Sustainable Development and International Distribution: Theory and Application to Rainforests

A situation is analyzed in which two countries negotiate the financing of costs that accrue if one of them switches onto a sustainable development path. The other country's incentive to pay arises as it benefits from the developing country's environmental resources, but at an ever declining rate as long as development remains nonsustainable. In an application to the protection of tropical rainforests it is shown that North to South redistribution of welfare would be substantial, yet the North would still gain enormously in efficiency terms. An explanation is given of why the Rio Conference failed in terms of rainforest protection.     

How Preussag Became TUI: A Clinical Study of Institutional Blockholders and Restructuring in Europe

Between 1997 and 2004, Preussag, a diversified German conglomerate of "old economy" businesses, transformed itself into TUI, a company focused almost entirely on tourism and logistics. We analyze how Preussag executed this change, and how the change contributed to Preussag's underperformance in the stock market. We find that only the divestitures created value, that the strategy to invest in tourism destroyed value, and that the acquisition premiums Preussag paid were mostly unjustified. The case shows how divestiture programs increase the liquid resources available to management and casts doubt on the positive governance role of institutional blockholders.     

Rating Expatriate Leader Effectiveness in Multisource Feedback Systems: Cultural Distance and Hierarchical Effects

A critical challenge for global firms is to implement assessment tools to develop expatriate leaders who can effectively manage role relationships across different directions (upward, laterally, downward) in cross‐national contexts. Drawing on social categorization and relational demography theories and a data set of 360‐degree ratings of expatriates from 36 countries, we use multilevel modeling to investigate relationships between cultural distance and ratings of leadership effectiveness in task and contextual performance by colleagues with different hierarchical vantage points (subordinates, supervisors, peers). Cultural distance refers to the overall degree of difference in key cultural values identified in the GLOBE study between an expatriate's and coworkers’ countries of origin. Unlike supervisors as a rating group, results show that peer and subordinate raters as a group may be more likely to have their ratings negatively influenced by cultural distance, an effect that may be exacerbated for peer ratings from countries higher in power distance and lower in humane orientation. This study contributes to the understanding of multisource feedback systems to assess expatriate leadership effectiveness by identifying likely group ratings tendencies linked to cultural distance and hierarchical perspectives. Organizations should develop strategies to mitigate possible effects of cultural distance on subordinate and peer ratings of expatriates. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Role of Performance Reporting System Characteristics for the Coordination of High-Cost Areas in Hospitals

This paper explores the role of a performance reporting regime’s characteristics for two non-financial performance measures that are commonly used in the management of operating theaters (OTs) in German hospitals. The performance measures are the on-time first case of the day starts and the percentage of deviations from the short-term OT plan. The characteristics studied are reporting detail, reporting method and reporting frequency. We find that the degree of detail that the reporting system provides on the causes of negative performance exerts a significant positive effect on both performance measures. The reporting method and frequency do not affect performance. We also study the effect of existing processual, organizational and governance-related problems on performance. We find that these problems exert a significant negative effect on performance but that performance can be improved by detailed reporting.     

Monopsony in the Labor Market,Minimum Wages and the Time Horizon: Some Unresolved Issues

This article discusses development of optimal solutions for monopsony in the labour market for the long run (when labour and capital are both flexible). It is shown that binding minimum wages up to a certain degree pushes the monopsonists to choose a high capital intensity of production, just as high as or even higher than that chosen when there is no regulation for minimum wages. Thereby, we demonstrate the existence of re-switching effects in the tradition of Piero Sraffa. The second part of the paper recalculates and analyzes earlier results by making use of the rather general constant elasticity of substitution production function. Based on a numerical solution for optimal monopsony under different regimes (no minimum wage, minimum wages of different values, etc.), we formulate a two-period game between the government and the monopsonistic firm (‘minimum wage game’). Finally, we analyze the relationship between the elasticity of substitution on the one hand and likely levels of employment on the other hand, after introduction of minimum wages.     

The curse of bureaucratisation or the blessings of professionalisation? Nurses’ engaged adoption of quality management in hybrid managerial positions

The paper concerns how new quality management in the Danish hospital sector has created new career and professionalisation opportunities for nurses. While the well-known dualism between the logics of professionalism and managerialism is challenged in the literature, not much is known about how engagement in the tighter steering of practice may converge with professional identities and meaningfulness in work. The paper applies a Bourdieusian and ethnographic approach to the examination of nurses’ enthusiastic involvement in quality management as they take up hybrid managerial positions in an acute care department. The findings demonstrate the importance of the material and symbolic value of scientific-bureaucratic knowledge in legitimizing quality management, achieving meaningfulness in practice and bolstering the professional role of nurses.     

Corporate taxation and the quality of research and development

This paper examines the impact of tax incentives on corporate research and development (R&D) activity. R&D tax incentives are commonly provided as special tax allowances or tax credits. In recent years, several countries also reduced their income tax rates on R&D output with the purpose to foster R&D activity. Previous papers have shown that all three tax instruments are effective in raising the quantity of R&D related activity. We in turn assess the impact of corporate tax incentives on the quality of R&D projects, i.e., their innovativeness and earnings potential. Using rich data on corporate patent applications to the European patent office, we find that a low tax rate on patent income raises the average profitability and innovation level of the projects undertaken in a country. The effect is statistically significant and economically relevant and prevails in a number of sensitivity checks. Generous R&D tax credits and tax allowances are in contrast found to exert a negative impact on project quality.