Gifted kids or pushy parents? Foreign direct investment and plant productivity in Indonesia

This paper analyzes the causal relationship between foreign ownership and various aspects of plant performance using micro data from the Indonesian Census of Manufacturing. It examines the implications of foreign ownership in two different contexts: foreign acquisitions and foreign privatizations. To control for the possible endogeneity of FDI decision propensity score matching is combined with a difference-in-differences approach. The results indicate that foreign ownership leads to significant productivity improvements in the acquired plants. The improvements become visible in the acquisition year and continue in subsequent periods. After three years, the acquired plants exhibit a 13.5% higher productivity than the control group. The rise in productivity is a result of restructuring, as acquired plants increase investment outlays, employment and wages. Foreign ownership also appears to enhance the integration of plants into the global economy through increased exports and imports. Finally, productivity improvements and evidence of restructuring are also found in the context of foreign privatizations.     

Framing the constructive alignment of design within technology subjects in general education

Design is core element of general technology education internationally. While there is a degree of contention with regards to its treatment, there is general consensus that the inclusion of design in some form is important, if not characteristic, of the subject area. Acknowledging that design is important, there are many questions which need to be considered in order to guide policy and practice, such as whether a singular general design ability can be explicitly defined empirically beyond an implicit verbal definition, and whether it can be taught and assessed. In order to address these questions in a systematic fashion, a framework is needed in order to guide relevant investigations. Having such a framework would allow for theory to be generated, hypotheses to be tested, and assumptions to be challenged. In response to this apparent need, this article presents a theoretical discussion pertaining to the constructive alignment of learning to design, wherein theories of knowledge, variation theory, knowledge transfer, and assessment validity and reliability are reflected upon.

     

Interaction Orientation and Product Development Performance for Taiwanese Electronics Firms: The Mediating Role of Market‐Relating Capabilities

While academics and practitioners are increasingly aware of the value of including the customer in new product development (NPD), processes for doing so effectively remain unclear. Therefore, this study explores the process through which a firm's interaction orientation (the ability to effectively interact with customers) influences product development performance. Drawing on the resource‐based view, this study develops a research model in which two market‐relating capabilities—market‐linking and marketing capabilities—mediate the effect of interaction orientation on product development performance. The validity of this model is examined by analyzing primary data gathered from 167 Taiwanese electronics companies. The model results provide support for a process link between interaction orientation, market‐relating capabilities, and product development performance, such that a firm's capabilities enable the conversion of customer‐based resources into productive new product outcomes. More specifically, the interaction orientation–product development speed relationship is mediated by both marketing and market‐linking capabilities, while the interaction orientation–product innovativeness relationship is partially mediated by marketing capability. That is, interaction orientation has indirect effects on product innovativeness and product development speed by strengthening both marketing and market‐linking capabilities that in turn improve product development performance. In addition, the results suggest that a firm's interactive rationality moderates the relationship between interaction orientation and marketing capability. Overall, this study enhances our understanding of how firms achieve superior product development performance by developing effective customer interaction. The findings of this study provide important strategic insights into NPD.     

Regulating monopoly price discrimination

There is a substantial literature assessing the impact of entry restrictions created by state certificate-of-need (CON) programs on hospital and nursing home markets, but comparatively little research has focused on CON for home health agencies (HHAs). We assessed the impact of state CON programs for HHAs, and for potential substitute service providers, on quality ratings for HHAs. HHA quality ratings were obtained from the Home Health Compare database developed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for the last quarter of 2010 through the last quarter of 2013. The HHA-level data were augmented with county-level area characteristics for each HHA in the CMS database. An ordered logit model was used to estimate the association between state CON restrictions and Low, Medium, and High quality categories, adjusted for HHA and area characteristics. The results indicated that HHAs in states with CON for HHAs were less likely to have High quality ratings, and more likely to have Medium quality ratings, compared to agencies in states without CON for home health. Additional research is needed to assess whether the apparent adverse impact of CON on HHA quality is related to diminished competition among HHAs in states with CON.     

Structural holes, innovation and the distribution of ideas

We model knowledge diffusion in a population of agents situated on a network, interacting only over direct ties. Some agents are by nature traders, others are by nature “givers”: traders demand a quid pro quo for information transfer; givers do not. We are interested in efficiency of diffusion and explore the interplay between the structure of the population (proportion of traders), the network structure (clustering, path length and degree distribution), and the scarcity of knowledge. We find that at the global level, trading (as opposed to giving) reduces efficiency. At the individual level, highly connected agents do well when knowledge is scarce, agents in clustered neighbourhoods do well when it is abundant. The latter finding is connected to the debate on structural holes and social capital.     

Evolutionary economics and the counterfactual threat: on the nature and role of counterfactual history as an empirical tool in economics

Counterfactual conditional statements are ubiquitous in any scientific endeavour. This paper contains an analysis of the nature of counterfactual conditionals and the conditions under which they are considered assertable by scientists. The paper then applies this analysis to the use of counterfactuals in evolutionary economics, arguing that because evolutionary economics is inherently concerned with historical processes it cannot avoid the use of counterfactual history as one of its tools of empirical analysis. We discuss the strengths and pitfalls of counterfactual history. We argue that because evolutionary economics starts from the foundation that randomness may be inherent in any economic system, the very aspects of evolutionary economics that make counterfactual history a desirable empirical tool also make that tool difficult to employ. RID="*" ID="*" We thank the participants of the International Seminar on Evolutionary Economics as a Research Programme in Stockholm, May 1997, for many helpful comments. We also thank Lorri Baier for many helpful substantive and textual comments. Correspondence to: R. Cowan     

Job security as a threatened resource: reactions to job insecurity in culturally distinct regions

As downsizing and restructuring have become global phenomena, the impact of job insecurity on employee attitudes has received significant attention. However, research examining the role of cultural dimensions has been largely unexplored. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, we investigated whether the relationships between both quantitative job insecurity (i.e. the perceived threat of job loss) and qualitative job insecurity (i.e. the perceived threat of losing valued job features) and employee attitudes (job satisfaction and turnover intention) differ in culturally distinct regions. This was examined using representative employee samples from two regions of Switzerland which differ in societal practices uncertainty avoidance and performance orientation: the German-speaking (n = 966) and the French-speaking (n = 307) regions. Our research indicates that whereas the relationship between quantitative job insecurity and turnover intention is stronger in the French-speaking region where there is higher societal practice uncertainty avoidance, the relationship between qualitative job insecurity and job satisfaction is stronger in the German-speaking region where there is higher societal practice performance orientation.     

Sackheim,Maxwell. My First 65 Years in Advertising. Blue Ridge Summit,Pennsylvania: Tab Books, 1975

Abstract

Elliott White Springs took over his family's old cotton mills in the early years of the Great Depression. During World War II he decided that the mill would profit more from producing finished cotton textiles and textile products. Immediately following World War II he launched his Springmaid brand of finished textiles with ads that shocked the ad industry in 1948 through 1959. Periodicals reporting his efforts at the time were highly critical of Springs' ads; however, Springs' strategy and ad tactics brought increased sales and brand name awareness for Springmaid.

Springs' ads, and even the criticism they generated, have been neglected by advertising historians. The author believes advertising writers have overlooked a true leader, perhaps a genius at the time, in the development of advertising practice. This article advocates the work of Springs as worthy of inclusion in the literature of the history of noteworthy and successful advertising.