Efficiency Wages and the Economic Effects of the Minimum Wage: Evidence from a Low‐Wage Labour Market*

This article exploits a natural experiment provided by the 1999 introduction of the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) to test for efficiency wage considerations in a low‐wage sector, the UK residential care homes industry. The empirical results provide support to the wage‐supervision trade‐off prediction of the shirking model and suggest that the NMW may have operated as an efficiency wage in the care homes sector, leading to a reduction in supervision costs. These findings can explain earlier evidence suggesting that although the NMW introduction increased wages dramatically in the care homes sector, it generated only moderate negative employment effects.     

Managing market entry in Oman: The case of Nawras

This article focuses on the challenges faced by the mobile operator Nawras when entering the Omani telecom market in 2005. The source material consists of auto‐ethnographic accounts of two European managers who worked at Nawras during the launch period. The result is a rich and highly personal account of market‐entry challenges and managerial efforts to overcome such challenges in a newly deregulated Gulf country. The Nawras story suggests that entrants into a Gulf market such as Oman need a great deal of flexibility and improvisation capabilities in order to become successful. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Organizational Culture and Innovation: A Meta‐Analytic Review

The relationship of organizational culture and innovation has been subject to extensive research over the last decades. The multitude of cultural variables under investigation has led to a fragmented concept of culture for innovation, and an inclusion into management theory is still missing. Further, managerial practice requires an underlying structure in order to decide what culture should be implemented in order to foster innovation, and to assess if a specific culture is an effective and efficient coordination instrument. Hence, a framework is needed which allows classification of cultural values without residuals, to draw expedient comparisons with reference to the criteria by which they are grouped, and to assess their relationship with organizational innovation. This meta‐analysis, which comprises 43 studies with a combined sample size of 6341 organizations, reveals that Quinn and Rohrbaugh's Competing Values Framework provides a meaningful structure for the ideational aspects of organizational culture. The Competing Values Framework describes value systems based on two main dimensions. Those two pairs of opposing values are flexibility versus control and internal versus external orientation. The analysis shows that the congruence of different cultures with organizational goals of innovation can be described based on that framework. Control theory is used to explain the relationship of organizational culture and innovation. While culture describes the ideational aspects of organizational values, clan control describes their coordinative effect. Managers may choose different clan control strategies according to the Competing Values Framework. They will most likely follow the strategy that provides a high level of congruence between the goals of management and the goals of their organization's social system. Individuals that have internalized the organizational values apply them as a form of self‐control. Those values will also be applied in groups, such as product development teams. While development teams may be formed and disbanded with certain projects and individuals may leave the company, the organization forms the steady frame of those activities. The cumulative data confirms the hypothesis that managers of innovative organizations most likely implement a developmental culture, which emphasizes an external and a flexibility orientation. Yet also group and rational cultures are to a certain extent consistent with the goals of an innovative organization and may thus be appropriate social control strategies. Hierarchical cultures emphasize control and an internal orientation and are less likely to be found in innovative organizations. A moderator analysis of the culture–innovation relationship revealed that it is not influenced by the differentiation between radical and incremental innovation, and only weak evidence exists for an influence of innovation adoption versus innovation generation. A potential reason is that those organizations that are geared toward innovation will pursue it consequently, without differentiating between different kinds of innovation. Therefore, managers that follow a (radical) innovation strategy should establish a developmental culture in their organization. If innovation rather represents a minor aspect of the firm's long‐term objectives, the efficiency‐oriented rational culture or a group culture may also be the right choice.     

“She did what? There is no way I would do that!” The Potential Interpersonal Harm Caused by Mispredicting One’s Behavior

When forecasting their own behavior, people are often inaccurate and tend to predict that they will engage in more socially desirable behavior than they actually do. The problem with inaccurate behavioral forecasts is that they can lead to negative consequences both for the self and for others. One particularly negative consequence may be that such errors can produce overly harsh evaluations and condemnation of others who do not act in a way that most people predict they themselves would act. This paper identifies these common behavioral forecasting errors, why they occur, and the negative interpersonal and unintended, unethical consequences they can have.     

Folgekosten für Private Krankenversicherungen aus dem zivilrechtlichen Teil des AGG

The Anti-Discrimination Law (AGG) creates particular challenges for private health care insurers. In future, maternity and pregnancy costs will have to be included in the calculation of contributions made by both sexes. This will entail many adaptations for the insuring companies. Through the legal cost-impact model, the contributions are determined by means of a conceptual framework for determining the costs flowing from the law. For private health insurers, the internal costs from the civil law component of the AGG range from approximately €?4.2 million to €?7.7 million. In addition, in the first year, there will be consequential costs from labour laws of €?3.2 million. This very substantial level of bureaucratic cost clearly indicates the need to investigate new laws in the context of a differentiated evaluation process which focuses entirely on the impact of the laws and the consequential costs.     

Ein neuer Zugang zum Konzept des Discounted Cashflow

A lot of papers have been published about the concept of discounted cash flow or DCF. In this paper we will summarize the recent development and review the main results. After showing the main weaknesses of the concept we will make a sketch of some promising ideas that can form the basis to overcome these weaknesses.