Limits to the Implementation of Benchmarking Through KPIs in UK Construction Policy: Insights from game theory

Abstract

Benchmarking through the use of key performance indicators (KPIs) has been an important part of the UK government's market-oriented reforms to improve efficiency across the public sector and in other areas such as construction where government is a major client. However, government attempts to implement construction KPIs have not followed the expected course. We argue that insights from game theory show that the initial plan for construction benchmarking failed to take account of the strategic value of the information collected and was not implementable because the sharing of information by construction suppliers with their clients was a dominated strategy.     

Identification and Trust in Public Organizations: A communicative approach

Abstract

Little empirical research has examined the link between organizational identification and organizational trust. Identification presupposes a level of consistency in its object, and this study proposes that trust can reduce uncertainty between organization and employee, enabling a bond between the two to form. Secondly, this research looks at how interaction with various organizational groups may affect organizational trust, thereby indirectly encouraging identification. It is thus proposed that organizational trust should be understood as an important mechanism mediating the relationship between interaction with employees at different levels of the organizational hierarchy and identification with the organization as a whole.     

The Creation,Maintenance and Governance of Public Goods and Free Goods

The theory of public goods is largely irrelevant to their management and governance. It is highly normative but is unused in the policy area. It remains centred on highly idealized and dichotomized characteristics (non-rivalrousness and non-excludability) of public goods despite important theoretical progress in the last twenty years. It is suggested that public goods are as much social as technological constructions, but there is no explanation of how such goods come into existence. It is argued that they are often subject to evolution that changes the balance of their characteristics between being public or private goods. Present theory bears little relationship to the governmental budgetary processes assumed necessary to finance such goods, yet all management and maintenance costs, often high enough to deter such funding, are ignored. While there is recognition that the intensive use of a public good often imposes costs directly upon users, there is no corresponding recognition either that inappropriate and intensive usage can erode public goods as assets or that such usage is difficult to control. Free goods are described and mooted as specific and important types of public goods. Illustrative examples of public and free goods, mainly from Australia and the Pacific, are cited.     

New Methods for Forecasting Inflation,Applied to the US*

Models for the 12‐month‐ahead US rate of inflation, measured by the chain‐weighted consumer expenditure deflator, are estimated for 1974–98 and subsequent pseudo out‐of‐sample forecasting performance is examined. Alternative forecasting approaches for different information sets are compared with benchmark univariate autoregressive models, and substantial out‐performance is demonstrated including against Stock and Watson's unobserved components‐stochastic volatility model. Three key ingredients to the out‐performance are: including equilibrium correction component terms in relative prices; introducing nonlinearities to proxy state‐dependence in the inflation process and replacing the information criterion, commonly used in VARs to select lag length, with a ‘parsimonious longer lags’ parameterization. Forecast pooling or averaging also improves forecast performance.     

Auditing Human Resource Management in the Global Environment

The globalization of business is making it increasingly important to understand how multinational enterprises (MNEs) can operate more effectively. Human resource management can be a critical determinant of corporate effectiveness, particularly as it plays out in the global arena. This article discusses how MNEs enhance their ability to utilize human resources and internal labour markets for competitive advantage through audits of the international human resource management (IHRM) function. A multidimensional auditing framework is developed and applied to the strategic aspects of IHRM in MNEs and international joint ventures.     

A policy perspective on incremental innovation in small and medium sized enterprises

The increased importance of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in industrial economies is explained and the very large variance in their degree of participation in the innovation process is established. Evidence from Canadian research clarifies the difficulties that smidl and medium sized firms, even in technology intensive industries, experience in developing new products and implementing new designs. Innovation theory is reviewed and the importance of inputs from specialist consultants is established for SMEs undertaking incremental innovation. Transaction costs concepts are then used to explain the difficulties SMEs encounter in arranging these linkages. A recommended form of policy to help to correct this type of market imperfection is derived and used to describe a gap in Canadian policies and to evaluate initiatives in Australia and UK.     

Globalization and trade union strategy: industrial restructuring and human resource management in the international civil aviation industry

For trade unions, the central problematic of globalization is the growing disparity between the mobility of capital and labour. The ability of capital to operate on a trans-national basis is widely perceived to have precipitated a process of cost cutting as international companies seek to cut workers' remuneration and other conditions of employment. However, systematic empirical evidence on the impact of globalization on human resource management is hard to find, as is any assessment of the differential impact of globalization on different occupational groups or the response of trade unions to any deterioration in their members' terms and conditions of employment. Focusing on the international civil aviation industry, we examine the effects of globalization on human resource management and the national and international strategies developed by organized labour in response. Although the evidence suggests that there is indeed a concerted effort by major airlines to cut costs, trade unions have been able to retard the pace of change and effectively defend the interests of some occupational groups. Moreover, the future course of globalization will be contested through new international strategies and repertoires of collective action developed by the trade union movement.     

Trust,individualism and job characteristics as predictors of employee preference for teamwork

Employee resistance has long been recognized as a key constraint on the success of organizational change initiatives. However, it is only recently that employee attitudes towards working in teams has been specifically investigated as a factor influencing team effectiveness. Using data from 218 employees in 40 self-managing work teams, we examined the relationship between trust, individualism, job characteristics and team members' attitudes towards teamwork. Providing a partial test of Mayer et al.'s (1995) relational model of trust, the results indicate that the two situational forms of trust (trust in co-workers and trust in management) were stronger predictors of an employee's preference for teamwork than propensity to trust. Trust in co-workers was found to partially mediate the relationship between a person's propensity to trust strangers and their preference for working in a team. The importance of considering the dispositional variables of propensity to trust and individualism as factors that influence an employee's preference for teamwork, as well as their trust in management, trust in co-workers and their opportunity for skill utilization are discussed.