Innovation and Performance: Benchmarking Australian Firms

This article empirically analyses the link between innovation and performance using a sample of large Australian firms, with a specific aim of developing benchmarking tools. Innovation is measured by firms' investment in R&D and applications for patents, trademarks and designs. An innovation index is constructed to provide one method of benchmarking. The index incorporates a firm's innovative activities into a single figure after accounting for firm size. The index provides a ranking of the most innovative firms in Australia. A second method of benchmarking uses a stochastic production frontier. This type of analysis identifies the firms which are located closest to a ‘best practice innovation frontier’.     

Do Teachers Matter? Measuring the Variation in Teacher Effectiveness in England*

Using a unique primary dataset for the UK, we estimate the effect of individual teachers on student outcomes, and the variability in teacher quality. This links 7,305 pupils to the individual teachers who taught them, in each of their compulsory subjects in the high‐stakes exams at age 16. We use point‐in‐time fixed effects and prior attainment to control for pupil heterogeneity. We find considerable variability in teacher effectiveness, a little higher than the estimates found in the few US studies. We also corroborate recent findings that observed teachers’ characteristics explain very little of the differences in estimated teacher effectiveness.     

An Ordered-Probit Analysis of Price and Performance in Competitively Tendered Contracts

Abstract
This article adopts an ordered-probit estimation procedure to investigate the influence of competitive tendering on contract price and performance. Using a two-equation recursive system the findings of Domberger, Hall and Li (1995) turned out to be robust to the ordered-probit methodology which confirmed the strong negative effect of competitive tendering on contract price. The evidence also suggested that performance was either enhanced or remained the same in the presence of competition. Overall, the results of this investigation support the view that competitive tendering generates efficiency gains without adverse effects on quality of service .     

A note on nominal government expenditure targets

In IS-LM models, government expenditure is usually fixed in real terms. In this short note, we examine some of the implications of nominal government expenditure targets for both model stability and comparative statics. When a fixed money supply policy is in operation, nominal government expenditure targets may stabilize an otherwise unstable system. If this is the case, an increase in the nominal stock of money will reduce the price level in the long run.     

Schools of thought in organizational learning

This article attempts to bring coherence to the diversity that characterizes organizational learning research. It argues that organizational learning is embedded in four schools of thought: an economic school, a managerial school, a developmental school, and a process school. The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the schools, describes how they differ from each other, and outlines how each of them can be employed effectively. To demonstrate the benefits of theoretical plurality, the four schools are applied to the key marketing topics of market orientation and new product development. Implications for future research in marketing are provided. Simon J. Bell is a lecturer in marketing in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at the University of Melbourne. Gregory J. Whitwell is an associate professor of marketing in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at the University of Melbourne. Bryan A. Lukas is an associate professor of marketing and director of the Master of Applied Commerce Program in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at the University of Melbourne.     

Regime switching as a test for exchange rate bubbles

This paper develops a new test for speculative bubbles, which is applied to data for the Japanese yen, the German mark and the Canadian dollar exchange rates from 1977 to 1991. The test assumes that bubbles display a particular kind of regime-switching behaviour, which is shown to imply coefficient restrictions on a simple switching-regression model of exchange rate innovations. Test results are sensitive to the specification of exchange rate fundamentals and other factors. Evidence most consistent with the bubble hypothesis is found using an overshooting model of the Canadian dollar and a PPP model of the Japanese yen.     

Linking sustainable business models and supply chains — Toward an integrated value creation framework

Extant literature on sustainable business models highlights that value creation stems from resources exchanged in relationships between a focal firm and its stakeholders. In this context, the literature has, so far, focused on direct relationships. However, despite the acknowledged relevance of sustainability issues in supply chains, this relational view of the focal company and its direct stakeholders has not been extended toward value creation for and with indirect stakeholders, such as stakeholders of suppliers. Addressing this gap, this conceptual article integrates a relational view of sustainable supply chain management into the management of sustainable business models. It extends the scope of sustainable business models from relationships between the focal firm and its direct stakeholders to indirect relationships with stakeholders of suppliers. A framework is developed that supports analysis and management of value-creating relationships between the focal firm, suppliers, and stakeholders of suppliers. By extending the conceptualization of sustainable business models to consider relationship chains beyond direct relationships, this article proposes that a focal firm has to actively manage interactions both with suppliers and with suppliers' stakeholders.     

Endogenous Games and Mechanisms: Side Payments Among Players

We characterize the outcomes of games when players may make binding offers of strategy contingent side payments before the game is played. This does not always lead to efficient outcomes, despite complete information and costless contracting. The characterizations are illustrated in a series of examples, including voluntary contribution public good games, Cournot and Bertrand oligopoly, principal–agent problems, and commons games, among others.     

Medication,equipment, and supply costs for common interventions providing extended post-surgical analgesia following total knee arthroplasty in US hospitals

Aims: To estimate the cost to hospitals of materials (i.e. medications, equipment, and supplies) required to administer common interventions for post-surgical analgesia after total knee arthroplasty (TKA), including single-injection peripheral nerve block (sPNB), continuous peripheral nerve block (cPNB), periarticular infiltration of multi-drug cocktails, continuous epidural analgesia, intravenous patient-controlled analgesia (IV PCA), and local infiltration of bupivacaine liposome injectable suspension (BLIS).

Materials and methods: This analysis was conducted using a mixed methods approach combining published literature, publicly available data sources, and administrative data, to first identify the materials required to administer these interventions, and then estimate the cost to the hospital of those materials. Medication costs were estimated primarily using the Wholesale Acquisition Costs (WAC), the cost of reusable equipment was obtained from published sources, and costs for disposable supplies were obtained from the US Government Services Administration (GSA) database. Where uncertainty existed about the technique used when administering these interventions, costs were calculated for multiple scenarios reflecting different assumptions.

Results: The total cost of materials (i.e. medications, equipment, and supplies) required to provide post-surgical analgesia was $41.88 for sPNB with bupivacaine; $756.57 for cFNB with ropivacaine; $16.38 for periarticular infiltration with bupivacaine, morphine, methylprednisolone, and cefuroxime; $453.84 for continuous epidural analgesia with fentanyl and ropivacaine; $178.94 for IV PCA with morphine; and $319.00 for BLIS.

Limitations: This analysis did not consider the cost of healthcare providers required to administer these interventions. In addition, this analysis focused on the cost of materials and, therefore, did not consider aspects of relative efficacy or safety, or how the choice of intervention for post-surgical analgesia might impact outcomes such as length of stay, re-admissions, discharge status, adverse events, or total hospitalization costs.

Conclusions: This study provided an estimate of the costs to hospitals for materials required to administer commonly used interventions for post-surgical analgesia after TKA.     

Firepower: Geopolitical Cultures in the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT

The human control of fire is a relatively neglected part of the discussion of the contemporary transformation of the planet. Thinking about it in terms of geopolitics is a way to link climate adaptation, extinction and the possibilities of extending traditional analyses of political ecology to the global scale. Such thinking is explicitly rejected as the appropriate premises for foreign policy action by the Trump administration which poses American greatness in terms of traditional understandings of firepower. This clash of geopolitical cultures is now key to global politics, where dramatic landscape transformation, related species extinctions as well as climate change results directly and indirectly from human control of combustion. Firepower is a matter of military technology as well as, in the form of fossil fuel combustion, the essential energy source that fuels the global economy. Focusing on combustion as a key geophysical force in contemporary geopolitics offers useful insights into the Anthropocene discussion and, in particular, the two planetary boundaries of climate change and biodiversity loss, which are key to contemporary efforts at global environmental governance.