Job factors and work outcomes of public sector expatriates

While the literature on private sector expatriates is burgeoning, research on public sector expatriates is scant, despite their increasing numbers. This is unfortunate, as these two groups of expatriates may face different work conditions at their foreign assignment. The target group for this study was the US Department of Defense administrators located at US embassies around the world. Results showed that the time expatriates had spent in their current location had a positive association with both work adjustment and work effectiveness. So did role clarity, which also had a positive association with job satisfaction, making it a more important job factor than role conflict, role overload or role discretion. Although role clarity may have a similar impact on work outcomes of expatriates, both in the private and public sector, the findings regarding role conflict and role overload may constitute a discrepant outcome for the two groups. There may also be a difference between the two categories of expatriates with regard to role discretion. Implications of these findings are discussed in detail.     

Entwicklung des Nebeneinanders von Privat- und Sozialversicherung in den Niederlanden

In the Netherlands, a “dual system” with a public and private sector has been established for health insurance. The advantage of this system is that the positive aspects of a good social policy with room for the employer are combined in order to avoid the buroc-racy and rigidity of a purely public system. In spite of the good experiences with this system over the last years, the Public Health Service is changing and innovations must be given a chance. This explains the willingness of the Netherlands to exchange practical experience with other countries and to discuss with other EU members the possibility of a combined orientated development of the Public Health Service system within the EU.     

PRODUCTIVITY AND FIRM DYNAMICS: CREATIVE DESTRUCTION IN INDONESIAN MANUFACTURING, 1994–2000

This paper examines the entry and exit, and the labour productivity, of Indonesian manufacturing firms with 20 workers or more, using a firm-level panel dataset constructed for the years 1994–2000. Overall change in manufacturing labour productivity reached 27.2%—an average growth of 3.5% per annum—between 1994 and 2000, a period that includes the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis, which hit Indonesia hard. Vibrant firm dynamics characterised this period, in which about 10% of manufacturing enterprises were renewed in any one year. By 2000, one-third of all enterprises in existence in 1994 had closed, but the number of enterprises that closed was lower than the number that entered and survived up to the year 2000. The replacement of exiting firms with newly entering firms contributed significantly to increases in overall labour productivity. Regulatory reform in support of this process should lead to gains in productive employment for Indonesian workers.     

It is Time for National Action to Reach the Lisbon Goals

Summary During the second half of 2004, the Netherlands held the Presidency of the European Union. One of the conferences during the Presidency was titled ‘More people at work: Policies to activate Europe’s labour potential’. It was organised on October 25 and 26, 2004 at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. The conference focused on four particular areas: the reconciliation of work and family life, activating social security systems, mobility and training. As a starting point for the discussions during the conference, academics who are experts in the specific policy areas were asked to write a paper. In this special edition of ‘De economist’ you will find a presentation of three of their papers. In my contribution I will explain why I have put the focus of this conference on increasing labour supply and more in particular why these four themes have been chosen as relevant for Member States and the Union. As time has not stopped after the Netherlands’ Presidency I will also take this opportunity to show that the conclusions of the conference have become an integrated part of the revitalised Lisbon strategy.     

THE EFFECT OF TRADED OPTION INTRODUCTION ON SHAREHOLDER WEALTH

Several authors suggest that the opening of a market in traded options constitutes a “feasibility-expanding” change. In this paper evidence on changes in the price of underlying stocks at the time of option listing is examined to determine whether option listing constitutes such a change. Evidence supports the hypothesis that call option listing is feasibility expanding, that put option listing is not feasibility expanding, and that call listings closer to the initiation of organized option trading have a larger impact relative to later listings.     

Rezensionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Global convergence of adaptive learning in models of pure exchange

Summary. This paper develops an adaptive learning scheme for a standard version of the OLG model with pure exchange. Perfect forecasting rules which generate perfect foresight orbits are approximated by cubic spline functions. These approximations are successively constructed using historical data only. Trajectories generated by this scheme converge to perfect foresight orbits globally for all initial conditions. This result holds for all parameterizations guaranteeing the existence of a monetary steady state and hence is independent of consumers' savings behavior. It generalizes to all one-dimensional models of the Cobweb type. Received: October 5, 2000; revised version: February 15, 2001     

Are Corporate Career Development Activities Les Available to Female Than to Male Expatriates?

Despite the growing interest in female expatriates, few empirical studies have focussed on corporate career development activities available to women. Given the faltering corporate support for female business expatriates in general, one may presume that such organizational activities are less available to women than to men. To test this proposition, a large number of Western female and male business expatriates assigned to Hong Kong responded to a mail survey. Controlling for differences between the two gender groups, three significant gender differences were found, all indicating a lower availability of these corporate activities to women than to men, partially supporting expectations. These corporate career development activities were fast track programs, individual career counseling and career planning workshops. Implications of these findings for globalizing firms as well as for their female employees are discussed in detail.     

Industrial New Product Launch Strategies and Product Development Performance

Just as reporters must answer a few fundamental questions in every story they write, decision-makers in the new product development (NPD) process must address five key issues: what to launch, where to launch, when to launch, why to launch, and how to launch. These decisions involve significant commitments of time, money, and resources. They also go a long way toward determining the success or failure of any new product. Deeper insight into the tradeoffs these decisions involve may help to increase the likelihood of success for product launch efforts. Erik Jan Hultink, Abbie Griffin, Susan Hart, and Henry Robben present the results of a study that examines the interplay between these product launch decisions and NPD performance. Noting that previous launch studies focus primarily on the tactical decisions (that is, how to launch) rather than on the strategic decisions (what, where, when, and why to launch), they explore not only which decisions are important to success, but also the associations between the two sets of decisions. Because the strategic launch decisions made early in the NPD process affect the tactical decisions made later in the process, their study emphasizes the importance of launch consistency—that is, the alignment of the strategic and tactical decisions made throughout the process. The survey respondents—managers from marketing, product development, or general management in U.K. firms—provided information about 221 industrial new products launched during the previous five years. The responses identify associations between various sets of strategic and tactical decisions. That is, the responses suggest that the strategic decisions managers make regarding product innovativeness, market targeting, the number of competitors, and whether the product is marketing- or technology-driven are associated with subsequent tactical decisions regarding branding, distribution expenditure and intensity, and pricing. The study also suggests that different sets of launch decisions have differing effects on performance of industrial new products. In this study, the greatest success was enjoyed by a small group of respondents categorized as Niche Innovators. Their launch strategy involves a niche focus, targeting innovative products into markets with few competitors. Tactical decisions made by this group include exclusive distribution, a skimming pricing strategy, and a broad product assortment.