When new product development fails in China: mediating effects of voice behaviour and learning from failure

This paper investigates conflicts following a new product development (NPD) failure. Conducted in a Chinese business setting, the study examines whether voice behaviour and learning from failure mediate the relationship between task- and emotional conflict emerging from NPD failure. Our findings indicate that voice behaviour and learning from failure are necessary to effectively reduce task and emotional conflict and thus to enhance future NPD. Specifically, it is revealed that emotional conflict leads to a reduced level; and that voice behaviour and learning from failure are significant mediators that influences the relationships between emotional and task conflicts with it.     

Competence Building and Corporate Renewal

In 1996, the French business publication Capital carried an analysis of what it called the resurrection of the dinosaurs: the revival of corporations that had been viewed as moribund. Examples abound in every industrialised country: Chrysler, IBM or General Electric in the United States and Usinor-Sacilor, Siemens or Fiat in Europe. What strategies are behind these cases of revival? This article describes how, starting in 1993, a French company sought to renew itself by implementing one particular strategy which has been widely discussed among managers and academics alike: competence building. It then discusses the general lessons which can be drawn from the case. In particular, the article aims to reveal empirically the relationship between competence building and the corporate renewal process and then to use the case history to help develop the theory of competence-based competition between firms.     

Feel Good,Do-Good!? On Consistency and Compensation in Moral Self-Regulation

Studies in the behavioral ethics and moral psychology traditions have begun to reveal the important roles of self-related processes that underlie moral behavior. Unfortunately, this research has resulted in two distinct and opposing streams of findings that are usually referred to as moral consistency and moral compensation. Moral consistency research shows that a salient self-concept as a moral person promotes moral behavior. Conversely, moral compensation research reveals that a salient self-concept as an immoral person promotes moral behavior. This study’s aim was to integrate these two literatures. We argued that compensation forms a reactive, “damage control” response in social situations, whereas consistency derives from a more proactive approach to reputation building and maintenance. Two experiments supported this prediction in showing that cognitive depletion (i.e., resulting in a reactive approach) results in moral compensation whereas consistency results when cognitive resources are available (i.e., resulting in a proactive approach). Experiment 2 revealed that these processes originate from reputational (rather than moral) considerations by showing that they emerge only under conditions of accountability. It can thus be concluded that reputational concerns are important for both moral compensation and moral consistency processes, and that which of these two prevails depends on the perspective that people take: a reactive or a proactive approach.     

Second-Best Pollution Taxes and the Structure of Preferences

We characterize optimal taxes on polluting and nonpolluting goods in Ramsey and Mirrlees second-best environments. The polluting good tax differs from the Pigouvian tax by Ramsey terms in the first and by Stiglitz/Mirrlees plus another adjustment term in the second. These terms can be positive, negative, or zero. If preferences are weakly separable in public and private goods, with the private good subutility weakly separable in labor and produced goods, nonpolluting goods are taxed uniformly and the concept of a tax differential between polluting and nonpolluting goods is well defined. The differential is then less than the Pigouvian tax in the Ramsey framework, but it can be greater, equal to, or smaller than the Pigouvian tax in the Mirrlees second best. In Mirrlees second best, if preferences are separable in labor supply and other goods, the second-best tax differential is identical to the Pigouvian tax.     

Demographic Shock and Social Security: A Political Economy Perspective

We assume that individual voters differ not only according to age but also productivity. In the steady state, workers with wages in the intermediate range join the retired persons to form a majority and vote for a positive level of social security. When a shock decreases population growth, entrenched interests can constrain majority voting decisions and prevent reforms in the name of entitlements. We show that from a Rawlsian viewpoint it may be desirable to rely on these entitlements to protect the low wage earners of the transition generations. However, when the possibility of fixing a basic pension is introduced, it constitutes a better instrument than entitlements.     

Voting over type and generosity of a pension system when some individuals are myopic

This paper studies the determination through majority voting of a pension scheme when society consists of far-sighted and myopic individuals. All individuals have the same basic preferences but myopics tend to adopt a short-term view (instant gratification) when dealing with retirement saving and labor supply. Consequently, they will find themselves with low consumption after retirement and regret their insufficient savings decisions. Henceforth, when voting they tend to commit themselves into forced saving. We consider a pension scheme that is characterized by two parameters: the payroll tax rate (that determines the size or generosity of the system) and the “Bismarckian factor” that determines its redistributiveness. Individuals vote sequentially. We examine how the introduction of myopic agents affects the generosity and the redistributiveness of the pension system. Our main result is that a flat pension system is always chosen when all individuals are of one kind (all far-sighted or all myopic), while a less redistributive system may be chosen if society is composed of both myopic and far-sighted agents. Furthermore, while myopic individuals tend to prefer larger payroll taxes than their far-sighted counterparts, the generosity of the system does not always increase with the proportion of myopics.     

International Sister-Cities: Bridging the Global-Local Divide

With the demise of the sharp urban-rural divide as a framework for urban analyses, debates have arisen regarding the utility of the city as a theoretically significant construct. Recently however, the growing emphasis on globalization has brought the analysis of global cities into sharp focus. The countervailing trend emphasizes the significance of the local. International sister-cities provide a site of analysis which illustrates the global-local interface and yet delves deeper. Initially conceived as a post-war means of developing friendships and cultural ties, sister-cities were based on similarities such as name or economic function. More recently, greater recognition has been given to the economic foundations and benefits of these connections. Providing an extension to an integrated approach to the study of sister-cities based on the multifold relationship between culture and commerce, this paper adds a further dimension by focusing on simultaneously operating multi-level entrepreneurial partnerships necessary to sustain active sister-city relationships. Drawing on New Zealand examples of twinning arrangements, it is demonstrated that the emergence and development of embedded partnership ties is vital to deriving sustainable economic and social benefits. While the global outreach of the sister-cities phenomenon appears to transcend the geographic confines of cities, strong locality considerations and local activism nevertheless predominate. A novel feature of this paper is the conceptualization of a hybrid form of entrepreneurialism, municipal-community entrepreneurship, which is argued as a valuable facilitator of the economic and social vibrancy of cities. to the two cities, it is broadening out to include cultural and work exchanges.     

The Political Economy of Social Security

We consider a two-period overlapping generations model in which individual voters differ by age and by productivity. In such a setting, a redistributive pay-as-you-go system is politically sustainable, even when the interest rate is higher than the rate of population growth. The workers with medium wages (not those with the lowest wages) and the retirees form a majority which votes for a positive level of social security. This level depends on the difference between the rates of population growth and interest as well as on the redistributiveness of the benefit rule.