Do Inward Investors Achieve their Job Targets?*

The paper utilizes data for north‐east England over the period 1985–98 to examine if foreign‐owned start‐up plants achieve their job targets. Different models are estimated, each shedding light on the relationship between the jobs promised by plants in their initial investment and their actual employment attained. On average, it is found that the plants achieve their job targets, but larger plants fall someway short. It is argued that these plants may deliberately overstate the number of jobs, and that the employment‐creation claims of inward investors and economic development agencies should be treated with skepticism.     

Routines, capabilities and the growth of the firm: Messrs. Ross & Glendining, Dunedin, 1862–1900

Evolutionary economists have suggested that the technical and organisational routines of individual firms play a similar role to genes in biological organisms. Unlike biological organisms, however, firms are supposedly able to engage in purposive adaptation and select out those routines that best enable them to adapt and grow in a changing environment. This thesis is tested by examining the way in which routines assisted the growth of a leading New Zealand enterprise. It concludes that while routines were helpful in enabling the enterprise to expand its core business, they were of little assistance when the management wished to diversify into new and dissimilar activities.     

The Impact of Graph Slope on Rate of Change Judgments in Corporate Reports

The use of graphs to disclose financial information in annual reports represents a significant dimension of financial disclosure management. Statistical graphics studies demonstrate that the accurate visual decoding of a graph is contingent upon the graph's slope parameter . This article reports two related studies into the slope parameter in a financial reporting context. A laboratory experiment indicates that sub-optimal slope parameters produce distorted judgments of corporate performance and an examination of the graphical formatting choices of 240 large U.K. companies indicates material departures from the optimal slope parameter. Policy implications are discussed.     

PERFORMANCE IMPLICATIONS OF PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE EXTENSION: THE CASE OF THE A‐10 AIRCRAFT

Firms are faced with challenging decisions when capital equipment reaches the end of its designed service life. This research examines the risks of deciding to extend the retirement date of a capital asset in terms of performance and cost and offers recommended actions to mitigate this risk. Through study of the United States Air Force's A‐10 aircraft, the authors analyze one example of decreased performance and increased costs experienced when supply chain implications are not explicitly considered when making service life extension decisions. In this case, the Air Force's efforts to save money through life extension of existing aircraft actually exceeded the seemingly enormous initial investment of acquiring new aircraft. Arguments are presented suggesting the Air Force, in particular, may reap benefits from forming supply chain relationships and creating continuity plans to manage problems such as parts shortages and cost increases when extending the use of capital assets beyond its intended service life.     

Blood Sports and Cherry Pie

Abstract . The results are reported of empirically testing two hypotheses relating to violence in a professional team sport: one, that hockey fans have a taste for violence (bockey is a “blood sport”) so that, in general, game attendance and violence in the National Hockey League are positively related; and two, more specifically, that the more extreme degrees of violence are positively associated with American, not Canadian, attendance. The data are game by game data for the 1983/84 season, violence is measured by various categories of penalty minutes (minors, majors, misconducts), and the model is a system of two reduced form equations. The results confirm that there is a significant and positive relationship between aggregate measures of violence (total penalty minutes) and attendance for games played in both American and Canadian cities; and there is a significant positive relationship between the more extreme forms of violence (proxied by majors and misconducts) and attendance only in American cities     

The migrant contribution to the British hotel industry

The contribution of migrants to the British hotel industry is elucidated and discussed. Different cultural backgrounds amongst migrants encourage new approaches to the solution of hotel operating problems. The determination and innovative drive of migrants has had a number of beneficial effects.