Restricted electricity use among poor urban households

For a variety of reasons, this article argues, electricity must be seen by policy‐makers in South Africa not as the sole provider of all future household energy needs, but rather as one component of an energy mix which includes such ‘transitional’ fuels as coal, gas and paraffin. The reasons for this are that electricity is expensive for poor households; it is subject to power failures and disconnections for non‐payment; the poor find it difficult to monitor and to control their consumption; appliances are expensive and several are required to make best use of electricity; people prefer other fuels because they are familiar and have strong personal and cultural associations, and because Eskom is not trusted owing to its past ties to illegitimate local authorities and misunderstanding of electricity and how its use is monitored and charged for. Further, it is mistaken to equate ‘development’ with total electrification: most developed countries have fuel mixes which include gas and coal, particularly for cooking and heating. Accepting an affordable fuel mix for the poor in particular would focus attention on the problems currently associated with paraffin, gas and coal, namely fires, poisoning and air pollution.     

Asymmetric Adjustment Costs, Asymmetric Pricing and Employment: Evidence from the UK

This paper uses an asymmetric multivariate model to investigate asymmetries in employment and pricing behaviour by firms. This generalises the approach of Granger and Lee (1989) and also exploits the cross equation restrictions on the equations for prices and employment implied by a restricted cost function—the dual to a Cobb‐Douglas production function. Our results suggest that both prices and employment respond asymmetrically to shocks to costs and demand.     

Spanish and American Business Professionals' Ethical Evaluations in Global Situations

More ethics research needs to explore the global differences in ethical evaluations. This study explored the relationships among nationality, teleological evaluations, ethical judgments, and ethical intentions using a sample of 222 American and Spanish business professionals. The path analysis indicated that teleological evaluations were related to ethical judgments and that both ethical judgments and teleological evaluations were related to ethical intentions. Executive nationality was related to teleological evaluations and ethical intentions with American individuals having higher teleological assessments and intentions to act ethically than the Spanish individuals. These findings have implications for global companies, which are presented along with the study's limitations and future research suggestions.     

Towards collective business action and cross-sector collaboration in responsible competitiveness clusters in southern Africa

Responsible competitiveness clusters are cross-sector collaboration initiatives focused on identifying and acting upon synergies between sustainable development and economic competitiveness objectives. By means of three case studies in southern Africa this paper investigates the incentives, opportunities and challenges encountered in the emergence of such clusters. The first case study focuses on a regional response to the development challenges encountered in a South African mining area, the second describes efforts to make the Malawian agriculture sector more inclusive and competitive and the third discusses options for enhancing the competitiveness of the Lesotho textile sector. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of international trade networks, the institutional framework, public sector support and internal governance processes as key factors influencing the initial level of success of these initiatives.     

The case of the unpopular pay plan

Three years after launching the team-based Quality For All program, Top Chemical Company CEO Sam Verde was searching for a team-based compensation system that would reflect his company's new philosophy. With a committee gathered to discuss the issue, Verde confronts the fact that changing pay plans is an issue few people can agree on. "Very simply," explains vice president for compensation Gilbert Porterfield, "the plan is designed to give employees working on teams real incentives for constant improvement and overall excellence. The variable aspect of the system pays employees for the performance of their group." This doesn't sit well with the others. "It's going to punish teams like mine for the failings of others instead of rewarding us for the work we do and have already done," says packaging team representative Ruth Gibson. Another committee member feels that team-based anything is a "motivational happy land that doesn't square with how people really work." While Verde likes the proposed pay plan, he has doubts over whether his employees will accept the risk. Upper management has no problem basing 60% of its pay on TopChem's performance. But getting line employees to risk part of their salaries--even as little as 4%--on the ups and downs of the chemical industry may be more trouble than it's worth. Four experts on compensation reveal where Top Chemical went wrong in its plan and how Sam Verde might bring about change successfully.     

Promise and peril in implementing pay‐for‐performance

Why would managers abandon pay‐for‐performance plans they initiated with great hopes? Why would employees celebrate this decision? This article explores why managers made their decisions in 12 of 13 pay‐for‐performance “experiments” at Hewlett‐Packard in the mid‐1990s. We find that managers thought the costs of these programs to be higher than the benefits. Alternative managerial practices such as effective leadership, clear objectives, coaching, or training were thought a better investment. Despite the undisputed instrumentality of pay‐for‐performance to motivate, little attention has been given to whether the benefits outweigh the costs or the “fit” of these programs with high‐commitment cultures like Hewlett‐Packard was at the time. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Expertise, Subversion, and Bureaucratic Discretion

This article examines a legislature's delegation of policy-makingauthority to an imperfectly controlled, expert bureaucrat. Thelegislature can reduce the bureaucrat's expertise advantagethrough costly investigations of its own before delegating.Further, the bureaucrat is granted discretionary bounds by thelegislature, but can subvert legislative dictates by steppingbeyond them at some cost. I analyze the interaction of preferencedivergence, investigation cost to the legislature, and subversioncost to the bureaucrat on the decision to delegate. The modelshows that, because of the equilibrium effect of subversionon discretion, bureaucrats will want subversion of legislativedictates to be difficult, while legislators want it to be relativelyeasy. It also highlights an indirect effect between preferencedivergence and discretion: preference divergence leads the legislatureto become more expert on policy matters, which leads it to delegateless.     

The Distributional Impact of Selected Commonwealth Outlays and Taxes and Alternative Commonwealth Grant Allocation Mechanisms

This article examines the redistributive impact of Commonwealth outlays and taxes (including outlays directed through and to the States)and two possible alternative systems of distributing Commonwealth funding amongst the States.