Winning the worksite customer

As the UK financial services industry advances channel strategies in response to developments in regulation, technology and government policy, a number of systems are evolving. One such system is worksite distribution. The environment is set to facilitate the development of this channel and a good deal of activity is under way. Key environmental drivers include the legal obligation on UK employers regarding stakeholder pensions provision; the continuing erosion in state benefits and the recognition that individuals will almost certainly have to provide for themselves in retirement; and the culmination of IT infrastructure development. Along with a tight labour market and reduced access to financial advice for the ‘mass market’ as advisers turn their focus to high-net-worth individuals, the role of the employer and the workplace as a source of information and purchase power begins to make sense — in essence, the role of a ‘portal’. This paper takes a close look at the customer potential of worksite marketing — both employers and employees — and the technology challenge faced by providers in winning their business.Worksite distribution (also known as worksite marketing) is the latest distribution channel emerging in UK financial services. There has been much discussion over the last two years on the viability of this channel in the UK. These discussions initially focused on comparing the drivers in the UK to the different drivers behind the development of the channel in the USA. More recently, discussions have focused on UK activity and the scramble to secure (pre-register) stakeholder pension (SHP) clients. This flourish of provider activity may well account for the channel becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, with many employers already being presented with a SHP or worksite proposition. ‘Best practice’ in this channel will be dependent on providing the best process for target customers — some lessons are learned from experience in other established markets and, importantly, from realising the inherent differences between the UK and these markets. This paper takes a deeper look at the subject and explores the worksite customer — who they are, how to win their business, and the enabling technology that will determine the outcome for financial service providers embarking on this channel.     

Accounting for Greenfield Union Organizing Outcomes

This paper presents a framework for evaluating and accounting for the outcomes of ‘greenfield’ union organizing campaigns. It argues that previous studies have tended to focus too much on the establishment of collective bargaining and negotiation of first contract as a campaign outcome. Instead, the effectiveness and representativeness of new union structures are emphasized, and the sustainability of those structures is emphasized as the most important outcome. A key finding from the empirical data is that campaigns that build both workplace activism and are co‐ordinated by officers create more sustainable outcomes than campaigns that focus on one or the other. The evidence shows how and why these outcomes emerge, and the paper concludes with a consideration of the theoretical and practical implications.     

Bedarfsgerechte Steuerung der Gesundheitsversorgung — Chancen und Hindernisse

On 2 July 2018, the German Council of Health Experts handed over its current report entitled, “Demand-oriented health care management” to the Federal Ministry of Health. The pronounced separation of outpatient and inpatient care, and distinction between private and public health insurance, is typical of the German system. Experts’ recommendations include improved coordination of outpatient and inpatient services, monistic hospital financing and family doctor-centred patient care. The main criticism of the report is that it lacks a regulatory concept with competitive management structures.     

R&D employee tenure in MNC subsidiaries: the role of institutional distance and experience

Long tenure of research and development (R&D) employees helps organisations to utilise employees' knowledge over a sustained time period and strengthen their competitive advantage. It also allows organisations to benefit from the training investments made on their R&D employees. Thus, identifying the determinants of R&D employees' tenure is crucial for designing effective R&D employee retention strategies. This paper analyses the factors explaining R&D employees' tenure in the subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs). Building on institutional theory, we claim that formal and informal institutional distance between MNCs' home and host country might lead to R&D employees' short tenure in subsidiaries. We further suggest that R&D employees' international experience and MNCs' host country experience play a moderating role. We find support for our hypotheses by mobilising an original database that combines patent data and the LinkedIn profiles of 939 R&D employees in 256 MNC subsidiaries in India.     

ENDOGENOUS PROCYCLICAL LIQUIDITY,CAPITAL REALLOCATION,AND q

Capital reallocation is procyclical and an economic boom has a cleansing effect by shifting the distribution of firms from low quality to high quality. We explain these facts by modeling search frictions for used capital in the business cycle. The article characterizes the stochastic equilibrium analytically to prove that the liquidity and the price of reallocated capital are procyclical endogenously. We calibrate the model and construct proxies in the data for the unemployment rate of capital and the time on the market. These two variables have a strong positive relationship in both the model and the data.