Privatizing public services and strategic behavior: The impact of incentives to reduce workers' compensation claim duration

During the 1990s, the state of Ohio contracted out Workers' Compensation (WC) case management, incorporating a large bonus payment intended to reward reduced claim duration. The bonus is essentially a decreasing function of average days away from work, excluding claims longer than 15 months. In response, duration is predicted to decrease for claims with moderate injuries and increase for some severe claims so that claimants will miss more than 15 months of work and be excluded from the calculation. I show that contractors increased duration for severe claims but find no evidence that contractors successfully reduced duration for moderate claims. However, contractors received large bonus payments. This is likely because the financial reward to merely excluding a small share of severe claims from the calculation of the bonus payment is large enough to enable TCMs to receive the full bonus. These contractor responses are inconsistent with state intentions, suggesting public entities should anticipate strategic behavior when crafting performance-based incentives.     

Showdown at Kykuit: Field-Configuring Events as Loci for Conventionalizing Accounts

abstract    Despite the centrality of fields as a concept in organizational research, the processes by which fields form and change have not been studied in great depth. By situating action in time and space, field-configuring events (FCEs) offer valuable settings for researchers seeking insight into such processes. This paper develops a theory of accounts as a way to understand a mechanism by which institutional entrepreneurs seek to shape fields and influence the institutions that govern them. Actors produce and distribute justified accounts – narratives that describe the way work in the field ought to be done – and attempt to persuade powerful actors in the field to adopt them as conventions. FCEs can thus be understood as loci for conventionalizing accounts. The theory of accounts and field-level change is illustrated with a case study of a turning point FCE during which competing institutional entrepreneurs in the field of 'non-profit technology assistance providers' present alternative accounts. Successful institutional entrepreneurship comes from recognizing political opportunities to align one's account with the dominant orders of worth in the field, thereby convincing powerful actors to accept one's account as convention.     

LINEAR PROGRAMMING AND GAME THEORY MODLES—SOME EXTENSIONS

This is an extension of the author's earlier paper in this Journal, showing how the complete range of decision criteria conventionally associated with game theory can be applied in conjunction with a linear programming model. The use of these criteria is demonstrated in relation to the same farm planning problem as was shown earlier in the development of Maximin programming, and a comparison of all the alternative plans resulting from the adoption of a game theoretic decision framework is presented.     

A Model of Reasoned Responses: Use of the Golden Mean and Implications for Management Practice

We address three issues regarding the relationship between political party affiliation and returns in the equities markets, as measured by the NYSE Composite Index and its sub-indexes. First, we find a tendency for returns to be greater during Democratic presidential administrations; however, this result is statistically insignificant. Second, we conclude that returns during the last two years of presidential administrations are greater than during the first two years. Third, we examine the relationship between the majority party in each house of Congress and equity returns. We raise the possibility that party affiliation of Congress is a factor in explaining returns.     

TECHNOLOGY CHANGE AS AN INSTRUMENT IN AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT

The introduction of new technology into agriculture is a central feature of development schemes, but is regularly criticised because of its distributive effects. Technology change is unavoidably biased, however, and cannot easily be used to serve specific distribution objectives. Ex post studies do not necessarily guide the appropriate choice of technology as they rarely offer causal explanations. Predicting the consequences of innovation is hampered by the narrowness of established economic models and the conceptual indefiniteness of technology as a variable in those models. In the absence of a wider system framework, technology for development is selected according to more general guides. These emphasise either the primacy of output objectives or advocate technology forms presumed appropriate to distribution objectives. Neither adequately substitutes for a broad framework to guide the choice of technology as an instrument in development.