be expected to produce at the point where their marginal evaluation equals average cost. Thus, they have an incentive to seek subsidies in order to expand production to the point where marginal evaluation equals marginal cost. While this is optimizing behavior on the part of the individual party, it may not be optimal in competing for the majority asset, because this process decreases the value of resources that the other party has expended towards acquiring the asset. Parties will determine their optimal output calculating only the private costs and benefits to be secured through party competition, but will ignore the social costs caused by the externality they generate in competing for a fixed percentage of votes. As a result, optimizing behavior by the individual parties may lead to an excess of resources devoted to producing political decisions.     

CROSS-SUBSIDISATION OF RURAL AREAS VIA UTILITY PRICING POLICIES*

Public utilities which apply roughly uniform prices to all consumers often engage in cross-subsidisation — charging prices which are below cost for consumers in low population density areas but above cost for consumers in high density areas. The distributional and allocative implications of this practice are examined and it is concluded that some cross-subsidisation may be justifiable on welfare grounds even where no externalities exist. There is, however, little empirical evidence released by utilities to enable assessment of the efficiency of their practices. If nothing else, we highlight the need for greater public disclosure of pricing practices by public utilities.