Organizational commitment and service delivery: evidence from an industrial setting in the UK

In this paper the links between organizational commitment and the delivery of service quality are explored. Using data from a survey of contact-level employees within an industrial service organization, the hypotheses that the antecedents to service quality do indeed drive the service delivery gap, that there is a relationship between organizational commitment and service delivery and that the antecedents of the service delivery gap are related to organizational commitment are tested. All three hypotheses are accepted, although the link between organizational commitment and service delivery is not very strong. However, it is found that organizational commitment is strongly tied to role ambiguity and teamwork as antecedents of the service delivery gap.     

Do types of economic ownership matter in getting employees to commit? An exploratory study in the People's Republic of China

Economic reforms launched in the People's Republic of China led to rapid growth in the non-state sector. Economic organizations in this sector adopt different styles of business operations and management practices when compared with their state counterparts. These systematic differences generate work dynamics with implications for workers' job attitudes and behaviours. The present study explores the relationship between workers' perception of the workplace and organizational commitment after the reform. Three hundred employees in Shanghai, from six enterprises, were randomly sampled for interview. Differences were found between state and non-state employees in their demographic characteristics, organizational perceptions and commitment. Findings suggested that state and non-state workers differed in their commitment and these relationships were mediated through various perceptual dimensions. Implications of the results for theory and practice are discussed.     

Politics,institutions, and outcomes: Electricity regulation in Argentina and Chile

Risk, whether market or political, is an important determinant of private investment decisions. One important risk, subject to control by the government, is the risk associated with the hold-up problem: governments can force utilities to shoulder burdensome taxes, to use input factors ineffectively, or to charge unprofitable rates for their service. To attract private investment governments must be able to make commitments to policies that are nonexpropriative (either to contracts that guarantee very high rates of return or to favorable regulatory policies). These commitments, of course, must be credible.

Judgments about the credibility of commitments to regulatoty policies are based upon two political factors: regulatory predictability and regime stability. Regulatory predictability implies that the regulatory process, in which prices and levels of service are set, is not arbitrary. If the condition of regulatory predictability holds, then investors can forecast their returns over time and hence can calculate the value of their investment. If there is regime stability, then there is minimal risk of wholesale changes in the way the government regulates the industry—the most extreme type of change being the denial of property rights, or expropriation. We argue that three characteristics of the regulatory process are, in turn, important determinants of regulatory predictability: agenda control, reversionary regulatory policy, and veto gates. Moreover, regime stability is also, in part, a function of these three characteristics. We examine our theory of political risk and regulatoty commitment by comparing the cases of Argentine and Chilean electricity investment and regulation.     

Commitment or discretion? An empirical investigation of monetary policy preferences in China

This paper offers a first attempt to estimate the policy preferences of China’s central bank by confronting a small-scale microfounded New Keynesian model in which monetary policy is described by commitment or discretion with the Chinese macroeconomic data over the period from 1992Q2 to 2017Q4. Bayesian model comparison reveals that the data favor discretionary monetary policy. Estimates of the loss function weights under both cases show that the leading policy goal is price stability, followed by output stability and then interest rate smoothing. Finally, through counterfactual analyses we assess how macroeconomic outcomes might improve, had the Chinese central bank been able to commit. These findings shed new light on the opaque Chinese monetary policy, and are robust to subsample analysis.     

Exploring the influence of food safety climate indicators on handwashing practices of restaurant food handlers

Recent models have conceptualized food safety climate as a subcomponent of food safety culture that consists of the shared values and perceptions of employees. The present study sought to understand how food safety climate indicators including commitment, role overload, and contingent rewards affect handwashing frequency of restaurant food handlers (n = 124). Managerial commitment was the only variable significantly correlated with handwashing frequency r(120) = .313, p < .001. A multiple regression model showed managerial commitment was a significant predictor of handwashing frequency, F(1,117) = 12.70, p < .001, R² = .098. Role overload moderated the relationship between goal level and handwashing frequency, but only when role overload was low, b = .530, (115) t = 2.02, p = .046, suggesting the presence of competing subcultures. Managers should prioritize a food safety culture and structure jobs in such a way that promotes food safety behavior execution.     

Management of a capital stock by Strotz's naive planner

The capital management problem posed by R.H. Strotz is analyzed for the case of the ‘naive’ planner who fails to anticipate changes in his own preferences. By imposing progressively stronger restrictions on the primitives of the problem – namely, the discounting function, the utility index function, and the investment technology – the planner's behavior is characterized first as the solution to an ordinary differential equation and then via explicit formulae. Inasmuch as these characterizations leave the discounting function essentially unrestricted, the theory can accommodate, in particular, decision makers who discount time according to the hyperbolic and ‘quasi-hyperbolic’ curves used in applied work and said to be supported by psychological studies. Comparative statics of the model are discussed, as are extensions of the analysis to allow for credit constraints, limited foresight, and partial commitment.     

The Moderating Effect of the Boundary Spanning Role on Perceived Supervisory Support: A Meta-Analytic Review

This article is a meta-analytic study examining the moderating effect the boundary spanning role has on the relationship between perceived supervisory support (PSS) and other important constructs within the marketing domain, including: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, performance, and turnover intentions. There was a positive relationship between PSS and every construct except turnover intentions, which was negative. Along with this, three out of the four relationships were stronger for boundary spanners as compared to non-boundary spanners. Overall, managers aimed at meeting organizational objectives (e.g. performance; turnover) should provide supervisory support to boundary spanning employees.     

Stationary Markovian equilibrium in altruistic stochastic OLG models with limited commitment

We introduce a new class of infinite horizon altruistic stochastic OLG models with capital and labor, but without commitment between the generations. Under mild regularity conditions, for economies with either bounded or unbounded state spaces, continuous monotone Markov perfect Nash equilibrium (henceforth MPNE) are shown to exist, and form an antichain. Further, for each such MPNE, we can also construct a corresponding stationary Markovian equilibrium invariant distribution. We then show for many versions of our economies found in applied work in macroeconomics, unique MPNE exist relative to the space of bounded measurable functions. We also relate all of our results to those obtained by promised utility/continuation methods based upon the work of Abreu et al. (1990). As our results are constructive, we can provide characterizations of numerical methods for approximating MPNE, and we construct error bounds. Finally, we provide a series of examples to show the potential applications and limitations of our results.     

利益分配、拆迁行为、承诺践行和拆迁冲突——基于城市拆迁满意度的调查

拆迁矛盾冲突已成为影响社会稳定的因素之一,已有对拆迁冲突产生原因的研究侧重于从文化客位角度。从文化主位角度出发,通过对2010年某市某片区城市拆迁满意度的调查数据进行因子分析,得出拆迁中的利益分配、拆迁行为、承诺践行情况不仅是城市拆迁满意度的关键因素,同时也与拆迁矛盾冲突具有直接关系。减少和化解拆迁冲突,重在如何实现拆迁中的利益分配均衡、拆迁行为规范和承诺切实践行。     

Network view of MNCs' socio-political behavior

While business networks and relationships in international and industrial marketing studies are explored extensively, relationships between firms and socio-political actors are rarely been studied. This paper addresses this gap and examines how MNCs manage their relationship with socio-political organizations. The study builds from the proposition that business firms, besides their actions in business market, have to manage their socio-political market. The study aims to develop a theoretical view that is based in business networks and contains the three concepts of legitimacy, commitment and trust. The proposition is that business firms behave proactively towards the actors in the socio-political environment which is related to their business goals. The three conceptual elements will enable us to understand more deeply the varieties in the firms' managerial behavior. Two cases test the concept in the model — those of Daewoo Motor Company (a South Korean MNC) and the Swedish MNC, Vattenfall. The study will contribute towards deeper understanding of socio-political market and how firms manage their socio-political relationships. The conclusions describe the theoretical and managerial implications.