Internet searches and transactions on the Dutch housing market

We use Google searches of the word ‘mortgage’ to explain monthly housing transactions in the Netherlands in the period from 2004 until 2015. Our estimates indicate that Google searches of the previous months are significantly positively associated with housing transactions in the current month. This shows evidence that Internet search data can provide information about real market behaviour.     

Controlling New Products in Large Diversified Firms: A Presidential Perspective

This article reports the findings of a pilot research project which investigated the nature and degree of control that presidents of large, diversified firms exercise over their new product initiatives. The research findings of this exploratory study challenge some of the conventional notions that exist regarding the management of new products. The control dimensions associated with "high" and "low" new product output situations are identified, and the role of a new product's strategic category in understanding the variations in presidential control is underscored. Most important, the findings represent a first step in capturing the "balance" that presidents appear to strike between "loose" and "tight" control when managing new products. As such, they suggest the potential for developing a control template against which presidents of other large, diversified firms might someday be able to judge their own new product control practices.     

Science and industry: a theory of networks and paradigms

The recent interest in 'network' forms of organization serves as a starting point to understand better the dynamic characteristics of technology development. Network theory allows one to describe the relationship between 'actors' involved in the development of new technologies, both cross-sectionaily and longitudinally, and, as a consequence, to model the structural and behavioural developement of a community of actors (regardless of whether this 'community' is defined as a set of individuals, e.g. the 'scientific' community, or is defined as a collection of organizations, e.g. an industry). In this paper, this network approach is used to develope a theoretical framework to undersiand the knowledge transition from 'scientific' paradigm status to a 'technological' paradigm status. It is belived that the propositions made in this paper will enable truly empirical studies on the nature of the development of 'scientific' and 'technological' paradigms.     

The purpose and effectiveness of technology transfer to small businesses by government-sponsored innovation centres

The Dutch government instituted regional innovation centres (ICs) for the stimulationof technology transfer to small business. In the context of an evaluation of these ICs, technology transfer is analysed on the basis of the adoption process according to Rogers. Attention is given to problems of bounded rationality, in particular tacit knowledge that arise especially among small business. Rogers criteria for adpoption are extended and supplemented with criteria for product innovation. The purpose of ICs is reconstructed as the guidance of firms in the adoption process, on the basis of the criteria. The analysis develops into a market segmentation of firms as a basis for a marketing plan for ICs. The segmentation corresponds with the taxonomy of firms in the context of diffusion that was developed by Pavitt on the basis of an innovation data base. Effectiveness of ICs is defined as the setting of proper priorities with respect to market segmentation, and a guidance of firms in the adoption process which enters and leaves the adoption process neither too late nor too early with approaches adopted to the market segments.     

Pay for performance: motivating the chief nurse executive

A recent membership survey of the Association of Nurse Executives indicates that an increasing number of nurse executives are receiving bonus compensation based upon the criteria of budget performance, patient satisfaction, and relations with physicians and nurses.     

Getting bang for your buck: the specificity of compensation and benefits information in job advertisements*

Even though some organizations are trying to attract high-level applicants through offering superior compensation and benefits, reward statements in job advertisements are sometimes rather general and vague. On the basis of person-environment fit theories, we examine whether providing more specific information on attractive reward packages in job advertisements leads to higher perceived person-reward fit and subsequent job pursuit intentions. Furthermore, based on signaling theory, we propose that person-reward fit allows job seekers to make inferences about broader person-organization fit. Applying an online experimental design among 283 experienced potential applicants, we find that more specific compensation and benefits information results in higher job pursuit intentions and that this relationship is fully mediated by person-reward fit perceptions. In turn, the effect of person-reward fit is partially mediated by perceptions of person-organization fit, indicating that people might use reward information as signals for other organizational attributes in early stages of recruitment.