On the optimal taxation of two person households

This paper generalises the optimal commodity tax formulae for households containing one person to cover the empirically relevant case of two person households. We provide an appropriate framework for the empirical estimation of the optimal tax structure and argue that this may be largely determined by female labour supply behaviour.     

Volunteerism under the magnifying glass

Are you making a concerted effort to seek out and attract those volunteers who can really add value to your cause? Do you place as much emphasis on recruiting volunteers for the long-term as you do when hiring employees? Arguably, the answers to all of these questions should be a resounding "yes."     

Saving your rookie managers from themselves

Most organizations promote employees into managerial positions based on their technical competence. But very often, that kind of competence does not translate into good managerial performance. Many rookie managers fail to grasp how their roles have changed: that their jobs are no longer about personal achievement but about enabling others to achieve, that sometimes driving the bus means taking a backseat, and that building a team is often more important than cutting a deal. Even the best employees have trouble adjusting to these new realities, and that trouble can be exacerbated by the normal insecurities that may make rookie managers hesitant to ask for help. The dynamic unfolds something like this: As rookie managers internalize their stress, their focus, too, becomes increasingly internal. They become insecure and self-focused and cannot properly support their teams. Invariably, trust breaks down, staff members become alienated, and productivity suffers. In this article, coach and management consultant Carol Walker, who works primarily with rookie managers and their supervisors, addresses the five problem areas that rookie managers typically face: delegating, getting support from senior staffers, projecting confidence, thinking strategically, and giving feedback. You may think these elements sound like Management 101, and you'd be right, Walker writes. But these basic elements are also what trip up most managers in the early stages of their careers (and even, she admits, throughout their careers). The bosses of rookie managers have a responsibility to anticipate and address these problems; not doing so will hurt the rookie, the boss, and the company overall.     

Improving Distribution Service Performance Through Effective Production and Logistics Integration

Current empirical research on logistics' relationships with other departments has mostly neglected the interface with production. On the basis of data from 387 manufacturing companies, we answer a recent call for research and extend the literature by examining effective working relationships and achieved integration between the production and logistics functions regarding their performance impacts and their antecedents. With respect to the former, we take a resource‐based perspective, showing that integration achieved between the production and logistics functions drives distribution service performance by serving as a pivotal capability element in the resource–capability–value chain. Within this chain, effective working relationships constitute the underlying resources and prove to be a strong driver of achieved integration. With respect to antecedents, we employ the theory of cooperation and competition and identify positive goal interdependence to substantially improve working relationships between production and logistics. Furthermore, we find this effect to be amplified via formalized performance measurement systems.     

The out-of-region bias: Distance estimations based on geographic category membership

This research addresses estimations of distance, an important factor in numerous consumer decisions (e.g., store choice, willingness to pay for travel). Our central hypothesis is that when two places are located in the same geographic category, individuals estimate them to be closer to each other than when they are located in different categories, a bias we term ??the out-of-region bias.?? In study 1, we demonstrate that participants are more willing to visit a store located in the city in which they live rather than a store located in a neighboring city because they mistakenly think that a store in their city is closer to home. In studies 2a and b, we show that the out-of-region bias leads consumers to express higher willingness to pay for an airline ticket that involves travel across versus within regions because they inaccurately estimate greater distance between cities that are located in different regions (vs. the same region). Study 2a also demonstrates that the out-of-region bias is ameliorated in the presence of a map, indicating that the bias is a conceptual (vs. perceptual) bias, and study 2b rules out an alternative explanation for our results based on consumers?? tendency to exaggerate north?Csouth distances.     

Monitoring and Motivation in Principal-Agent Relationships: Some Issues in the Case of Local Authority Services

This paper examines a number of issues concerning the effects of monitoring on principals and agents involved in the provision of local authority services subject to competition. It examines, and then extends, existing theoretical work indicating the potential for sub-optimal outcomes which result from the principal introducing monitoring schemes which focus upon the measurable aspects of the agent's performance. The paper then departs from the received principal-agent paradigm in order to consider whether monitoring and competitive regimes more generally have negative effects on the welfare and performance of principals and agents in both theory and practice.     

Personal characteristics of salespeople and the attractiveness of alternative rewards

How do personal characteristics of salespeople affect their desire for the various rewards available to them? Do younger salespeople desire different types and levels of rewards than older salespeople? Are there differences due to job tenure, marital status, family size, and so forth? In this article, the authors attempt to answer these questions. Based on an extensive investigation of the industrial sales forces from two large companies, the authors examine the relationship between personal characteristics and the sales force's valence for various rewards. Although some of the findings are consistent with current sales management practices, some are not, suggesting that present day thinking with respect to the design and administration of rewards may need more careful scrutiny.