Tqm: Instant Pudding For the Personnel Function?

Adrian Wilkinson and Mick Marchington, who are Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Industrial Relations at the Manchester School of Management, consider the long-running debate about the role of the personnel function and, in particular, the argument that line managers are now taking the lead in the development of HR initiatives. They argue that this debate obscures the reality of organisational diversity and that a more fruitful line of enquiry is to focus on the different roles which personnel practitioners may play. They stress the diversity and multiplicity of personnel contributions in the development of TQM initiatives uncovered in their recent case study research, and suggest that there is perhaps a more optimistic future for the personnel function than implied elsewhere.     

The Impact of Interest Rates and The Housing Market on The UK Economy

The Chancellor has asked Professor David Miles to examine the UK market for longer-term fixed rate mortgages. This paper by Adrian Cooper, which is part of a study commissioned by the Miles Review, presents the results of a series of simulations using the OEF Model of the UK economy to investigate the contribution of the housing market to macroeconomic volatility and the implications of changing the structure of mortgage finance from the current variable rate system linked to short-term interest rates to a fixed rate system linked to long rates. The main findings are that the housing market has been a contributor to past volatility in the UK economy, and that moving to a fixed rate structure would reduce the impact of a change in interest rates on key macroeconomic indicators.     

The effect of information load on decision makers' cue utilization levels and decision quality in a financial distress decision task

Seventeen practising auditors and sixty-seven accounting students participated in a decision making experiment that examined the effect of increasing amounts of accounting information on cue usage and decision quality. Each participant made financial distress decisions under three levels of information load. Approximately one-third of those participating apparently experienced information overload and exhibited an inverted-U relationship between information usage and information load; the others exhibited patterns of increasing cue usage. The individuals who apparently experienced information overload also reached decisions of lesser quality, as indicated by significantly lower decision making consistency, lesser agreement with a composite judge, and lower consensus.     

The ex-post behavior of firms offering optimal employment contracts

The influential papers of Azariadas (1975) and Baily (1974) have clearly demonstrated that with imperfect labor mobility expected profit maximizing firms will offer employment contracts that will not result in profit maximizing behavior once the ‘state of nature’ is disclosed. This Letter shows that such firms will behave as if their objective were to maximize the expected utility of each individual worker subject to a profit target. The rule that emerges when there is unemployment will be shown to be formally equivalent to Meade's Rule for optimal population [Meade (1955, ch. 6)].     

Seasonality in asset returns: Evidence from the gold market

In this paper we test monthly mean daily returns to gold over the period January 1975 to December 1984 against three definitions of seasonality. Weak evidence exists for seasonality under the second of the three definitions. However, this is not prima facie evidence of market inefficiency, as the pattern is consistent with seasonality in Eurodollar interest rates reported by other authors. Differences in the time pattern of returns between on- and off-shore rates raises further questions.     

Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework

We develop a model of staggered prices along the lines of Phelps (1978) and Taylor (1979, 1980), but utilizing an analytically more tractable price-setting technology. ‘Demands’ are derived from utility maximization assuming Sidrauski-Brock infinitely-lived families. We show that the nature of the equilibrium path can be found out on the basis of essentially graphical techniques. Furthermore, we demonstrate the usefulness of the model by analyzing the welfare implications of monetary and fiscal policy, and by showing that despite the price level being a predetermined variable, a policy of pegging the nominal interest rate will lead to the existence of a continuum of equilibria.     

Knowing and doing: the value of intelligent application in local government improvement

Little is known about what distinguishes managerial thought and practice in successful councils, as opposed to poorly-performing or failing organizations. Managers in high-performing councils in England were interviewed about their improvement practices. Their responses highlighted the importance of an in-depth understanding of customers, staff and the organizational environment; coupled with an inspiring vision of a better future. A commitment to learning was fundamental, forming the basis for an ‘intelligent application’ model of the improvement process.