Lost in translation: exploring the link between HRM and performance in healthcare

Using data collected in 2004 from 132 Victorian (Australia) public healthcare providers, comprising metropolitan and regional hospital networks, rural hospitals and community health centres, we investigated the perceptions of HRM from the experiences of chief executive officers, HR directors and other senior managers. We found some evidence that managers in healthcare organisations reported different perceptions of strategic HRM and a limited focus on collection and linking of HR performance data with organisational performance management processes. Using multiple moderator regression and multivariate analysis of variance, significant differences were found in perceptions of strategic HRM and HR priorities between chief executive officers, HR directors and other senior managers in the large organisations. This suggested that the strategic human management paradigm is ‘lost in translation’, particularly in large organisations, and consequently opportunities to understand and develop the link between people management practices and improved organisational outcomes may be missed. There is some support for the relationship between strategic HRM and improved organisational outcomes. Implications of these findings are drawn for managerial practice.     

Corporate Governance Reforms in India

In recent years India has been moving further in the direction of adopting an Anglo-American model of corporate governance. This decision, the result more of international economic and political pressures than public debate, in effect represents a new development strategy for the world's most populous democracy. In light of this situation, it is important to ask two basic questions: 1) why has the Anglo-American model of corporate governance been adopted? and; 2) can it be justified? This paper addresses the first of these questions by distinguish and examining three historical models of governance in India: 1) the managing agency model in the colonial period; 2) the business house model that emerged after independence, and; 3) the Anglo-American model which has recently been adopted (and is still emerging). The second question is approached through an examination of the "development impact" of the new model, as indicated by such measures as growth, employment and respect for shareholder rights.     

Alliance Strategies of Small Firms

The paper concludes that small firms follow one of two alliance strategies. When the firms are small relative to their rivals and to their market, they tend to use alliances to gain economies of scale and scope; when they are large in relative terms, they avoid alliances. This behavior is consistent with alliance usage by large firms. The paper also analyzes the sources of profit for a small firm that uses a "constellation" of allies to compete in a scale-intensive industry. Its profits depend on a combination of the group-based advantages generated by the constellation, and the share of these profits that the firm can appropriate from the group. Small firms face particular hazards in this regard when their bargaining power within their constellation is weak. The paper illustrates these arguments with data froma small survey, with case studies from the computer industry, and with a simple mathematical model.     

A model of the effect of affect on economic decision making

The standard economic model of decision making assumes a decision maker’s current emotional state has no impact on his or her decisions. Yet there is a large psychological literature that shows that current emotional state, in particular mild positive affect, has a significant effect on decision making, problem solving, and behavior. This paper offers a way to incorporate this insight from psychology into economic modelling. Moreover, this paper shows that this simple insight can parsimoniously explain a wide variety of behaviors.

Combining revealed and stated preferences data

Our objective is to develop a unifying framework for the incorporation of different types of survey data in individual choice models. We describe statistical methodologies that combine multiple sources of data in the estimation of individual choice models and summarize the current state of the art of data combination methods that have been used with market research data. The most successful applications so far have combined revealed and stated preference data. We discuss different types of market and survey data and provide examples of research contexts in which one might wish to combine them. Although these methods show a great deal of promise and have already been used successfully in a number of applications, several important research issues remain. A discussion of these issues and directions for further research conclude the paper.     

Honesty, Individualism, and Pragmatic Business Ethics: Implications for Corporate Hierarchy

The boundaries of honesty are the focal point of this exploration of the individualistic origins of modernist ethics and the consequent need for a more pragmatic approach to business ethics. The tendency of modernist ethics to see honesty as an individual responsibility is described as a contextually naive approach, one that fails to account for the interactive effects between individual choices and corporate norms. By reviewing the empirical accounts of managerial struggles with ethical dilemmas, the article arrives at the contextual preconditions for encouraging the development of reflective moral agents in modern corporations.     

Who makes,who breaks: Which scientists stay in academe?

We examine the survival of young scientists in academe. The propensity to leave follows an inverse u-shape. Publishing increases and patenting decreases the chance of survival. Scientists with strong preferences for business are less likely to stay in academe.     

Eurokrise: Erneute Atempause ist kein Grund zum Ausruhen

The current state of affairs in the euro area (EA) instills hope in economic recovery but also substantial concern. The crisis countries have made considerable, albeit quite uneven, progress in central areas of reform. Yet severe obstacles remain. Moreover, European policy makers have reformed the EA’s institutional framework to strengthen its resilience. Yet important elements of a stable architecture are still missing, and it remains unclear whether the EA is moving towards full integration or a Maastricht 2.0. Most importantly, since it has become impossible to construct a viable fi scal bridge due to the success of the OMT programme, now everything depends on the perseverance of domestic reform policies.     

Trade liberalization in services: Investor responses to NAFTA’s cross-border trucking provisions

ABSTRACT

We investigate the response of US trucking firms to the removal of barriers to cross-border trucking under NAFTA. This was done via a program implemented in 2007, cancelled in 2009, and reinstated in 2011. We use a model of endogenous exporting to show that this can arise from incorrect expectations of import competition. We find that, unsurprisingly, the program’s start resulted in lower stock returns, particularly for border firms. However, later policy changes indicate that investors, and particularly those investing in US multinationals, viewed the pilot as beneficial.