The interplay between learning strategy and organizational structure in predicting career success

The institutionalization of management development and the money spent on it is in sharp contrast to the importance attached to what we know about how managers learn and whether it helps them to get promotion, given the specific organizational context in which they work. We therefore examined career success as a complex positive or negative function of the individual's learning strategy and the organization's structure. One hundred and twenty-seven managers from three government-related organizations completed a questionnaire. A deep learning strategy, characterized by a focus on meaning and relations, fosters career success, especially in a lowly specialized context. In contrast, a surface learning strategy, characterized by a focus on instructions and facts, hampers career success, especially in a highly integrated context. The findings strongly suggest that management development programmes need to be made to measure, taking into account both how the manager learns and how the organization is structured.     

Assessing risks – challenges posed by the European general product safety directive

The concept of risk appears in a prominent way in the recently revised European Directive on General Product Safety (GPSD). Risk assessment is therefore an important tool for the success of the Directive; the question is how risk assessment should be carried out in a systematic manner in order to meet the aims of the Directive. In this paper, the references in the GPSD concerning the concept of risk are reviewed and compared with reported problems in European risk assessment. Existing guidelines for risk assessment are examined in order to determine what factors determine the consistency of the outcome. This leads to recommendations for a process that could be followed in order to make risk assessment successful in the context of the GPSD. On the basis of existing guidelines for risk assessment, criteria are formulated with which methods of risk assessment should comply. A stepwise process is proposed in order to develop a common method of risk assessment that can be applied in Europe to support the GPSD. The requirements for risk management in the new GPSD are rather and lack specification, both for producers and for enforcement authorities. The Directive further refers to the need to develop non-binding guidelines in due course. Sources of different outcomes of the risk assessment process are outlined in this paper as well as possibilities to achieve a more consistent basis for decisions, more uniformity and transparency. These are essential conditions if one wishes to avoid both undue trade barriers and unsafe products on the market. A leading role for the European Commission seems necessary to make sure that the intentions of the GPSD are accomplished.     

Is pay related to performance in The Netherlands? An analysis of Dutch executive compensation, 2002–2006

This paper analyzes the characteristics of Dutch pay arrangements. We show that (1) studying executive compensation outside the Anglo-American countries adds insights to the pay for performance literature, (2) pay for performance relations are different for various types of executives and for various compensation components, (3) attention to the methodological treatment of conditional stock (option) grants is important, and (4) researchers should go beyond stock market performance indicators to detect the performance relatedness of pay. All in all, a myriad of pay-performance relationships has been found for the Dutch case, when the above is accounted for.     

Job search and academic achievement

The paper develops a structural model for the labor market behavior of students entering the labor market. We explicitly model the trade-off between devoting effort to studying and to job search. Furthermore, we allow for on-the-job search. The model is estimated using a unique data set of individuals who completed undergraduate education in the Netherlands between 1995 and 2001. Our estimation results show that labor market returns of high grades are low. Wage increases between jobs are explained by labor market friction rather than returns of early work experience. Our results indicate that a 1 percentage point decrease in the unemployment rate increases wage offers on average by 3 percent, but that the amount of job search effort is not very sensitive to business cycle fluctuations. Policy simulations show that study effort and hence academic achievement are much more sensitive to financial incentives than job search effort and labor market outcomes.     

Future sustainability and images

Ambitions for sustainable development invariably lead to pondering the future, because sustainability issues require a future oriented transition of existing, unsustainable systems and practices. Working towards transition requires thorough experimentation with a broad range of innovation projects. However, in the public arena, many such projects are met with stereotypical images, which influence their innovative potential in often unpredictable ways. What is the role of multiple images in complex sustainable development issues, and what are promising approaches to deal with their associated problems? We report current insights from selected cases from TransForum, a large-scale innovation programme toward transition of Dutch agriculture. Our preliminary results show that that simple images can cause a disregard of complexity and that a negative societal image can stifle a project's innovative potential. Images need to me monitored and managed to increase the future potential of innovation projects. Visualisation techniques may foster taking complexity into account in an innovation project. Furthermore, increasing image awareness can help a project to adapt more effectively to existing societal discourses and the images embedded in them. Finally, fostering effective transition requires the creation of new, enticing, images, that do justice to the ambition for transition.     

The effects of political fragmentation on investments: A case study of watermill construction in medieval Ponthieu, France

The link between political fragmentation and economic development has been frequently discussed in the pre-modern growth literature, yet, it has mostly been treated in a general manner. This paper provides a specific and detailed case study of the patterns of watermill construction in the northern French region of Ponthieu, France. The results suggest that political fragmentation in the juridical context of medieval Europe positively affected investments in machinery. I concentrate on the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a period characterized by political fragmentation and weak central authority, and provide original evidence that watermill construction was significantly more intense in areas where authority was fragmented and landholding was divided between numerous landlords. I suggest that the mechanism behind the phenomenon is that in the institutional context of medieval Europe political fragmentation reduced the territorial extent of lords' jurisdiction and therefore, of their monopoly over watermill construction. This, in return, promoted the construction of neighboring watermills, thereby affecting the number of watermills and the level of competition in the milling industry.     

Opportunity,fair process and relationship value: career development as a driver of proactive work behaviour

In line with recent findings from organisational justice theory, we hypothesised that employee proactive behaviour and careerist orientation is predicted by the interplay of perceived favourability of career development opportunities, the perceived fairness of the procedures used to decide them, and employee organisational commitment. Employees (N = 325) of a large financial services organisation responded to a self‐completion questionnaire. As predicted, when career development opportunities were viewed unfavourably, perceived procedural justice was significantly and positively related to individual proactive behaviour and significantly and negatively related to careerist orientation but only when organisational commitment was high. It appears that high procedural justice may only ‘offset’ the negative effects of unfavourable career development opportunities when employees identify with, and are committed to, their organisation. Further support is presented for a relational, rather than instrumental, model of procedural justice when reflecting on employee reactions to their employers’ policies and decision‐making. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.