Innovative human resource practices and organizational commitment: an empirical investigation

In the contemporary business environment, human resource (HR) is an indispensable input for organizational effectiveness. Hence, an effective management of human resources has an important role to play in the performance and success of organizations. Competitive pressures have encouraged organizations to be proactive in diagnosing HR problems and to adopt more innovative HR practices since these were no longer a matter of trend, but rather of survival. The present study attempted to explore the relationship of three dimensions of innovative human resource practices (IHRPs): that is, the extent of introduction of IHRPs, their importance for organizational goal achievement and satisfaction with implementation of IHRPs, with organizational commitment (OC). Regression analyses showed that the perceived extent of introduction of innovative human resource practices by the organizations was the most significant predictor of organizational commitment.     

Blogging: A new play in your marketing game plan

The emergence, proliferation, and ubiquity of the Internet have not only transformed businesses, but also altered the relationship between businesses and the customer. Recent advances in technology have helped to migrate this relationship to an interactive level where technology contributes to brand building by creating and sustaining a long-term relationship with the customer. Media fragmentation and customer indifference to traditional marketing tools are forcing marketers to seek new opportunities so the marketing message not only captures customers’ attention, but also tries to engage them with the company. This paper discusses blogs within the context of creating this new, more enduring relationship with the customer. Blogs are discussed within the framework of Web 2.0, the next generation of the Internet, which is comprised of user-generated content and social computing. The use of blogs by several companies as tools to better engage the customer in the creation, delivery, and dissemination of marketing messages is also demonstrated.     

A SIMULATION APPROACH TO THE ANALYSIS OF STABILISATION POLICIES IN AGRICULTURAL MARKETS: A CASE STUDY*

Agricultural markets are very often susceptible to year-to-year fluctuations in price and output and it is generally agreed that it would be desirable to control these fluctuations by intelligent market support operations. In this paper we develop a simulation model to assess the efficacy of market support operations in the case of egg market in the U.K. during the period 1958-68. We argue that for this problem a simulation approach is more effective than either a geometric or an algebraic approach. On the basis of our analysis, we find that in the absence of the market support operations of the British Egg Marketing Board during the period 1958-68, the long-run average return to the egg producer would have been only marginally different from the actual but the instability of the market would have been substantially greater. We also found that because of the nature of the subsidy arrangements, there were severe limits to the Egg Board's capacity to increase producer price even in the short run in spite of the inelastic demand curve. More generally, we conclude that marketing Boards in situations similar to the Egg Board's should aim at keeping close to the long-run producer price rather than short-run profit maximisation.     

Tests and uses of macro-econometric models: A critical survey

Summary In spite of some recent developments, the general area of methods for testing and using macro-econometric models is in a very underdeveloped state. Statistical measures like Theil's inequality coefficient or simple mean square error give some idea about the performance of forecasts of individual variables. They do not give a satisfactory measure for the model as a whole. Even more important, these statistical measures do not provide a proper economic measure of the efficiency of the model. In general we would like to have some measure of the sensitivity of optimum policy developed on the basis of the model. The acceptability of the model will then depend on whether the degree of uncertainty thus associated with the objective function of the policy maker is acceptable. This of course requires specification of the objective function of the authorities using the macro-econometric models. Here again the progress achieved so far is rather limited. We have argued for a programming approach to the problem where instead of searching for a general welfare function, we accept one target as the object of maximisation while other targets appear as constraints. This approach however, is only a shortrun solution. The longer run problem of specifying a social welfare function and evaluating and using macro-econometric models has so far been barely scratched on surface. The author is grateful to Professor J. A. Sawyer for his valuable comments at various stages of this paper. This survey was done in connection with the project on Econometric Model of the U.K. that is going on at London Business School under the supervision of Professor R. J. Ball.