Strategic Human Resource Management as Ethical Stewardship

The research about strategic human resource management (SHRM) has suggested that human resource professionals (HRPs) have the opportunity to play a greater role in contributing to organizational success if they are effective in developing systems and policies aligned with the organization??s values, goals, and mission. We suggest that HRPs need to raise the standard of their performance and that the competitive demands of the modern economic environment create implicit ethical duties that HRPs owe to their organizations. We define ethical stewardship as a model of governance that honors obligations due to the many stakeholders and that maximizes long-term organizational wealth creation. We propose that if HRPs adopt an ethical stewardship framework and the qualities of transformative leaders, they will be more aware of their ethical duties to their organizations and more effective in helping their organizations to create increased wealth, achieve desired organizational outcomes, and establish work environments that are more satisfying to employees.     

Optimal financial contracts with hidden effort,unobservable profits and endogenous costs of effort

This paper studies financial contracting in a two-period financing model with double moral hazard, as entrepreneurial effort choices and profits are unobservable and non-verifiable. The optimal financial contract must induce both the high effort level and truthful revelation of profits. The paper further analyses the structure of the optimal contract where the entrepreneur's payoff takes a general functional form that allows for endogenously determined costs of effort. The entrepreneur's performance is influenced by not only extrinsic work motivation factors but also intrinsic factors so that the degree of control imposed by the investor, in the form of end-of-period transfers, affects the entrepreneur's costs of effort. The finding shows that under well-defined conditions, the optimal contract that solves a model with non-verifiable profits also elicits effort, and generally resembles a simple debt contract. The structure of the optimal contract is robust in the general case where the entrepreneur's payoff function is non-linear in transfers.     

The Gambler,the Carrots,and the Cook: A Critical Evaluation of Investment Potential in the Vietnamese Software Industry

The Vietnamese software industry has shown substantial development in recent years. On the basis of interviews with informed respondents this article investigates the condition and potential for further development of the industry, using a soft systems approach. Finegold's eco-system model is used to build a model of the industry. Partnerships and networks are identified as important factors in industry evolution, with the key role played by venture capital. Furthermore, the Vietnamese government and its institutions will continue to have a significant influence on the industry.     

Empirical Studies of Self‐Employment

This paper presents a review of empirical studies of self‐employment for the Australian, Canadian, Dutch, UK and US labour markets. Both cross‐sectional and longitudinal studies are analysed. Analyses using cross‐sectional data examine the propensity to be self‐employed at any one point in time, whereas longitudinal studies focus on the transition into self‐employment from wage/salary employment and the survival rate in this state over time. Various hypotheses advanced in the economics and sociology literatures on self‐employment are tested. These include the relationship between managerial ability and the propensity to be self‐employed and the impact of financial constraints on entry into self‐employment stressed in economic models of entrepreneurship, and the relationships between self‐employment choice and the nature of the work and group characteristics (e.g., ethnic enclaves) stressed in sociological models of entrepreneurship. The evidence shows that self‐employment outcomes are significantly affected by factors such as individual abilities, family background, occupational status, liquidity constraints and ethnic enclaves.     

Alternative Corporate Governance Systems in Japanese Firms: Implications for a Shift to Stockholder-Centered Corporate Governance

In Asia, the recent catastrophic decline in regional stock markets, continuing currency crisis and failures of major financial institutions and industrial corporations have increased domestic and international interest in corporate governance. Nowhere is this greater than in Japan where financial institution reform has catapulted this to the fore. In this paper, we use agency theory and institutional theory, together with comparative case examples, to derive some propositions on the dynamics of changing corporate governance systems in Japanese firms. We argue for the co-existence of stakeholder and shareholder-centered corporate governance systems in Japan. This argument has an important implication for corporate governance research and agency theory. Namely, changes in ownership structure and institutional expectations would force firms to focus on maximizing shareholder value even where the interests of stakeholders are more emphasized. It suggests an environmental selection mechanism to ensure the emergence of appropriate corporate governance mechanisms to solve the agency problem. Further, the loss of competitiveness and the prolonged poor performance of firms can change the institutional norms to emphasize asset efficiency and transparency rather than stability and business ties.     

Attitudes Toward Economic Risk and Occupational Choice

This paper examines the effects of attitudes toward economic risk on occupational choice. Workers with a more favourable disposition toward economic risk have a higher probability of being employed in the more prestigious, high‐paying Professional and Administrative occupations. Potential biases associated with omitted genetic and family background factors are considered. The marked differential in attitudes toward economic risk between males and females, however, makes only a minor contribution to the considerable occupational segregation on the basis of gender in the contemporary Australian labor market.     

Information control in the hold‐up problem

We study the use of information control to mitigate hold‐up risks. We identify a distinction between asymmetric information that creates an ex ante investment incentive and asymmetric information that causes ex post inefficiency, which then allows ex post inefficiency to be eliminated without compromising the ex ante investment incentive. We characterize the properties of the optimal information structure and the payoffs and welfare achievable with information control in the presence of hold‐up risks.     

The effects of environmental regulation on the stock market: the French experience

The impact of environmental regulation on the French stock market is investigated by using event study methodology and asset pricing models. The impact of environmental regulation on the stock prices of environmentally friendly businesses and polluters is assessed. Additionally, we estimate the change in systematic risk following the introduction of new regulations. According to the results, the French stock market is particularly sensitive to the environmental regulation embodied in the European Union Emissions Trading System and less so to the regulation on water, soil and air. The chemicals, oil and gas industries exhibit negative reactions, whereas other polluters (such as construction and materials, and industrial transportation) produce positive abnormal returns.