Fuelled Power: Oil,Financiers and Central Bank Policy in Nigeria

While the literature on business power and global finance has illuminated the ways in which financial institutions limit the policy autonomy of states in developing countries, we know much less about the circumstances under which the power of financiers is undermined. In this article, I advance explanations of these circumstances by arguing that state access to natural resource revenues reduces the power of financial institutions and enhances the capacity of the state to pursue central bank policies which violate the interests of major financiers. I employ a case study of central bank policy in Nigeria to probe this argument and find evidence that supports the claim that whenever the Nigerian government's access to resource revenues increased, the state's capacity to diverge from financiers’ preferred central bank policies and to advance its own preferences increased as well. The analysis provides the basis for broader propositions about the policy space of developing countries vis-à-vis financial institutions and the variability of structural power.     

Socio-institutional determinants of educational resource efficiency according to the capability approach: An endogenous stochastic frontier analysis

We investigate the role of private and public resources in educational attainments and the socio-institutional determinants of educational resource efficiency in Italy. Following the Sen's capability approach, we consider social capital and the quality of government part of the social conversion factors through which resources can be converted into human capabilities, such as education. We analyze the case of Italy by constructing a new longitudinal dataset from 1993 to 2012, using repeated cross sections from the main social survey of the Italian Statistical Institute and a panel stochastic frontier model that takes into account endogeneity. The results show the relative importance of private resources (measured by an ad hoc constructed wealth index), the complementarity between private wealth and public expenditures on education, and the positive impact of social capital and the quality of government on educational resource efficiency.     

Tourism,heritage and politics: conflicts at the City of David,Jerusalem

This article analyses the development and progress of conflicts at the “City of David” heritage-tourism site in Jerusalem, Israel and the reciprocal relations between heritage sites and conflicts. It offers a comprehensive examination of the development of a major tourist attraction in Israel. Our research is based on the following two methods of qualitative research: (1) in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 43 key stakeholders; (2) textual analysis of current written materials and historical documents. The study investigates the relevant processes and decisions, stakeholder perceptions, the role of the archaeological excavations, and their relationship to the development of conflict. On a broader level, this study formulates a theoretical and practical framework for analysing the development of heritage tourism sites in conflict zones.     

企业文化与人力资源管理关系研究

企业文化影响着人力资源管理活动,对企业核心竞争力有着持久的影响。进行人力资源管理,要充分考虑企业文化对员工的作用。本文根据我国的国情,研究企业文化与人力资源管理之间的关系,研究企业文化如何作用于人力资源管理,以及人力资源如何对企业文化产生作用。通过深入的研究明晰企业文化与人力资源管理的相互影响途径、特征和规律,以求对实际人力资源管理工作有所启发。     

Small system dynamics model for alleviating the general practitioners rural care gap in Ontario,Canada

The disproportionate concentration of healthcare professionals in urban areas is a concern in many countries, including Canada. A need to address this rural care gap has driven a large number of government led initiatives worldwide over the years. This paper presents a model that can be used as a tool to examine the efficacy of such policies on the workforce distribution in the long term. A small system dynamics model is employed to simulate the current and future distribution of general physicians at a jurisdictional level. The model represents the transition of general practitioners to provide insight into the dynamics of care provision over time. The movement, and competition, between rural and urban areas is modeled to enable detailed exploration of the ability for proposed measures to alleviate the care gap in the future. Among the tested policies are such commonly used initiatives as financial incentives to rural professionals, promotion of medical education in rural areas, expansion of rural education programs and the engagement of international medical graduates etc. We demonstrate how the model can be used as a tool to determine an efficient and well-chosen combination of policies which can help alleviate the rural care gap in the future, given that some policies are more effective than others alone but also combined with other initiatives. The presented small system dynamics model is tested on Canada's reality, but its simple nature lends itself to easy application to other countries that experience a similar problem.     

施工企业人力资源管理现状探讨

人力资源是企业最宝贵的资源,也是企业的一种战略能动资源,这一点对于施工企业同样适用。在激烈的市场竞争环境下,人才是企业竞争的核心竞争力。对于施工企业特殊的工作环境、工作强度以及员工构成的特殊性,人力资源在确保实施建筑企业的经营战略中起扮演着关键的角色。     

Hotel environmental management initiative (HEMI) scale development

Owing to a lack of construct reliability and validity of environmental management measurements, advancements in understanding hotels’ environmental management practices have been somewhat limited. The goal of this paper is to propose a uniform and parsimonious scale that captures Hotels’ Environmental Management Initiative (HEMI) with the most common three dimensions in the hotel industry: environmental resource conservation efforts, environmental policy and training, and environmental public relation efforts. After the refinement of the initial items, the scale was confirmed with cross-cultural data obtained from full-time hotel employees in two Asian countries. The twenty-one item HEMI scale demonstrated a satisfactory level of content, convergent, discriminant, cross, and criterion-related validity. The proposed HEMI scale will serve as a useful tool for future hospitality scholars who would like to further explore the impact of hotels’ environmental management initiatives on employees’ attitudes and behaviors toward the environment and their environmental performance.     

Job satisfaction in aging workforces: an analysis of the USA,Japan and Germany

In light of the dramatically aging workforces in many industrialized countries, age diversity management will become a major challenge in human resource management. To successfully handle an age-diverse workforce, it is crucial to understand how employees of different ages can be motivated. This paper analyzes age's moderating role in the relationship between situational job characteristics and job satisfaction. To control for the potential influence of the cultural and institutional context, we use data from the USA, Japan and Germany. Findings show that older employees' job satisfaction is driven by different factors than younger employees: older employees put more emphasis on good relationships with colleagues, while income, advancement opportunities, job security and having an interesting job are less important. However, these effects are mostly nation-dependent, which underlines the importance of conducting cross-cultural or cross-national aging research.     

Corporate sustainability strategies in institutional adversity: Antecedent,outcome, and contingency effects

This study examines (i) how top-level managerial institutional ties drive corporate sustainability strategies of emerging market firms operating under conditions of institutional adversity; (ii) the impact of corporate sustainability strategies on market performance; and (iii) the moderating role of financial resource slack on the relationships between corporate sustainability strategies and market performance. The study builds from institutional development logic and the structure–conduct–performance paradigm. Primary data are collected from 300 firms operating in a major sub-Saharan African market. Findings show that top-level managerial institutional linkages with regulatory national governmental officials, local community leaders, and top managers at other firms drive corporate proactive and responsive sustainability strategies, which in turn influence market performance. In addition, the findings reveal that financial resource slack strengthens the path between corporate proactive sustainability strategies and market performance, but not the path between corporate responsive sustainability strategies and market performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.