Images of the Virtuous Employee in China's Transitional Economy

We examine contemporary images of employee virtue and managers' perceptions of actual employee conduct in Wuhan, Beijing and Xi'an, drawing on document analysis and structured interviews with 112 respondents in ten case study companies. The image promulgation strategies of the one joint venture enterprise and the two private enterprises in our sample entailed active avowal of tradition linked employee virtue, drawing on a mixture of Communist and Confucian moral imagery. In contrast, most of the seven state-owned or predominantly state invested enterprises had abandoned or marginalized traditional Communist imagery, none promoted Confucian imagery, and two emphasized alternative images of one-sided servility toward the customer. We infer, from managers' accounts, that the abandonment of tradition linked images by the state-owned sector was a tacit acknowledgment of prior covenant violation, and that outside the state-owned sector, tradition linked moral propaganda contributed to moral atmosphere only when part of a consistent high-commitment HRM strategy. In drawing out implications for theory and further research, we note the different socio-political contexts of organizations in China and the West, discuss the relationship between bonds or covenants and psychological contracts, and compare tradition linked employee virtues with dimensions of organizational citizenship.     

中国互联网支付体系

一、互联网支付概述在电子商务发展初期,业界关注的问题集中在如何把现有的支付机制有效地移植到互联网上,信用卡以广泛的发行基础和方便的支付流程率先大规模地得到应用。随着应用的深入,信用卡通过互联网实现无卡交易的缺陷日益显现,而其他互联网支付机制得到了充分的发展,借记账户支付、支票等传统支付工具先后得到开发。近几年,以虚拟账户方案为代表,完全依赖互联网的创新支付机制快速成长,最常见的支付工具———现金也出现了多种电子化实现方式。基于互联网的支付机制从本质上说仍需依赖传统的支付系统,清算与结算环节仍然通过传统的…     

Imperfectly competitive cycles with Keynesian and Walrasian features

We consider a multi-sector overlapping generations model with oligopolistic firms in the output markets and wage-setting trade unions in the labour markets. A coordination problem between firms creates multiple temporary equilibria which are either Walrasian or of the Keynesian unemployment type. There exist many deterministic and stochastic equilibrium cycles fluctuating between Keynesian recession and Walrasian boom periods with arbitrarily long phases in each regime. The cycles are in accordance with certain empirical regularities. Money is neutral and superneutral, but appropriate countercyclical fiscal policies stabilize the cycles in a textbook Keynesian way.     

Hotel management style: a study of employee perceptions and preferences

This study investigates employee perceptions of, and preferences for, management practices within a five-star, medium-sized hotel. In particular, the study examines the hypothesis that hotel managers have become more consultative. Using longitudinal data over a 4-yr period, the study examines the perceptions of staff of the management practices and styles in the changing environment of one hotel. The findings suggest that, while staff prefer a decisive style of management, supervisors and department heads were perceived as being autocratic. In fact, in the 4 yr over which the data had been collected, the style of management had become less consultative and more autocratic. Implications for management are discussed, as are recommendations for future research.     

Black rural land ownership: A matter of economic survival

Conclusion A vast majority of Blacks left the South to escape conditions of poverty. The fascination of big city life seduced many others. For whatever reasons, it is a widely accepted fact that the millions of Blacks who migrated from the South contributed significantly to the decline in black-owned rural land. However, the literature is beginning to more frequently reveal that the less than altruistic behavior patterns of land officials has possibly contributed most to the loss of rural land by Blacks.     

Symbiotic International Business Networks: Collaboration between Small and Large Firms

As the drivers of globalization remove barriers that traditionally segmented the competitive environments of small and large firms, firms of all sizes are beginning to share the same competitive space. Symbiotic arrangements are evolving through which smaller firms enter the value chains of larger firms, to the benefit of both sides. Using a conceptual framework with illustrative examples, this article explains how smaller firms can use symbiotic, collaborative arrangements with larger firms to overcome inherent constraints of size and to achieve the efficiencies required for world‐class competitiveness. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons,Inc.     

On the complementarity of money and credit

I propose a model where agents choose to conduct their business using two payment instruments, money and bilateral credit. A friction in the timing of transactions rationalizes the use of both instruments and makes it optimal for agents to use money as a means of settlement for credit. Money and credit complement each other. With anticipated inflation, complementarity implies that the credit to money ratio decreases with inflation.