Ten years after: Interference of hospital slack in process performance benefits of quality practices

We investigate the long-term relationship between an organization's quality management practices and process-level performance. Further, we examine whether availability of organizational slack over the study interval interferes with the relationship between quality practices and process performance. Organizational slack consists of the available and accessible resources in an organization; we focus here on unabsorbed slack in the form of financial resources. We investigate the quality practices of U.S. general acute care hospitals, measured by their depth of implementation of practices characterizing a total quality management system, and use them to predict process performance related to four medical conditions. Analysis reveals differing effects that are dependent on hospital slack conditions. In hospitals with high slack, quality practices significantly predict three of four studied process performance measures. In contrast, in hospitals with low slack, quality practices predict only one of the four process performance measures, while other factors outweigh the effects of quality practices. This study lends support to management taking a long-term perspective related to implementation of quality management systems, and highlights the relevance of slack conditions in garnering the benefits of such systems.     

Disaster relief routing: Integrating research and practice

Disaster relief presents many unique logistics challenges, with problems including damaged transportation infrastructure, limited communication, and coordination of multiple agents. Central to disaster relief logistics is the distribution of life-saving commodities to beneficiaries. Operations research models have potential to help relief agencies save lives and money, maintain standards of humanitarianism and fairness and maximize the use of limited resources amid post-disaster chaos. Through interviews with aid organizations, reviews of their publications, and a literature review of operations research models in transportation of relief goods, this paper provides an analysis of the use of such models from the perspective of both practitioners and academics. With the complexity of disaster relief distribution and the relatively small number of journal articles written on it, this is an area with potential for helping relief organizations and for tremendous growth in operations research.     

Life-cycle patterns in male/female differences in job search

We investigate whether women search longer for a job than men and whether these differences change over the life cycle. Our empirical analysis exploits German register data on highly attached displaced workers. We apply duration models to analyze gender differences in job search taking into account observed and unobserved worker heterogeneity and censoring. Simple survival functions show that displaced women take longer to find a new job than comparable men. Disaggregation by age groups reveals that these differences are driven by differential behavior of women in their prime-childbearing years. There is no significant difference in job search duration among the very young and older workers. These differential outcomes remain even after we control for differences in human capital and when unobserved heterogeneity is incorporated into the model.     

Understanding Russian regions’ economic performance during periods of decline and growth—An extreme bound analysis approach

This article uses “extreme-bound”-type analysis to revisit the determinants behind the widely differing economic growth in Russian regions prior to the recent global financial crisis. Using data of regional growth in 1995–2006 for 77 Russian regions, it examines the growth drivers for the phase of economic decline up to 1998 and for the period of strong growth afterwards separately. Looking at forty variables considered to be potentially related to growth, it determines, for each of the two periods, the ones robustly associated with Russian economic performance. Among the variables considered are proxies of politico-institutional features, indicators of economic reform, and measurements of both economic and non-economic initial conditions. The main findings are as follows: during the period of economic decline up to 1998, differences in Russian regional growth were almost entirely driven by initial conditions, with resource and human capital endowments, industrial structure, and geographical location playing the dominant roles. However, after the 1998 crisis, the importance of initial conditions declined and was basically reduced to fuel production, advantageous geographical location, and population structure. There is also some evidence that more reform-oriented policies and better regional leadership made a difference. These results could be seen as pointing to determinants of economic performance in periods of actual economic decline being different from those in normal times of economic growth.     

Too close for comfort? Distinguishing between team intimacy and team cohesion

The authors examine theory and research on team intimacy and team cohesion, and argue that the two have often been confused, merged, and used interchangeably in recent theoretical, empirical, and applied work on team effectiveness. The authors propose distinct definitions to clarify and distinguish between team intimacy and team cohesion, and suggest areas that will aid research and application. Their examination provides a framework for understanding the inconsistent findings in team effectiveness and team building research and thus helps to improve human resource management (HRM) interventions.     

Screening‐oriented recruitment messages: Antecedents and relationships with applicant pool quality

The ability of firms to attract qualified job applicants is a critical component of the human resource management process. However, while a large body of research has examined the relationship between firm recruitment practices and applicant pool attributes, very little research has investigated what factors are associated with organizational decision makers' utilization of specific recruitment tactics. We draw on labor economics, sociological, and agency theoretical perspectives to make predictions regarding the use of screening‐oriented recruitment messages in actual web‐based job advertisements. Results suggest that perceptions of labor supply, recruiting firm reputation, and the use of quality‐based compensation incentives are associated with use of screening‐oriented messages, which in turn are associated with applicant pool quality. These findings hold important theoretical insights into the factors shaping firm recruitment activity and provide practical strategic implications for managing firm recruitment objectives. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Does the Gender Preference for Competition Affect Job Performance? Evidence from a Real Effort Experiment

Experimental evidence has documented that competition may enhance the performance of male subjects in some tasks when competition is imposed exogenously by the experimenter. This note describes data for a task where a simple agency relationship is established in the laboratory between two groups of agents, managers, and workers. The manager chooses from either the piece rate or tournament payment scheme for the worker. The results show that male performance decreases when the tournament is chosen for them by the manager and also suggests that the gender of the manager may be an important facet of the agency relationship. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Investigating guanxi dimensions and relationship outcomes: Insights from Sino-Anglo business relationships

This study aims to develop and test a concept for improving Anglo-Chinese business relationships. By piecing together and incorporating both Chinese and western relationship constructs into a cohesive framework and testing this on a sample of Taiwanese importers, the study conceptually and empirically advances our understanding of the discipline further. Specifically, three facets of guanxi, namely ganqing (an affective element), renqing (reciprocation and favor), and xinren (personal trust) are conceptualized to determine cooperation and coordination, which in turn lead to improved performance. Based on a sample of 208 buyers (surveying perceptions of their relationships with Anglo suppliers), we provide empirical support for our concept and reveal that ganqing, renqing and xinren are crucial for fostering the development of such Sino-Anglo relationships. By providing an international flavor in terms of the constructs outlined and the importer-exporter context, the study provides fresh insights to help broaden our horizon further and understand more about relationships in an international context. Several implications are extracted from the study which a) western marketers importantly need to practice as they grapple to enter Chinese markets and nurture business relations, b) Chinese buyers can consider when managing their supplier portfolios and c) academics can use to help measure important relational constructs and undertaking research in a Chinese context.     

Reconceptualizing professional service firm innovation capability: Scale development

Building on capability theory, this paper presents a reconceptualization of the innovation capability construct within a knowledge-intensive service context, specifically, professional service firms (PSFs). Employing a rigorous multi-stage scale development process we interviewed 37 participants and surveyed 463 respondents across a wide range of PSFs including lawyers, accountants, consulting engineers and management consultants. The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses highlight the multi-dimensional nature of innovation capability within this context. Three dimensions were identified: client-focused, marketing-focused, and technology-focused innovation capability. We provide evidence of face validity, content validity, convergent and discriminant validity, nomological validity and reliability of our scale. Our scale offers a new way to measure innovation capability within PSFs and highlights the need to move beyond the narrow manufacturing mind-set focus of prior innovation research. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.