Promoting Employee Flexibility Through HR Practices

Current competitive environments have created a growing interest in employee flexibility in firms. Recently researchers have differentiated between two facets of employee flexibility: behavior flexibility and skill flexibility. This study proposes a model of relationships between these two facets of employee flexibility and the extent to which HR practices influence them. This model is tested by estimating structural equation models on a sample of 226 commercial departments in Spanish companies. The results of the study show that the two facets of employee flexibility are interrelated, in that skill flexibility influences behavior flexibility. Furthermore, findings confirm the influence of job enrichment on employee flexibility and the significant effect of the internal fit among HR practices on employee flexibility. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Evaluating frequent flyer programs from the air passengers' perspective

Frequent flyer programs are used as a common strategy in the airline industry. They can be defined as a service quality attribute that consists of some redemption of free flight miles and can determines the selection of airlines. It has been argued that they can act as an entry barrier, but limited attention has been paid to assessing the impact of this strategy on passengers’ perceptions of service. They are generally part of broad airline service quality parameters and thus can creates dilemmas for airline managers, passengers and regulators regarding their added value, costs and competitive effects on industrial organization.     

Supplier Financing and Earnings Quality

In this paper we investigate the effect of earnings quality on supplier credit in a sample of small and medium‐sized firms. After controlling for other determinants of trade credit, we show that firms whose earnings present lower variability, higher smoothing and predictability, and higher accruals quality have access to more trade credit from suppliers. This association suggests that earnings attributes associated to lower volatility and higher precision with respect to cash flows facilitate access to trade credit.     

Business and Social Reputation: Exploring the Concept and Main Dimensions of Corporate Reputation

Different theoretical approaches highlight the growing relevance of corporate reputation as strategic factor. Among these approaches the arguments of the Resource-Based View are special worthwhile (Grant, 1991, California Management Review 33(3), 114–135; Barney, 1999, Sloan Management Review Spring, 137–145). Nevertheless, this topic poses several methodological problems (Barney et al., 2001), as the unavailability to identify and measure this organizational factor, that is “socially complex” and intangible in its nature. In this work, using the findings of our empirical research on Spanish biotechnology firms, we carry out an identification and measurement of corporate reputation, highlighting its two key components: “business reputation” and “social reputation”. Dr. Gregorio Martín de Castro is Assistant Professor at the Business Administration Department in Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). He has several years of research experience at CIC Spanish Knowledge Society Research Centre, he holds an Expert Diploma in Intellectual Capital and Knowledge Management from INSEAD (France), and he was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University during 2004–2005. He is author and co-author of several papers concerning Resource-Based View, Intellectual Capital and Knowledge Management. Dr. José Emilio Navas López is Professor and Head of the Business Administration Department in Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). He is author and co-author of several books and papers concerning Technology Management, Strategy and Knowledge Management. He has held the first Knowledge Management Chair in Spain at I.U. Euroforum Escorial. Dr. Pedro López Sáez is Assistant Professor at the Business Administration Department in Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) and he was a Research Fellow at Harvard University during 2004–2005. He has several years of research experience at CIC Spanish Knowledge Society Research Centre and he is author and co-author of several papers concerning Resource-Based View, Intellectual Capital and Knowledge Management.     

The real exchange rate and economic growth: are developing countries different?

Recent research has found a positive relationship between real exchange rate (RER) undervaluation and economic growth. Different rationales for this association have been offered, but they all imply that the mechanisms involved should be stronger in developing countries. Rodrik (2008 Rodrik, D. 2008. The real exchange rate and economic growth. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2: 365–412.  [Google Scholar]) explicitly analyzed and found evidence that the RER–growth relationship is more prevalent in developing countries. We show that his finding is sensitive to the criterion used to divide the sample between developed and developing countries. Using alternative classification criteria and empirical strategies to evaluate the existence of asymmetries between groups of countries, we find that the effect of currency undervaluation on growth is indeed larger and more robust for developing economies. However, the relationship between RER undervaluation and per capita GDP is non-monotonic, and is limited largely to the least developed and richest countries. This discontinuity constitutes a puzzle that calls for closer analysis.     

Accruals quality and corporate cash holdings

This Work Uses Panel Data For Firms Listed In The Spanish Stock Exchange Over The Period From 1995 To 2001 To Analyse The Effect Of Accounting Quality On Cash Holdings. The Results Show That Firms With Good Accruals Quality Hold Lower Cash Levels Than Firms With Poor Accruals Quality. This Finding Suggests That The Quality Of Accounting Information May Reduce The Negative Effects Of Information Asymmetries And Adverse Selection Costs, Allowing Firms To Reduce Their Level Of Corporate Cash Holdings. The Results Also Show That Cash Holdings Decrease When Firms Increase Their Use Of Bank Debt And In The Presence Of Cash Substitutes. In Contrast With This, Firms With Higher Cash Flow Hold Higher Levels Of Cash.     

Peers and Culture*

We analyze the evolution of culture when parents socialize children to the cultural variants that maximize child lifetime utility. Parents invest in cultural transmission by taking into account that children are also influenced by peers. We model the influence of peers by assuming that children observe different cultural variants in their peer group, assign merit to them and adopt one variant, following a probabilistic adoption rule. We show that cultural diversity is sustainable even if all parents strive to transmit the same variant. We also show that a parental demand for cultural pluralism does not guarantee cultural diversity.     

Technical efficiency and productivity changes in Spanish airports: A parametric distance functions approach

This paper contributes to the airport benchmarking literature in two ways. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt at using a stochastic distance function to measure airports’ productivity changes while considering multiple outputs. Secondly, we calculate the evolution and decomposition of the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) for Spanish airports. The average rate of productivity showed a slight annual improvement of 0.9%, and the core engine of this was 3% increase in technical progress rather than through efficiency. Results, by airport, identify those needing improvement, to be more attractive in the Spanish airport restructuring program.     

A contribution to duality theory,applied to the measurement of risk aversion

This paper determines the precise connection between the curvature properties of an objective function and the ray-curvature properties of its dual. When the objective function is interpreted as a Bernoulli or cardinal utility function, our results characterize the relationship between an agent’s attitude towards income risks and her attitude towards risks in the underlying consumption space. We obtain these results by developing and applying a number of representation theorems for concave functions.The work of Juan E. Martínez-Legaz has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology and the FEDER, project BEC2002-00642, and by the Departament d’Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació, Direcció General de Recerca de la Generalitat de Catalunya, project 2001SGR-00162. He also thanks the Barcelona Economics Program of CREA for its support. John Quah would like to acknowledge with gratitude the financial support of the ESRC (grant number R000271171). He would also like to thank the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley, whose hospitality he enjoyed while completing this project. Both authors would like to thank Simon Cowan for pointing the way to some important references. They are also very grateful to the referee whose insightful suggestions led to a much improved paper