HR practices and commitment to change: an employee‐level analysis

This article explores the relationship between HR practices and commitment to change in three health service organisations in Ireland. The research focuses on employee views of HR practices and resulting employee‐level consequences including commitment to change, perceptions of the industrial relations climate and the psychological contract, and work–life balance. The findings indicate that the HR practices valued by employees, and which are related to a range of employee‐related consequences, are very different from the lists of sophisticated HR practices that appear in the high performance literature. The research suggests that organisations need to ensure that attention is still paid to the basics of the employment relationship and that these are not lost in the rush to introduce more sophisticated approaches to managing employees.     

Enacting the vision for sustainable development

Utopia, as a concept, is now used with varying intentions, engendering semantic confusion. When substituted with the notion of visioning, it can be also problematic, if sometimes for different reasons. An implicit engagement in visioning is examined in a community-based futures process for creating a strategy for the sustainable management of natural resources in the Mary River catchment, in Queensland, Australia. It is found that visioning, if it can be binding and impelling for common-interest groups, can be just as unrealistically utopian, or as slippery as the scaly creatures it is trying to protect, when applied afresh to a community exploring change from a variety of initial ideals and needs. It may be seen as an emergent property of active learning.     

Visiting Nurse Association of New York and Crisis Management after September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001 was a devastating event that changed all of our lives and organizations. This article examines the impact of September 11, 2001 on the Visiting Nurse Association of New York and how it decided to respond in the future. Crisis Management, which has become more prevalent for many organizations, is an important strategic initiative for the VNA helping them provide the infrastructure to respond effectively to emergencies and unpredictable events. It is important in today's volatile business climate, that hospital and nursing organizations develop a strategic system to handle "worst case scenarios".     

From Experience: Applying Performance Support Technology in the Fuzzy Front End

A new product originates from an idea, or in many cases, integration of multiple ideas. The process of transforming an idea into a robust concept requires definition of the underlying technologies, identification of expected customer benefits, and assessment of the market opportunity. The idea-development and subsequent idea-selection stages of new product development are often referred to as the "fuzzy front end" because they typically involve ad hoc decisions and ill-defined processes. To address this shortcoming, Nortel developed an idea-to-opportunity front-end process that provides a consistent and structured approach for idea development and evaluation. This article describes the process and how it was implemented using electronic performance support technology.     

Improving schedule reliability based on copulas: An application to five of the most congested US airports

This study, based Newark Liberty International, New York John F. Kennedy, New York LaGuardia, Chicago O’Hare International and San Francisco International in the US, provides a perspective on the predictability of on-time performance evaluation by applying an actuarial and financial method called copula. It is common for the percentage of on-time gate arrivals to be portrayed in daily news as an indicator of schedule reliability. However, the degree of interdependency between gate arrival delays and block delays may provide some indication of schedule reliability.     

Property Rights Reform in Rangeland China: Dilemmas On the Road to the Household Ranch

This paper contributes to the debate over land tenure in rural China by extending its spatial coverage to the country’s extensive rangeland regions. Key characteristics of pastoral tenure, identified from field appraisals in western China, include group tenure and fuzzy boundaries. Although these characteristics give rise to efficiency concerns, from a new institutional economics perspective they also facilitate the realization of certain benefits, benefits that could represent opportunity costs of further exclusiveness. The strengthening of rangeland co-management may constitute a more appropriate path to institutional improvement than the establishment of the household ranch, the current goal of national rangeland policy.     

Stabilization policy and income distribution in developing countries

The trade-off between income distribution and stabilization is one of the least understood in development economics. The paper reviews the recent literature on the effects of devaluation and monetary and fiscal policy. Devaluation is shown to have a significant impact on incomes through both its expenditure switching and reducing effects, this varying with the time perspective taken. The implications of these effects for poverty are explored, and shown in principle to be complex and uncertain. Similarly, monetary and fiscal restraint is shown to influence income distribution through changes in the level and structure of output. How changes in monetary and fiscal policy affect the poor in developing countries is again difficult to determine theoretically. The labor market is shown to be a key determinant of how policy changes are transmitted to poverty groups. The paper concludes that rigorous empirical research on this subject is long overdue.     

Cuba: The New Frontier of Study Abroad Programs for U.S. Students

The growing reconciliation between the United States and Cuba has created a unique opportunity for U.S. business and hospitality students to observe and experience first-hand an economy in marked transition. Attempting to balance the tenets of socialism with a rapidly growing reliance on capitalism creates a rare learning environment for students. This article presents the plan for a 10-day faculty-led study abroad program to Cuba. The program is divided between the two (arguably) most important destinations in Cuba: the economic and cultural center, Havana, and the tourism powerhouse of Varadero. At each destination, students are engaged in lectures, site visits, research, and cultural experiences.     

INTEREST AS AN ARTEFACT OF SELF‐VALIDATING CENTRAL BANK BELIEFS

The classical/Sraffian approach to distribution is proposed as a more congenial framework for Keynes's concept of interest as a conventional variable—resulting from the interplay between central bank behaviour and financial market sentiment—because it provides a sounder basis for multiple interest rate equilibria. While either monetary policy or market expectations can be decisive, the capacity of policy to ensure markets acquiesce in the authorities' view remains at least as plausible as Keynes supposed. Interest is a result of ‘history’ plus the beliefs of the monetary authorities, where those beliefs may be illusory but nevertheless validated by actual outcomes.