Graduate Engineers and British Trans-National Business: Elite Human Resource Or Technical Labourers?

Bryn Jones, Peter Scott, Brian Bolton and Alan Bramley discuss the results of their cross-sectoral study of manufacturing firms in the UK. They find that policy of treating graduate engineers as an elite human resource is mostly confined to consortia having international cooperative links and to companies with ‘central interventionist’ HRD policies. the high degree of decentralisation characteristic of UK-owned companies, however, combined with the disproportionate recruitment of non-engineer managers, restricted the career development of engineers. All four authors are from the University of Bath. Bryn Jones and Peter Scott are from the School of Social Sciences. Brian Bolton and Alan Bramley are from the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and the School of Mechanical Engineering.     

Accessing other people’s technology for non–profit research

As patents and other forms of intellectual property become more pervasive in the next generation of biotechnologies, designing policies and practices to ensure sufficient freedom to operate (i.e., the ability to practice or use an innovation) will be crucial for non–profit research agencies, especially those intent on developing technologies destined for commercial release. Are non–profit organisations exempt from intellectual property claims? What constitutes infringement of a patent? How does a non–profit establish its freedom to operate? We address these issues in this paper and evaluate various options for accessing other people’s technologies. Options include cross–licensing agreements, research–only or cost–free licences, market segmentation strategies, mergers or joint ventures, and patent pooling or clearinghouse mechanisms. Responding creatively to the new intellectual property environment will have far reaching consequences for the future of non–profit research.     

Design and Implementation of Return on Capital Employed Performance Indicators Within a Trading Regime: The Case of Executive Agencies

The financial regime under which trading executive agencies operate implies that return on capital employed (ROCE) is used to indicate that revenues meet but do not exceed costs, including the cost of capital; that is, that there is neither cross-subsidisation nor hidden taxation. This paper develops a model for measuring ROCE derived from this objective. It argues that users of ROCE indicators are likely to lack financial sophistication and to want to compare performance between entities, so that indicators should be clear, readily understandable and comparable. The range of measurement and presentation methods used in practice undermines clarity and comparability and some methods are inconsistent with the model. Performance is sometimes characterised as meeting the target when this is problematic. The paper also examines outturn performance and finds some very substantial excess returns, implying hidden taxation.     

The Incidence of Taxes on Casino Gambling: Exploiting the Tired and Poor

A bstract . The equity of taxes on casino gambling in Las Vegas and Atlantic City using recent survey data is examined. Daniel B. Suits (1977) study of the tax on casino gambling concluded that the tax was progressive when he used a national sample to estimate tax incidence. This result is challenged. Tax incidence is estimated using survey data obtained from people who either live in or have traveled to Las Vegas or Atlantic City. On the basis of the sample of people who have given themselves access to casino gambling , the tax is regressive; in fact, it is extremely regressive in Las Vegas. Therefore, in this time of easier access to casino gambling, policy-makers should be aware that the taxes on casino gambling place a proportionately heavier burden on low income groups.     

Invariance of covariance structures under groups of transformations

Summary The invariance of covariance structures under Lie groups of transformations is discussed. Implications for minimum discrepancy estimates of parameters are considered.     

Strategic reward systems: a contingency model of pay system design

A limited number of studies have addressed the idea of ‘strategic’ reward systems—the matching of compensation systems to a firm's strategy. Prior research on this topic has been confined to U.S. firms, however, and a number of key questions remain unanswered. Using a sample of 917 employees from two large Swiss financial institutions, we found that pay systems are linked with divisional strategic orientation, but in a different form than prior studies. Additionally, we identify hierarchical position as an important variable in the tailoring of reward systems. Hierarchy has a significant main effect on pay plan design, and an interactive effect with strategic orientation. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.