Climate change and its marginalizing effect on agriculture

The agriculture of some areas considered marginal in the EU agricultural context is being questioned due to its low productivity and growing dependence on economic aid programs Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This study shows that climate change increases these areas marginalisation of since worsens crop growth conditions. The influence of climate change on the agricultural sector is analyzed using the Multicriteria Decision Paradigm with information provided by the Erosion-Productivity Impact Calculator (EPIC) and a General Circulation Model (GCM) as inputs for multicriteria mathematical programming models. The results obtained show climate change effects on the crop portfolio. Further results suggest that climate change effects are not only economics and environmental, reducing the suitable area for crops, but also social as it causes loss of jobs in the agricultural sector.     

Trade policies, concentration, growth and welfare

The aim of this paper is to analyse, through a theoretical model, the effects that the trade integration of two countries may have on industrial location, growth and welfare.The conclusions reached finally depend both on whether the import or the export costs are affected by the trade policies on which the integration process is based and on whether the rich or the poor country introduces them. In general, when integration leads to an increase of industrial concentration in the rich country, the growth rate increases and welfare improves in both countries. If integration means that industry moves to the poor country, the growth rate decreases; in spite of this, in this case the poor country can also improve its welfare.     

Critical Role of Leadership on Ethical Climate and Salesperson Behaviors

Leaders play a critical role in setting the tone for ethical climate in organizations. In recent years, there has been an increased skepticism about the role played by corporate executives in developing and implementing ethics in business practices. Sales and marketing practices of businesses, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry, have come under increased scrutiny. This study identifies a type of leadership style that can help firms develop an ethical climate. Responses from 333 salespeople working for a North American subsidiary of an international pharmaceutical company were used to analyze the impact of instrumental leadership on ethical climate. We also examined the effect of ethical climate on effort, satisfaction with the supervisor, and job satisfaction. Managerial implications are provided.     

Benchmarking Corporate Social Responsibility within Spanish Companies

In this paper, the authors focus on the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) upon business profitability. In order to be capable of working with homogeneous data, the authors’ starting point is to use the criteria defined by PricewaterhouseCoopers’ work on the subject, and published by the Spanish journal Actualidad Económica. In this work, an index was created which assigns between one and five points to the companies depending on the importance given by them to CSR. The CSR measurement published by the Observatorio de la RSE will also be considered. In order to measure companies’ profitability, this paper will take into account their return on equity (ROE) and return on assets (ROA) of 2005 and 2006. The authors’ purpose is to demonstrate that the relationship between CSR and business profitability is neutral.

Methodological Procedure for Estimating Brazilian Quarterly GDP Series

This paper presents a methodology for estimating the Brazilian GDP quarterly series in the period between 1960–1996. Firstly, an Engle–Granger’s static equation is estimated using GDP yearly data and GDP-related variables. The estimated coefficients from this regression are then used to obtain a first estimation of the quarterly GDP, with unavoidable measurement errors. The subsequent step is entirely based on benchmarking models estimated within a state space framework and consists in improving the preliminary GDP estimation in order to both eliminate as much as possible the measurement error and that the sum of the quarterly values matches the annual GDP.

The State in Court: the economic effects of fee-shifting rules in Spain when suing the government

Following the recent public debate concerning the situation of the Judicial system in Spain, the paper analyses the special position of the State in Court, essentially with reference to suits brought by individuals against the State before Spanish first instance Courts, although international Courts are touched as well. The analysis focuses on the incentives to litigate and to settle in a dispute with the State, focusing on the State’s special procedural rules and the fee-shifting rules applied in the Spanish Justice system. The asymmetries in favor of the State reduce the incentives to litigate against the State, but also reduce the settlement range in order to achieve out-of-Court settlements.     

Transforming Human Resource Management Systems to Cope with Diversity

The purpose of this study is to examine how workgroup diversity can be managed through specific strategic human resource management systems. Our review shows that ‘affirmative action’ and traditional ‘diversity management’ approaches have failed to simultaneously achieve business and social justice outcomes of diversity. As previous literature has shown, the benefits of diversity cannot be achieved with isolated interventions. To the contrary, a complete organizational culture change is required, in order to promote appreciation of individual differences. The paper contributes to this discussion by exploring the implications of this change for human resource management, and explaining how the systems of practices should be changed when they are directed to diverse groups. The model designed to test this notion includes: (1) demographic and human capital diversity as independent variables, (2) group performance (measured as innovation outcomes) as the dependent variable and, (3) the orientation of the strategic human resource management system as a potential moderator of this relationship. The main conclusion of the empirical analysis developed is that different patterns of human resource management practices can be used, depending on the type of diversity that the organization faces, and the specific effects that it wishes to manage. Concretely, three alternative management systems are identified in this paper, with different moderating effects. This result has interesting implications for human resource management professionals, explained in the last section. The limitations of this study are also discussed, as well as some issues that future research in this field should address.     

Reluctant employees and felt stress: The moderating impact of manager decisiveness

Job stress is an integral part of the organizational landscape and particularly severe in the sales profession. A host of studies have looked at felt stress, its antecedents, and consequences. This research examines how employee resistance to change and a manager's decisiveness affect the salesperson's felt stress and turnover intentions. This study shows that the salesperson's resistance to change is positively associated with felt stress. Study results also show that the impact of an employee's resistance to change on felt stress is moderated by a manager's decisiveness. Model hypotheses are tested with responses from 255 bank salespeople in India.     

Determinants of contract duration in outsourced services in the defense sector

In this article we analyze the contract duration using Transaction Cost Theory with a sample of 283 outsourced services in the Spanish Army during the period 2009–2014.The analysis results show that the greater the specificity of the service, the greater the duration of the contract. In addition, it is obtained that the greater the uncertainty about the behaviour of the provider, the lower the duration of the agreement. These results are consistent with existing literature and empirical works.

However, in the case of external uncertainty and incompleteness of the contract, they do not affect the contract duration. This may be because less complex services for shorter terms can be specified better and are less affected by external circumstances. Therefore, the uncertainty should be decomposed and analyzed according to their sources.