Evaluating the operational performance of knowledge-based industries: the perspective of intellectual capital

Performance evaluation is more than a quantitative concept but should also take industrial characteristics into account in order to form an accurate evaluation. In the past, evaluations of the operational performance of knowledge-based industries have missed out a significant factor, which is intellectual capital (IC). By adopting data envelopment analysis (DEA), a multiple-objective decision making method, this study aims to construct an efficiency evaluation model for the Taiwanese digital content industry based on the perspective of IC. The empirical results suggest that the scale of the digital content companies does play an important role in influencing the operating efficiency. The firms have a small amount of capital can still attain optimal efficiency, from the perspective of IC. In addition, human resource capital and customer capital are the most significant influential factors that deserve digital content firms’ attention. It is suggested that enterprises in the digital content industries should focus more on managing their IC. DEA can provide the semiconductor firms’ operations with insights into resource allocation and competitive advantage as well as help with strategic decision-making.     

关于绩效审计研究的新思考

自20世纪60年代以来，不少学者对绩效审计展开研究，并取得了一些积极的成果，但总体研究状况并不乐观。本文分析了其中的原因，并就解决该问题提出了若干新的建议。     

浅析我国产业结构存在的问题及政策建议

从我国目前的经济发展现状来看,产业结构调整中存在一些问题和矛盾,只有解决这些问题,才能促进国民经济的健康、快速、稳定的发展。针对这些问题,我国产业结构必须进行合理有效地调整,制定适合我国情况的产业政策,促进产业结构的合理化和高度化。     

Comparative advantage and unemployment

Worker heterogeneity in productivity and labor supply is introduced into a matching model. Workers who earn high wages and work high-hours are identified as those with strong market comparative advantage—high rents from being employed. The model is calibrated to match separation, job finding, and employment in the SIPP data. The model predicts a big drop in employment for workers with weak comparative advantage during recessions. But the data show that workers with strong comparative advantage also display sizable employment fluctuations, implying that aggregate employment fluctuations are not explained by the responses of workers with small rents to employment.     

Diversity management and the effects on employees’ organizational commitment: Evidence from Japan and Korea

With globalization increasing, diversity management has emerged as an important workplace issue, even in the traditionally non-diversified companies of Japan and Korea. These companies will need to pay more attention to diversity management as a potentially competitive resource. Most of the existing studies in diversity have been conducted in the United States, and thus may not represent the situations of Asian countries, such as Japan and Korea, in which cultural values significantly differ and the labor force is highly homogeneous. The current research describes the realities of diversity management practices in Japanese and Korean companies, and empirically examines how the practices influence employees’ attitudes at the workplace. The results indicate that diversity management practices trigger positive effects on employees’ organizational commitment, which was mediated by their perception of procedural justice.     

Does Chatter Matter? The Impact of User-Generated Content on Music Sales

The Internet has enabled a new era of user-generated content, threatening the hegemony of traditional content generators as the primary sources of “legitimate” information. In this study, we examine the usefulness of such content, consisting of data from blogs and social networking sites, in predicting sales in the music industry. We track changes in online chatter for a sample of 108 albums for four weeks before and after their release dates. We identify the significance of variables on the observation date in predicting future album unit sales one, two, and three weeks ahead. Our findings are that future sales are positively correlated with (a) the volume of blog posts about an album, and (b) traditional factors such as whether the album is released by a major label and reviews from mainstream sources like Rolling Stone. More generally, the study provides some preliminary answers for marketing managers interested in assessing the relative importance of the burgeoning number of “Web 2.0” information metrics that are becoming available on the Internet. The study also provides a framework for thinking about when user-generated content influences decision making.     

管理者的绩效三角与企业文化效应研究

笔者提出管理者绩效三角模式,揭示管理者或者管理团队的素质与能力禀赋以及与特定企业的企业文化的适应关系.管理者或管理团队的素质与能力可以区分为精神素质结构、业务能力结构、知识结构三大维度;每一维度的体现值越大,对管理绩效的贡献就会越大;而在三个维度的体现值总和不变的条件下,三者相等时的素质与能力结构可以实现最优的管理绩效;三个维度的体现值、管理绩效与管理者或管理团队所发挥出的企业文化效应成正比关系.     

Calibrating an algorithm for estimating transactions from FXFX exchange rate quotes

In this paper we investigate the efficiency of a class of transaction-generating algorithms, originally suggested in Bollerslev and Domowitz (1993). Our comparison utilizes real transaction data recorded over Reuters D2000-2 electronic broking system for 7 h in June 1993 and transaction data generated from FXFX quotations over an identical period. Results suggest that, at this high-frequency data sampling, the performance of these transaction-generating algorithms is poor, with the most likely explanation of this outcome due to the high-frequency characteristics of FXFX spreads and quotation intensity.