The relationship between high performance work systems and employee proactive behaviour: role breadth self‐efficacy and flexible role orientation as mediating mechanisms

Drawing on the contextual perspective, this study provides novel empirical evidence on how the organisational context (specifically, the firm's human resource strategy) has an effect on employee proactivity. We use matched data from managers and employees in 102 Spanish professional service firms to examine how high performance work systems contribute to enhance employee proactive behaviours through two motivational variables: role breadth self‐efficacy and flexible role orientation. Results of a multilevel study demonstrate that role breadth self‐efficacy mediates between HPWS and employee proactivity, but flexible role orientation does not mediate this relationship.     

Cultural agility and international assignees’ effectiveness in cross‐cultural interactions

While many mutable competencies and immutable personality traits have been shown to have a direct positive relationship with international assignee success, this study examines whether a set of situation‐specific cross‐cultural competencies comprising cultural agility are also related to international assignee success. This study examines whether the combination of three situation‐specific responses to cultural differences (cultural adaptation, cultural minimization and cultural integration) explain any additional variance in supervisor's ratings of international assignee success above and beyond personality and cross‐cultural competencies. To test this hypothesis, supervisor‐rated of assignees’ effectiveness in working with host nationals was regressed on the number of international assignees’ cultural orientations. Controlling for personality and dynamic competencies, the overall model was significant explaining 17 per cent of the total variance. This study provides some preliminary evidence on the importance of expatriates’ possessing the ability to possess concurrent cultural orientations. The HR practices to foster cultural agility are discussed.     

Firm heterogeneity and immigrant wage assimilation

This article investigates the role of job mobility in immigrant wage assimilation. I use longitudinal linked employer–employee data for Portugal to estimate the immigrant wage catch-up in log wage regressions with both individual and firm fixed effects. I show that moving to firms with higher wage premiums accounts for approximately 30% of the immigrant wage catch-up in the first years.     

Success factors in a CRM strategy: technology is not all

Organisations today need to create, maintain and reinforce relationships with customers. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) seems to have helped firms to better understand their relationships. However, past studies have looked at technology and customer orientations (COs) as key factors. This paper aims to analyse the simultaneous effect of Market Orientation (MO) (rather than CO), Knowledge Management (KM) and other organisational factors in order to explain how to implement a successful CRM. Findings suggest that MO and KM may influence CRM success. Data also suggest that particular organisational factors such as employees, leadership and specific know-how may be key factors in determining the success of CRM. For efficiency resource management, this paper recommends to focus not as much in technology, but on programmes for selection, training and motivation of employees which may enhance CRM objectives. Companies may also pursue a higher customer value by putting in place and reinforcing KM schemes in specific know-hows about CRM.     

Information and Investor Behavior Surrounding Earnings Announcements

The goal of this paper is to analyze the impact of annual earnings announcements on the market through the order flow data in addition to the usual transaction data. In this respect, examining order flow data can potentially reveal valuable information that is not available from transaction data. In fact, the data allow us to test hypotheses about asymmetric information and investor behavior and to test if the behavior varies with investor sophistication. In addition, the paper tries to identify the determinants of the impact on a firm's value using assumptions about investor behavior.     

The relevance of commuting zones for regional spending efficiency

We use data envelopment analysis (DEA) efficiency scores to show that clustering municipalities into encompassing regional clusters improves spending efficiency of single stand-alone municipalities. We propose a new geographic aggregation based on municipalities-to-municipalities commuting flows, defined using hierarchical cluster analysis. Our example for Portugal shows that from an output-oriented perspective between 83% and 98% of municipalities would increase their efficiency scores, while from an input-oriented perspective between 86% and 98% of municipalities would also be better off in terms of efficiency. Then using a linear regression model, we find that population increases positively affects the efficient scores (via scale economies). Also, increases in the share of high-educated and poorer residents leads to higher efficiency scores.     

Organising migrant workers: the living wage campaign at the University of East London

This critical case study looks at the campaign led by Citizens UK and Unison to get the University of East London (UEL) to sign up to the London living wage (LLW). UEL agreed to pay the LLW after a brief campaign in November 2010 and it was subsequently implemented in August 2011. The study charts the course of the campaign and draws on mobilisation theory and new primary research to account for its success. What our findings suggest is that community organisers and union activists were able to organise and mobilise a largely apolitical group of migrant workers. This, we suggest, can be explained by the successful mobilisation of the community and augurs well for future broad‐based campaigns.     

Surplus distribution and characteristics of social enterprises: Evidence from microfinance

The issue of surplus distribution has hardly been analyzed in the context of the social economy. This paper highlights the main drivers of distribution between various stakeholders of microfinance institutions (MFIs), which are an example of social enterprises. We focus on three major variables: size, governance structure and subsidies. Our results show that the size of the institution is the main indicator of the surplus that the organization keeps as a self-financial margin. Moreover, MFIs with a cooperative ownership structure allocate a larger part of their surplus to their employees, whereas non-profit organizations and shareholder-firm MFIs do not allocate their surplus in a significantly different way among their main stakeholders. Finally, we do not find any clear-cut effect of subsidies on the surplus allocation process.     

Bank market power and the intensity of borrower discouragement: analysis of SMEs across developed and developing European countries

Small Business Economics - This paper analyzes the effect of bank market power on the financial constraints of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the study of borrower...