The Existence and Nature of Physician Agency: Evidence of Stinting from the British National Health Service

The ability of physicians to make take-it-or-leave-it offers of treatment implies that even fully informed consumers of health care may receive treatments that they would not themselves choose. This paper examines both the extent and direction of this distortion away from patient choice—the physician agency effect—using a large patient-level claims-based data set for dental treatments under the British National Health Service. We find that an improvement in the outside opportunities of patients results in a small but significant increase in the level of service provided when dentists are remunerated on a fee-for-service basis. This is suggestive of stinting, wherein physician agency results in undertreatment relative to what patients would choose. We further find that the effect is increased when patients are fully insulated from the cost of their treatment.     

Re-thinking the future of work: Beyond binary hierarchies

How will work be organised in the future? This paper reveals that although there are multiple stories about the future of work, a similar storyline is adopted across many of the competing visions. Most visions firstly squeeze all forms of work into one side or the other or some dichotomy and then proceed to temporally and/or normatively sequence the two sides of the dualism and finally label the resultant one-dimensional and linear trajectory as some -ism, -ation or post-something-or-other. This paper evaluates critically such hierarchical binary narratives (e.g., the shift from informal to formal work, non-commodified to commodified work, localisation to globalisation, Fordism to post-Fordism, bureaucracy to post-bureaucracy) and displays how these dominant narratives, as well as the counter narratives that simply invert the temporal and/or hierarchical sequencing of these dichotomies, over-simplify lived practice. The paper concludes by offering a way forward that transcends these one-dimensional linear tales and recognises the heterogeneous and multiple directions of work in order to provide a more kaleidoscope-like understanding of the direction of work and open up the future of work to new possibilities.     

Explaining participation in off-the-books entrepreneurship in Ukraine: a gendered evaluation

Despite the growing recognition that many entrepreneurs conduct some or all of their trade off-the-books, few have evaluated whether there are variations in the rationales of men and women engaging in this shadow enterprise culture. Reporting face-to-face interviews with 331 entrepreneurs in Ukraine during 2005–06, of whom 90 per cent operated partially or wholly off-the-books, the finding is that women are largely ‘reluctant’ entrepreneurs and men more commonly chiefly ‘willing’ entrepreneurs, although both motives are normally co-present to differing degrees in entrepreneurs’ explanations and their relative importance changes over time. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for both further research and public policy.     

Performance pay and assortative matching

We show that couples sort on performance pay with dual receipt couples much more likely than predicted by random. In addition, we show that the return to performance pay appears largely invariant to whether one's spouse earns performance pay. The major exception is that among the college educated, the return to performance pay is larger for women when their spouse also receives performance pay. Thus, dual receipt households concentrate the returns to performance pay hinting that performance pay may influence the distribution of household income.     

中英高等教育之间的联结

高等教育往往是不同国家之间联系、发展的出发点,学校与学生之间长久关系的全球性联结的重要性已被世界各大院校所认知。 我所就职的大学──诺丁汉大学,很早就认识到中国的重要性,并且,多年来一直致力于与中国、澳大利亚、北美及欧洲的一流大学进行交流与合作,并且组建了 Ｕｎｉｖｅｒｓｉｔａｓ ２１──一个具有世界一流研究技术水平的资深大学所组成的国际性网络组织。 组建Ｕｎｉｖｅｒｓｉｔａｓ ２１的目的在于加强各大学之间的联系,鼓励我们的员工相互合作,学生相互交换,我们彼此间学到很多,通过大学之间的合作与共同努力…     

e-Relationships for e-Readiness: Culture and corruption in international e-B2B

The role of electronic networks in B2B relationships has been growing exponentially. From massive internet B2B exchanges to tiny RFID chips, B2B is increasingly becoming e-B2B. Whilst e-B2B has been explored intra-nationally, its international counterpart is less well documented; as has been the role that culture might play in the development of international e-B2B relationships. In this paper we address this important issue of international e-business relationships. Specifically we explore the interconnection between national e-readiness and cultural values, and address the research question: How do cultural values impact a nation's readiness to engage in e-business? Drawing upon international surveys we link cultural values with national e-business infrastructure. Our findings suggest an intriguing link between cultural values and a nation's readiness for e-B2B. From these results we develop managerial recommendations and extrapolate research opportunities.     

Strategies for creating value through individual and collective customer experiences

Despite tremendous interest in how online communities create value, existing research tends to focus on limited means through which such value is generated. In this article, we develop a conceptual model of customer value formation. This model rests on two dimensions, namely whether value is formed in the customer or provider domain and whether the value is individual or collective in nature. This enables value formation to be characterized in four ways and enables a more nuanced view of value formation to emerge. Firms are encouraged to reflect on their efforts to support each of the four value formation types. In particular, our conceptualization challenges companies to consider customer contexts outside of customer-firm interaction as important sources of value creation for customers. Such reflection enables practitioners to develop strategies for supporting individual and collective value creation across both the customer and provider domains.