Integration and divergence of patent systems across national and international institutions

Based on a framework grounded in the institution-based view, this paper addresses the extent of global patent system integration and development. Our findings suggest that nations’ patent systems have yet ‘met’ the ‘international standards’, despite national and international endeavor toward this goal. The impact of international institutions on national institutions is reflected in the process rather than the outcome. Among the three components of patent systems across 88 nations, conformity is the strongest for ‘patent mechanism’, operations is the most diverse for ‘patent administration’ and ‘patent enforcement’ does not form a cross-nation divide due to most nations being moderate enforcers.     

Market Orientation and CSR: Performance Implications

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become of great interest to both researchers and practitioners alike with much discussion on whether the costs outweigh the performance implications. CSR has become a firm strategic tool (not only an ethical concept) as firms recognize that the customer value proposition and CSR is integrated with the focus on how to differentiate the firm from the view of the customer. We utilized market orientation (MO) theory as our foundation for our research as it explains how organizations adapt to their customer environment to develop competitive advantages. With the current customer focus on CSR, MO assists the field in identifying a possible firm differentiation. Our research found that firms that ranked high on CSR correlated positively to performance. We also found our theoretically developed constructs of firm customer orientation (CO) and firm market orientation correlated with the firm adopting CSR. The results also indicated that CSR positively mediates CO and MO to firm performance. As past research had mixed results over the direct relation of MO to performance, our research suggests that CSR may be the missing variable to explain the MO/Performance relationship.     

International linkages and productivity at the plant level: Foreign direct investment, exports, imports and licensing

Productivity growth may be affected particularly for developing countries by international linkages or technology transfer. We evaluate relationships between productivity and FDI, exports, imports and licensing for Turkish manufacturing plants in the apparel, textiles, and motor vehicles industries. We assess performance premia associated with these international technology transfer channels that control for plant size and location. We then use a structural model to allow for plant-specific input composition and interactions, estimated alternatively by quantile regression and semi-parametric techniques to recognize plant heterogeneity and to accommodate simultaneity and selection issues. Overall, we find that productivity is most closely related to foreign ownership, especially for larger plants and in combination with other forms of technology transfer, followed by exporting and then licensing.     

Electronic medical record use and efficiency: A DEA and windows analysis of hospitals

We use data envelopment analysis (DEA) to examine the relationship between hospital electronic medical record (EMR) use and efficiency in a national sample of acute care hospitals. Data sources include the American Hospital Association (AHA), Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS), and Case Mix Index. Using two research approaches including a retrospective, cross-sectional design and a first differencing repeated measures design, we find limited evidence that EMRs can improve hospital efficiency. Small hospitals may benefit in the area of efficiency through EMR use, but medium and large hospitals generally do not demonstrate such a difference. Likewise, there does not appear to be a significant increase in efficiency over time associated with EMRs when compared to the efficiency of hospitals without such documentation.     

Optimal Rationing Policies and Production Quantities for Products with Several Demand Classes

This paper considers a situation in which several distinct classes of customers exist for a single product or service in a fixed, finite planning period. If such a product is also perishable and if backlogging is not permitted, it may sometimes be worthwhile to reject “low-revenue customers” upon arrival, depending on the number of units on hand and time left until the end of the period. The objectives of this study are to derive optimal rationing policies at any state of the planning period and to formulate a procedure for calculating the optimal production quantity at the beginning of the period for various cost (production) functions, given that an optimal rationing policy is to be followed. The approach used is backward-recursion dynamic programming. Résumé Ce mémoire examine une situation dans laquelle plusieurs classes distinctes de clients existent pour un seul produit ou service au cours d'une période de planification déterminée. Si cette denrée est également périssable et que le stockage n'est pas permis, il est parfois avantageux de rejeter les “clients à bas revenus,” tout dépendant du nombre d'unités en main et du temps qui reste avant la fin de la période. Les objectifs de l'éude visent à créer des politiques de rationnement optimal au cours de la période de planification et de formuler une méthode de calcul des quantités optimales de production en début de période relativement à plusieurs fonctions relatives au coǔt (production), compte tenu de l'application d'une politique de rationnement optimal. Il s'agit ici de programmation dynamique à récursivité rétrograde.     

The symmetric multiple prize all-pay auction with complete information

This paper extends the analysis of the n-player all-pay auction with complete information to cover the case of m≤n prizes, valued in weakly decreasing order, but symmetrically across players. We provide a complete characterization of the Nash equilibrium distributions for this class of auctions and provide an exact expression for the expected revenue generated.     

Outsourcing, productivity, and input composition at the plant level

Abstract .  We evaluate the productivity and input composition effects of outsourcing (or subcontracting) for Turkish textile and apparel manufacturing plants. We analyze differences in performance indicators for plants that subcontract inputs or outputs, and find that plants that outsource internationally perform better than those that outsource domestically. We evaluate labour productivity gaps and find that more productive plants both initiate outsourcing and subsequently increase their productivity. We then estimate a flexible production function, controlling for simultaneity and selection bias, and find that higher productivity from input subcontracting involves greater skilled labour intensity but the reverse is true for output subcontracting.     

Circulation and effective demand: a comment on Nell

In a recent paper in this Journal, Ed Nell presented a theoryof circulation intended to unify ‘the theories of money,production, and effective demand’. The current commentuses a very simple leakage and injection approach to arriveat some of Nell's results. In doing so, we are able to correcta small slip in Nell's original paper. More importantly, withthe slip corrected, the money supply and multiplier processesare seen to be one and the same.     

The Relationships Between MBO System Strength and Goal‐Climate Quality and Strength

We adopted Bowen and Ostroff's ( 2004 ) HRM system strength concept so as to test it within the context of a management by objectives (MBO) system, which was utilized by six independent firms owned by a large, diversified family business group in Turkey. For this purpose, we surveyed the middle managers to measure 10 context‐specific metafeatures of the MBO system. By using aggregated scores at the functional group level (N = 47), we captured the distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus dimensions of this HRM practice. We tested and compared three alternative theoretical models of HRM strength where the three dimensions have compensatory, additive, and distinctiveness mediated effects on climate quality and strength. Results support the compensatory model and indicate that the strength of the MBO system (as a reflective latent variable representing the shared variance of the system's distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus) is positively related to business units’ quality and strength of goal climate. In addition, distinctiveness—but not consistency and consensus—of the MBO system appears to be particularly critical for the emergence of a strong and high‐quality goal climate. Lastly, implications and limitations of the study as well as possible future research directions are discussed. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.