A Gender‐Aware Study of Self‐Leadership Strategies among High‐Growth Entrepreneurs

We apply a gender‐aware framework to examine the self‐leadership strategies men and women early stage high‐growth entrepreneurs employ as they develop innovations. Utilizing a matched‐pair sample of early stage entrepreneurs operating firms in high‐technology business incubators, our results suggest that female and male entrepreneurs have significantly different self‐goal‐setting and self‐cueing behaviors. Results also suggest male entrepreneurs who use stronger goal‐setting behaviors increase their intellectual property development to a greater extent than female founders. Further, for female entrepreneurs who use greater self‐cueing, the negative relationship realized with intellectual property development is lower than for male entrepreneurs.     

‘Australian sailors wanted’: Labour supply and Australian shipping,c. 1870–c. 1914

In the pre-1914 era Australia did not develop an ocean-going merchant navy. The problem is well recognised in previous studies that assumed that it was high Australian wages that made the operational cost of deep-sea vessels uncompetitive on a global scale. This article reconstructs historical shifts in the Australian market for a seagoing workforce and demonstrates there was low recruitment of Australian labour. Drawing on new sources and inspired by efficiency wage theory the article argues that it was this shortage of a domestic labour supply that constrained the development of a national deep-sea shipping industry.     

Australian Manufacturing Business: entrepreneurship or missed opportunities?

In the light of criticism of the performance of Australian business, this article surveys the mounting array of firm and industry evidence to assess the performance of Australian mass production manufacturers. The focus is on lower technology sectors of food and drink, packaging, rural and consumer chemicals, and building materials because these are sectors where Australian firms faced fewer constraints. The article evaluates whether the large firms that emerged in these industries demonstrated entrepreneurship by responding to opportunities, developing their technical capabilities and learning how to manage their growing businesses effectively.     

Gender and Inequality: Austerity and Alternatives

Gender equality policies aim to increase women’s participation in the market economy, but they do not always recognise that market societies reproduce inequalities at micro and macro levels. At the micro level, labour markets are gendered institutions, and at the macro level, austerity policies have inherent biases and negative impacts that fall disproportionately on women.     

Comparing NHS Hospital Unit Costs

Efforts to improve the efficiency of the hospital sector in the National Health Service (NHS) have concentrated on measuring the unit costs of service provision. Hospitals identified as having high unit costs are considered poor performers. Several indices have been constructed to measure unit costs. These produce conflicting messages: hospitals with relatively high unit costs as measured using one index may have low unit costs according to another index. Furthermore, the publication of cost information may lead to unintended consequences and perverse behaviour, rather than genuine performance improvements. To get a more accurate picture of performance, cost information should be included within a broader performance assessment framework for hospitals.     

Cost-Sharing Incentive Programs for Source Water Protection: The Grand River's Rural Water Quality Program

Over the last few years, Canadian provinces have come to see watershed-based source protection as a means of improving water quality that has been subject to upstream agricultural contamination. Cost-sharing incentive programs—whereby farmers are reimbursed for some portion of out-of-pocket expenses when they voluntarily adopt Best Management Practices—have been identified as possible means of achieving the goal. This paper uses data from the first seven years of operation of Ontario's Rural Water Quality Program for the Grand River to examine the role of financial incentives in encouraging participation. Program data supplemented with Statistics Canada's Census of Agriculture data are used to estimate a Heckman two-stage model of participation rates. Program-specific cost-sharing incentive factors, along with farm income and computer usage, are important determinants in the first-stage discrete participation decision. The most significant factor in the second-stage degree of participation decision is the maximum dollar value of grant that can be obtained by the farm; however, participation response elasticities are inelastic, ranging between 0.02 and 0.25. Au cours des dernières années, les provinces canadiennes en sont venues à considérer la protection des sources d’eau à l’échelle des bassins versants comme un moyen d’améliorer la qualité de l’eau susceptible d’être contaminée par les activités agricoles en amont. Les programmes d’incitatifs à frais partagés – dans le cadre desquels une partie des dépenses que les producteurs engagent leur sont remboursées lorsqu’ils adoptent volontairement de meilleures pratiques de gestion – sont perçus comme des moyens qui pourraient permettre d’atteindre l’objectif. Dans le présent article, nous avons utilisé les données des sept premières années d’application du Rural Water Quality Program, mis en place par l’Ontario pour la protection de la rivière Grand, afin d’examiner le rôle des incitatifs financiers dans l’encouragement à la participation. Nous avons utilisé les données de ce programme ainsi que des données tirées du Recensement de l’agriculture de Statistique Canada pour analyser les taux de participation à l’aide du modèle en deux étapes de Heckman. À la première étape, les incitatifs à frais partagés spécifiques à un programme, de même que le revenu agricole et l’utilisation d’un ordinateur, sont des facteurs importants dans le choix de participer ou non. À la deuxième étape, la valeur maximale de la subvention que peut obtenir une exploitation agricole représente le facteur le plus important. Toutefois, l’élasticité des réponses de participation est inélastique, et varie de 0,02 à 0,25.