Labor–Management Partnership and Employee Voice: Evidence from the Healthcare Setting

This paper examines the relationship between labor–management partnership (LMP) and employee voice in the healthcare setting. We argue that the ability of LMP to deliver gains to employees is contingent on the quality of the procedural infrastructure on which it is established. We maintain that the quality of LMP processes influences employee trust in their employer and perceptions of union effectiveness and that these perceptions, in turn, are related to employee patient‐care voice.     

Public involvement in flood risk management in Hungary

The increasing frequency and intensity of recent floods and their economic, social, and political impacts created a situation in Hungary where flood management strategies need urgent reconsideration. Research suggests that in the case of natural disasters of uncertain and changing character, public education, information, participation, and cooperation are particularly important tools for coping. Drawing on the data collected by two recent empirical studies, this paper investigates state-of-the-art public involvement in flood control activities in Hungary. Results of a questionnaire survey and a series of semistructured interviews conducted in three flood basins of the Tisza river indicate that although the highly centralized system of flood control, and especially its strong financial background, a characteristic of state socialism, has significantly weakened since the political transition, forms of public participation, which could reduce the risk by building on a more conscious and responsible attitude of the citizens, have not developed yet. Paternalist and elitist attitudes prevail on the part of the authorities, contributing to the passivity of the public. There are signs, however, that in certain places, local government leaders take responsibility for building communication networks to raise public awareness and mobilize the public more effectively.     

Information Asymmetry Determinants of Sarbanes-Oxley Wealth Effects

We investigate the roles of information asymmetry and governance in the wealth effects associated with passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) for a sample of 1,158 firms. For events suggesting adoption of stringent reform legislation, we find more (less) favorable abnormal returns (ARs) for firms with high (low) information asymmetry and for firms with weak (strong) governance. More favorable effects could result from expected improvements for firms with high information asymmetry or weak governance. Firms with positive ARs experience information asymmetry reductions post-SOX, indicating the market was able to discern the firms that would most benefit from the legislation's passage.     

The effect of unionization on firms’ earnings management and employee compensation: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design

This study examines the effect of unionization on US firms’ accruals-based earnings management and future employee compensation expenses by employing a research design that overcomes the inherent endogeneity issue of the relationship between unionization and earnings management. First, by comparing firms that just pass unionization by a small number of votes to those that just barely lose elections, the regression discontinuity design estimations document significant downward accruals earnings management for firms that barely pass unionization, compared to those that barely fail to pass unionization. Second, the association between unionization and earnings management is only significant in US states without right-to-work legislation, where unions are more powerful. These findings are consistent with recently unionized firms’ incentives to report lower earnings in order to mitigate unions’ demands for greater employee compensation. Further, for firms that barely pass unionization, we find that: (1) unions cannot fully “undo” the effects of earnings management, that is, downward managed earnings depress future compensation expenses, and (2) firms cannot fully “undo” the effects of unionization, that is, compensation expenses increase after unionization despite the downward earnings management.     

Industrial Relations in Transition Economies: Emergent Industrial Relations Institutions in Bulgaria

East European societies currently in transition to market economies are creating new structures for industrial relations. Transition has ambiguous effects upon the relations between industrial relations institutions and the state. On the one hand, economic pluralism implies separation between state and economy and 'depoliticization'. On the other, economic crises and threats to social order require co-operation between state and unions. The influence of the state is greater because of the embryonic form of employer organization and enterprise-level management. This paper examines the political and economic contexts of industrial relations in Bulgaria, as an example of one type of 'constrained' collective bargaining system. The paper emphasizes continuities between the communist and post-communist period, and the central role of trade unions in the transition process.     

Is Selection Bias Inherent in Housing Transactions? An Equilibrium Approach

We develop an equilibrium model for residential housing transactions in an economy with houses that differ in their quality and households that differ in their planned holding horizon. We show that, in equilibrium, a clientele effect persists, with long‐horizon buyers overwhelmingly choosing higher quality properties and short‐horizon buyers settling for lower quality properties. This clientele effect creates a sample selection bias: the properties that are on the market are predominantly of lower quality. Since these are the preferred choice of short‐horizon buyers, they demonstrate a faster turnover. Both the clientele effect and the selection bias are more pronounced with an increase in the variance of house quality and in the variance of the planned holding horizon. Our theoretical model supports empirical evidence on the existence of such bias in home price indices and explains it by the differences in ex ante holding horizons.     

Informal ties in organizations: a case study

Network techniques are applied to a case study. The results show that using a joint approach can help in giving further insight into the analysis of informal ties in an organization. Special emphasis is given to centrality. The concept of mutual awareness, both on an individual and a global levels, is introduced and illustrated.     

Technology sourcing decisions in exploratory projects

Drawing on research on innovation as knowledge combination and firm’s organizational boundaries the paper contributes to open the black box of a firm’s sourcing strategy, investigating how the new knowledge a project aims to develop affects sourcing decisions. The fine-grained level of investigation adopted, namely the project level, not only enhances the understanding of the antecedents of sourcing decisions in any single project but provides primary explorative evidence on the concept of a company sourcing strategy as a portfolio of decisions across projects. Our test is implemented on a sample of 60 New Product Development projects carried out by a group of leading Italian firms, operating in the machine tool industry. We identify two knowledge dimensions that are the determinants of sourcing decisions at project level: novelty, new functions that satisfy emergent market needs, and breadth, heterogeneity of technological fields that encompass possible solutions to product problems. Our findings show that in firms choosing sourcing configurations on a project-by-project basis, exploratory projects, which search at the frontiers of either novel product features or heterogeneous technological domains, spur firms to exploit the potential advantages of external sources.