International Telecommunications,Settlement Rates,and the FCC

This paper models settlement arrangements between international telecommunication carriers. The FCC in the United States claims these arrangements cost United States consumers billions of dollars annually, largely to subsidize foreign carriers in low-income countries. A model is given which makes sense of this claim, as well as the role of costs, competition, and income disparities in settlement rate determination. Findings are tested using data spanning 17 years and 167 countries. Some implications are drawn for the FCC's recently proposed settlement rate caps, as well as for proposals for multilateral solutions.     

Dilemmas in the management of temporary work agency staff

Temporary jobs account for an increasing proportion of new engagements in the UK labour market, with temporary work agencies or 'labour market intermediaries' occupying a central role in the regulation of entry into some organisations. Such evolving arrangements have been found to have their contradictions, even for the host organisation. This article explores the internal and external pressures to use a temporary work agency as a means of recruiting labour at host organisations. It considers some of the HRM issues that stem from the use of such workers, including the tendency to devolve HRM to the managers of such agencies operating within the host organisation. Central to this article is a consideration of the potential sustainability of organisations' use of temporary agency workers, engaging with this concern from the perspective of organisational cost‐effectiveness.     

The Role of Advertising in the Marketing Strategy of Accountancy Firms: Evidence from a Regional Market

Rules governing the advertising activity of accountancy firms have recently been relaxed. Published evidence is, however, scant regarding the perceived value of accountancy firms' advertising by both users of their services and by business advisers. Building on a conceptual model of the role of advertising in accountancy firms described in an earlier issue of this journal [Watkins and Wright, Service Industries Journal, Vol. 5, No. 3, November 19851, this article presents some results from a recent survey of a regional accountancy market. These results show that a careful examination of advertising within the overall marketing mix is required, with other forms of marketing perhaps offering greater possibilities. The overall conclusion is that the cost-effectiveness of the advertising of accountancy services h s t be open to doubt.     

Satisfaction and dimensions of control among call centre customer service representatives

This study explores the perceptions of HR managers on the strategic management of labour turnover in a selection of large hotels in Australia and Singapore. The main argument is that the effects of labour turnover can be mitigated with strategically managed human resources through the four key HR activities. The hotel industries in both Singapore and Australia revealed a comparable range of HR policies and practices being adopted, with an explicit recognition of the contribution an organization’s human resources have on the bottom-line. There was a clear convergence towards minimizing turnover primarily through the recruitment, selection and induction processes. This was despite fundamental social, economic and labour differences between Singapore and Australia.     

International market selection strategies of manufacturing and services firms

This paper discusses the entrepreneurial landscape in Africa and locates a new generation of African entrepreneurs and their business networks within it. Unlike others in that landscape (i.e. micro- or small-scale informal sector vendors, and traditional or multinational large-scale formal sector firms), the ‘new generation’ entrepreneurs are business globalists who organized a system of business enterprise networks consisting of national, regional, and pan-African organizations. The study analyses interview data from 57 men and women network members from 10 countries (Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe). Some defining characteristics of these entrepreneurs are interactive social and business relationships, use of modern management methods and information technology, trust among fellow members, transparent business practices, advocacy on behalf of the private sector, and commitment to increasing intra-African commerce. Their mission is to improve the climate for private sector business in Africa and to promote regional economic integration. They pursue cross-national commercial ventures, maintain official observer status at established regional economic organizations, sign memoranda of understanding with multilateral agencies, establish venture capital funds, and help to change government policies. The paper identifies characteristics of the ‘new generation’ entrepreneurs, evaluates goals and achievements of their networks, and concludes that despite limitations, these entrepreneurs and their organizations have created intra- and cross-national networks that strengthen private-sector-led economic growth in Africa.     

The Long and Bumpy Road to Glass-Steagall Reform: A Historical and Evolutionary Analysis of Banking Legislation

This paper focuses on understanding the role of interest groups and markets in influencing regulatory change. To that end, it first identifies the interest groups surrounding the creation of legislation that separated commercial and investment banking in the 1930s and then identifies the interest groups involved in the more recent attempts to repeal the separation. Careful attention is also given to developments in the private market that affect the legislative process. This then becomes the case study for understanding how interest groups and market developments are able to influence regulatory policy. This particular case study finds that existing orthodox economic and political science literature gives too much credit to interest groups and not enough credit to private market developments when analyzing policy development and reform.     

Influence of strategies and heuristics on farmers' response to change under uncertainty

Hierarchical Decision Models of woolproducers' decisions provide unique insights into the impact of major price changes. Producers' lagged response in some contexts appear to be due to the ambiguous decision environment they face, their strategic goals and responses to that environment apart from lags caused by factors such as attitude to risk, expectations adjustment, adjustment costs and learning costs. Much of the response to major price changes comes from strategic decisions to change enterprises rather than marginal changes to existing enterprises. In ambiguous environments, methods may need to be found that incorporate simplifying behavioural rules and strategies.     

A Bayesian Multiple Comparison Procedure for Order-Restricted Mixed Models

A Bayesian hierarchical mixed model is developed for multiple comparisons under a simple order restriction. The model facilitates inferences on the successive differences of the population means, for which we choose independent prior distributions that are mixtures of an exponential distribution and a discrete distribution with its entire mass at zero. We employ Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques to obtain parameter estimates and estimates of the posterior probabilities that any two of the means are equal. The latter estimates allow one both to determine if any two means are significantly different and to test the homogeneity of all of the means. We investigate the performance of the model-based inferences with simulated data sets, focusing on parameter estimation and successive-mean comparisons using posterior probabilities. We then illustrate the utility of the model in an application based on data from a study designed to reduce lead blood concentrations in children with elevated levels. Our results show that the proposed hierarchical model can effectively unify parameter estimation, tests of hypotheses and multiple comparisons in one setting.