The implications of nurse staffing information: the real value of reporting nursing data

There is a dearth of information about the relationship between the patient care contributions of nursing and its financial contributions to an organization. As consumers and legislators are becoming more aware of the ramifications of nurse staffing issues, and as they endeavor to address them with legislative solutions, the decision on how best to develop optimal staffing strategies may soon be taken away from nursing leaders. To maintain control of this important issue and develop solutions that will help highlight the economic and patient care contributions of nurses, a thorough understanding of the problem, and a new commitment are needed from nursing leaders to take charge of the issue. To relate nursing care to patient outcomes, meaningful data on the nursing care provided is needed in addition to data on the nursing needs of patients. Staffing and performance monitoring tools should be used to effectively plan, implement, and control financial and operating resources as well as measure the economic value of the nursing profession's contribution to the cost and benefits of patient care.     

Indeterminacy of intertemporal equilibria under imperfect competition

Summary. It is known that overlapping generations models with imperfectly competitive firms may exhibit a continuum of stationary equilibria. The reason of this indeterminacy is that different price expectation functions of consumers lead to different objective demand functions against which firms maximize. All these expectation functions fulfill perfect foresight in the equilibrium, but they can be arbitrary off the equilibrium. In this paper it is shown that it is not this arbitrariness which is responsible for the indeterminacy, but that the continuum of stationary equilibria emerges even if expectation functions are rational. Received: March 25, 1999; revised version: February 16, 2000     

Spectrum management reform: Rethinking practices

Unparalleled growth in wireless communications has increased the pressure for more spectrum to support more users, more uses and more capacity. To alleviate that pressure, major regulatory changes were introduced in several countries in two key areas of spectrum management, namely spectrum assignment and allocation. This paper analyzes those changes and discusses strategies and tactics for deregulating the use of radio spectrum. Spectrum management reforms are considered within the theoretical framework of transition economics, which is concerned with optimal reform speed and sequencing. The paper shows how Anglo-Saxon and European countries have been implementing gradual reforms. Meanwhile, Central American reformers have chosen a fast transition from command-and-control regulation to market mechanisms. Transition economics is used to evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of different spectrum reform strategies.     

A study and implementation of business-to-business e-commerce with the OBI standard

Internet based e-commerce has flourished in the business-to-consumer world. The lack of well-accepted standards is hindering the success in providing business-to-business e-commerce solutions. Open Buying on the Internet, or OBI, standard is one of the recent efforts in bringing business-to-business e-commerce into corporate purchasing. OBI is a common standard, based on the existing industry standards, that guides trading partners in implementing interoperable purchasing systems on the Internet. In this paper, we present a field study project on how companies may use OBI. We also survey the additional desirable services expected from managers who may use OBI-based e-commerce systems. We then describe a prototype implementation to enable the OBI capability in the IBM Net.Commerce merchant server software. With our implementation, existing merchant servers can be easily augmented to adopt the OBI standard for business-to-business e-commerce. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Window on Eastern Europe: A Moral Movement for Polish Business

Our regular contributor on the business ethics scene in Poland reports on recent encouraging developments and sees them as contributing to the 'moral revolution' in addition to the political and economic ones which a leading Polish academic judges his country needs today. The author is Professor of Management at DePaul University Department of Management, 1 East Jackson Blvd, Chicago IL 60604, and Visiting Fulbright Professor of Management at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan.     

The role of current and non-current accruals in the relation between stock returns and earnings

This study examines the role of accruals in the relation between stock returns and earnings for intervals of one to four years. We argue that the roles of current and non-current accruals differ because the former turn over more frequently while the latter include long term timing differences and permanent differences. Accordingly, the roles of both categories of accruals are examined over intervals within and beyond the cycle of current accruals. The results suggest that accruals strengthen the association between stock returns and earnings and that they are more important for shorter intervals. Further, non-current accruals play a dominant role in the relation between stock returns and earnings while the effect of current accruals is negligible for all intervals examined.     

Ethics Codes in British Companies

How common are corporate codes of ethics in the UK and especially among Britain's most admired companies? The author is Wicklander Professor of Professional Ethics at DePaul University, Chicago, and current President of the American Society for Business Ethics.     

Which Chinese Markets to Diversify into?

This paper investigates the correlation and feedback relationships between the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index (HSI), the Hang Seng Chinese Enterprise Index (CEI) and the S&P 500 Index (SP). We divide the indexes into two separate periods, from the inception of the CEI in 1994 to the stock market crash in 2000, and from 2001 to 2011. Our results show that the feedback relationship between the CEI and the SP is stronger after 2000. As the feedback relationship grows stronger, the diversification benefit reduces for US investors who utilizes the CEI as a tool for diversifying into Chinese markets.     

Networks,Internationalization & Policy

This is the introduction to this special issue of Small Business Economics, dedicated to networks, opportunity, internationalization and policy. As the drivers of globalization are removing barriers, which traditionally segmented the competitive environments of small and large firms, firms of all sizes are joining international networks. Former competitors are now working together and this symbiosis is enhancing competitiveness. Consequently, networking is giving rise to unprecedented opportunities, facilitating internationalization. Simultaneously, new realities are creating the need for new policies.