Leading knowledge-workers through situated ambiguity

The paper explores how formal leaders make sense of and deal with autonomy of knowledge-workers. Based on interviews, I suggest that leaders make sense of knowledge-workers’ autonomy as ranging from perfectly autonomous to too autonomous to less independent to acting childish. This ambiguity was dealt with by making sense of leading as ranging from facilitative and supportive approaches to more controlling, even reprimanding acts. This empirical investigation of constructions of ‘leader/ship’ and ‘followers’ contributes to leader/ship-follower/ship literature. The paper’s contribution to theory lies in the notion of situated ambiguity; a way to understand the emerging way through which formal leaders navigate and smoothly move between their own differing perspectives, different practical situations, various culturally acceptable understandings of leaders and knowledge-workers.     

Dynamism and realignment in the HR architecture: Online labor platform ecosystems and the key role of contractors

Given the widespread contribution of independent contractors to organizational innovation and competitive advantage, it is timely to reassess assumptions about the HRM practices appropriate to their management and the rationale for organizations to work with them. In the original and highly influential HR architecture model of Lepak and Snell (1999), contractor status is viewed as an outcome of the low value and/or low uniqueness of human capital resulting in the proposition to externalize and manage them using either none or minimal compliance-based HRM practices. Developments in digital technologies and algorithmic management epitomized by online labor platforms prompt us to reconsider these assumptions and to challenge the proposed links between value/uniqueness of human capital, employment mode and HRM practices that are assumed by the HR architecture model. Using insights from online labor platforms, we argue that the significant benefits to firms of working with contractors, coupled with the possibilities offered by algorithmic management to efficiently monitor and regulate their behavior, provide a compelling reason for organizations to choose external employment modes even when workers are key to value creation. We challenge the alignment and stability of the relationships proposed by the HR architecture model, and offer propositions to extend the model by reconsidering the rationale for, and nature of, HRM practices associated with contractors. This reassessment is both timely and relevant given the growing prominence of business models where externalizing workers is central alongside the development of new forms of algorithmic human resource management to control them.     

FAIR TRADE IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE AND UNFAIR: REJOINDER

This is a rejoinder to a criticism of Henderson (2008 ) by Alastair Smith. Our conclusion is that Henderson's basic case, although nicked around the edges by developments since the original was written, still stands. Moreover, we point out that Smith's criticism of Henderson's point that Fair Trade could help kill the banana actually supports Henderson's case. Finally, Smith's proposed 'trade, not aid' solution does not contradict Henderson (2008 ). Refusing to buy Fair Trade coffee and other products and, instead, buying quality coffee and other products would not reduce trade, as Smith seems to imply.     

Significant drivers of growth in Africa

We employ bootstrap techniques in a production frontier framework to provide statistical inference for each component in the decomposition of labor productivity growth, which has essentially been ignored in this literature. We show that only two of the four components (efficiency changes and human capital accumulation) have significantly contributed to growth in Africa. Although physical capital accumulation is the largest force, it is not statistically significant on average. Thus, ignoring statistical significance would falsely identify physical capital accumulation as a major driver of growth in Africa when it is not.     

Fiscal Policy in Europe: How Effective Are Automatic Stabilisers?

It is largely recognised that fiscal policy will have largerresponsibilities for cyclicalstabilisation in EMU given the loss of the monetary instrument.At the same time, theEMU's budgetary framework emphasises the need to rely onautomatic fiscal stabilisers,rather than active policies in cushioning the business cycle.We show that automaticstabilisers are relatively powerful in the event of shocksto private consumption, but lessso in the case of shocks to private investment and exports.In the case of supply sideshocks, the automatic stabilisers are largely ineffective,but this may actually be a goodthing to the extent that supply-side disturbances call forstructural adjustment rather thancyclical stabilisation.     

Women,Muslim Immigrants,and Economic Integration in France

Muslim immigrants to Europe display distinctive attitudes toward women in a wide range of survey data. This study investigates whether this translates into distinctive behavior. Relying on a dictator game in France and an identification strategy that isolates the effect of religion from typical confounds such as race, we compare the donations of matched Christian and Muslim immigrants and rooted French to in‐group and out‐group men vs. women. Our results indicate that Muslim immigrant participants deviate from Christian immigrant and rooted French participants in their behavior toward women: while the latter favor women over men, Muslim immigrants favor men over women.     

Independent electoral management bodies and international election observer missions: any impact on the observed level of democracy? A conceptual framework

What kind of institutions are needed to stabilize and foster democracy? Clearly elections are crucial and much of the institutional and legal surrounding of elections has been subject to research. Two institutional variables have been neglected though, specifically in empirical research: Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) and International Observer Missions (EOMs). Can EMBs and EOMs foster free and fair elections? If yes, under what conditions? And what kind of competences are needed for them? We hypothesize that both can become crucial institutions for free and fair elections. Whereas independent central banks or audit courts control special issue areas in order to take certain decision out of the realm of politics, EMBs control the moment of the set-up of government—the election, when conflicts of interest of politicians are at its peak. Although other kinds of independent administrative agencies have been the subject of political science and economic research, EMBs and EOMs have also been neglected here. This article undertakes to outline a conceptual framework for testing various hypotheses on the institutional set-up of EMBs. Hypothesizing that de iure and de facto independence of EMBs foster fair elections, the detailed institutional set-up of EMBs as independent variable is outlined in order to test for the level of democracy as a dependent variable. Furthermore, the importance of EOMs as well as their interaction effect with EMBs is analyzed. Although by now EOMs are sent to almost any country with elections, their impact has not been analyzed in an encompassing way in spite of that the mission have intensified in their work, have become more costly and their verdicts are gaining ever more publicity.     

Forecasting inflation with an uncertain output gap

The output gap is a crucial concept in the monetary policy framework, indicating demand pressure that generates inflation. However, its definition and estimation raise a number of theoretical and empirical questions. This paper evaluates a series of univariate and multivariate methods for extracting the output gap in Norway, and compares their value added in predicting inflation. We find that models including the output gap have better predictive power than models based on alternative indicators, and they forecast significantly better than simple benchmark models. Furthermore multivariate measures of the output gap perform better than the univariate gaps. Comments from two anonymous referees, Q. Farooq Akram, Tommy Sveen, Ken West, Fredrik Wulfsberg and seminar participants in Norges Bank are gratefully acknowledged. All mistakes remain our own. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of Norges Bank.