An investigation of managerial interventions in employee disputes

Seventy four university managers described up to six recent conflicts and reported on their intervention strategies. Findings show that managers use a range of strategies, including overlooking, as interventions for employees’ disputes, instead of favoring the use of any particular one. Choices of intervention strategies were influenced by the type of issue being disputed, the seriousness of the dispute, and managers’ self-efficacy with mediation. Specifically, managers most frequently used mediation to resolve task-related disputes, and tended to use a variety of different strategies to intervene in personality conflicts. When managers perceived conflicts to be highly serious, they most frequently used mediation, followed by arbitration, offering incentives, and lastly, overlooking. Managers with a high degree of mediation self-efficacy more frequently mediated employees’ disputes, whereas managers with a low degree of mediation self-efficacy more frequently overlooked employees’ disputes. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

On MLEs in an extended multivariate linear growth curve model

In this paper the extended growth curve model is considered. The literature comprises two versions of the model. These models can be connected by one-to-one reparameterizations but since estimators are non-linear it is not obvious how to transmit properties of estimators from one model to another. Since it is only for one of the models where detailed knowledge concerning estimators is available (Kollo and von Rosen, Advanced multivariate statistics with matrices. Springer, Dordrecht, 2005) the object in this paper is therefore to present uniqueness properties and moment relations for the estimators of the second model. One aim of the paper is also to complete the results for the model presented in Kollo and von Rosen (Advanced multivariate statistics with matrices. Springer, Dordrecht, 2005). The presented proofs of uniqueness for linear combinations of estimators are valid for both models and are simplifications of proofs given in Kollo and von Rosen (Advanced multivariate statistics with matrices. Springer, Dordrecht, 2005).     

Labour Markets in Professional Sports

Important elements of supply and demand are starkly observable in professional athletics. Demand affects how pay varies with personal productivity, racial discrimination, the nature of factor substitutions, and player mobility. Property rights affect the supply of athletic talent, arms races and incentives to restrict competition. In sports, excess incentives to win can create negative externalities. Collective agreements such as reverse-order drafts, payroll caps and revenue sharing constrain these forces, but redistribute rents from talented players to owners because they punish success. The European approach–promoting better-performing teams and relegating those with the poorest records–punish failure.     

Horatio Alger Meets the Mobility Tables

The question of how entrepreneurship relates to income mobility is cogent given the current public debate about the sources of income inequality and mobility in United States society. We examine how experience with entrepreneurship has affected an individual's place in the earnings distribution. Our basic tack is to follow individuals' positions in the income distribution over time, and to see how their mobility (or lack thereof) was affected by involvement with entrepreneurship. Our main finding is that for low-income individuals there is some merit to the notion that the self-employed moved ahead in the earnings distribution relative to those who remained wage earners. On the other hand, for those at the upper end of the earnings distribution, those who became self-employed often advanced less in the earnings distribution than their salaried counterparts.     

DATA‐DRIVEN DRAFTING: APPLYING ECONOMETRICS TO EMPLOY QUARTERBACKS

We show that firms can employ data‐driven methods to improve their hiring decisions. Specifically, we use data available to National Football League (NFL) teams prior to the NFL draft to estimate econometric models that predict the future performance of drafted quarterbacks. As our methods are replicable, stakeholders can use them to improve the draft's efficiency and help it accomplish its mission to promote competitive balance. Furthermore, data‐driven methods such as ours can help firms avoid biases against employee characteristics that do not affect future job performance. (JEL L83)     

Unemployment,disequilibrium and the short run phillips curve: An econometric approach

The paper specifies a disequilibrium model for the aggregate labour market consisting of demand and supply functions for labour, an adjustment equation for wages as well as for prices, a transactions equation and, finally, an equation that relates measured unemployment to vacancies and to excess demand. The model has a more sophisticated treatment of dynamics than earlier disequilibrium models. The parameter estimates and the goodness-of-fit are satisfactory and the model's implications for the behaviour of several important variables are sensible. In particular, excess demand estimates computed in various ways are reasonable.     

Vertical externalities in tax setting: evidence from gasoline and cigarettes

A common feature of federal systems is that tax bases are joint property. Consequently, state and federal tax setting decisions are interdependent. Our aim here is to put forward a rudimentary theoretical analysis of this phenomenon, and to use the theory as a framework for econometrically estimating the magnitude of the responses. We find that when the federal government increases taxes, there is a significant positive response of state taxes. For example, a 10-cent per gallon increase in the federal tax rate on gasoline leads to a 3.2-cent increase in the state tax rate.     

Training for virtual teams: An investigation of current practices and future needs

Organizations are creating virtual teams at an ever‐faster rate. Virtual team leaders and members from distant locations work together and communicate with each other using a variety of information technologies. Results from a survey of 440 training and development professionals identify current organizational training practices aimed at preparing leaders and members for virtual team assignments. Comparing organizations with more effective and less effective virtual team training programs allowed us to identify a set of “best practices.” We offer practical guidance regarding the effective use of training to promote high‐quality virtual team performance. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.