Employee involvement and participation: developing the concept of institutional embeddedness using WERS2004

It is widely accepted that employee involvement and participation (EIP) is a key component of the high commitment bundle of HRM, but that it can take a range of forms in practice. Much of the analysis to date has either treated different forms of EIP as a single construct or has measured EIP by virtue of its presence or absence alone. Drawing on earlier work based on the data from WERS1998 examining the link between various forms of EIP and employee outcomes such as job satisfaction and organisational commitment, the authors re-apply and extend these ideas to data from WERS2004. In particular they develop the concept of institutional embeddedness, in order argue that both the depth and breadth of EIP have important associations with commitment though not with satisfaction.

This association held for workplaces employing 25 or more workers, and here it was apparent that the more that employees are involved at workplace level – through a wider number of EIP practices that are held more frequently and include opportunities for workers to have their say – the more likely it is that investments in EIP will reap the reward of organisational commitment. For smaller establishments, given that they tend to operate with relatively few formal schemes, it is likely that managers in these workplaces find alternative ways in which to engage the workforce, and that informal EIP offer similar levels of embeddedness in these situations. A clear implication to be drawn from the findings is that, in a context of lower levels of formality within organisations (large and small), line managers are more than ever the key link between HR policy and the embodiment of actual practice at the workplace.     

The impact of broadband on jobs and the German economy

This study calculates the impact of investment in broadband technology on German employment and economic output. Two sequential investment scenarios are analysed: the first one reflects the government’s National Broadband Strategy that extends through 2014, and the second covers the ultra-broadband evolution from 2015 to 2020. The authors conclude that the required investment of close to 36 billion euros is justifi ed by the substantial benefi ts that would be generated in terms of both additional jobs and GDP growth.     

Context Effects in a Negatively Framed Social Dilemma Experiment

A number of studies of the positively-framed voluntary contribution mechanism (VCM) public goods game have examined the role of context on participant behavior. Relatively little attention, however, has been given to the effects of context in negatively-framed VCM games even though this setting is relevant to a wide array of real world challenges, such as common pool resource use and pollution externalities. This study uses a carefully-controlled laboratory experiment to investigate the degree to which the context in which decisions are made influences decision making in a negatively-framed VCM laboratory experiment. The context treatments that we evaluate vary communication, voting, and the status quo of the initial endowment. Results indicate that providing groups the opportunity to communicate and vote significantly reduces choices that impose external costs. Importantly, the pro-social effects of communication and voting are strongest when the status quo endowment is the private account, which generates costs on other participants. This result suggests that the effect of the status quo endowment is a function of whether the social dilemma is framed positively or negatively when communication between participants is allowed.     

Lottery Incentives and Resource Management: Evidence from the Agricultural Data Reporting Incentive Program (AgDRIP)

Environmental and Resource Economics - To manage resources effectively in an agri-environmental context, policymakers need information about on-farm management practices and ecological conditions....     

Member Values Over Time. A Study of the Relationship Between Member Values,Age and Length Of Membership

Expectations of association members change over time depending on two factors: age and length of membership. In the product- and service-marketing literature, the fact of changing needs and expectations during a customer’s life cycle is already well explored. So far, this is not the case in the research on members of nonprofit organizations. This paper closes this research gap from a member-value perspective by discussing the links among age, length of membership, and value perception. Survey data from 1,613 members of a Swiss hiking trail association reveal that both temporal metrics show significant positive relationships with all member-value dimensions: enjoyment, affection, identity, power, participation, understanding, and safety. In this respect, length of membership shows stronger effects than age and the only member value unaffected by time is that of individual economic goals. The paper closes with practical implications for the management of membership associations.     

Social versus psychological brand community: The role of psychological sense of brand community

In the quest for building long-term successful brands, many marketers have become increasingly interested in how to create and foster successful communities of brand users. The appeal of such an approach to relationship marketing lies in the recognition that members of brand communities tend to exhibit favorable brand-related behaviors and intentions. Research examining the social influence and creation of such social relationships among admirers of a brand has revealed substantial insights about the social processes that underlie customers' involvement in brand communities. Curiously, the psychological underpinnings of a customer's perception of community with other users of the brand remain unexplored. We offer the perspective that the observable, core components of brand community outlined in previous research may represent markers of social brand communities, while psychological brand communities may be characterized by an unobservable, psychological sense of community that could precede, or even work in lieu of, social interaction.     

Ambient-based pollution mechanisms: A comparison of homogeneous and heterogeneous groups of emitters

Over the last two decades, ambient-based tax mechanisms have been offered as a potential solution to the problem of nonpoint source water pollution. Previous theoretical analyses suggest that the performance of ambient-based tax mechanisms does not depend on firm characteristics, such as size, whilst policy discussions advocate that such mechanisms are best suited for regulating relatively homogeneous firms. Using controlled laboratory experiments, we provide empirical evidence that the distribution of firm sizes does have a significant impact on observed group decision making and further that heterogeneity has the potential to generate both some relatively desirable outcomes as well as some outcomes that are not attractive. These results suggest that richer theoretical models that capture important strategic interactions and social preferences are needed to better describe laboratory behavior and, by extension, behavior in potential policy settings.     

Believability and consumer perceptions of implausible reference prices in retail advertisements

Based on results from three studies, this research addresses questions relating to the role of perceived believability of a reference price set at an implausible level. Compared to effects of more plausible levels of reference prices, an implausible reference price is shown to be capable of positively influencing both perceptions of a fair price and the highest price that would be paid for an advertised product, as well as more evaluative dependent variables such as perceived value of the advertised offer and purchase willingness estimates. The perceived believability of the price offer is associated with a stronger impact on evaluative dependent variables than price-related estimates. Results indicate the importance of scrutiny of retailers' use of advertised reference prices by public policy advocates, and suggest implications for theoretical bases used to address reference pricing issues. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Experiments on Damage-Based Ambient Taxes for Nonpoint Source Polluters

This article presents experimental tests of a linear and a nonlinear ambient tax mechanism that involve modest information requirements for the regulator. When agents are not allowed to communicate, both tax mechanisms result in emission levels that approximate the social optimum. When agents can communicate, emissions are considerably below the optimum, but we show that the tax function can be scaled to achieve social efficiency. Finally, by disaggregating the overall efficiency measure, we show that changing the pollution threshold that triggers the tax increases the inefficiency resulting from variation in agent-level decisions, but does not affect average emissions.