New development: Are social impact bonds (SIBs) viable in Italy? A new roadmap

This paper presents a roadmap to support the development of social impact bonds (SIBs) in Italy. Current barriers and opportunities are explained. SIBs should be piloted in areas where the cultural, ideological, technical and governance barriers are low. Accurate measurement systems will be necessary and an effective governance structure needs to be agreed. With careful piloting and follow-up, the SIB model could be a solution to welfare and public service funding in Italy.     

Human resource management in the Canadian manufacturing sector

Using a sample of 356 Canadian manufacturing organizations, this study examines the pattern of implementation of a wide range of HRM practices including external recruitment procedures, internal job posting systems, performance appraisal methods, job evaluation methods and pay-for-performance systems. A comparison of the adopted HRM practices between large and small firms and between union and non-union firms is also made. The results show that the main difference between large and small firms lies in the recruitment procedure and the job evaluation process. The difference between the union and non-union firms is associated with the greater emphasis placed on performance by the latter.

This study also presents some evidence regarding the perceived importance of twenty HRM activities. The evidence suggests that the three most important activities include health and safety compliance, employee/labour relations and disciplinary issues. On the other hand, the three least important ones are conducting attitudinal surveys, public relations activities and career planning development.     

Wages and skills utilization: effect of broad skills and generic skills on wages in Singapore

Many people go for training to upgrade their skills which is hoped to pave the way for better pay. But what are the kinds of skills that really affect wages? Employers have emphasized the value of generic skills such as interpersonal and communication skills, teamwork and problem solving. Does possession of these skills translate to at least the same or better wages as compared with having broad skills represented by educational qualifications and job‐related training? This paper, arising from the research project on the Skills Utilisation in Singapore, aims to answer which skills can have more influence on wages and which job‐related training in terms of training duration can have more impact on wages. Using ordinal logistic regression, our findings show that educational qualification and initial training time can influence wages as well as utilization of leadership, planning and problem‐solving skills.     

Management forecast credibility and underreaction to news

In this paper, we first document evidence of underreaction to management forecast news. We then hypothesize that the credibility of the forecast influences the magnitude of this underreaction. Relying on evidence that more credible forecasts are associated with a larger reaction in the short window around the management forecasts and a smaller post-management forecast drift in returns, we show that the magnitude of the underreaction is smaller for firms that provide more credible forecasts. Our paper contributes to the literature by providing out-of-sample evidence of the drift in returns documented in the post-earnings-announcement drift literature, with the credibility of the news being one explanation for the phenomenon.     

Antecedents to complaint behaviour in the context of restaurant goers

Abstract

This article deals with the process by which consumer complaint behaviour is formed. The general aim is to analyse the nature of this type of response to dissatisfaction, describing its development in terms of how it is influenced by a combination of several factors already researched in the literature. The most relevant contributions from the related theoretical work indicate that public and private responses (complaint behaviour) are the most common reactions of consumers when faced with a dissatisfactory experience. A group of determinants which influence these responses in different ways has also been identified. The main objective of this study is to analyse the relationship between the different determinants of complaint behaviour with the aim of identifying the variables which exert the greatest influence.     

Habilitation von Jutta Röser an der Universität Hamburg

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Modeling asymmetric comovements of asset returns

Existing time-varying covariance models usually impose strongrestrictions on how past shocks affect the forecasted covariancematrix. In this article we compare the restrictions imposedby the four most popular multivariate GARCH models, and introducea set of robust conditional moment tests to detect misspecification.We demonstrate that the choice of a multivariate volatilitymodel can lead to substantially different conclusions in anyapplication that involves forecasting dynamic covariance matrices(like estimating the optimal hedge ratio or deriving the riskminimizing portfolio). We therefore introduce a general modelwhich nests these four models and their natural 'asymmetric'extensions. The new model is applied to study the dynamic relationbetween large and small firm returns.     

Entangled Affiliations and Attitudes: An Analysis of the Influences on Environmental Policy Stakeholders' Behavioral Intentions

We examined attitudes as one potential influence on the behavioral intentions of three stakeholder groups commonly in conflict. Business managers (n = 97), government environmental regulators (n = 69), and active members of pro-environmental groups (n = 49) were surveyed to assess the differences among these groups in their attitudes toward property rights, environmental regulation, and technology. We compared the influence of these attitudes and stakeholder group affiliation on intentions to engage in pro-environmental behavior. The attitudes measures explained a significant amount of the variance in behavioral intention, even after group membership was controlled. Theoretical implications of these findings for stakeholder theory are discussed along with some practical applications of these findings for stakeholder negotiations and management practices.