First organise, then automate: a modern socio-technical view on ERP systems and teamworking

Previous empirical work demonstrated that self-managing teamwork and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are difficult to combine in practice, and have called for the development of templates for configuring ERP systems to support teamworking. This requires a view on organisation design, dealing with both in an integrated fashion. 'Modern Socio-technology' provides such a view. We discuss its underlying principles and show how it relates to ERP.     

More thinking on research methods for the resource‐based perspective

We re‐examine the benefits of using a broader set of research methods to address key questions associated with the resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm. In responding to Levitas and Chi, we consider how research inside organizations can complement and augment research relying on secondary data. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Satisfaction drivers for Internet service technology among stock brokerage customers in Thailand

Many financial services firms are offering the Internet as a self-service technology (SST), for online stock trading, in an effort to increase effciency and give customers greater access. It is important to understand how this technology will influence customer satisfaction. This paper reports results of exploratory research to identify sources of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the service encounter in Thai stockbrokerage firms. Results show that customers and service providers determine sources of customer dis/satisfaction differently, depending on whether the service encounter is technology-based or interpersonal. Different customer profiles give rise to segmentation in response to the use of Internet technology in this industry.     

Do Gold Market Returns Have Long Memory?

This study examines the long memory behavior in gold returns during the post-Bretton Woods period using a new rescaled range technique. Unlike the conventional rescaled range analysis, the new rescaled range analysis is robust to short-term dependence and conditional heteroscedasticity found in the gold data. Statistical results suggest that the long memory behavior in gold returns is rather unstable. When only few observations corresponding to major political events in the Middle East, together with the Hunts event, in late 1979 are omitted, little evidence of long memory can be found.     

Duration and the price behavior of fixed-rate level payment mortgages: An analytical investigation

In this research we use a continuous payment formula for duration to examine the price behavior of a fixed-rate level payment mortgage. In the case where the mortgage is held to maturity, duration increases monotonically as term-to-maturity increases, regardless of changes in the market rate of interest. In the case where the mortgage is prepaid prior to maturity, there exists a unique market interest rate below which duration is a monotonically increasing function of time of prepayment, but above which duration has a global maximum at some time of prepayment prior to the term-to-maturity.     

Cultural influences on the design of incentive systems: The case of East Asia

Arguing that culture moderates the potency of various incentives in motivating employees, we propose a culture-contingent model of incentive system design in this article. Four nation-level determinants of culture are identified: historical events, economic/political structure, geographical location, and language characteristics. Based on evidence found in East Asia, specific propositions that either relate a national characteristic to some cultural attributes or predict how a cultural characteristic favours a particular type of incentive system are generated. The implications of this culture-contingent model for incentive system design in multinational firms are discussed.We would like to thank Donna Randall for her helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

Innovative productivity and returns to scale in the pharmaceutical industry

This study shows that firms in the pharmaceutical industry experience decreasing returns to scale in R & D as the level of R & D expenditures rises. The paper presents the results of our study of the innovative output of 16 pharmaceutical firms over a 19 year period. Given the strong correlation between R & D budgets and firm size, our study suggests the wave of mergers in the industry may yield less innovative productivity than managers expect.     

Monetary policy regimes and beliefs*

This article investigates the role of beliefs over monetary policy in propagating the effects of monetary policy shocks within the context of a dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium model. In our model, monetary policy periodically switches between low and high money growth regimes. When individuals are unable to observe the regime directly, they form inferences over regime‐type based on historical money growth rates. For an empirically plausible money growth process, beliefs evolve slowly in the wake of a regime change. As a result, our model is able to capture some of the observed persistence of real and nominal variables following such a regime change.