EFFECTS OF HEAVY DRINKING IN COLLEGE ON STUDY EFFORT, GRADE POINT AVERAGE, AND MAJOR CHOICE

This article measures the effects of college drinking on study hours, grade point average (GPA), and major choice using simultaneous equation models and data from the 1993 College Alcohol Study. Binging and intoxication decrease GPA directly and indirectly by reducing study hours. Greater frequency of drinking increases the effect on study hours but not the total effect on GPA. College drinking increases the probability of choosing a business major but decreases the probability of choosing engineering. Simulations show that the effects of heavy drinking on GPA and major choice reduce future weekly earnings by between 0.3 and 9.8%.     

Intellectual Capital–Enhancing HR,Absorptive Capacity,and Innovation

This study investigates the role of intellectual capital (i.e., human, social, and organization capital)–enhancing human resource (HR) practices in the development of a firm's absorptive capacity, as well as the mediating role of absorptive capacity in its relationship to the firm's innovation performance. Results show that while human capital–enhancing HR (acquisition and developmental HR) is positively related to absorptive capacity, social capital–enhancing HR affects absorptive capacity through egalitarian HR practices. Organization capital–enhancing HR practices contribute to absorptive capacity through effective information systems. Finally, our findings confirm that the various intellectual capital–enhancing HR practices affect innovation performance through their impact on the firm's absorptive capacity. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Social Security Benefit Uncertainty under Individual Accounts

Social Security reforms that include individual accounts change both the expected benefit and the benefit risk. This article uses a long-term stochastic forecasting model to estimate the distribution of expected benefits under a simple individual account, recognizing uncertainties in the current system. Introducing individual accounts increases the overall variability of benefit levels relative to current law; indeed the standard deviations of expected benefit gains exceed the level of those gains. The increase in uncertainty about benefit replacement rates is even larger, however, because individual accounts partially sever the link between earnings and benefits in the existing system. (JEL H55)     

Targeting interventions to high-risk populations: Benefits and costs

Targeting prevention interventions to high-risk populations may increase intervention benefits, but identifying and/or finding the high-risk populations may increase intervention costs. We explore the costs and benefits of targeting in the context of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention in high-risk injection drug users (IDUs). Focusing interventions on such a population should maximize the number of HIV infections averted. Recruiting high-risk IDUs for such interventions, however, may be more difficult and costly. We base our analysis on an earlier model that determines the allocation of resources to two interventions, street outreach and methadone maintenance. The model seeks to minimize HIV incidence in a population of heterosexual IDUs and their non-injecting sex partners. We conclude that while targeting an inexpensive intervention like street outreach rarely proves to be cost-effective, even a costly targeting effort can increase cost effectiveness for an expensive, effective, narrowly focused intervention such as methadone maintenance.     

Is yours a learning organization?

An organization with a strong learning culture faces the unpredictable deftly. However, a concrete method for understanding precisely how an institution learns and for identifying specific steps to help it learn better has remained elusive. A new survey instrument from professors Garvin and Edmondson of Harvard Business School and assistant professor Gino of Carnegie Mellon University allows you to ground your efforts in becoming a learning organization. The tool's conceptual foundation is what the authors call the three building blocks of a learning organization. The first, a supportive learning environment, comprises psychological safety, appreciation of differences, openness to new ideas, and time for reflection. The second, concrete learning processes and practices, includes experimentation, information collection and analysis, and education and training. These two complementary elements are fortified by the final building block: leadership that reinforces learning. The survey instrument enables a granular examination of all these particulars, scores each of them, and provides a framework for detailed, comparative analysis. You can make comparisons within and among your institution's functional areas, between your organization and others, and against benchmarks that the authors have derived from their surveys of hundreds of executives in many industries. After discussing how to use their tool, the authors share the insights they acquired as they developed it. Above all, they emphasize the importance of dialogue and diagnosis as you nurture your company and its processes with the aim of becoming a learning organization. The authors' goal--and the purpose of their tool--is to help you paint an honest picture of your firm's learning culture and of the leaders who set its tone.     

Abnormal Accruals and Managerial Intent: Evidence from the Timing of Merger Announcements and Completions

We examine acquiring managers' opportunistic reporting behavior around stock‐for‐stock acquisitions. Using the timing of merger announcements and completions to infer managerial intent, we show that acquirers with the most inflated earnings tend to announce mergers on Fridays, and that they manage earnings several quarters before the merger announcement date. Friday announcers exhibit a stronger negative association between pre‐merger announcement abnormal accruals and post‐merger announcement market performance than non‐Friday announcers. This effect is driven mainly by mergers that are completed relatively quickly after they are announced. Overall, the evidence supports the notion that some acquiring managers inflate earnings prior to announcing the mergers, and time the merger announcements to exploit investor inattention.     

Teaching ethics to marketing and logistics majors: A transformative learning experiment

Within the context of a transformative learning field experiment, the ethical ideologies of marketing majors, logistics majors, and nonbusiness majors were found to differ. Based on this finding, a field experiment was conducted to determine the effect (if any) that ethics instruction has on marketing and logistics majors versus nonbusiness majors. Students' knowledge of basic ethical principles and their ability to assess the application of these principles to ethical dilemmas were tested with a new assessment instrument. The major findings suggest (a) transformative learning ethic exercises have pedagogical potential and (b) dissimilar ethical predispositions between marketing and logistics majors versus nonbusiness majors confirms the need for customizing ethics pedagogy by college major.     

The Harvard Living Wage Campaign: Origins and Strategy

A member of the Harvard living wage campaign explains its internal development. Begun in 1998, the campaign drew inspiration from the global justice movement, organized labor’s reawakening, and the flowering of college anti-sweatshop groups. Locally, it responded to a decade of attacks on Harvard workers’ livelihoods and unions, as well as the enactment of a living wage ordinance by the city of Cambridge. The article recounts the campaign’s organizing strategy and tactics, its oppositional relationship to the Harvard administration, and the university’s response. Finally, it discusses the campaign’s limited victory on wages and contracting policies, as well as its significance for campus unions, students who participated, and student-labor mobilization beyond Harvard.     

Multiple Dimensions of Private Information: Evidence from the Long-Term Care Insurance Market

We demonstrate the existence of multiple dimensions of private information in the long-term care insurance market. Two types of people purchase insurance: individuals with private information that they are high risk and individuals with private information that they have strong taste for insurance. Ex post, the former are higher risk than insurance companies expect, while the latter are lower risk. In aggregate, those with more insurance are not higher risk. Our results demonstrate that insurance markets may suffer from asymmetric information even absent a positive correlation between insurance coverage and risk occurrence. The results also suggest a general test for asymmetric information.     

Pseudo-Transformational Leadership: Towards the Development and Test of a Model

We develop and test a model of pseudo-transformational leadership. Pseudo-transformational leadership (i.e., the unethical facet of transformational leadership) is manifested by a particular combination of transformational leadership behaviors (i.e., low idealized influence and high inspirational motivation), and is differentiated from both transformational leadership (i.e., high idealized influence and high inspirational motivation) and laissez-faire (non)-leadership (i.e., low idealized influence and low inspirational motivation). Survey data from senior managers (N = 611) show differential outcomes of transformational, pseudo-transformational, and laissez-faire leadership. Possible extensions of the theoretical model and directions for future research are offered.