A comparative analysis of performance assessment: international joint venture managers versus regional headquarters managers

This paper examines a relatively unexplored dimension within the IHRM literature: whether JV CEOs and representatives of their foreign parents' regional headquarters differ in their evaluations of JV effectiveness. This study is based upon a sample of 153 JVs located in China. Existing theories suggest an alternate rationale detailing why the evaluations of JV managers and their foreign parent companies should differ and why they should be similar. Our investigation generally finds that evaluations are similar, with some differentiation occurring when our sample is divided by JV age and by JV industry. Overall, the results suggest that isomorphic forces may exist between managers of JVs and managers of their foreign parents in the JV system.     

The desirability of workfare in the presence of misreporting

In this paper we demonstrate that in addition to its acknowledged screening role, workfare—namely, introducing work (or training) requirements for welfare eligibility in means-tested programs—also serves to mitigate income misreporting by welfare claimants. It achieves this goal by effectively increasing the marginal cost of earning extra income in the shadow economy for claimants who satisfy the work requirement. We show that when misreporting is sufficiently prevalent, supplementing a means-tested transfer system with work requirements is socially desirable.     

Optimum pricing of mutual guarantees for credit

The main finding of this paper is that under financial market impediments and asymmetric information, a mutually guaranteed and correctly schemed and priced insurance credit contract should have an abnormal actuarial profit. Such a contract improves welfare by simultaneously eliminating underinvestment (UI) and overinvestment (OI) and by reducing the probability of the insurer’s ruin. This solution is relevant for mutual credit insurance agencies and international or governmental agencies interested in increasing the value creation of small and medium enterprises that suffer from limited access to equity and debt markets.     

Three approaches to technology in science and their organizational correlates

Three alternative approaches to organizational technology and their application to science and university departments are examined. Perrow's model of organizational goals provides the framework for generating and testing hypotheses regarding standardized units of production and their correlates on the one hand, and stability and change on the other hand. The results and implications of Perrow's model to the science system are discussed and elaborated. Enough evidence is provided to suggest that the notion of technology might be intuitively well understood, but its construct validity is incomplete and needs further investigation. Even in the sciences, with a limited selection of fields, one finds considerable differences among the three approaches to technology.     

Venture capital: Structure and incentives

Venture capital is a major source of financing for firms in their early stages of development. Such businesses, especially in the high technology industries, are characterized by a high degree of uncertainty and asymmetry of information. In this paper we analyze the relationship between a venture capital organization (“capitalist”) and the initial owner of an entrepreneurial entity in which it invests (“entrepreneur”). We focus on the agency problems and derive a compensation system. In our model the capitalist provides a combination of equity and debt financing while the owner provides equity financing which serves as a signal affecting the beliefs (“optimism”) of the capitalist. The interesting result is that since the capitalist is assumed to be more risk averse than the entrepreneur, he is made to be more optimistic than the entrepreneur at the optimum.