Economic marginalism and the microstate,the impact of donor conditionality requirements in international aid programmes on a SHRM training project in the Cook Islands

Donor conditionality involves the formal terms and commitments under which major international aid agencies, such as the World Bank and the IMF grant aid or arrange loans for developing countries. In doing so, said agencies have tended to emulate, as a matter of policy, private-sector market reforms based on the contemporary neoclassical model. As a consequence, donor conditionality tends to place formalized and regular stress on inflationary control, privatization of publicly owned equity and the deregulation of public-sector employment. In turn, the functional utility of strategic human resource management as a vehicle able to obtain major change-related outcomes has tended to give it an important role in the implementation process. This paper reports on events that took place in the Cook Islands, a central Pacific microstate, during a university-based training course for public service managers in which the government imposed on a virtual exercise the full weight of real decisionmaking process. It will attempt to place this action in a larger context by, first, critically examining the tendency for SHRM initiatives to be distorted - a situation that arises when the requirements of donor conditionality do not fit the economic, social and cultural conditions in which they are to be applied. It will conclude by reviewing some of the issues to be debated should the tendency to use a single model of reform be replaced by a more country-friendly programme of requirements.     

A SYMMETRIC INPUT–OUTPUT TABLE FOR EU27: LATEST PROGRESS

The European Commission is currently establishing an Environmentally Extended Input–Output (EE-IO) Database for the EU27 developed by the Joint Research Centre at the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS). This project attempts to generate an analytical dataset comprising all EU countries and yearly time series for the period 1995–2005. Since, for the time being, IO and environmental accounts data are only available with significant gaps part of the dataset will require estimates based on best available proxy data and reasonable assumptions. This paper is focused on the IO database shaped around Eurostat supply and use tables and symmetric IO tables consistent with the NACE classification. The paper describes the procedure by which the latest preliminary results have been obtained for an aggregate EU27 symmetric input–output table for the year 2000.     

管理会计在企业的应用:社会和组织内部环境的影响

本文依据系统理论、管理会计权变理论的框架,采用历史分析的方法,研究社会环境和组织内部环境对中国企业管理会计应用的影响。认为影响我国企业管理会计应用的社会环境因素主要包括经济模式、政治因素、来自国外的影响、学术界引进等变量;组织内部环境因素主要有:组织文化、员工价值观以及组织结构等变量。     

Bayesian Calibration of p‐Values from Fisher's Exact Test

p‐Values are commonly transformed to lower bounds on Bayes factors, so‐called minimum Bayes factors. For the linear model, a sample‐size adjusted minimum Bayes factor over the class of g‐priors on the regression coefficients has recently been proposed (Held & Ott, The American Statistician 70(4), 335–341, 2016). Here, we extend this methodology to a logistic regression to obtain a sample‐size adjusted minimum Bayes factor for 2 × 2 contingency tables. We then study the relationship between this minimum Bayes factor and two‐sided p‐values from Fisher's exact test, as well as less conservative alternatives, with a novel parametric regression approach. It turns out that for all p‐values considered, the maximal evidence against the point null hypothesis is inversely related to the sample size. The same qualitative relationship is observed for minimum Bayes factors over the more general class of symmetric prior distributions. For the p‐values from Fisher's exact test, the minimum Bayes factors do on average not tend to the large‐sample bound as the sample size becomes large, but for the less conservative alternatives, the large‐sample behaviour is as expected.     

An empirical research of crude oil price changes and stock market in China: evidence from the structural breaks and quantile regression

This article investigates the relationship between real crude oil price changes and the Chinese real stock market at the industry level. Our study uses monthly data over the period 1994:03 to 2013:12. Based on input–output (IO) tables, this article will explore more details for the driving factors of sensitivity to oil price changes. We divide these driving factors into cost- and demand-side dependence. Empirical results reveal that sensitivity varies across different industries and periods based on structural breaks and asymmetric effects of oil price changes. Furthermore, some industries seemingly not directly affected by oil are sensitive to the real oil price changes. Finally, using a penalized quantile regression for panel data, we find that these two factors significantly affect lower, but not upper, quantile of sensitivity.     

INDUSTRY‐LEVEL PRODUCTIVITY MEASUREMENT AND THE 2008 SYSTEM OF NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

The 2008 System of National Accounts recognizes capital services as the conceptually correct way to measure the input of capital into production. This allows setting up an integrated system of industry‐level and aggregate productivity accounts that are consistent with the 2008 SNA. The paper discusses the new aspects in the 2008 SNA and sets out such an integrated system, based on Jorgenson's aggregate production possibility frontier and gross output‐based industry productivity measures. Recent results for industry productivity measures for the United States complete the picture.     

Use Tables for Imported Goods and Valuation Matrices for Trade Margins—an Integrated Approach for the Compilation of the Belgian 1995 Input–Output Tables

This paper describes the compilation of the use table for imported goods and the valuation matrix of trade margins for Belgium in 1995. It introduces the methodological novelty of integrating the compilation of both tables and systematically exploiting the fact that large import and export flows do not generate trade margins. This is notably the case for direct imports for intermediate consumption or investment by non-traders, and direct exports by producers. For identifying these trade flows, extensive use was made of intrastat and extrastat data. The results are compared with those of a proportional distribution of imports and trade margins. Many statistical offices resort to the latter approach because of a lack of survey data on the destination of trade margins and imports. We demonstrate that the integrated approach can improve the quality of both the import matrix and the valuation matrix for trade margins, while using only existing data sources.     

A contingency-configurational view of purchasing operations: The mediating role between supplier relationship and firm performance

The literature has considered purchasing and supply management activities from a strategic perspective, but the tactical role of purchasing operations has yet to be explored. Purchasing operations represent the internal modus operandi for transactions with suppliers, comprising three main activities – purchasing transactions, purchasing document management, and purchasing assessment – and supportive activities like purchasing knowledge management. Following the contingency theory, we hypothesize that these internal activities mediate between external supplier relationship management and firm performance (financial, customer and delivery performance). Complementarily, we adopt the configurational theory to hypothesize that this link between external and internal activities can be combined to increase firm performance. To test this contingency-configurational view of purchasing operations, we conducted a quantitative survey with 234 companies. The regression results of the contingency analysis show that purchasing operations activities have a full mediation role in most relationships between supplier relationship management and firm performance, while knowledge management positively moderates the association between purchasing assessment and customer performance. Moreover, the cluster analysis for the configurational analysis shows that supplier relationship management and purchasing operations follow maturity levels of joint implementation of internal and external activities. Our findings shed light on the purchasing operations by defining the activities representing this concept and showing their role in supply management. We also contribute to practice by proposing an integrative system that helps managers organize the firm's purchasing and supply management activities.     

I.J. Bienaymé [1796–1878]: Criticality,Inequality, and Internationalization*

Two striking contributions of Bienaymé to mathematical statistics: (1) a completely correct statemet of the Criticality Theorem for simple branching processes in 1845; and (2) the derivation of the Bienaymé-Chebyshev Inequality, are revisited on the 200th anniversary of his birth. We use writings and archival materials available since the note of Heyde & Seneta (1972) to present a fuller biographical picture. Bienaymé's connections with Buniakovsky and Chebyshev are elucidated, and this role in furthering Chebyshev's international contacts outlined. A concluding section illuminates Bienaymé's understanding of the linear regression of one random variable on another in an actuarial context of random shocks.     

E-Service Quality: A Meta-Analytic Review

The dominance of the internet as a shopping and distribution channel also necessitates an understanding of e-service quality. Using means-ends-chain theory, we develop a conceptual framework to understand the different models and the associated multiple measures that have been developed to examine this construct. We test the measures empirically using meta-analytic techniques. We also summarize the impact of e-service quality on key outcomes—customer satisfaction, repurchase intentions, and word-of-mouth, as well as the moderating impact of three contextual factors: country culture, regulatory environment, and industry context. Results indicate that e-service quality has four underlying dimensions (website design, fulfilment, customer service, and security/privacy) though their relevance for overall e-service quality is moderated by country-specific (uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, power distance, individualism), regulatory environment-specific (financial secrecy, rule of law), and industry-specific (services/goods, retailing/banking) factors as well as research-design factors.