Recurrent unemployment in young black and white males

In this article the author, using data drawn from the experience of West Indians and white school leavers, examines the problem of recurrent unemployment and its relationship to the structure of local labour markets.     

Empirical Effects of Performance Contracts: Evidence From China

Performance contracts (PCs)—contracts signed between thegovernment and state enterprise managers—have been usedwidely in developing countries. China's experience with suchcontracts was one of the largest experiments with contractingin the public sector, affecting hundreds of thousands of statefirms, and offered a rare opportunity to explore how PCs work.On average, PCs did not improve performance and may have madeit worse. But China's PCs were not uniformly bad; in fact, PCsimproved productivity in slightly more than half of the participants.PC effects were on average negative because of the large lossesassociated with poorly designed PCs. Successful PCs were thosethat featured sensible targets, stronger incentives, longerterms, managerial bonds, and were in more competitive industries.Selecting managers through bidding was not associated with performanceimprovement. Good PC features were more often observed in state-ownedenterprises (SOEs) under the oversight of local governments,that faced more competition, that were smaller in size, andthat had better previous performance.     

Managerial Altruism and Governance in Charitable Donations

We describe a double agency problem in firms' charitable donations. When managers have better knowledge about the effectiveness of donations and their altruistic preferences, it is difficult for shareholders to tell whether charitable donations are made for a strategic purpose or due to managerial altruism. We characterize the equilibrium donations in a heterogeneous competition model. We show that managerial altruism is a substitute for the effectiveness of donations, and excess donations cannot be prevented by a compensation scheme that reduces the interest conflicts between ownership and management. Under board authorization, the board will tolerate donations with high effectiveness and low altruism as well as donations corresponding to low effectiveness and high altruism. Under a penalty scheme, the altruistic manager will increase donations, in order to increase donation's strategic benefit to compensate for the loss from the penalty. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Analysing Texts in Context: Current Practices and New Protocols for Critical Discourse Analysis in Organization Studies

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in organization studies would be strengthened by an increased focus on a central CDA tenet that texts should be analysed in context. Context has, for the most part, been afforded a taken‐for‐granted status that is misplaced because of the diverse ways in which it may be defined and applied. These generally unacknowledged differences relate to whether context is treated as space, time, practice, change, or frame. The result is a confusing array of studies claiming some degree of CDA status without core agreement – or acknowledgement of disagreements – about what is meant by context or how it should be linked to texts. To remedy this situation we identify in this Point article nine methodological protocols related to conceptual definitions, data selection, and data analysis which we argue benefit the consistency and rigour with which CDA in organization studies is applied. Use of these protocols may also serve as criteria against which the rigour of CDA research papers may be assessed.     

Linking JIT strategies and control systems: A comparison of the United States and Japan

Potential blows to US competitiveness by Japanese manufacturers have been instrumental in stimulating interest in the development of manufacturing strategy theory and its importance at the level of competitive strategy. Unfortunately, little substantial empirical research effort has attempted to measure manufacturing strategy and to explore its potential linkages with management control systems in the United States and Japan. This study expands the empirical data base available on this topic by exploring the adoption of just-in-time strategies, and the use of management control systems associated with the implementation of inventory reduction and flexibility initiatives in the United States and Japan.