专用性人力资本投资激励研究

研究委托人如何激励代理人对专用性人力资本进行投资 .代理人对人力资本投资的激励来自对未来报酬或职业发展的考虑 .但当投资是代理人的隐藏行动 ,而产出是委托人的私有信息时 ,由于出现双边败德行为 ,基于产出的报酬契约不能诱导代理人对专用性人力资本的投资 .职位提升机制能在一定程度上激励代理人的投资 ,但当委托人不提升从效率角度而言该被提升的代理人时 ,仍未能走出双边败德之困境 .当产出低时解聘代理人的解聘机制能消除委托方的机会主义行为 ,当人力资本的专用性较大 ,或投资的边际成本较小时 ,能诱导 Pareto有效的投资     

企业进入权、组织控制与跨国公司专用性投资激励

论文从国际生产组织控制视角,将Rajan和Zingales^[1]进入权思想融入国际生产与贸易模型中,研究跨国公司专用性投资激励问题。研究发现,在进入权的机会控制和数量调整机制作用下,跨国公司通过限制进入、替代竞争来激发当地供应商做出事前定制投资、分摊投资和事后最优专用性投资,确保获取合意投入品和预期最大化利润。当前,政府要引导外向企业致力于微观企业主体的制度建设和组织能力培养,构建起中国国际生产网络及其组织机制,为推进对外直接投资和企业国际化经营提供微观保障。     

基于信息非对称的投资决策机制研究

现代企业投资项目的成功与否,不仅取决于企业所取得的融资量,而且还取决于委托人、代理人关系链的制约,激励机制的有效发挥.由于企业经理作为代理人同委托人存在信息非对称,经理存在逆向选择和道德风险问题,此时,如何配置资金并给予经理人适当激励以使企业获得更高的绩效,经理的最优补偿方案与企业的投资机会特征间的联系,经理补偿方案与企业价值间的联系,便成为我们研究的一些重要课题.本文基于信息经济学和博弈论的基本理论,在对项目盈利水平进行量化的一维空间中,分析委托人,尤其是代理人的行为方式,建立模型,研究委托人的最佳机制(资本配置方案、经理人的激励补偿方案)和代理人的最佳战略.模型的研究结论将项目盈利水平的一维空间由低到高分为了三个区域,分别确立了委托人和代理人的最优策略.     

专用性投资、知识及环境对合作创新决策的影响

从交易成本理论的视角,探索专用性投资、知识复杂性及环境不确定性对企业合作创新决策的影响,以及进入权的调节作用。以我国企业为样本进行问卷调查,将企业规模及年限、资本结构、RD强度、广告强度作为控制变量,构建理论模型并进行检验。研究表明:专用性投资对合作创新的形成具有积极作用,并且相互提供的进入权越大,专用性投资对合作创新模式的影响越大;进入权能够减弱知识复杂性对合作创新的负向影响;环境不确定性不利于形成合作创新,且进入权会增加环境不确定性对合作创新的负向影响。     

逆向选择下供应链业务外包中的最优合约配置

研究了委托人(业务购买方)对于承包人(业务供应方)生产成本具有非对称信息时的最优合约设计问题.基于委托人视角,给出了委托人如何诱导代理人报告自己真实成本信息的逆向选择模型,并刻画了最优合约的特征.结果表明:给出的合约能够达到诱导代理人讲真话的目的;在信息非对称条件下,委托人由于信息缺乏受到了损失,而低成本类型的代理人获得了额外的信息租金;在非对称信息条件下,最优合约的参数配置受到委托人事前信念的影响.     

委托代理框架下项目投资的最优合同设计

在不确定的市场环境下,企业的投资机会具有期权特点。本文在委托代理框架下,研究实物期权投资中的最优合同设计问题。考虑一个委托代理制的企业,委托人拥有推迟项目投资的期权,授予代理人执行该投资期权。信息不对称下,代理人有隐藏信息转移现金流的动机。为了实现自身利益的最大化,委托人设计合同,在该合同下,代理人将揭示真实的信息。在信息对称与信息不对称的情形下,分别建立实物期权模型,得到了委托人设计的最优合同。并通过数值分析,得到了如下的主要结论,信息不对称下,与信息对称相比,高成本的项目投资时机推迟,低成本的项目时机提前,投资期权价值减少。委托人的期权价值随着审核效率的提高而增大。当代理人越没有耐心时,委托人的期权价值越大。本文的研究为现实中的委托代理框架下的实物期权投资决策提供了一定的指导意义。     

信息不对称下委托代理契约纳什实施性研究

针对代理人逆向选择导致委托人无法将契约与代理人类型状态直接关联的矛盾,研究了信息不对称下委托代理契约的纳什实施性问题。通过建立信号空间上的纳什均衡与有效配置的映射关系,将委托人契约与代理人状态联系起来,并以完全信息下委托人的最优契约和逆向选择下的次优契约为例,研究分析委托人契约纳什实施的性质,当且仅当委托契约满足激励相容约束时,才具备纳什实施的惟一性,该结果为实务契约设计逼近激励可行契约提供了新的途径。     

基于Rubinstein讨价还价的激励契约研究

传统的激励契约理论通过假设委托人提供一个"要么接受,要么走人"的契约给代理人,从而搁置了委托人与代理人就契约进行的讨价还价问题.这种假设下,委托人能获得最大收入,但代理人只能获得保留收入.本文假设代理人可以与委托人就激励契约进行Rubinstein讨价还价,从而得到一份均衡的契约.在均衡契约中,代理人的收益往往会高于传统契约.     

不同风险偏好的过度自信代理人薪酬合同设计

本文将过度自信心理特征纳入到经典委托代理框架,从代理人过度自信程度、代理人的风险偏好、努力-产出不确定性、努力可观测性、保留效用几个角度,构建了多个不同的委托代理情景,分别分析了委托人提供不同形式合同、代理人付出不同努力水平时他们的期望效用,从而考察在各种情景下委托人应怎样为不同类型代理人设计薪酬合同,激励代理人付出努力,以实现委托人和代理人决策组合的帕雷托最优.结果表明,对不同过度自信程度及风险偏好的代理人,委托人提供的合同形式大不相同.这不仅从行为的角度拓展了经典委托代理框架,而且为委托人设计薪酬合同提供了非常有益的参考.     

现代企业组织制度中的委托─代理关系

现代企业组织制度中存在一系列委托─代理关系,基于所有权和经营权相分离的委托─代理制既是必要的,有效的,又存在着委托人和代理人的效用函数不同的矛盾。西方管理学家对委托人目标和代理人效用函数的不一致性进行了研究,提出了委托─代理理论。本文简要介绍这一理论,并从对代理人的考核评价和奖惩、实行目标管理、培育企业文化以及建设正常运行的市场四个方面,论述了建立健全激励─约束机制,改善委托─代理关系的途径。     

Power,authority and legitimacy

Management, human resources, organization, control, leadership, etc., all seem to be just so many euphemisms for power, and this suggests a discourse of management and organization that calls things by their proper name. This paper on the contrary stresses the need to resolve the concept of ‘power’ itself into more differentiated notions, and proposes that clarification may be derived from distinctions once explicit in the vocabulary of Classical antiquity, but lost in modern European languages. It argues that nothing but confusion in thinking about organizations, management and legitimation can result from the failure to recognize that the phenomena this vocabulary identifies and distinguishes are irreducibly different.     

Defining Spirituality of Work

There is a current surge of writings on spirituality and related topics. For instance, Woodward (1997) has pointed out that since Thomas Moore's publication of Care of the Soul in 1994 there have been nearly 800books published with the word soul in the title. These run all the way from Chicken Soup for theWoman's Soul (Canfield et al., 1996) to A Guide to Liberating YourSoul (Barrett, 1995). Spirituality of work is a big part of this surge. Definitionsof spirituality of work seem to vary widely. Bowman (1998, p. 8) in his `reviewof the phenomenon of spirituality of work' found `Definitions of the term spirituality in the context of the Spirituality of Work troublesome and particularly subjective. Many writers do not even attempt definitions.' The purpose of this article is to review the concept of spirituality of work in its historical and current use and to propose a comprehensive definition.     

WebStress: a web interface to explore a multidatabase bibliographic corpus on occupational stress

A bibliographic study on a multidisciplinary subject, such as occupational stress, requires a multidatabase query facility. Given this, we searched eight databases belonging to different fields (medicine, psychology, etc.) and from different countries. Thus, more than 26000 references on occupational stress were gathered. A bibliographic corpus of this sort is unusable because of the heterogeneous format of the records and the number of duplicate entries. Considering the limitations of commercial programs, we have developed a system, called WebStress, for reformatting the data and removing duplicates. The huge number of references and the research needs of updating and searching have necessitated the addition of several other functions to WebStress. Therefore WebStress comprises a web interface that makes it possible to search the corpus with advanced features (using clustering, a specialized thesaurus on stress and Boolean queries). In addition to the usual bibliographic queries on a specific database such as Medline, WebStress provides bibliometric analysis of the corpus, which might contribute to a detailed analysis on occupational stress in order to highlight the networks of researchers and to find the main topics studied in this area. WebStress is not yet available to researchers in general. It is being further developed, and also permission needs to be obtained from the eight commercial bibliographic databases that it consults.     

A new lease for life? The return of vitalism in management and organization studies

This paper starts from a growing interest in the concept of concern, lived experience or “inhabiting” as part of the so-called “affective turn”. My main argument is that the notion of concern cannot be thought or understood without the concept of life. The concept of life, however, is somewhat of a taboo topic in the social sciences. I hold, nevertheless, that in order to reflect on their assumptions and to define concern for their own studies, scholars need to think about life and make a choice regarding the various approaches that can be taken. I therefore present and compare four vitalist approaches: romanticism and Lebensphilosophie, vitalism as ethos and pathos, neuroecosociality as well as vitalism as becoming.     

Effects of the implementation of information technology on employees' strain and job satisfaction: a context-dependent approach

The effects on staff of the implementation of new office information technology were investigated in ten companies in Vienna using a longitudinal design. Strain and satisfaction of 331 employees (implementation sample: n = 212; control sample: n = 119) were measured at five points in time over a period of 22 months. The study is based on a context-dependent approach. Personal factors (individual differences, external load) were assessed by questionnaires, and situational factors (job design, implementation content and implementation context) by objective measures. The impact of these factors on employees' strain responses was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). While the implementation of new technology as such made no significant contribution to the explanation of strain variables, a reasonable model fit was achieved when implementation characteristics were taken into account. The data suggest that negative effects of implementations must be expected if (1) adaptational demands do not include the enhancement of employee qualifications, (2) character-based user interfaces are not replaced, and (3) employees have few or no opportunities to participate in the implementation process.     

Consequences of work-family conflict on employee well-being over time

The effects of work-family conflict on the well-being of a diverse sample of 342 non-professional employees from the greater Los Angeles area were examined. Data were collected at two points in time, and a rigorous research design was employed. The effects of self-report bias were considered by controlling for social desirability bias, and by collecting two sources of data (i.e. self-reports and co-workers reports). The results revealed that work-family conflict predicted employee well-being over and above social desirability bias. In addition, analyses were consistent when both self-reports and co-workers reports were utilized. Finally, work-family conflict was a longitudinal predictor of employee's positive well-being. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses were consistent across self-reports and co-worker reports.     

Policy Goals for Health and Safety

Health management and safety regulation are separate disciplines but share the aim to extend expectancy of life in good health. The need to improve cost-effectiveness calls for their co-ordinated management according to a unified rationale. Three guiding principles of accountability, demonstrable net benefit and a uniform measure of performance, have been laid out in Canada by the Joint Committee on Health and Safety. They call for open accounting in terms of (health-related quality-adjusted) life expectancy. The principles are utilitarian in format but, it is argued, inequity is naturally diminished in the process of optimizing cost-effectiveness through maximum marginal returns. Comments are made on practical implementation. The need for public consent in practice calls for two additional principles reflecting fair procedure and sovereignty of the citizens. It is concluded that public health and safety measures should be surveyed, documented for cost-effectiveness and prioritized for improvement.     

The impact of a participatory organizational intervention on job stress in community health care institutions

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of a short-term participatory intervention in health care institutions in Norway on workers' control, other job characteristics, job stress, subjective health and job satisfaction. Participants (including managers and supervisors) were randomly allocated to intervention groups and to a control group. Actions to solve problems based on the employees' own perceptions of the main problems were seen as the key motivators for organizational improvement and increased control at the task and office level in the work situation. The main stressors identified by the participants in this study were lack of information, communication and respect between professions, as well as the need for professional and personal development. The participatory intervention had a positive, but limited effect on work-related stress, job characteristics, learning climate and management style, and seemed to have started a beneficial change process. There were no negative short-term effects on work-related stress and job demands. Organizational interventions may be a potential training ground for acquiring participatory skills and resources, and if sustained after the intervention period, they can have long-term effects on problem solving, job stress and employee satisfaction.     

Circadian Rhythm and the Business Person

Each human being has an internal timekeeping mechanism. To date, over 100 so-called circadian rhythms have been detected. Perhaps the most significant is body temperature. There is an apparent connection between this rhythm and the efficiency with which we do things in the course of the working day. Within individuals, patterns have been discovered which give credence to the popular notions of a morning or an afternoon person, and so on. Our memory changes from morning to afternoon: short-term memory is stronger in the morning, and long-term memory stronger in the afternoon; in schools, morning students have higher grades than students who have other time-of-day preferences. Therefore, a strong case can be made in support of flexible time schedules. It is reported that productivity went up on the introduction of such a scheme. Employee stress has been seen to decline also. When flextime was offered, parents with small children took advantage of the benefit as well as unmarried employees. The only drawback is ensuring that, with so many individual variations in preferences, the needs of the company are fully met. If such a scheme can be devised, however, the research suggests that productivity and efficiency will increase.