Globalization and imperfect labor market sorting

This paper focuses on the ability of the labor market to efficiently match heterogeneous workers to jobs within a given industry and the role that globalization plays in that process. Using matched worker–firm data from Sweden, we find strong evidence that openness improves the matching between workers and firms in industries with greater comparative advantage. This suggests that there may be significant gains from globalization that have not been identified in the past — globalization may improve the efficiency of the matching process in the labor market. These results remain unchanged after adding controls for technical change at the industry level or measures of domestic anti-competitive regulations and product market competition. Our results are also robust to alternative measures of the degree of matching, openness, and the trade status of an industry.     

Work,employment and engagement conditions in a female‐dominated public service occupation after restructuring/outsourcing

Most research on the phenomenon of public service restructuring/outsourcing focuses on lower skilled work in peripheral activities and typically provides an overview of effects on work, employment and employment relations. Through an in‐depth case study of probation, the intention of this article is to explore professional worker experiences of the restructuring/outsourcing of a core public service activity where the workforce is female dominated. The article highlights three dimensions of job quality that all suffered deterioration—work, employment and engagement. The case of probation adds to evidence demonstrating that employees experience adverse effects even though transfer regulations and union agreements supposedly protect workers. Probation also stands as an exemplar of impoverishment processes in a female‐dominated occupation which reinforces the view that public services can no longer be relied upon to provide high‐quality jobs for highly qualified women.     

How do managerial techniques evolve over time? The distortion of “facilitation” in healthcare service improvement

When applied to solving real-world problems in the public sector, managerial techniques are likely to evolve over time in response to the context of their implementation. The temporal dynamics of this evolution and its underlying processes, however, remain under-researched. To address this gap, we present a qualitative longitudinal case study of a UK-based knowledge mobilization programme utilizing “facilitation” as a service improvement approach. We describe the processes underpinning the distortion of facilitation over time and argue that an uncritical and uncontrolled adaptation of managerial techniques may mask the unsustainable nature of the resulting improvement outcomes captured by conventional performance measurement.     

Transforming union women: the role of women trade union officials in union renewal

The article investigates the nature of the increasing involvement of women in the decision-making structures of the fifth largest UK union through a study of senior women union officials. It is argued that senior union women, operating within a feminist paradigm, balance both transformational and status quo objectives in working towards union survival and renewal.     

CEO duality,succession-planning and agency theory: research agenda

In response to Harris and Helfat's commentary on our article, ‘One hat too many: Key executive plurality and shareholder wealth,’ we suggest that their arguments are quite plausible, but we believe further empirical tests are needed. These proposed tests are described in our response. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Earnings Management Surrounding New Debt Issues

We examine whether firms manage earnings before issuing bonds to achieve a lower cost of borrowing. We find significant income‐increasing earnings management prior to bond offerings. We also find that firms that manage earnings upward issue debt at a lower cost, after controlling for various bond issuer and issue characteristics. Our results are consistent with studies that report earnings management around equity issuance. The results indicate that, like equity holders, bondholders fail to see through the inflated earnings numbers in pricing new debt.     

Union impact on the effective adoption of High Performance Work Practices

This paper examines the literature and research on unions relevant to the effective adoption of High Performance Work Practices. It demonstrates that unions that have a cooperative relationship with management can play an important role in overcoming barriers to the effective adoption of practices that have been linked to organizational competitiveness through the development and application of human capital. In particular, unions have the unique advantage of delivering independent voice that cannot be substituted by management. Not only can unions make a contribution to organization competitiveness but they can also ensure that employees benefit from High Performance Work Practice adoption and in doing so secure their own relevance. The contribution that unions can make is inhibited by management and union's reluctance to engage in an integrative relationship and an institutional context that does not value unions. Organizations that want to capture the value that unions can add must move away from a pluralist model of autocratic management, hostile unions and adversarial industrial relations, beyond a unitarist model that sees no role for unions, to a cooperative partnership with unions that shares the gains of implementing High Performance Work Practices.     

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and CEO tenure,turnover, and risk aversion

Using a sample of CEO turnover from 1999 to 2005, we find that CEOs become significantly more risk averse following the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, SOX. Their increased risk aversion may serve as an explanation for why CEO tenure is not significantly shortened and forced CEO turnover is not more likely post-SOX, as we document in this paper. In addition, we provide evidence that financial restatements have some effects on CEO tenure and the probability of forced CEO turnover. This may be due to intensified monitoring activities by the board and the financial press in the post-SOX era, but we cannot contribute all of it to SOX. In some occasions, SOX seems to weaken the effect of board monitoring on CEO tenure and the effect of firm performance on CEO risk aversion. Though the increased monitoring level post-SOX contribute to the increased CEO risk aversion, little impact is found from the SOX-mandated accuracy and transparency of financial reporting.     

Populism and Fiscal Illusion

There is a widespread concern that anti‐elitist or populist opinion is on the rise. The policy concern is that political opportunists would exploit voter rational ignorance for their own cynical purposes. In this article I demonstrate that, in the field of taxation, this sort of behaviour already occurs. Fiscal illusion can be described as deceiving taxpayer‐voters into paying more tax than they would otherwise agree to. Taxpayers are already victims of political opportunism unrelated to the rise of populism.     

Clinical and economic benefits of professional CGM among people with type 2 diabetes in the United States: analysis of claims and lab data

Background: It is estimated that one in 10 people in the US have a diagnosis of diabetes. Type 2 diabetes accounts for 95% of all cases in the US, with annual costs estimated to be $246 billion per year. This study investigated the impact of a glucose-measuring intervention to the burden of type 2 diabetes.

Objective: This analysis seeks to understand how professional continuous glucose monitoring (professional CGM) impacts clinical and economic outcomes when compared to patients who are not prescribed professional CGM.

Methods: This study utilized a large healthcare claims and lab dataset from the US, and identified a cohort of patients who were prescribed professional CGM as identified by CPT codes 95250 and 95251. It calculated economic and clinical outcomes 1 year before and 1 year after the use of professional CGM, using a generalized linear model.

Results: Patients who utilized professional CGM saw an improvement in hemoglobin A1C. The “difference-in-difference” calculation for A1C was shown to be –0.44%. There was no statistically significant difference in growth of total annual costs for people who used professional CGM compared to those who did not ($1,270, p?=?.08). Patients using professional CGM more than once per year had a –$3,376 difference in the growth of total costs (p?=?.05). Patients who used professional CGM while changing their diabetes treatment regimen also had a difference of –$3,327 in growth of total costs (p?=?.0023).

Conclusion: Significant clinical benefits were observed for patients who used professional CGM. Economic benefits were observed for patients who utilized professional CGM more than once within a 1-year period or who used it during a change of diabetes therapy. This suggests that professional CGM may help decrease rising trends in healthcare costs for people with type 2 diabetes, while also improving clinical outcomes.