High involvement work practices and firm performance

During the past two decades the chain of three links organizational strategy – human resources practices – organizational performance has been deeply analysed. However, the mediator role of organizational structure in the first link of this chain remains relatively uninvestigated. In this article we analyse a model of relationships among organizational strategy, organizational structure, human resources practices, and organizational performance. Through a structural equation methodology applied to a sample of 183 Spanish companies, we will try to confirm that organizations with differentiation strategies are more likely to implement high involvement work practices. As a novelty we will introduce organizational structure as a mediator of this relationship. For that we will use the construct control mechanisms (centralization, formalization and socialization). Further, we will analyse the effect on firm performance of these proposed relationships among differentiation strategy, control mechanisms and high involvement work practices.     

Multidimensional configurations of the organizational climate construct

This study describes the creation and validation of a multidimensional model which assesses the level of employee satisfaction based on international theoretical models. It utilizes data collected from a sample of 518 public and private company employees during the year 2009 in the city/state of São Paulo, Brazil. In the first stage of the study, 15 independent dimensions were theoretically obtained. In the second stage, five different multiple dimensions were confirmed using structure equation modeling (SEM) technique, thus characterizing general configurations of the organizational climate construct denominated motivation, management philosophy, leadership, people management and nature of work. It is hoped that the model can contribute by enhancing managerial best practices of an organization by attending a major demand for those listed on stock markets, since these companies must periodically provide information on job satisfaction of their employees to maintain or achieve higher levels of corporate governance.     

How employee perceptions of HR policy and practice influence discretionary work effort and co-worker assistance: evidence from two organizations

Drawing on social identity theory and organizational justice research, we model the impact of employee perceptions of human resource (HR) policies and practices on two important outcome variables – discretionary work effort (DWE) and co-worker assistance (CWA). Results based on 618 full-time employees in two organizations show that HR practices are positively related to procedural and distributive justice and that organizational identification mediates the relationship between procedural and distributive justice and DWE and CWA, respectively. Distributive justice is also shown to have direct effects on the two outcome variables suggesting the relevance of a social exchange perspective as a complement to social identity explanations. Implications for research and practice are briefly discussed.     

Beta-product dependent Pitman–Yor processes for Bayesian inference

Multiple time series data may exhibit clustering over time and the clustering effect may change across different series. This paper is motivated by the Bayesian non-parametric modelling of the dependence between clustering effects in multiple time series analysis. We follow a Dirichlet process mixture approach and define a new class of multivariate dependent Pitman–Yor processes (DPY). The proposed DPY are represented in terms of vectors of stick-breaking processes which determine dependent clustering structures in the time series. We follow a hierarchical specification of the DPY base measure to account for various degrees of information pooling across the series. We discuss some theoretical properties of the DPY and use them to define Bayesian non-parametric repeated measurement and vector autoregressive models. We provide efficient Monte Carlo Markov Chain algorithms for posterior computation of the proposed models and illustrate the effectiveness of the method with a simulation study and an application to the United States and the European Union business cycle.     

Closed-skew normality in stochastic frontiers with individual effects and long/short-run efficiency

This paper considers the estimation of Kumbhakar et al. (J Prod Anal. doi:10.1007/s11123-012-0303-1, 2012) (KLH) four random components stochastic frontier (SF) model using MLE techniques. We derive the log-likelihood function of the model using results from the closed-skew normal distribution. Our Monte Carlo analysis shows that MLE is more efficient and less biased than the multi-step KLH estimator. Moreover, we obtain closed-form expressions for the posterior expected values of the random effects, used to estimate short-run and long-run (in)efficiency as well as random-firm effects. The model is general enough to nest most of the currently used panel SF models; hence, its appropriateness can be tested. This is exemplified by analyzing empirical results from three different applications.     

Bargaining, coalitions and competition

We study a Gale-like matching model in a large exchange economy, in which trade takes place through non-cooperative bargaining in coalitions of finite size. Under essentially the same conditions of core equivalence, we show that the strategic equilibrium outcomes of our model coincide with the Walrasian allocations of the economy. Our method of proof makes use of the theory of the core. With respect to previous work, our positive implementation result applies to a substantially larger class of economies: the model relaxes differentiability and convexity of preferences, and also admits an arbitrary number of divisible and indivisible goods.     

Psychological Meaning of Products and Product Positioning

New product positioning is an issue increasingly being considered by new products managers. An article on this topic by Crawford appeared in this Journal in 1985. Roberto Friedmann and Parker Lessig employ the concept of psychological meaning of products to discuss why and how Crawford's new product positioning typology affects the consumer. They present arguments to show that the psychological meaning of products and Crawford's typology address product positioning from complementary and converging perspectives. They also argue that psychological meaning of products can be a valuable managerial planning tool.     

Model risk in credit risk

We provide sharp analytical upper and lower bounds for value‐at‐risk (VaR) and sharp bounds for expected shortfall (ES) of portfolios of any dimension subject to default risk. To do so, the main methodological contribution of the paper consists in analytically finding the convex hull generators for the class of exchangeable Bernoulli variables with given mean and for the class of exchangeable Bernoulli variables with given mean and correlation in any dimension. Using these analytical results, we first describe all possible dependence structures for default, in the class of finite sequences of exchangeable Bernoulli random variables. We then measure how model risk affects VaR and ES.     

Judicial Efficiency and Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Extensive research exists on the individual determinants of being an immigrant entrepreneur, concerning both social environment and human capital. However, the role of the judiciary has not been investigated yet. Analyzing more than 160,000 new micro enterprises owned by immigrants, our paper aims to fill this gap by focusing on the relation between justice and immigrant entrepreneurship. Results show that judicial efficiency is one of the determinants of self‐employment, although some differences among immigrant groups are identified. Therefore, the study confirms the key role of judicial enforcement in promoting not only growth but also the integration of these new citizens.