When Stress Frustrates and When It Does Not: Configural Models of Frustrated versus Mellow Salespeople

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the stress–strain relationship by examining compound causes of frustration in the workplace. Drawing on configuration theory, this article describes stress patterns, that is, configurations of role stressors and social stressors, and underlying frustration and its negation, that is, mellowness. In addition, this article describes potential sources of such frustration‐stimulating stress patterns by examining constellations of employee and task characteristics. Based on a sample of 118 salespeople, the authors analyze the data using fuzzy‐set Qualitative Comparative Analysis—an analytic method pertinent to describing configurational patterns of causal factors. The findings from this study indicate the coexistence of alternative patterns of stressors for frustration. In addition, the findings show that configurational patterns for frustrated salespeople are quite different from those characterizing mellow salespeople. In summary, knowledge of these constellations of stressors helps sales managers detect conditions that frustrate, and develop strategies to diminish these conditions in order to improve sales force performance.     

An analysis of Japanese earnings forecast revisions with application to seasoned equity offerings

Using the bootstrap method, we explore the characteristics of revisions in Japanese earnings forecast data. We find that forecast revisions exhibit a downward trend over time as the actual earnings announcement date approaches, and are serially correlated with three significant lags. Using these characteristics we develop a model to estimate abnormal forecast revisions, and illustrate the model's use with a sample of Japanese companies announcing seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). In contrast to results obtained by studies using American data, our findings indicate significant positive upward revisions when Japanese firms announce an SEO.     

Trends and cycles of the internet evolution and worldwide impacts

In this paper we present a quantitative analysis of the evolution of some Internet and ICT evolution indicators. It focuses on the number of Internet hosts, the Internet penetration index, the ICT development index and the software/protocols development. In addition, we analyzed the series of most impacting events building up the Internet along the last fifty years. These analyses were carried out using the multi-logistic procedure recently proposed by the authors. Our results for hosts counting, penetration index and software/protocols development are compatible with the onset of some radical changes in the Internet technology to be currently underway and we forecast new growth rate peaks to occur by 2015. The software/protocols were found to having been powered by bursts of creativity with periods of the order of the Kuznets and Kondratiev economic cycles. Similar conclusions were drawn from the series of main events building up the Internet. Despite the clear signs of worldwide improvement in the ICT infrastructure and usage between 2002 and 2007 obtained from the ICT development index, its cross-correlation with the human development index (HDI) revealed the presence of a group of countries whose improvements in the operational ICT index are disconnected from their corresponding HDI improvements.     

Increased coordination in public transport—which mechanisms are available?

After several years of New Public Management reforms within public transport, coordination seems to receive increased attention. With examples of actual as well as suggested changes taken from Denmark, Sweden and the UK the aim of the article is to analyse and classify the mechanisms utilized and suggested to increase coordination between core stakeholders within passenger railway services and bus services. Four distinctive mechanisms of coordination are suggested, namely organisational coordination, contractual coordination, partnership coordination and discursive coordination. Each coordination mechanism has its strengths and failures. The article also debates to what extent the mechanisms conflict with three core characteristics of New Public Management: Unbundling of the public sector into corporatized units; more contract-based competitive provision; and greater emphasis on output controls.     

Regimen changes and duration in the European Monetary System

This article examines the regime changes in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System (EMS), applying the duration model approach to weekly data of eight currencies participating in the ERM, covering the complete EMS history. When using the non-parametric (univariate) analysis, it was found that for those regimens with long durations, the ERM would have been relatively stable, while for the (more common) regimes associated with short durations would have been more unstable. The probability of maintaining a certain regime is estimated to be 0.685. When applying a parametric (multivariate) analysis to investigate the role of other variables in the probability of a regime change, it is concluded that the interest rate differential with Germany and the magnitude of the realignment would have negatively affected the duration of a given regime, while credibility would have positively influenced such duration. Finally, when distinguishing between groups of currencies, it is observed that those in the core are more stable than those in the periphery, obtaining evidence against equality of survival functions among these groups of currencies.     

TECHNICAL NOTE A MODIFIED EOQ MODEL WITH TEMPORARY SALE PRICE DERIVED WITHOUT DERIVATIVES

Most previous works applied differential calculus to derive optimal solutions for economic ordering policy. The formulations are suggested in this short note to show that optimal solutions can be derived algebraically without using differential calculus to treat the EOQ model with a temporary sale price.     

Implementation of Four Models for Outstanding Liabilities in Winbugs: A Discussion of a Paper by Ntzoufras and Dellaportas

Abstract

Ntzoufras and Dellaportas (2002) described four models for outstanding claim amounts of the “reported but not settled” variety. Two of the models incorporated claim-counts data in addition to the claim amounts themselves in order to add a hierarchical stage in the usual log-normal and state-space models. The purpose of this discussion is to describe how the models presented in Ntzoufras and Dellaportas may be implemented using WinBUGS. The use of WinBUGS to implement the Bayesian analysis of a number of other actuarial models was considered by Scollnik (2001).