NEW FORMS OF PROVIDER IN THE ENGLISH NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

ABSTRACT 1 : A wide ranging set of reforms is being introduced into the English National Health Service (NHS). They are designed to increase the market‐like behaviour of providers of care with a view to improving efficiency, quality and responsiveness of services. This paper is concerned with one aspect of those reforms: namely the policy to increase the diversity of types of providers of care to NHS patients. In this context, increasing diversity means that providers will not all be standard publicly owned NHS organizations. They can be publicly owned but autonomous, or independent (both in for‐profit and not for profit). The paper discusses the wide range of organizational forms available, analyzing their governance structures It then discusses the small amount of evidence currently available about the performance of diverse providers of health care.     

Making tax and social security decisions: lean and deskilling in the UK Civil Service

Lean working has had a significant impact on the work skills of civil servants. This study examines the impact of lean specifically focusing on ‘decision‐makers’, those civil servants engaged in deciding tax and social security claims. Using qualitative data from trade union members and stewards in two major government departments, this study found significant evidence of deskilling often in the face of dealing with potentially complex legal and factual issues. Using Mashaw's framework of administrative justice, the article argues that management's use of lean was evidence of an accelerated shift to a managerial model of administering tax and benefits where the administrative processes of decision‐making become paramount at the expense of the quality of the decisions made.     

Whose firm is it anyway? Analyzing ownership effects on IPO performance

This study revisits current practice that ownership holding at IPO has a homogeneous impact on IPO performance. Using signalling theory, we develop and test a conceptual model explaining the relationships between the aggregated ownership structure and IPO price premium. We argue that aggregated ownership has a direct effect on issue price premium, and offer specific hypotheses on the effect of the shares sold during the offering by each type of owner on IPO performance. We use archival data from a sample of US firms that issued IPOs between 1996 and 2000 and find a significant direct effect of ownership configuration, namely, heterogeneity in effect of each ownership type on IPO performance as well as interaction effects between different ownership types. Copyright © 2013 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

客舱销售：潜力无限

附属收入继续作为航空公司总收入的一部分正在不断增长，运营商所提供的产品和营销策略比以往更富有想象力，对于客户而言更中意更合适。     

集亚诺之大成

优良血统 Prestige 550是在前作畅销船型prestige 500的好评声中发展而来.同样由Garroni设计团队和Prestige设计工作室一起设计的prestige 500已在多个知名大奖的颁奖礼上捧杯,其中包括至尊大奖"2012年度欧洲最佳动力艇".也正因如此,才让设计师将这些前作设计理念中的关键元素融入到更大尺寸的动力艇研发中,550由此应运而生.     

Gibbs posterior inference on value-at-risk

ABSTRACT

Accurate estimation of value-at-risk (VaR) and assessment of associated uncertainty is crucial for both insurers and regulators, particularly in Europe. Existing approaches link data and VaR indirectly by first linking data to the parameter of a probability model, and then expressing VaR as a function of that parameter. This indirect approach exposes the insurer to model misspecification bias or estimation inefficiency, depending on whether the parameter is finite- or infinite-dimensional. In this paper, we link data and VaR directly via what we call a discrepancy function, and this leads naturally to a Gibbs posterior distribution for VaR that does not suffer from the aforementioned biases and inefficiencies. Asymptotic consistency and root-n concentration rate of the Gibbs posterior are established, and simulations highlight its superior finite-sample performance compared to other approaches.     

Astroturfing Global Warming: It Isn’t Always Greener on the Other Side of the Fence

Astroturf organizations are fake grassroots organizations usually sponsored by large corporations to support any arguments or claims in their favor, or to challenge and deny those against them. They constitute the corporate version of grassroots social movements. Serious ethical and societal concerns underline this astroturfing practice, especially if corporations are successful in influencing public opinion by undertaking a social movement approach. This study is motivated by this particular issue and examines the effectiveness of astroturf organizations in the global warming context, wherein large corporate polluters have an incentive to set up astroturf organizations to undermine the importance of human activities in climate change. We conduct an experiment to determine whether astroturf organizations have an impact on the level of user certainty about the causes of global warming. Results show that people who used astroturf websites became more uncertain about the causes of global warming and humans’ role in the phenomenon than people who used grassroots websites. Astroturf organizations are hence successful in promoting business interests over environmental protection. In addition to the multiple business ethics issues it raises, astroturfing poses a significant threat to the legitimacy of the grassroots movement.     

Improving Marketing's Contribution to New Product Development

In many firms, the marketing department plays a minor role in new product development (NPD). However, recent research demonstrates that marketing capabilities more strongly influence firm performance than other areas such as research and development. This finding underscores the importance of identifying relevant capabilities that can improve the position of marketing within the NPD process as part of the quest to improve innovation performance. However, thus far, it has remained unclear precisely how the marketing department can increase its influence on NPD to enhance a firm's innovation performance. The results of this study demonstrate that the relationship between marketing capabilities and innovation performance is generally mediated by the decision influence of marketing on NPD. In particular, both marketing research quality and the ability to translate customer needs into product characteristics serve to increase marketing's influence on NPD. This increased influence, in turn, positively contributes to overall firm innovation performance. Hence, these results show that in addition to having the appropriate marketing capabilities, the marketing department must achieve a status in which these capabilities can translate into performance implications.     

Modelling the Risks Associated with the Increased Importation of Fresh Produce from Emerging Supply Sources Outside the EU to the UK

The risk of non‐indigenous plant pests entering the UK via international trade in fresh produce is increasing. The objective of this article is to identify existing and emerging supply sources for UK fresh produce importers and examine the extent to which they could provide invasion pathways. We tested the hypothesis that increased imports of fresh produce from new sources outside the European Union could increase the risks of non‐indigenous insect pests. We use a bio‐economic model approach in which the number of species arrivals is a function of the volume of imports, whereas the volume of imports itself is a function of gross domestic product, relative import prices and seasonality. The study has identified clear trends, which show import volumes of fresh produce and species detections increasing from new supply sources. If this trend continues in the future, then the UK inspection agency should expect to confront species from new suppliers in much greater numbers, given that import volumes of fresh produce are income elastic.