bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
PERFORMANCE‐RELATED PAY AND THE PROSPECTS FOR GENDER PAY EQUITY
Authors: Rubery Jill 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTEqual pay for work of equal value has come to be almost inextricably associated with the application of job evaluation. Current trends towards performance‐related pay systems pose a potential threat to the pursuit of greater gender pay equality as discretion in pay determination increases and there is no clear relationship between earnings and job grade. This paper examines the basis for this view drawing upon the now widespread literature and research into performance‐related pay. the argument is made that the problem for gender equality lies both in the nature of the payment system and in the context in which it is being applied, including the changes in the nature of employment relationships that are accompanying these developments. While some women may benefit, overall the moves towards a widening income dispersion and the increased importance of management discretion and appraisal are likely to disadvantage women. However, the individualization of pay is likely to lead to further fragmentation of the interests of women, reducing the likelihood of collective resistance. Opportunities to monitor pay trends will also decrease as the spread of performance‐related pay reduces the transparency of the labour market.
SUCCESS IN DECISION MAKING: DIFFERENT ORGANIZATIONS, DIFFERING REASONS FOR SUCCESS
Authors: Rodrigues Suzana Braga , Hickson David J. 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTIn an attempt to elucidate some possible conditions for success in managerial decision making, data were analysed from 53 cases of decisions in eight British organizations, five business firms and three non‐business organizations (two universities and a District of the National Health Service). No clear relationships between features of the processes of making the decisions, and their successfulness were found until the business firms and the non‐business organizations were separated. Clear differences then showed up, relatively speaking, in the conditions conductive to success. In the business firms, a successful decision was more likely to result from a decision‐making process in which resources were available. In other words, in business a successful decision is most likely when sufficient information and sufficient means of implementation are to hand. By contrast, in the universities and the Health District, a successful decision was associated more with thesocial qualitiesof the decision‐making process itself. In other words, in non‐business organizations a successful decision is most likely when the right people participate and the people at the very top do not interfere too much.
SCALE, PERFORMANCE AND THE NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF LOCAL AUTHORITY SERVICES
Authors: Boyne George A. 
Published: May 2007

New public management (NPM) arguments on strategy and structure suggest that performance is enhanced if large organizations are disaggregated into smaller units. the NPM perspective reflects the views of public choice theorists who claim that big organizations are unresponsive to public needs, inefficient and fail to achieve their formal goals. These arguments have underpinned many recent changes in the structure of public services at both central and local levels.This paper uses data on six local government services to test the NPM hypothesis that there is a negative relationship between scale and performance. Five dimensions of performance are analysed: service coverage, quality, speed of provision, efficiency, and administrative effectiveness. Scale is measured through indicators of service output, caseload and needs. the impact of scale is tested in multivariate statistical models which control for other potential influences on variations in performance across local authorities.Only around half of the statistical evidence suggests that the smallest local units are the best performers. In addition, even when performance does decline with scale, this trend is reversed in the very largest units. Thus, contrary to NPM arguments, the biggest organizations are seldom the poorest performers.
High Commitment Management and Payment Systems
Authors: Wood Stephen 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThis paper extends the analysis of high commitment management (HGM) reported in a previous Journal of Management Studies article (Wood and Albanese, volume 32, number 2) by examining its linkage to payment systems. It opens with an overview of what the literature on HCM portrays as the pay systems that are most compatible with it. Then it reports research, based on data from a representative sample of manufacturing plants in the UK, which examines what pay systems in practice are used in conjunction with HCM. It also assesses whether, as we might expect, plants using piecework and individual bonuses are less likely to adopt such an approach. Finally, the paper examines whether changes in payment systems are made as managements attempt to heighten their use of HCM.Contrary to the claims of many writers, there is no systematic association between the use of HCM and the use of performance or contingent pay systems, such as merit pay and profit‐sharing schemes. the study does, however, show that those plants in which merit pay is paid as a permanent increase in the basic wage are likely to have higher levels of HCM (and rates of change in it) than are those in which merit pay is simply paid as a bonus. Individual bonus systems appear to be associated with plants which are not pursuing high commitment management to any great extent. Finally, the research shows that for the period 1986 to 1990 payment system changes in British manufacturing, though highly varied, tended to be introduced in association with a greater use of HCM and not introduced as a substitute for this. Moreover, the research suggests that these were lagging other changes, rather than leading them.
‘Sameness’ and ‘Difference’ Revisited: Which Way Forward For Equal Opportunity Initiatives?
Authors: Liff Sonia , Wajcman Judy 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTRecent interest in ‘managing diversity’ has reopened debates about forms of equality in the workplace. Approaches to equality developed in the 1970s and 1980s have been characterized as an attempt to ensure that if individuals bring the same abilities to work, or perform in the same way, they should receive the same access to jobs and employment benefits, regardless of social group membership. Managing diversity appears to be about a more positive valuing of difference. Benefits are seen to derive from different perspectives and approaches and these should be nurtured and rewarded rather than suppressed. Feminists have long argued about the extent to which women are the same as, or different from, men, and about the political consequences of adopting these positions. Recent theoretical developments have led to some novel solutions to this dilemma. These include asserting claims to both ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’, the deconstruction of ‘difference’, and the reconstruction of ‘sameness’ on women's terms. This paper explores approaches to equal opportunities through both established and novel theoretical perspectives. It argues that existing practice cannot be fitted neatly into the conventional distinctions between ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’, and explores the potential characteristics and strengths and weaknesses of equality initiatives based on the new theoretical perspectives.
Strategic Motives For International Alliance Formation*
Authors: Glaister Keith W. , Buckley Peter J. 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThis paper considers the strategic motivation for international alliance formation for a sample of UK firms with partners in western Europe, the United States and Japan. the relative importance of a set of strategic motives is identified and related to extant theory. A parsimonious set of strategic motives for the sample studied is provided by means of factor analysis. the paper identifies the main strategic motives for alliance formation by UK firms as intrinsically linked to the market and geographical expansion of the firm and that the main strategic motives are underpinned by the theories of strategic positioning and organizational learning. This study also finds that some of the often suggested motives for alliance formation found in the literature, in particular aspects of risk reduction associated with new projects, appear not to be particularly important motivating factors. Hypotheses are tested on the relationship between the relative importance of individual strategic motives and a number of characteristics of the sample ‐ contractual form of the alliance, relative partner size, primary geographical location of the venture, industry of the alliance and partner nationality. Implications of the findings for future theorizing on alliances and their motives is identified.
Re‐Engineering the Sense of Self: the Manager and the Management Guru*
Authors: Jackson Bradley G. 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTConventional explanations of the enormous popularity of management gurus have centred on the need for managers to find relatively quick and simple solutions to their organizations' complex problems and the gurus' adeptness with marketing technology to promote these solutions. A few writers have also recognized the role that management gurus play in responding to managers' needs to make sense of themselves. Management gurus appeal to the manager's social or externally directed esteem needs by legitimating and celebrating the manager's role in society. the spiritual and charismatic quality of the gurus' work resonates with the manager's personal or internally driven needs by providing a sense of hope and purpose.The relationship between the management guru and manager is further explored with an analysis of the rhetorical techniques employed by the two leaders of the re‐engineering movement, Michael Hammer and James Champy. Adopting a dramatistic or dramaturgical perspective, I describe how these writers skilfully manipulate the managers'sense of themselves to provide a compelling rationale for launching or supporting a re‐engineering initiative within their organizations. the inherent dramatic appeal of the re‐engineering process is an important reason for the movement's phenomenal popularity and, paradoxically, its lack of universal success.
THE IMPLICATIONS OF STOCHASTIC DEMOGRAPHIC ASSUMPTIONS FOR MODELS OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF INHERITED WEALTH
Authors: Jenkins Stephen 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThe paper extends existing distributional models to incorporate two sets of ‘stochastic’ demographic assumptions: (a) where the number of heirs is randomly determined, and (b) where the gender of a given child is randomly determined (but the total number of heirs is non‐stochastic). The consequent increase in heterogeneity of family types might be expected to increase the inequality of family wealth and reduce the degree of intergenerational inheritance, relative to the ‘deterministic’ case, but it is shown that this conclusion is very much conditional on the other assumptions made; about the pattern of marriage and estate division in particular.
INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND COURNOT EQUILIBRIUM: EXISTENCE, UNIQUENESS AND COMPARATIVE STATICS *
Authors: Collie David 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThis paper proves the existence and uniqueness of Cournot equilibrium in models of international trade under oligopoly. The existence of Cournot equilibrium is established without the usual assumption that profit functions are concave. Instead the proof uses a weaker‘aggregate concavity’condition. A simple proof is used to establish the uniqueness of the equilibrium. And, the paper considers the implications of the assumptions, used to prove the existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium, on the comparative static results.
A NOTE ON COMPUTATION OF THE DOUBLE‐HURDLE MODEL WITH DEPENDENCE WITH AN APPLICATION TO TOBACCO EXPENDITURE
Authors: Jones Andrew M. 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThis note shows how the sample likelihood of the full double‐hurdle model with dependence can be reformulated to allow estimation with standard econometric software. An illustrative example is provided, using data on tobacco expenditure by households in the 1984 UK Family Expenditure Survey.
ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION FLOWS IN CUSTOMER MARKETS
Authors: Sibly Hugh 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTIn customer markets an information asymmetry exists between a firm's current customers and prospective customers. When a firm changes its price, current customers are instantly aware of the price change, while potential customers are informed slowly of the change. The paper explicitly models this information imperfection and the associated asymmetry in firms' customer flows. The main result of the paper is that, because of the information asymmetry, there will be a range of marginal cost and demand over which the firm has no incentive to change price. It is also shown that prices will be more upwardly flexible than downwardly flexible. The size of the range, and the extent of downward price inflexibility, depends on the rate at which information is transmitted to customers.
A NOTE ON EXPORT UNIT VALUE INDICES IN COMPETITIVENESS VARIABLES
Authors: King Alan 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTSeveral reasons have been suggested for why export unit value data is an unreliable proxy for export prices and hence may result in the estimated coefficients of export models being both biased and inconsistent. The purpose of this note is to consider the role of exporters' choice of invoicing currency in contributing to this problem.
SEARCH EXTERNALITIES IN MACROECONOMIC THEORY
Authors: Wing Gerhard 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThe paper gives a survey of the basic features of macroeconomic models with search externalities. It presents a simple static general equilibrium model with search externalities. Within this context the main results characterizing steady state in dynamic search models are reproduced in a simple context. Specifically, the link between transaction technology and strategic complementarity is analysed. It is shown that increasing returns to scale in the transaction technology create feed‐back effects and multiple, Pareto‐ranked equilibria may arise. With economies of scale in matching, fluctuations in the economy can be large even with a low elasticity of search activity. The formal equivalence to models with investment externalities is analysed. In an application to the labour market, the allocative role of wages in the presence of search frictions and hysteresis effects are discussed. General conditions are given under which the set of welfare ranked equilibria is described by a closed loop. Finally, it is shown that with a more general transaction technology, even with constant returns to scale multiple equilibria may occur in the presence of externalities.
RELATIVE INEQUALITY, ABSOLUTE INEQUALITY, AND WELFARE: LARGE SAMPLE TESTS FOR PARTIAL ORDERS
Authors: Bishop John A. , Chakraborti S. , Thistle Paul D. 
Published: May 2007

ARSTRACTTwo general welfare criteria, mean‐relative Lorenz and mean‐absolute Lorenz dominance, induce partial orders on income distributions. We propose asymptotically distribution‐free inference procedures, based on the union‐intersection principle, for these two welfare criteria. Unlike classical tests, our procedures allow one to distinguish among dominance, equality, and noncomparability. We show that union‐intersection tests must be used to test for partial orders, and that the statistical ordering is acyclic. The tests are applied to compare the UK distribution of real family income to five other countries.
ON THE REVISITED ILLYRIAN MODEL AND PERVERSITY: THE CASE OF THE LONG‐RUN1
Authors: Kahana Nava , Weiss Avi 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThe modified theory of the Illyrian firm was developed, in part, to correct a perversity exhibited by the traditional theory of the Illyrian firm — that output rises in response to a fall in output price or a rise in fixed costs. We show that while this revised model has solved the problem for the short‐run the problem remains in the long‐run, and this long‐run perversity may have important policy implications for the short‐run as well. We also show that the under‐production problem associated with the traditional LMF is mitigated (and perhaps even reversed) in the modified LMF.
WHY WAS UNEMPLOYMENT IN POSTWAR BRITAIN SO LOW?*
Authors: Broadberry S. N. 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTWhy was Unemployment in Postwar Britain So Low?This paper takes a fresh look at the low unemployment in postwar Britain, which is seen as exceptional rather than the norm. During the 1950s and 1960s low unemployment was reconciled with stable inflation through the exercise of wage restraint. Yet the postwar settlement which underpinned this wage restraint also allowed the entrenchment of restrictive practices, which inevitably slowed the growth of productivity and the feasible real wage, thus contributing to Britain's relative economic decline.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE EARNINGS DISTRIBUTION: HOW ARE HOUSEHOLDS AND INDIVIDUALS RELATED?*
Authors: Parker Simon Charles 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the links between individual and household distributions of earnings. Using a sample of 1991 data from the UK, considerable complexity is uncovered in the structure of the household earnings distribution. This is due to heterogeneity of earners and positive ‘clustering’ of earners within households. The structure of the clustering behaviour of earners for different household types is estimated, and the contribution of clustering to overall earnings inequality is evaluated. Perhaps surprisingly in view of the observed clustering behaviour, it is found that clustering has reduced overall inequality, although the mean‐adjusted distribution of individual earnings is insignificantly different from the distribution of household earnings.
EQUILIBRIUM GROWTH IN A MONETARY ECONOMY WITH TRANSACTIONS COSTS*
Authors: Marquis Milton H. , Reffett Kevin L. 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThe paper describes a dynamic general equilibrium monetary economy with technological primitives that are consistent with the possibility of asymptotic equilibrium growth. The paper focuses on the relationship between equilibrium financing constraints on investment goods, transaction costs and economic growth. A generalized growth condition is derived that involves both monetary growth rates and transaction costs. The condition is used to show that (i) although inflation taxes can potentially exert a negative influence on long‐run economic growth, these growth effects cannot in general be arbitrarily large; and (ii) for some monetary growth rates, money is superneutral in contrast to the models of Stockman and Abel. Numerical work indicates that although the welfare and growth effects of decreasing nominal interest rates from a benchmark are large, the costs associated with raising nominal interest rates from benchmark are not.
THE 1992 RESEARCH ASSESSMENT EXERCISE: OUTCOME, OUTPUTS AND INPUTS IN ECONOMICS AND ECONOMETRICS*
Authors: Taylor Jim , Izadi Hooshang 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThis paper presents the results of a statistical analysis of the University Funding Council's 1992 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE92), focusing here on the Economics and Econometrics Unit of Assessment. The data collected to support the RAE92 provide information about the inputs and outputs of the research process across all institutions of higher education in the UK. The paper has two primary aims: firstly, to provide information to the economics profession in order to aid self‐appraisal at the departmental level by providing quantitative data on research inputs and outputs relating to all 60 departments of economics assessed in the RAE92; and secondly, to investigate the extent to which variations between departments in their research ratings can be ‘explained’(in a statistical sense) by various quantitative research indicators constructed from the RAE92 database. The information suggests that research indicators constructed from the RAE92 database provide potentially valuable information about research activity in economics and econometrics in the UK.
COST FUNCTIONS AND COST EFFICIENCY IN ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION: A STOCHASTIC FRONTIER APPROACH*
Authors: Burns Philip , Weyman‐Jones Thomas G. 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThe paper develops a cost frontier model of electricity distribution and estimates it on data for the 12 regional electricity companies of England and Wales. It is found that some significant cost drivers in cross‐section estimation are insignificant when the model is estimated on panel data, highlighting the well‐known drawbacks of cross‐section estimation. Panel data estimation suggests that the main determinants of distribution operating costs are the number of customers in the area and simultaneous maximum demand. These results and the efficiency rankings of the companies are not sensitive to changes in error distribution assumptions and sample size. There is also significant evidence of economies of scale. There is a small but significant effect on cost efficiency from privatization, but this is as likely to be due to the changes in accounting policies at the time of privatization as any real effect.
CRIME, DETERRENCE AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN ENGLAND AND WALES: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS*
Authors: Reilly Barry , Witt Robert 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThis paper uses aggregate data from 42 police‐force areas over 12 years to test predictions of Becker's economic model of crime. The effects of measures for deterrence on the incidence of three types of acquisitive criminal activity (burglary, theft, robbery) in England and Wales are explored. Mixed support for the Becker model emerges. The growth in unemployment is seen to impact positively on two of the three types of criminal activity examined.Per capitahousehold income is seen to have a negative effect on the recorded rates of burglary and theft, but there is some evidence that the income variable is a proxy for the effects of unemployment. Poor housing conditions and the relative youth of the population were also found to play a role in the determination of criminal activity.
OUTPUT, PRODUCTIVITY AND WAGES IN THE BRITISH COAL INDUSTRY BEFORE 1914: A MODEL WITH EVIDENCE FROM THE DURHAM REGION*
Authors: Gernrnell Norman , Wardley Peter 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThis paper proposes a model of productivity and wages in the Durham coal industry during 1882–1914. The model predicts a negative relationship between wages and productivity which derives from the industrys production function and wage‐setting arrange‐ ments and does not require or imply a ‘leisure preference’ by miners. It is also suggested that predicted effects of some variables on productivity are different from those proposed by previous investigators. Using modern time‐series methods on data for output per worker and per shift, it is shown that the two measures essentially reflect predicted effects on output and productivity respectively.
BACKGROUND RISK AND THE THEORY OF THE COMPETITIVE FIRM UNDER UNCERTAINTY*
Authors: Wong Kit Pong 
Published: May 2007

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the optimal production decision of a firm under output price risk á la Sandmo when the firm also faces a dependent background risk. It is shown that standard risk aversion plus a non‐negative association between the output price risk and the background risk are sufficient to ensure a reduction in the firms optimal output upon introduction of the background risk. The paper investigates the impact of a deterministic transformation of the background risk on the firms optimal production decision. It is shown that decreasing absolute risk aversion in Ross' sense is among the sufficient conditions that generate an unambiguous negative comparative static result.