The impact of supplier development on buyer competitive advantage: A path analytic model

As manufacturing firms increasingly realize that supplier performance is crucial to their establishing and maintaining competitive advantage, supplier development has been a subject of considerable research in supply chain management. We develop and test a path model to explore how supplier development practices affect buyer-supplier performance from the buying firm's perspective in the context of Hong Kong's electronics industry. The results show that top management, supplier evaluation, and supplier strategic objectives are significant determinants of transaction-specific supplier development, and that buyers that have closer collaborative relationships with suppliers may strengthen their competitive advantage.     

Technicity in nursing and the dispensation of thinking

While technology and health care delivery are inextricably and increasingly intertwined and technology has driven major advances in quality and efficiency in health care, technology does not replace the need for a thinking human being in care delivery. The term "technicity" refers to the tension created by the ability of humans to think versus their risk of being exploited as objects subservient to technologies. Drawing upon the philosophical works of Thoreau, Heidegger, and others, the authors pause on the conundrum created by expanding technology with the assumption that technological "improvements" should be evaluated with caution. Health care information systems are an example of tools that have improved our ability to collect and store information, but when systems "go down," staff can be rendered helpless. Similarly, technology can impose personal distance between the patient and provider in instances where staff are positioned as a mechanism for collecting data rather than a person interacting with another person. In some cases, health care providers function as navigators helping patients reach the correct pharmaceutical, rather than as teachers helping patients seek better health. Lastly, the tendency toward systems analysis in the context of the complex hospital environment leads solely toward uniform solutions rather than instances where a customized solution is warranted.     

Var and Impulse-Response: A Note

Journal of Quantitative Economics -     

Remanufacturing for the Circular Economy: An Examination of Consumer Switching Behavior

For the circular economy to be tenable, consumers need to not only return products after use, but also purchase products that are remanufactured. However, research finds that consumers have a poor opinion of remanufactured products and are typically not prepared to adopt them. Thus, development of the circular economy is dependent upon deeper understanding of consumers’ attitudes and behaviors. Research typically considers either micro‐level or macro‐level factors when assessing consumer perceptions of remanufactured products. The current research incorporates macro‐level factors of price, government incentives and environmental benefits with the moderating influence of micro‐level consumer attitudes to examine consumers’ intention to switch from purchasing new products to remanufactured products. The findings suggest that a consumer's attitude toward remanufactured products is an important moderating factor predicting consumer switching behavior to remanufactured products. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Dynamic effects of externalities,optimal saving and economic growth

Conclusion Recognizing the fact that provision of mixed public goods can result in both consumption externalities of the Samuelsonian variety as well as production externalities we set out to extend the earlier results of Rao and Kalpagam (1977) on the effect of public goods on economic growth. In so doing, we considered three standard specifications of production externalities and enlarged the concept of consumption displacement. Our basic conclusion is that the results of our earlier paper remain valid under the more general conditions set out in this paper.     

A note on the extension of tables for the Friedman statistic

Abstract  The tables for the Friedman rank-test arc extended using a sampling method. A table is given for the traditional significance levels .01, .025, .05 and .10 for number of blocks equal to 7 and 8 and for treatments of size 6 and 7. A brief discussion of available tables is also included along with an example of an application.     

The Behavioural Critique of Accounting

This note examines the implementation of the true and fair view requirement into the laws of Austria, Finland, Norway and Sweden. It builds on an earlier analysis of the 12 EU member states that had previously implemented the requirement. It is found that three of the four countries depart from the wording of the appropriate language versions of the Fourth Directive. Also, two of the countries do not implement the ‘override’, and the other two implement it in a way not done before, by reserving to the member state the specification of the allowed departures.     

Pay for Performance and Corporate Governance Reform

Directors’ pay and corporate governance continue to generate public outrage and calls for reform. Our meta‐regression analysis of all comparable UK pay‐for‐performance estimates finds little, if any, meaningful association between directors’ pay and corporate performance. However, there is evidence of the effectiveness of past “comply‐or‐explain” rules, especially the Cadbury Report. Unfortunately, the effects of past reform efforts tend to erode over time. This study also explores differences between pay–performance estimates, finding that these are largely explained by how pay and performance are measured by a given study.