Three generations of Telework: New ICTs and the (R)evolution from Home Office to Virtual Office

‘New ICTs’, such as smartphones and tablet computers, have revolutionised work and life in the 21st Century. Crucial to this development is the detachment of work from traditional office spaces. Today's office work is often supported by Internet connections, and thus can be done from anywhere at any time. Research on detachment of work from the employer's premises actually dates back to the previous century. In the 1970s and 1980s, Jack Nilles and Allan Toffler predicted that work of the future would be relocated into or nearby employees’ homes with the help of technology, called ‘Telework’. Analysing technological advancements—the enabling forces of change in this context—over four decades sheds new light on this term: they have fostered the evolution of Telework in distinct stages or ‘generations’. Today's various location‐independent, technology‐enabled new ways of working are all part of the same revolution in the inter‐relationship between paid work and personal life.     

Strategic Staffing and Small‐Firm Performance

Although staffing can be a critical determinant of whether small businesses succeed or fail, there has been less research in this area than might be expected, given the large numbers of such firms. While there has been some research on specific recruiting and selection practices, there has been little attention to the strategic aspects of staffing. We investigated relationships between strategic approaches to staffing and small‐firm performance using lagged survey data from 139 founders and owners of small firms. Results indicate that recruiting approaches imitating the practices (processes) of larger businesses are positively related to a perceptual measure of firm performance. Selection approaches stressing a growth orientation are also positively related to firm performance. Finally, founders’ and owners’ perceptions of the strategic importance of human resources moderate the relationship of firm performance with imitative recruiting practices as well as with growth‐oriented selection practices. An important contribution of this article is that contextual knowledge facilitates our understanding of the performance implications of staffing practices in small firms. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Stakeholder incentives and reforms in China's state-owned enterprises: A common-property theory

We argue that state-owned enterprise reform has failed in China, because incentive mechanisms that confront the key stakeholders did not elicit efficient behavior. Although incentive mechanisms were intended to elicit more effort, incentives became de facto improper because of a number of developments. This paper analyzes alternative sharing or incentive systems and highlights the interdependency among property rights, incentives, and enforcement. A common-property model is put forward to analyze recent reforms and to show that alternative property right assignments have complex and diverse configurations of positive and negative externalities. Incentive mechanisms that favor more equal distribution are the most inefficient, whereas those that differentiate among heterogeneous stakeholders based on effective, rather than actual, effort are more promising. An ideal arrangement that combines equal sharing and proportional effort is proposed.     

Assessing aggregate reallocation effects with heterogeneous inputs,and evidence across countries

Theoretically, reallocating an input from a firm where the input has low marginal product to a firm where the input has high marginal product would increase aggregate productivity without any underlying change in technology. This paper argues that measuring these reallocation effects requires accounting for detailed input types because, for example, differences in wages across producers often reflect the skill mix of workers, not allocative inefficiency. The paper develops an approach to measuring reallocation that accounts for worker skill and the composition of capital assets, thus focuses on the set of countries for which this information is available. The results show once input heterogeneity is accounted for, the effects of reallocation on aggregate productivity were small on average, but sizable in a subset of countries. Panel regressions indicate that reallocation effects are related to population distribution and government effectiveness.     

The Contribution of Associate's Degree Holders to U.S. Earnings,Labor Quality,Productivity, and Overall Economic Growth

There is substantial evidence on the importance of education as a driver of earnings, productivity, and economic growth. However, knowledge of the specific role of associate's degrees in U.S. economic growth is limited. We analyze the sources of U.S. economic growth and identify the contribution of associate's degree holders to improvements in earnings, labor quality, productivity, and overall economic growth. We find evidence that substitution toward workers with associate's degrees has increased U.S. earnings, aggregate labor quality, and productivity, and that these effects are concentrated in the health care, trade, and government sectors. While the average educational attainment of people entering the labor force has plateaued, our results suggest that shifting workers from some college to associate degrees could improve earnings, the quality of the workforce, productivity, and growth, potentially without more time spent in school.     

Self-selection and variations in the laboratory measurement of other-regarding preferences across subject pools: evidence from one college student and two adult samples

We measure the other-regarding behavior in samples from three related populations in the upper Midwest of the United States: college students, non-student adults from the community surrounding the college, and adult trainee truckers in a residential training program. The use of typical experimental economics recruitment procedures made the first two groups substantially self-selected. Because the context reduced the opportunity cost of participating dramatically, 91 % of the adult trainees solicited participated, leaving little scope for self-selection in this sample. We find no differences in the elicited other-regarding preferences between the self-selected adults and the adult trainees, suggesting that selection is unlikely to bias inferences about the prevalence of other-regarding preferences among non-student adult subjects. Our data also reject the more specific hypothesis that approval-seeking subjects are the ones most likely to select into experiments. Finally, we observe a large difference between self-selected college students and self-selected adults: the students appear considerably less pro-social.     

When do wholly owned subsidiaries perform better than joint ventures?

This study explores when wholly owned subsidiaries outperform joint ventures with local partners. In order to avoid the endogeneity problem inherent in foreign subsidiaries' operating mode decisions that might confound performance measurement, we employ the propensity score matching method, along with the difference‐in‐differences approach, and compare the performances of joint ventures turned wholly owned subsidiaries vis‐à‐vis continuing joint ventures. Based on foreign subsidiaries' financial data in China for 1998–2006, we find strong evidence that converted wholly owned subsidiaries outperform continuing joint ventures in industries characterized by high levels of intangible assets such as technology or brand, after controlling for factors that may affect the conversion decision. This finding is consistent with the prediction of transaction cost theory. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Five dimensions of organizational citizenship behavior: Comparing antecedents and levels of engagement in China and the US

The purpose of this article is to investigate differences between the US and China in (1) employees’ level of engagement in the five dimensions of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) identified by Organ (1988), and (2) the effects of perceived distributive justice and perceived supervisor support on OCB. Results suggest that Chinese respondents have a higher level of sportsmanship and courtesy, but a lower level of civic virtue than the US respondents. In addition, perceived supervisor support is significantly related to all five OCB dimensions for the Chinese sample, whereas for the US sample, perceived distributive justice is significantly related to conscientiousness and sportsmanship and marginally related to altruism. A follow-up study was conducted in the US to examine the direct effects of such cultural factors as individualistic/collectivistic orientation and power distance orientation on each of the five OCB dimensions, and their moderating effects on the relationships of the five OCB dimensions with perceived supervisor support and perceived distributive justice. Results suggest an effect of individualistic/collectivistic orientation on the five OCB dimensions. No relationship was found between power distance orientation and OCB. Moreover, the results did not support our predictions regarding the moderating effects of individualistic/collectivistic orientation and power distance orientation on the relationships between OCB dimensions and perceived supervisor support or perceived distributive justice.     

Enjoyment in zoos

Abstract

The range of paid work carried out within the home suggests that a growing number of home‐working individuals will find themselves in distinctive positions in relation to the flows and interconnections of the space–time compression. This has potentially significant consequences for their experience of leisure. This article discusses how space and place within the home are contested issues that manifest in different ways across time. Consideration is made on the fluid nature of the spatial boundaries within the home environment and the impact this has upon the notion of the home as a site of, and for, leisure. The article explores how the home represents a physical setting and a matrix of social relationships, and discusses how this matrix proves especially complex for individuals engaged in home‐based work, particularly when aligned with notions of leisure choices and constraints.