Suit the action to the word,the word to the action: Eliciting motives for trust and reciprocity by attitudinal and behavioural measures

Two important primitives of social capital are the disposition to trust and to reciprocate manifested in social life. In this paper, attitudinal and behavioural evidence is used to investigate the nature of the motivations underlying behaviour in Trust and Dictator games. In doing so, we have three aims. First, to find out whether, and to what extent, answers to a questionnaire about attitudes towards trust and civicness predict subjects’ behaviour. Second, to disentangle strategic from other-regarding motivations by comparing behaviour in Trust and Dictator Games. Third, to investigate to what extent a correspondence could be found between subjects’ attitudinal ‘type’ and their behaviour in the two interactive experimental settings. The paper builds on previous work in the area and in particular finds that using surveys to distinguish between the behavioural responses of different attitudinal types–“Trusting” or “Prudent” on the one hand and “Trustworthy” or “Untrustworthy” on the other, allows us to dig deeper into the underlying motivations of the experimental subjects. The self-declared trusting tend to manifest trust by investing more in the risky interaction than the prudent, and the self-declared trustworthy are inclined to return more than the untrustworthy. Moreover, the self-reported trustworthy and untrustworthy tend to manifest positive or negative reciprocity, respectively. The evidence suggests that the former are moved by the intention to reward and the latter by the desire to punish a stingy Sender by returning an even smaller amount than received. This seems to confirm the “multiple self” view (Elster, 1986), whereby in the personality of each individual many components–possibly distant in terms of the motivating sentiments–are gathered together.     

An investigation into the compatibility of consultation and performance comparison in the UK's policy of Best Value

The policy of Best Value (BV) has been at the centre of the modernization of English and Welsh local government since 1999. At the heart of BV, is a performance management framework aimed at securing continuous improvement in the delivery of local services. This article critically examines the performance comparison – comprising performance indicators, audits and inspections – and consultation elements of this framework from the perspective of how they provide separate avenues to confirm the achievement of continuous improvement in local services. Three key issues are singled out for particular attention and investigated from a conceptual and empirical basis. The first issue relates to the construct validity of the performance comparison and consultation process in terms of the extent to which they are able to identify failing local services. The second issue involves an examination of whether the performance comparison elements of BV are conducted consistently between authorities, auditors and inspectors and thus the extent to which they provide accurate information about the performance of local services. The third issue identifies the impact of the consultation and performance comparison elements of BV on aspects of service delivery not subjected to these two confirmatory processes. Survey findings drawn from the views of 389 BV lead officers across local authorities in the UK reveal that whilst most respondents believe that the performance comparison elements of BV are able to accurately ‘identify failing services’, they strongly dispute the consistency of the performance comparison elements of BV. In addition, the survey findings reveal that more respondents than not believe that the performance comparison processes of BV serve to adversely skew resources away from areas of activity subject to less formal measurement. Detailed case study evidence drawn from three local authorities involved in the completion of the entire BV process offer further insights into the compatibility of the performance comparison and consultation processes of BV.     

The intra‐alliance division of value created through collaboration

The differential benefits reaped by individual partners are a major determinant of the impact of strategic alliances on firm performance and an important (dis)incentive for alliance partners to collaborate in value creation. Theoretically, we lack an explicit theory of intra‐alliance value division; empirically, previous analysis has been hampered by methodological challenges. We propose a bargaining framework for intra‐alliance value appropriation, as well as a measure for capturing its variation. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 200 biotechnology R&D alliances, and are able to explain variation in value appropriation across alliance partners, partner types, and individual firms of each type. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Best Value: Is It Delivering?

The enhancement of public service performance has been a central concern of successive Labour governments since 1997. Best Value is intended to address this by replacing the former policy of compulsory competitive tendering with a policy that has been likened to a local government version of total quality management. In this article the authors draw on a survey of local government officers to explore the extent to which BV is providing the basis for improvements in the quality of local services and finds mixed results.     

Australia's switch to international financial reporting standards: a perspective from account preparers

This study reports the findings of a structured telephone survey on adoption of international financial reporting standards (IFRS) from 60 firms drawn from among Australia's top 200 corporations. Although we find evidence of strong systematic variation in survey responses with factors such as firm size, industry background and expected impacts on financial performance, the general results indicate that many respondents have not been well prepared for the transition and are generally very sceptical about the claimed benefits of IFRS as enunciated in the government's Corporate Law Economic Reform Program. The results have implications to other international reporting jurisdictions, particularly the European Union, where adoption of IFRS is already underway.     

Attrition bias in the Capitalia panel

The Capitalia survey of manufacturing firms in Italy represents an important source of panel data on Italian firms. Panel attrition, however, represents a potential obstacle to such use of the sample. In this paper, sample entry and exit behaviour are studied, and a test for attrition bias is carried out in order to evaluate the potential for using panels constructed from the Capitalia survey. The analysis reveals the presence of distorting panel attrition effects in simple models of firm performance. In addition, the paper discusses both the implications of attrition bias for estimates and also briefly considers possible solutions. Finally, some suggestions are made as to how to reduce the impact of attrition bias through the provision of additional information on the nature of the attrition process available to the surveying institution at the moment of data collection.     

Adding business value: a strategy for identifying and patenting environment‐related inventions and avoiding patent infringement

For many environmental companies, reaching financial goals is a function of identifying and protecting intellectual property assets, keeping those assets from falling into the hands of competitors and avoiding litigation disputes over the use of those assets. Recognizing that intellectual assets are valuable tangible and intangible assets of a company is the first step in maximizing the value of those assets. However, many environmental companies are not aware that some of their technologies, ideas, concepts and know‐how are potentially patentable and, therefore, fail to maximize the value of those assets by taking advantage of the limited monopolies that patent systems provide to the owners of patents. In the ever‐increasing competitive global market, companies should evaluate their intellectual assets to ensure they are adequately protecting those assets by obtaining patents for ideas that are patentable. As more patents for environmental technologies issue from patent offices around the world, however, the likelihood of infringing one of those patents can increase. Therefore, avoiding infringing others' patents while at the same time identifying and patenting the company's own technologies should be a key business strategy regardless of the size of the environmental company. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment