DIVIDEND CHANGES OF FINANCIALLY WEAK FIRMS

This study examines both the patterns of dividend changes of financially weak firms and the announcement effects of unexpected dividend changes on both stocks and bonds. Most of the weak firms initially examined did not pay a dividend. For those firms that did, dividend increases were modest, and dividend decreases were large. The results of the bond analysis cannot be used to support either the signalling hypothesis or a wealth expropriations hypothesis. Finally, on average, the stock market does not appear to interpret dividend news for weak firms differently than for strong firms.     

Ten Years After: South African Employment Relations Since the Negotiated Revolution

Post‐apartheid South Africa has embarked on an ambitious programme of labour market reform in pursuit of ‘dynamic efficiency’ and ‘redistributive justice’. It involves both legislation to promote equality among races and an institutional framework inspired by the European Social Model. We examine how this framework has fared over the past decade, in particular pinpointing the tension between adversarial traditions and the new social partnership, and between market‐oriented economic policy and corporatist institutions. Our conclusion is that the system has performed reasonably well, but tackling the mass unemployment at the root of continued inequality is a far longer‐term project.     

Does co-creation impact public service delivery? The importance of state and governance traditions

Co-creation in public service delivery requires partnerships between citizens and civil servants. The authors argue that whether or not these partnerships will be successful depends on state and governance traditions (for example a tradition of authority sharing or consultation). These traditions determine the extent to which co-creation can become institutionalized in a country’s governance framework.     

Financial versus non-financial information: The impact of information organization and presentation in a Balanced Scorecard

This paper investigates how the organization and presentation of performance measures affect how evaluators weight financial and non-financial measures when evaluating performance. We conduct two experiments, in which participants act as senior executives charged with evaluating two business-unit managers. Performance differences between business units are contained in either a financial or one of the three non-financial categories. Specifically, the first experiment studies how organizing measures in a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) format affects performance evaluations. Our results show that when the performance differences are contained in the financial category, evaluators that use a BSC-format place more weight on financial category measures than evaluators using an unformatted scorecard. Conversely, when performance differences are contained in the non-financial categories, whether measures are organized into a BSC-format or into an unformatted scorecard has no impact on the evaluation. The second experiment shows that when performance markers are added to the scorecards (i.e., +, −, and = signs for above-target, below-target, and on-target performance), evaluators that use a BSC-format weight measures in any category containing a performance difference more heavily than evaluators using an unformatted scorecard. Our findings suggest that firms should carefully consider how to present and organize measures to get the intended effect on performance evaluations.     

Diverging Mortality Inequality Trends among Young and Old in the Netherlands*

We analyse the trends in inequality in mortality across poverty groups at different ages over the period 1996–2016 in the Netherlands. In addition, we examine whether these trends are related to unequal changes in avoidable mortality, separated by preventable and treatable causes of death. We find that while inequalities in mortality have decreased at ages up to 65, inequalities increased for the oldest age groups. The decline in inequality at the younger ages can, to a large extent, be explained by a strong decrease of mortality from preventable and cardiovascular causes among the poor. The link between inequality and avoidable mortality at the oldest ages is less straightforward. The increasing inequality at old age might be the result of the inequalities shifting from the young to the older age groups, or of the rich benefiting more from the recent health (care) improvements than the poor.     

George gives to geology Jane: The name letter effect and incidental similarity cues in fundraising

• People tend to like others with attributes similar to their own (the similarity principle) and favor products with names similar to their own (the name letter effect).
• In the present field experiment, the name letter effect and similarity principle are tested in a phonaton among alumni of Utrecht University, The Netherlands. First name and surname initials, fields of education, and association memberships of alumni were matched to those of students soliciting contributions in the phonaton.
• Female alumni with first names and fields of study similar to those of solicitors were more likely to donate, as were male alumni with first names similar to the field of study of solicitors. Both male and female alumni with first names similar to the name of the university donated more often than those with dissimilar names.
• Name letter effects are a cheap and effective instrument to increase donations in fundraising campaigns conducted by telephone.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CEO Leadership Styles and the Implementation of Organizational Diversity Practices: Moderating Effects of Social Values and Age

Drawing on strategic choice theory, we investigate the influence of CEO leadership styles and personal attributes on the implementation of organizational diversity management practices. Specifically, we examined CEO transformational and transactional leadership in relation to organizational diversity practices and whether CEO social values and age may moderate these relationships. Our results suggest that transformational leadership is most strongly associated with the implementation of diversity practices. Transactional leadership is also related to the implementation of diversity management practices when either CEO social values or age are relatively high. These findings extend previous work examining predictors of diversity management in organizations and highlight the central role that organizational leaders may play in the successful implementation of these practices.     

Bilateral Exchange Rates and Jobs

We study the labor market effects of realignment in fixed bilateral exchange rates, such as China's peg to the US dollar. We employ the open economy model by de Melo and Robinson to identify the core parameters of the real, trade side of the economy driving the unemployment effects of bilateral exchange rate realignment. A small open economy version of the model is explored analytically and a large multicountry version numerically. Analytics in the small open economy model show that unemployment effects of adjusting of a bilateral peg hinge on the fraction exported to and imported from the trading partner. A larger fraction exported to and a smaller fraction imported from the trading partner make it more likely that revaluation of a trading partner's currency has beneficial effects. Numerics in the large economy model show that Chinese revaluation can generate both positive and negative unemployment effects depending upon underlying parameter values. Adverse unemployment effects can go along with an improving trade balance.     

Differences in technology transfer between science-based and development-based industries: Transfer mechanisms and barriers

Although several studies in the wide body of literature on technology transfer have hinted at differences across industries, this still remains an understudied issue. Our study addresses this topic and considers to what degree technology transfer processes differ across different industrial sectors. To that end, we study to what extent technology transfer processes differ along both types of transfer mechanisms and key barriers inhibiting the transfer process. Based on a survey of Dutch practitioners on both sides of the transfer process, we test a number of hypotheses that differentiates between science-based regimes and development-based regimes. While our findings confirm our hypotheses concerning differences between the regimes regarding the use of specific transfer mechanisms, we also find that both regimes share a number of mechanisms that are similar. In addition, our findings show a remarkable degree of similarity among barriers inhibiting the process. We discuss these findings within the context of the broader literature and formulate policy implications.