Confounding and collinearity in regression analysis: a cautionary tale and an alternative procedure,illustrated by studies of British voting behaviour

Quality & Quantity - Many ecological- and individual-level analyses of voting behaviour use multiple regressions with a considerable number of independent variables but few discussions of their...     

Global work force 2000: the new world labor market

Just as there are global markets for products, technology, and capital, managers must now think of one for labor. Over the next 15 years, human capital, once the most stationary factor in production, will cross national borders with greater and greater ease. Driving the globalization of labor is a growing imbalance between the world's labor supply and demand. While the developed world accounts for most of the world's gross domestic product, its share of the world work force is shrinking. Meanwhile, in the developing countries, the work force is quickly expanding as many young people approach working age and as women join the paid work force in great numbers. The quality of that work force is also rising as developing countries like Brazil and China generate growing proportions of the world's college graduates. Developing nations that combine their young, educated workers with investor-friendly policies could leapfrog into new industries. South Korea, Taiwan, Poland, and Hungary are particularly well positioned for such growth. And industrialized countries that keep barriers to immigration low will be able to tap world labor resources to sustain their economic growth. The United States and some European nations have the best chance of encouraging immigration, while Japan will have trouble overcoming its cultural and language barriers.     

The Performance of Internet Firms Following Their Initial Public Offering

We find that initial returns were more favorable for Internet initial public offerings (IPOs) than non–Internet firm IPOs. Since the demise of the Internet sector, the underpricing of Internet–firm IPOs is not significantly different from other IPOs.
Initial returns of Internet firms are positively and significantly related to underwriter prestige and to pre–IPO market conditions. However, initial returns after the demise of the Internet sector are not significantly related to these characteristics.
The aftermarket performance of Internet firms is initially favorable but weakens over time. Firms that experienced higher initial returns during the strong Internet cycle experience weaker aftermarket performance.     

Relationship equity and switching behavior in the adoption of new telecommunication services

This paper first defines and then presents a model of “relationship equity” for business markets. It points out that the potential benefits of managing relationship equity have been largely ignored and that a general model and stream of relevant research questions could be useful to marketing and relationship practitioners. The model developed considers the special case of key account management as antecedent, two different types of moderator variables, relationship equity as a perception by the buyer, and switching behavior via adoption of new telecommunication services as a result of this perception. The model is used as a basis for developing a number of working propositions.     

The uncertainty challenge of contingent collaboration

Contingent knowledge workers will play an increasingly important role in organisational success as workers transition in and out of project‐based innovation teams with more frequency. Our research finds that collaborators in the contingent, high‐skill workforce face uncertainty challenges to their work that are unique from the independent, contingent professionals more often studied. The article proposes a theoretical framework of uncertainty to guide us in understanding collaborative contingent knowledge workers’ work experience. Interviews with postdoctoral researchers reveal four findings about the influence of these highly uncertain work environments on collaborative contingent knowledge workers – collaboration isolation, frustrated independence, performance anxiety and internalised blame. Perhaps most concerning is that the workers internalise the negative impacts as personal failings instead of recognising them as consequences of a poorly designed work environment. This study argues for the need to manage and mitigate different sources of uncertainty to avoid creating an unnecessary burden on contingent knowledge workers, and to enable a sustainable, contingent knowledge workforce.     

The Big Family: Informal Financing of Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Businesses by Guanxi

Guanxi facilitates interaction between companies and people in Confucian societies. Does this type of social construct still play the key role, when the entrepreneurs live in Western societies? The objective of this article is to verify the impact of Guanxi on the capacity of small and medium‐sized businesses accessing financial resources informally. To this end, data collected from small Chinese entrepreneurs active in the principal business center of Brazil were used. From nonparametric tests, the results suggest that: (1) different levels of Guanxi allow small and medium‐sized businesses to access informal financial resources; (2) different types of informal financing are mostly used, or judged to be more significant, depending on the level of Guanxi of the entrepreneur in terms of parental and nonfamily ties; and (3) unlike the Western literature on the financial cycles of start‐ups, this type of informal financing can extend beyond the initial stage of the business. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Can the academic literature contribute to the debate over mandatory audit firm rotation?

Recently, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) issued a concept release soliciting public recommendations to improve auditor independence and audit quality (PCAOB, 2011). The focus of the release is on mandatory audit firm rotation (MAFR) with a request for commentaries addressing the advantages and disadvantages of MAFR. In this paper, we briefly summarize the recent literature on mandatory audit firm rotation and suggest how it can be useful to regulators as they consider the implementation of mandatory rotation. We find that the conclusions reached about the possible effectiveness of MAFR appear to depend on the type of data used (voluntary vs. mandatory auditor changes), suggesting that regulators should exercise care when drawing inferences from past audit firm rotation research.     

Secondary cancer rates following breast cancer diagnosis

Life table analysis and other mortality methods apply well to end points other than mortality. This paper demonstrates the application of mortality experience methodology to the recurrence of breast cancer and/or new primaries in women previously diagnosed with primary breast cancer. Specific recurrence rates are broken out by duration as well as attributes available at the time of primary breast cancer diagnosis: stage, histology, age band, and year of diagnosis. Use of attained age is demonstrated to control for the effect of aging over long durations. Breast cancer recurrence is shown to drop to a relatively low rate compared with the rate of new primary occurrence.