good neighbors but bad employers two faces of corporate social responsibility programs using two firm level datasets in korea we analyzed the effects of corporate social responsibility csr on employment relations we propose that participation in corporate social activity may not necessarily reflect an ethical commitment to do the right thing but instead can be associated with mobilizing internal resources to offset the costs imposed by external csr involvement undertaken because of social pressure analysis of the two datasets showed similar results the results demonstrate that socially responsible actions facilitate employer tendency to use performance based pay and efficiency based work practices we also find that csr has a negative association with employment growth and increased labor flexibility through contingent employment these findings shed light on the internal impact of csr involvement on a firm s employment policies with respect to resource allocation

best practices in demand forecasting tests of universalistic contingency and configurational theories abstract the paper focuses on best practices in demand forecasting literature has addressed the best practice concept under three different perspectives according to the universalistic perspective some forecasting practices are universally effective regardless of the context in which companies operate in the contingent perspective the effectiveness of forecasting practices depends on the specific kind of context each company faces a third perspective is the configurational one which asserts that there are synergistic effects among best practices in this work we compare these different perspectives by designing and testing different sets of propositions that underline the aforementioned perspectives analysis is conducted by collecting data of more than 500 companies in different countries via the 4th edition of the global manufacturing research group gmrg iv questionnaire the results demonstrate that each perspective has some empirical support

competition for advertisers and for viewers in media markets standard models of advertising financed media assume consumers patronise a single media platform precluding effective competition for advertisers such competition ensues if consumers multi home the principle of incremental pricing implies that multi homing consumers are less valuable to platforms then entry of new platforms decreases advertisement prices while a merger increases them and advertisement financed platforms may suffer if a public broadcaster carries advertisements platforms may bias content against multi homing consumers especially if consumers highly value overlapping content and or second impressions have low value

determinants of women s health status and health care utilization in a developing country a latent variable approach a latent variable representation of health is used in a system that determines health and various indicators of health and health care utilization for nicaraguan women estimates differ somewhat from standard estimates they imply that women s schooling increases health care utilization literate women report less disease incidence women s childhood backgrounds affect their adult health and health care utilization and general resources favor childbirth related care but women s full income favors general care the most significant result is that several important characteristics usually associated with development women s schooling household resources and women s labor force participation have inverse or no associations with women s health health status is hypothesized to be important in developing countries both as a direct indicator of welfare and because of its possible impact on productivity health care utilization also is of interest both because of its relation to health status and because it is a particular manifestation of demand and supply for a 1 modem service work on the determinants of health status and health care utilization in developing economies however is flawed because true health status is not directly observable the indicators of health status that have been used in empirical studies anthropometric measures days ill self reported or clinical disease records inputs such as nutrients and health care utilization indicesare imperfect indicators of underlying health status and generally do not give a congruent representation of that status thereby they may not measure adequately health status and their use may lead to biases in estimates and incorrect interpretations we use a latent variable methodology for the first time to explore health status and health care utilization in a developing country this approach employs systematic relations between various indicators of health status and health status itself and between health status and various related outcomes so that it is possible to estimate the determinants of health status and control for health status in other relations even though health status is not directly observed by using this methodology we obtain more satisfactory estimates of the determinants of health status and of health care utilization in a developing country context than previous estimates using direct but imperfect proxies this should improve the empirical bases for evaluating health and related policies in the developing world i latent variable model of health status and health care utilization in the human capital tradition of analysis of health individual health status is viewed as determined by individual demand factors given supply prices environment age and resources including genes health care utilization is a derived demand for a service which is used to produce better health to incorporate the latent variable representation of the unobserved health status we assume that the demand supply health status and health care utilization interactions as well as the relation of other health indicators to health status can be represented by the following linear system of relations

the quality of schooling quantity alone is misleading although much research discusses the quantity of schooling as an effective impact on productivity and earnings most such research leaves out the idea of the quality of schooling which may cause biases in the estimated returns to schooling this paper consequently attempts to extend the standard mincerian approach to incorporate school quality as well as quantity it demonstrates how exclusion of quality in the standard procedure may cause biases in the estimated returns to years of schooling probably in the upward direction the paper explores the implications of this extension of the standard model for the case of young brazilian males it shows that the estimate of the private return to years of schooling using the preferred quality inclusive specification is only one half the estimate using the standard procedure indicating substantial upward bias in the standard estimates it further outlines a method for estimating a social return to quality and finds that it exceeds substantially the social return to quantity the paper then shows why this in turn suggests there may be an equity productivity trade off in schooling investments

financial intermediation and endogenous growth an endogenous growth model with multiple assets is developed agents who face random future liquidity needs accumulate capital and a liquid but unproductive asset the effects of introducing financial intermediation into this environment are considered conditions are provided under which the introduction of intermediaries shifts the composition of savings toward capital causing intermediation to be growth promoting in addition intermediaries generally reduce socially unnecessary capital liquidation again tending to promote growth

trying to explain home bias in equities and consumption investors hold a substantially larger proportion of their wealth portfolios in domestic assets than standard portfolio theory would suggest a phenomenon called equity home bias in the absence of this bias investors would optimally diversify domestic output risk using foreign equities therefore consumption growth rates would tend to co move across countries even when output growth rates do not empirically however consumption growth rates tend to have a lower correlation across countries than do output growth rates a phenomenon i call consumption home bias in this paper i discuss these two biases and their potential relationship as suggested by the literature

nutrients impacts and determinants understanding the determinants of nutrient intake and the influence of nutrition on performance is critical in designing policies to alleviate hunger and malnutrition a series of studies undertaken by the authors which are synthesized here analyzes the influence of prices income and women s schooling on the nutrient intake of those in developing countries and the effect of nutrition on health productivity wages and fertility these studies suggest that the impact of food price increases may be strong particularly among those with the lowest incomes that the growth of income may be less likely to improve nutrient intake than has been suggested by others and that womzen s schooling is important in improving nutrition these studies also indicate that nutrition exerts a positive influence on wages productivity and fertility our limited knowledge of the role and determinants of nutrition is reflected in the finding of unduly strong effects of seasonalitv on price nutrition relations and the lack of a direct association between nutrition and health the nutrition of poor populations is of substantial interest because of the widespread and plausible presumption that better nutrition improves the welfare of individuals in such populations nutrition also is of interest because of the common conjecture that better nutrition improves productivity a series of our studies have analyzed the relations between nutrition and health labor productivity and fertility and the relations between prices income women s schooling and nutrition intake here we synthesize the results of these studies and address some of the puzzles and policy implications that have arisen

high performance work systems and organizational performance across societal cultures this paper assesses whether societal culture moderates the relationship between human resource management hrm practices and organizational performance drawing on matched employer employee data from 387 organizations and 7187 employees in 14 countries our findings show a positive relationship between hrm practices combined in high performance work systems hpws and organizational performance across societal cultures three dimensions of societal culture assessed power distance in group collectivism and institutional collectivism did not moderate this relationship drawing on the ability motivation opportunity amo model we further consider the effectiveness of three bundles of hrm practices skill enhancing motivation enhancing and opportunity enhancing practices this analysis shows opportunity enhancing practices e g participative work design and decision making are less effective in high power distance cultures nevertheless in markedly different countries we find combinations of complementary hpws and bundles of amo practices appear to outweigh the influence of societal culture and enhance organizational performance

market provision of broadcasting a welfare analysis this paper presents a theory of the market provision of broadcasting and uses it to address the nature of market failure in the industry advertising levels may be too low or too high depending on the nuisance cost to viewers the substitutability of programs and the expected benefits to advertisers from contacting viewers market provision may allocate too few or too many resources to programming and these resources may be used to produce programs of the wrong type monopoly ownership may produce higher social surplus than competitive ownership and the ability to price programming may reduce social surplus

mnc knowledge transfer subsidiary absorptive capacity and hrm based on a sample of 169 subsidiaries of multinational corporations mncs operating in the usa russia and finland this paper investigates the relationship between mnc subsidiary human resource management hrm practices absorptive capacity and knowledge transfer first we examine the relationship between the application of specific hrm practices and the level of the absorptive capacity second we suggest that absorptive capacity should be conceptualized as being comprised of both employees ability and motivation further results indicate that both ability and motivation absorptive capacity are needed to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from other parts of the mnc

shareholder value stakeholder management and social issues what s the bottom line we test the relationship between shareholder value stakeholder management and social issue participation building better relations with primary stakeholders like employees customers suppliers and communities could lead to increased shareholder wealth by helping firms develop intangible valuable assets which can be sources of competitive advantage on the other hand using corporate resources for social issues not related to primary stakeholders may not create value for shareholders we test these propositions with data from s p 500 firms and find evidence that stakeholder management leads to improved shareholder value while social issue participation is negatively associated with shareholder value copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

are organisation researchers too obsessed with the economic responsibility of the firm the original intent of business education in america focused on the development of professional managers who would look after the interests of society as economic and shareholder theories influenced business education firm performance became the manager s top if not only priority the economic responsibility of the firm also appears to be dominating scholarly interest in organisations as well however business firms constitute part of the fabric of society and closer attention should be paid by organisation researchers to the social responsibilities of the firm in doing so a more balanced research approach can be achieved in this article we give evidence that research within the study of the organisation specifically in the field of management has predominately turned its attention to the economic responsibility of the firm we close by demonstrating that other fields within organisation research also appear to be favouring the study of performance and we offer suggestions as to how scholars might better address the firm s role in society beyond its economic responsibility

the dynamics of alignment insights from a punctuated equilibrium model several prior articles have emphasized the importance of alignment between business and information system is strategies and between business and is structures seeking to advance our understanding of alignment we examine the dynamics of changes in alignment through strategy structure interactions in the business and is domains more specifically we address the following question in what ways does alignment evolve over time changes in the strategic is management profile which includes business strategy is strategy business structure and is structure over time are examined using a punctuated equilibrium model involving long periods of relative stability or evolutionary change interrupted by short periods of quick and extensive or revolutionary change case studies of changes in business and is strategies and structure over long time periods in three organizations suggest that the punctuated equilibrium model provides a valuable perspective for viewing these dynamics the cases suggest that a pattern of alignment may continue over a long period because either the level of alignment is high or the managers do not recognize the low alignment as a problem revolutions involving changes in most or all dimensions of the strategic is management profile interrupt the evolutionary changes however organizations hesitate to make such revolutionary changes in strategic is management profiles complete revolutions apparently require a combination of strong triggers finally post revolution adjustments to one dimension of the strategic is management profile seem to follow revolutionary changes

the feldstein horioka puzzle and spurious ratio correlation abstract this study shows that the feldstein horioka puzzle resembles a spurious ratio correlation due to a common deflator pearson 1896 7 empirically the feldstein horioka specification and its counterpart with an arbitrary deflator final domestic demand give similar results monte carlo results also indicates that the slope and r 2 of the ratio regression are upward biased theoretically assuming each of the original undeflated variables are linear homogeneous functions of the deflator and random disturbances formulas for and r 2 are derived as saving and investment rates are numerically small relative to the disturbances both and r 2 are predominantly determined by the disturbances and they tend towards unity when the disturbances are close in magnitude the feldstein horioka results are therefore noisy though not entirely spurious and do not necessarily reflect a strong correlation between investment and savings

informative advertising with differentiated products in this paper we study the role of promotional expenditures by sellers in a model of product differentiation advertising conveys full and accurate information about the characteristics of products heterogeneous consumers who have no source of information other than advertisements seek to purchase the products that best fit their needs despite the roles played by advertising in improving the matching of products and consumers and in increasing the elasticity of demand faced by each firm we find that the market determined levels of advertising are excessive given the extent of diversity in the market we derive a promotional equilibrium based on a specific information transmission technology paying explicit attention to the structure of consumer information and its impact on firms demand curves this allows us to study the effects of changes in the advertising technology including an increased ability to target messages to specific groups of consumers on the equilibrium in the product market we find that decreased advertising costs may reduce profits by increasing the severity of price competition

media market concentration advertising levels and ad prices standard media economics models imply that increased platform competition decreases ad levels and that mergers reduce per viewer ad prices the empirical evidence however is mixed we attribute the theoretical predictions to the combined assumptions that there is no advertising congestion and that viewers single home allowing for crowding in viewer attention spans for ads may reverse standard results as does allowing viewers to multi home jel classification d11 d43 l13

quantity restrictions on advertising commercial media bias and welfare abstract we study the welfare effect of a quantity restriction on advertising in free to air television and other advertising financed media in the presence of commercial media bias broadcasters face a trade off between increasing the number of viewers by sending content that is highly valued by viewers and increasing the price of advertising by choosing advertiser friendly content a cap on advertising drives the per viewer price of ads up thus content improves for viewers therefore the cap can be welfare enhancing even when viewers are not ad averse competition among broadcasters makes it more likely that a cap on advertising improves welfare thus there is a complementarity between regulation and competition on this market we also show that a tax on advertising revenues has quite different effects than a cap on advertising quantity

institutional theory and mnc subsidiary hrm practices evidence from a three country study this study sets out to explore human resource management hrm practices in multinational corporation mnc subsidiaries within an institutional theory framework based on a sample of 158 subsidiaries of mncs operating in the united states russia and finland the paper examines factors hypothesised to influence the hrm practices adapted in us japanese and european mnc subsidiaries located in russia finland and the us the results indicate significant differences in hrm practices used across host countries both the status of the subsidiary human resource department and the degree to which the subsidiary was involved in knowledge transfer with other parts of the mnc had a significant impact on the selection of hrm practices

investments in schooling in two generations in pre revolutionary nicaragua the roles of family background and school supply abstract family background and school supply underlie the demand and supply for schooling but are usually ignored in empirical estimates these considerations are investigated for two generations in nicaragua using unique data on adult sisters and their offspring to identify inter versus intrafamilial effects and to control for unobserved family background the results suggest that the standard interpretations are misleading 1 unobserved family background and school supply factors are important in schooling determination 2 omission of these factors leads to overestimates of impacts of parental schooling and family size 3 both parental schooling and family size primarily represent unobserved family background and school supply in standard estimates

returns to education a further international update and implications this paper updates evidence on the returns to investment in education by adding estimates for new countries and refining existing estimates to bring the total number of country cases to over 60 the new cross country evidence confirms and reinforces earlier patterns namely that returns are highest for primary education the general curricula the education of women and countries with the lowest per capita income the findings have important implications for directing future investment in education which for efficiency and equity purposes should concentrate on these priority areas

what do unions and employers negotiate under the umbrella of corporate social responsibility comparative evidence from the italian metal and chemical industries the corporate social responsibility csr and industrial relations ir studies have evolved mostly in parallel in this paper we integrate the ir with the csr perspective highlighting their similarities and differences in particular the study adopts a framework which includes a wide set of csr related issues to explore what unions and companies negotiate under the umbrella of csr it analyses and compares the national sectoral agreements of two key industries in the italian economy i e metal and chemical we find that these two sectors exhibit differences because the csr related issues covered by the two contracts are formally labelled as csr in the chemical contract and not labelled as csr in the metal contract we also find similarities regarding the csr related issues covered and not covered by the national contracts and the binding processes centrally negotiated for their implementation we interpret the similarities in light of the specificities of the italian ir system and the differences in light of the negotiation traditions of the two sectors under study which induce the actors in the metal sector traditionally with more conflictual ir relations to focus more on what differentiates the csr and ir perspectives and the actors in the chemical sector traditionally with more cooperative ir relations to focus more on what the csr and ir perspectives share

the theoretical foundation of industrial relations and its implications for labor economics and human resource management the author identifies the core principle that forms the theoretical and policy foundation for the field of industrial relations labor is embodied in human beings and is not a commodity and argues that the field s two central dependent variables are labor problems and the employment relationship next he uses this core principle along with complementary ideas from institutional economics to develop a theoretical framework that not only explains the nature of the employment relationship and labor problems but also reveals shortcomings in related theories from labor economics and human resource management finally this framework is used to derive the fundamental theorem of industrial relations demonstrate that optimal economic performance occurs in a mixed economy of imperfect labor markets and organizations and show that a certain amount of labor protectionism promotes economic efficiency and human welfare

exploring the curvature of the relationship between hrm csr and corporate financial performance this article contributes to the general literature on the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance as well as to the emerging hrm csr literature by exploring the curvature of the relationship between hrm csp and cfp we advance conceptual arguments in favor of an inverted u shaped relationship our results demonstrate a significant quadratic relationship between hrm csp and cfp we provide evidence that this relationship is not linear or s shaped but rather inverted u shaped

what you don t know can hurt you or at least mislead you family behaviors unobserved heterogeneities and the determinants and impacts of human resources over the life cycle what one does not know in the form of unobserved heterogeneity can mislead one in empirical estimates a simple model of intrahousehold allocations illustrates the possible importance of unobserved factors such as abilities in determining human resources and their impacts the author reviews over forty years of studies primarily from latin america and the caribbean but also from elsewhere to illustrate the substantial empirical importance of unobserved heterogeneity with regard to preferences and intrahousehold allocations schooling returns school quality early life nutrition and program evaluation

formal human capital attainment of career legislators in the u s congress modeling legislatures as unions the present paper employs a human capital modelthat examines among other things the educationalattainment of career politicians legislators statistical evidence is presented which suggests thatthe formal educational levels differ systematicallybetween career and non career politicians legislatorsat the federal level i e in the u s congress a result consistent with the implications of thelegislative pay union model developed by mccormick andtollison 1978 any adverse selection consequencesare potentially significant regarding the quality offederal legislation and the social cost of governmentactivities

does more schooling make women better nourished and healthier adult sibling random and fixed effects estimates for nicaragua there is debate on whether schooling causes increases in productivity or whether the estimated relationships reflect ability knowledge tastes etc that are associated with schooling this paper examines the impact of women s schooling on women s health and nutrition with and without controls for unobserved childhood background factors related to ability and motivation random and fixed effects models are estimated using data on adult sisters both sets of estimates reinforce the relationships found in standard estimates that women s schooling positively affects their health and nutrient intakes the latter result is particularly robust

a century of current account dynamics abstract recent globalization trends have refocused attention on the historical evolution of international capital mobility over the long run the issue is examined here using time series analysis of current account dynamics for fifteen countries since circa 1850 the inter war period emerges as an era of low capital mobility and only recently can we observe a tentative return to the degree of capital mobility witnessed during the late nineteenth century the analysis of saving and investment dynamics also helps make sense of the frequently observed high correlation of saving and investment rates in historical data

competition between networks a study of the market for yellow pages this paper estimates the importance of network effects in the market for yellow pages i estimate three simultaneous equations consumer demand for usage of a directory advertiser demand for advertising and a publisher s first order condition derived from profit maximizing behaviour estimation shows that advertisers value consumer usage and that consumers value advertising implying a network effect i find that internalizing network effects would significantly increase surplus as an application i consider whether the market benefits from monopoly which takes advantage of network effects or oligopoly which reduces market power i find that a more competitive market is preferable copyright 2004 wiley blackwell

modes of theorizing in strategic human resource management tests of universalistic contingency and configurational performance predictions the field of strategic human resource management shrm has been criticized for lacking a solid theoretical foundation this article documents that contrary to this criticism the shrm literature

financial development exchange rate regimes and the feldstein horioka puzzle evidence from the mena region this article investigates whether the feldstein and horioka 1980 argument on domestic saving investment relationship is supported by the data of the countries in the middle east and north africa region when financial development levels and exchange rate regimes are taken into account to this end we employ both the auroregressive distributed lag bounds cointegration test and panel mean group procedures the results support the view that a successful international financial integration requires compatible levels of financial intermediation the evidence also suggests that saving investment cointegration is not invariant to exchange rate regimes

a new database on the structure and development of the financial sector this article introduces a new database of indicators of financial structure and financial development across countries and over time the database is unique in that it combines a wide variety of indicators that measure the size activity and efficiency of financial intermediaries and markets it improves on previous efforts by presenting data on the public share of commercial banks introducing indicators of the size and activity of nonbank financial institutions and constructing measures of the size of bond and primary equity markets this article introduces a new database the first to provide comprehensive measures of the development structure and performance of the financial sector this database is the first to define and construct indicators of the size and activity of nonbank financial intermediaries such as insurance companies pension funds and non deposit money banks it is also the first to include indicators of the size of primary equity markets and primary and secondary bond markets in constructing the database authors carefully deflate measures and match stock and flow variables

stakeholders relationships and product market competition abstractin this article we study the relationships between main stakeholders shareholders consumers and employees when firms are consumer oriented co in the sense of caring about consumers interests in the objective function we let these firms first bargain with labour union over their employees wages and then compete either in the quantity space cournot competition or in the price space bertrand competition our model shows that taking care of the consumers interests when determining product market strategies may reverse the traditional ranking between cournot and bertrand equilibria this implies that if shareholders in a co firm can choose either a quantity or a price strategy they will surprisingly choose the latter moreover we show that the conflicting interests between main stakeholders are attenuated under bertrand competition compared to cournot competition

firms choice of method of pay using data from the bls industry wage survey the author tests the theory that firms choose their methods of pay by balancing the gains from more precise links between performance and pay against m

high performance work practices and core employee wages evidence from italian manufacturing plants past research has provided mixed evidence on the relationship between high performance work practices hpwps and wages drawing from more than 1 800 interviews with the hr managers in a stratified

the close but adversarial model of supplier relations in the u s auto industry while cooperative buyer supplier relations are an important source of sustainable competitive advantage noncooperative behavior persists widely this paper tests a model incorporating noncooperative behavior within a context of formal commitment using data from the u s auto industry this close but adversarial model appears to be reasonably well supported by the data suggesting that even within professed cooperative buyer supplier relationships adversarial behavior persists in contrast a small but significant minority of the relationships were found to be characterized by high levels of trust as well as informal commitment the results suggest specific strategies for developing cooperative supplier relations 1998 john wiley sons ltd

household production of health investment analysis and applications michael grossman s health investment model provides significant insights into allocations between both leisure and income and health and nonhealth goods our geometric extension i integrates labor leisure choice with the consumer s production of both health and nonhealth goods and ii distinguishes between medical expenditures and healthcare investment this provides a framework for examining the effects of changes in incomes and wages alternative insurance arrangements including managed care travel times waiting times and schooling observed differences between the income elasticities for health goods and health investment can be resolved through relative resource intensities in the production of health and nonhealth goods

the construct validity of the kinder lydenberg domini social performance ratings data carroll 1991 encouraged researchers in social issues management sim to continue to measure corporate social performance csp from a variety of different perspectives utilizing a variety of different measures in addition wolfe and aupperle 1991 and others have asserted that there is no single best way to measure csp and that multiple measures and perspectives help develop the field however pfeffer 1993 suggest that a lack of consistent measurement has constrained organization studies and by implication the field of social issues management in its development as a field it may be in the best interest of social issues management researchers to try to development a common body of measures and data recently kinder lydenberg and domini co kld a social choice investment advisory firm has made available their social performance database the kld data have potential to become a widely accepted set of csp measures the purpose of this paper is to present a construct validity study comparing the kld data to other measures of csp

exchange rate regimes and the feldstein horioka puzzle the french evidence this paper investigates whether the feldstein and horioka economic journal 90 314 329 1980 argument on domestic saving investment relationship is supported by the french data when an endogenous structural break corresponding to a major policy regime change is taken into account the evidence suggests that the saving investment cointegration disappears after the estimated endogenous structural break point in 1973 coinciding with the end of the bretton woods system of fixed exchange rates consistent with a current account targeting policy an investment driven saving process appears to be the case for the fixed exchange rate regime period

high performance work systems in foreign subsidiaries of american multinationals an institutional model this study examines the implementation of high performance work systems hpwss in 217 subsidiaries of american based multinational enterprises operating in 14 countries in asia africa and europe specifically this paper explores the effect of host country institutional factors on the extent of hpws implementation in subsidiaries and focuses on strong agency influences and dominance effects the proposed model was more successful in explaining the effect of hpwss on rank and file employees than on managers of particular interest is the strong positive association between host country economic growth and hpws implementation which suggests a possible cyclical sensitivity of subsidiaries regarding human resource management strategy

intellectual capital configurations and organizational capability an empirical examination of human resource subunits in the multinational enterprise building on the organizational capabilities literature and theories of the multinational enterprise this paper develops and tests a framework that examines the relationship between intellectual capital configurations and organizational capabilities in human resource hr subunits looking at 187 subunits from 20 mnes findings show that intellectual capital dimensions vary in their usefulness for generating sharing and implementing hr management practices in particular while certain resources may help in the development of one capability they may harm the development of another implications are that an organization s intellectual capital investments will differ depending on the desired capability

the role of performance related pay in renegotiating the effort bargain the case of the british public service much of the academic and policy literature on performance related pay prp focuses on its role as an incentive system its role as a means for renegotiating performance norms has been largely neglected this study examines the introduction of performance related pay based mostly on appraisals by line managers in britain s public services during the 1990s previous research indicates that prp failed to motivate many of the staff and that its operation was divisive nevertheless other information suggests that productivity rose this article seeks to resolve the paradox using contract theory to show that performance pay was the instrument of a major renegotiation of performance norms and that this rather than motivation was the principal dynamic goal setting and appraisal by line managers played a key role in this process

why governments should invest more to educate girls abstract women and men often receive the same percentage increase in their wage rates with advances in schooling because these returns decline with more schooling the marginal returns for women will tend to exceed those for men especially in countries where women are much less educated the health and schooling of children are more closely related to their mother s education than father s more educated women work more hours in the market labor force broadening the tax base and thereby potentially reducing tax distortions these three conditions it is argued justify the disproportionate allocation of public expenditures toward women s education

opening the black box of the relationship between hrm practices and firm performance a comparison of mne subsidiaries in the usa finland and russia this paper investigates the extent to which different human resource management hrm practices work better in different countries we also try to open the black box between hrm and multinational enterprise mne subsidiary performance by considering mechanisms through which hrm practices affect mne subsidiary performance the study utilizes a unique data set consisting of subsidiaries of 241 mnes operating in russia usa and finland in the partial least square analysis used to examine our hypotheses we demonstrate that different hrm practices are preferable in different countries and that motivation and ability are important mediating variables in the hrm mne subsidiary performance relationship

international venturing by emerging economy firms the effects of firm capabilities home country networks and corporate entrepreneurship past literature on foreign direct investment generally supports an economics perspective that there is a direct relationship between firm specific ownership advantages and international expansion however in emerging economies with their institutional environment context characterized by low resource munificence and continuous economic liberalization a theoretical extension of the current perspective is needed this paper introduces new parameters by focusing on specific ownership advantages and strategic actions that firms have to develop in response to the institutional characteristics of the emerging economies when they decide to pursue outward fdi the focus here is on international venturing that requires a firm to engage in activities for new business creation in a foreign country rather than simply seek to distribute a product in another nation it is shown empirically that the relationship between firm specific ownership advantages and international venturing is moderated by the degree of home industry competition and export intensity in addition such a relationship is mediated by the intensity of corporate entrepreneurial transformation in the form of innovation new business creation and strategic renewal

capital mobility in developing countries some measurement issues and empirical estimates an economy s financial integration with the outside world the extent of capital mobility across its borders is a key determinant of some of its most important macroeconomic properties yet little is known about this characteristic of many developing economies an important stumbling block in the empirical assessment of financial integration openness is the many approaches to measuring it the author describes and evaluates different tests of capital mobility surveys existing evidence and applies four tests of capital mobility to assess the degree to which the many developing countries tested have achieved integration with the world financial markets the four tests are the 1 magnitude of gross capital flows 2 uncovered interest rate parity 3 strength of saving investment correlations and 4 behavior of domestic consumption over time the evidence suggests that most developing countries can be considered to be financially open in only 18 of the 57 developing countries classified did the data fail to show financial openness and that many countries may be experiencing an increased degree of integration with world financial markets

the saving and investment nexus for china evidence from cointegration tests the saving and investment nexus as postulated by feldstein and horioka fh 1980 is revisited the saving investment correlation for china is estimated over the periods 1952 1998 and 1952 1994 the latter culminating in a period of fixed exchange rate regime amongst the key results it is found that saving and investment are correlated for china for both the period of the fixed exchange rate and the entire sample period with high saving investment correlation the results suggest that the chinese economy is in conformity with the fh hypothesis this is a valid outcome for in china capital mobility was fairly restricted over the 1952 1994 period as indicated by the relatively low foreign direct investment

the impact of market orientation and strategic hrm on firm performance the case of chinese enterprises this study examines market orientation as the antecedent to strategic human resource management shrm and the related effects on firm performance in an emerging economy context it is suggested that the relationship between shrm and firm performance is moderated by ownership type and autonomy in staffing of these firms empirical results from a sample of chinese firms from various industries and regions reveal that shrm mediates the relationship between market orientation and firm performance it is also found that the effect of shrm on firm performance is stronger for firms with a higher degree of autonomy in staffing and weaker for private firms other types of ownership state or foreign have no effect on this relationship

the effect of human resource management practices on mnc subsidiary performance in russia this study investigates the relationship between human resource management hrm and the performance of 101 foreign owned subsidiaries in russia the study s results provide support for the assertion that investments in hrm practices can substantially assist a firm in improving performance further different hrm practices for managerial and non managerial employees are found to be significantly related to firm performance only limited support however is obtained for the hypothesized relationship between efforts at aligning hrm practices with firm strategy and subsidiary performance

advertising competition and entry in media industries this paper presents a model of media competition with free entry when media platforms are financed both from advertising receipts and customers subscriptions we establish a relationship between the equilibrium levels of prices advertising and entry the welfare maximizing levels and the advertising technology under constant or increasing returns to scale in the audience size we find an excessive level of entry and an insufficient level of advertising we then extend the analysis along several dimensions the price as a strategic variable on the market for advertising free media platforms and the media quality dimension

explaining wage inequality in telecommunications services customer segmentation human resource practices and union decline this study examines factors related to within occupation wage inequality among service and sales workers in the telecommunications industry the author draws on a 1998 survey of a nationally representative sample of 354 service and sales centers in the industry to examine the importance of management practices and union institutions in shaping wage variation the results strongly indicate that business strategies of customer segmentation and human resource practices explain variation in wages over and above that explained by the human capital of the work force in addition despite extensive deregulation and de unionization of the industry the union wage premium is 22

situational ethics across borders a multicultural examination managers throughout the world regularly face ethical dilemmas that have important and perhaps complex professional and personal implications further societal consequences of decisions made can be far reaching in this study 210 financial services managers from australia chile ecuador and the united states were queried about their ethical beliefs when faced with four diverse dilemmas in addition the situational context was altered so the respondent viewed each dilemma from a top management position and from a position of economic hardship results suggest a complex interaction of situation culture and issue when individuals make ethical judgments specifically chileans were found to have different beliefs about sex discrimination and child labor dilemmas when compared to their colleagues from the other three nations chileans and australians also disagreed on the bribery dilemma anglo managers were more likely than latin american managers to change their ethical responses when the situation was altered for multinational firms interested in maintaining healthy ethical climates the findings suggest that culturally contingent ethical guidelines or policies adapted to the local customs must be considered further managers must remain aware of issues related to specific situations both internal and external that would cause subordinates to alter their moral judgment

does local financial development matter we study the effects of differences in local financial development within an integrated financial market we construct a new indicator of financial development by estimating a regional effect on the probability that ceteris paribus a household is shut off from the credit market by using this indicator we find that financial development enhances the probability an individual starts his own business favors entry of new firms increases competition and promotes growth as predicted by theory these effects are weaker for larger firms which can more easily raise funds outside of the local area these effects are present even when we instrument our indicator with the structure of the local banking markets in 1936 which because of regulatory reasons affected the supply of credit in the following 50 years overall the results suggest local financial development is an important determinant of the economic success of an area even in an environment where there are no frictions to capital movements

the modern history of exchange rate arrangements a reinterpretation we develop a novel system of reclassifying historical exchange rate regimes one key difference between our study and previous classifications is that we employ monthly data on market determined parallel exchange rates going back to 1946 for 153 countries our approach differs from the imf official classification which we show to be only a little better than random it also differs radically from all previous attempts at historical reclassification our classification points to a rethinking of economic performance under alternative exchange rate regimes indeed the breakup of bretton woods had less impact on exchange rate regimes than is popularly believed

perceived senior leadership opportunities in mncs the effect of social hierarchy and capital drawing on the structural perspective in organizational theory this study develops a conceptual framework of the social hierarchy within the multinational corporation mnc we suggest that parent country nationals pcns host country nationals hcns and third country nationals tcns occupy distinctively different positions in the social hierarchy which are anchored in their differential control or access to various forms of capital or strategically valuable organizational resources we further suggest that these positions affect employees perceptions of senior leadership opportunities defined as the assessment of the extent to which nationality and location influence access to senior leadership opportunities using multilevel analysis of survey data from 2039 employees in seven mncs the study reveals two significant findings first hcns and tcns perceive that nationality and location influence access to senior leadership opportunities more than pcns second three moderating factors gender tenure and education increase the perception gaps between pcns on the one hand and hcns and tcns on the other although these results are inconsistent these findings indicate that the structural position of pcns hcns and tcns in the social hierarchy affect sense making and perceptions of access to senior leadership opportunities

the firm s choice of hrm practices economics meets strategic human resource management the authors compare and contrast two theoretical approaches to explaining a firm s choice of human resource management hrm practices one from strategic human resource management shrm and the other from economics they present hrm frequency distributions depicting key empirical patterns that both theories must explain and then review and apply shrm theory to explain these patterns since no economic model has thus far explicitly considered firms choice of hrm practices the authors develop one based on standard microeconomic production theory the model yields a new theoretical construct the hrm demand curve and a new empirical estimating tool the hrm demand function together these provide an alternative explanation of hrm frequency distributions new insights on the limitations of shrm theory and the first alternative to the standard huselid type regression model using recent survey data on hrm practices at several hundred american firms the authors estimate representative hrm demand functions to illustrate the empirical implementation of the model they find that although both theoretical approaches have value the economic model seems superior in terms of generality logical coherence predictive ability and congruence with empirical data

the corporate social performance financial performance link strategic managers are consistently faced with the decision of how to allocate scarce corporate resources in an environment that is placing more and more pressures on them recent scholarship in strategic management suggests that many of these pressures come directly from sources associated with social issues in management rather than traditional arenas of strategic management using a greatly improved source of data on corporate social performance this paper reports the results of a rigorous study of the empirical linkages between financial and social performance corporate social performance csp is found to be positively associated with prior financial performance supporting the theory that slack resource availability and csp are positively related csp is also found to be positively associated with future financial performance supporting the theory that good management and csp are positively related 1997 by john wiley sons ltd