企业集团内部团队生产的最优激励机制研究

本文提供了企业集团内部团队生产的多代理人模型,从激励的角度分析了模型的解及其特征,重点讨论了帮助努力对设计最优激励契约的影响;在此基础上,获得了团队工作是最优的充分条件;最后,就所有权因子的激励与扭曲效应进行了阐述,指出正是这一扭曲效应导致了集团内部团队生产低效的可能性.     

代理成本与“信用价差之谜”

作为一个内生因素,企业中的代理问题可能会恶化企业的信用风险.通过将代理人与股东之间的最优合约模型嵌入到Leland-Toft内生违约框架中,研究了道德风险这一具体的代理问题对信用风险及信用价差的影响机制.结论表明:企业中的道德风险问题对企业信用风险产生明显影响,并且显著增加信用价差;对于描述道德风险的关键参数,论文建立的模型明确了它们在影响信用价差中起到的作用.由此,论文从代理问题的角度对“信用价差之谜”给出了合理解释.此外,文中也给出了债券价值、股权价值和内生违约边界的显性表达式.     

领导影响团队成员学习能力二维多层次模型的实证研究

本文首先提出团队领导可以通过提高自身学习能力和与团队成员发展良好关系这两个维度来积极影响团队成员的个人学习能力的理论模型,随后我们以国内某大型企业集团所属21家工厂的130个团队领导和941名团队成员为样本,应用多层线性模型(HLM)对理论模型进行验证.研究发现领导学习能力和领导成员关系分别从能力和关系维度对成员学习能力具有显著正向影响,并且上述两组关系分别受到领导成员间建设性争论和团队心理安全的正向调节.此外,当团队成员学习能力被向上聚合到团队层次后与团队绩效显著正相关.最后,我们对本研究的贡献、不足以及未来的改进方向进行了讨论.     

公平偏好下的团队效率研究

在Alchian & Demsetz标准团队理论基础上,将代理人内在的公平偏好考虑进来,建立了基于公平偏好的团队理论模型,分析在预算平衡约束和代理人的公平偏好存在条件下的团队效率以及公平偏好对团队合作的作用机理,可以为合理利用代理人的公平偏好提高团队生产效率,提供理论指导和启示.     

基于动态博弈的企业集团政策动态一致性分析

运用动态博弈模型 ,以企业集团内部公共费用征收问题为背景 ,讨论了集团总部与成员企业之间的动态博弈 ,并对集团政策的动态一致性问题进行了研究分析 .最后 ,本文还给出了在集团非平均主义政策倾向下相应的动态博弈模型 ,以及动态一致性政策所满足的条件 .     

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.     

基于非理性预期的团队合作问题研究

将行为金融理论应用于解决团队合作问题,在考虑团队成员非理性预期的条件下,通过建立合作模型,研究各成员的博弈行为、团队价值以及团队监督,并分析了非理性预期对团队合作的动态影响.结果表明,面对未来的不确定性,过度预期成员会增加团队合作道德风险,使团队绩效降低,对其应加强监督;而保守预期成员则能减少团队合作道德风险,提升团队价值,对其应削弱监督.此外,随着工作经验的丰富,团队成员将趋于理性,非理性预期对团队合作的影响会逐渐减小.该结论在选拔团队成员和实施团队监督等方面的运用,能够有效促进团队合作.     

企业集团代理人风险态度、道德风险与信用风险传递

由于企业集团的关联企业众多,股权结构复杂,导致银企信息更加不对称,银行对企业集团贷款资金的监管更加困难,企业集团也更有机会产生不按照贷款合约使用贷款资金的道德风险,从而增大了银行的信用风险.针对此问题,首先分析了企业集团代理人转移银行贷款资金的动机,以及企业集团子公司之间信用风险的传递过程;其次,基于代理人效用最大化原理,分析委托代理合约、代理人风险态度,以及代理人转移贷款资金的道德风险对企业集团子公司信用风险的影响;最后,建立了度量企业集团子公司信用风险的违约概率模型.研究表明,代理人的风险态度、委托代理合约的状态都会影响企业集团子公司的违约概率.     

道德风险下带有Knight不确定的最优动态契约设计

本文从概率统计模型本身的不确定性是本质的、不能消除掉的角度出发, 研究了Knight不确定下连续时间委托-代理问题, 其中主要考虑了代理人的道德风险对契约执行过程以及契约存续情况的影响.首先, 建立了代理人延续价值以及委托人预期利润的动态方程.其次, 运用次线性期望下的随机最优性原理, 以更加准确、深刻的方法去刻画实际委托人和代理人经济行为, 进而得到委托人效用值函数的Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) 方程, 并求得委托人对代理人最优支付以及代理人最优努力水平的表达式.最后, 通过理论解的数值模拟, 分析了Knight不确定对委托人和代理人最优策略以及最优契约的影响.     

基于信息经济学的担保机构与中小企业信贷分析

引入担保机构变量,建立担保银行信贷配给模型,分析担保机构、银行与中小企业之间的作用机理以及担保机构在信息不对称情况下面临着企业逆向选择及道德风险时的风险规避选择.研究结果表明,引入担保机构加大了对企业的资格审核,但是银行面临的风险却转嫁给了担保机构;从理论上说明贷款企业是在一定条件下才采用混同均衡;担保机构只要设立合适的契约组合,可以使企业自我显示风险类型,规避风险.尽管引入担保机构缓和了银行的信用配给,但由于担保壁垒的存在,解决中小企业贷款的能力十分有限.建议推动银保合作及推行社会化的担保机构,共同分担风险,从根本上解决中小企业的融资困境.     

Introduction to Special Section on Sensitivity Analysis and Summary of NCSU/USDA Workshop on Sensitivity Analysis

This guest editorial is a summary of the NCSU/USDA Workshop on Sensitivity Analysis held June 11–12, 2001 at North Carolina State University and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Risk Assessment and Cost Benefit Analysis. The objective of the workshop was to learn across disciplines in identifying, evaluating, and recommending sensitivity analysis methods and practices for application to food‐safety process risk models. The workshop included presentations regarding the Hazard Assessment and Critical Control Points (HACCP) framework used in food‐safety risk assessment, a survey of sensitivity analysis methods, invited white papers on sensitivity analysis, and invited case studies regarding risk assessment of microbial pathogens in food. Based on the sharing of interdisciplinary information represented by the presentations, the workshop participants, divided into breakout sessions, responded to three trigger questions: What are the key criteria for sensitivity analysis methods applied to food‐safety risk assessment? What sensitivity analysis methods are most promising for application to food safety and risk assessment? and What are the key needs for implementation and demonstration of such methods? The workshop produced agreement regarding key criteria for sensitivity analysis methods and the need to use two or more methods to try to obtain robust insights. Recommendations were made regarding a guideline document to assist practitioners in selecting, applying, interpreting, and reporting the results of sensitivity analysis.     

Distinguishing traumatic, vicarious and routine operational stressor exposure and attendant adverse consequences in a sample of police officers

Problems in studying occupational stress within the police service are identified and the paucity of work on operational duties as potential stressors are discussed. The present study reports the results of a factor analysis of operational stressors (N = 601 serving British police officers) that revealed three factors: exposure to death and disaster; violence and injury; sexual crime. These were demonstrated to be reliable scales and were included in logistic regression models together with a range of demographic and psychological variables. Models were applied to men and women separately, which showed there to be different predictors of the likelihood of suffering distress (measured by the General Health Questionnaire, GHQ) in terms of the officer's gender and operational role. Overall the model for women officers was better at predicting psychological distress than that for men. These findings are related to aspects of the police occupational culture. Further discussion is offered that conceptualizes police operational stressors as traumatic, routine and vicarious. Finally, some implications are drawn for the provision of stress intervention in the light of this differentiation.     

Criteria for selecting a production control philosophy

Logistic objectives constitute a compromise between having short leadtimes and a low volume of work in progress on the one hand and a high resource loading and due date obligation on the other. Miscellaneous production planning approaches offered today provide different combinations of logistic objectives for satisfying a manufacturing strategy. To combine the strength of the various approaches into a unified system, a new approach based on a dynamic and distributed production planning methodology is proposed. To customize the approach, various analyses and specifications have to be made and for that reason some important characteristics and criteria for analysing production control philosophies will be given.     

The social construction of the meaning of acute stressors: a qualitative study of the personal accounts of police officers using a stress counselling service

The police profession is one in which acute stressors are encountered more frequently than in other occupations. Using the personal accounts of 35 police officers attending an in-house stress counselling clinic, the aim of the present study was to provide a qualitative examination of how the institutional context of policing influenced the ways in which acute stressors signified to individual police officers experiencing felt distress. Using the framework of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy as an analytical tool, it is argued that beliefs contributing to the experience of felt distress are related to the way in which policing as both an identity and an activity is constructed through the police organizational culture. Not only do these constructions influence the ways in which officers perceive themselves and their environments, but they also operate at the collective level to 'normalize' some emotional responses and to 'pathologize' others which, it is argued, could impact upon the outcomes of interventions such as stress counselling.     

The moderating role of social support in Karasek's job strain model

This paper examines whether social support is a boundary-determining criterion in the job strain model of Karasek (1979). The particular focus is the extent to which different sources of social support, work overload and task control influence job satisfaction, depersonalization and supervisor assessments of work performance. Hypotheses are tested using prospective survey data from 80 clerical staff in a university setting. Results revealed 3-way interactions among levels of support (supervisor, co-worker, non-work), perceived task control and work overload on levels of work performance and employee adjustment (self-report). After controlling for levels of negative affect in all analyses, there was evidence that high levels of supervisor support mitigated against the negative effects of high strain jobs on levels of job satisfaction and reduced reported levels of depersonalization. Moreover, high levels of non-work support and co-worker support also mitigated against the negative effects of high strain jobs on levels of work performance. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of social support networks both at, and beyond, the work context.     

Job insecurity, coping resources and personality dispositions in occupational strain

This paper presents research on the relationships between the work-related stressor of perceived job insecurity and various indicators of occupational strain, taking into account employees' personality dispositions (trait negative and positive affectivity) and coping resources. Respondents were 222 Australian public servants surveyed during organizational restructuring that involved downsizing and threat to job certainty. The research was formulated within an adaptation of Osipow, Doty, and Spokane's (1985) framework of stress-strain-coping that included the possible direct as well as moderating effects of personality dispositions in reporting occupational strain (Parkes, 1990). Findings from hierarchical regression analyses indicate consistent significant independent effects of personality dispositions, coping resources and perceived job insecurity on various indicators of strain. There was also support for the moderating roles of negative affectivity and self-care in the relation between perceived job insecurity and physical strain. Implications for the role of dispositional factors, especially negative affectivity, and the utility of various coping resources in accounting for occupational strain in times of threatened job security are discussed.     

Job stress, job strain, and psychological withdrawal among Dutch university staff: towards a dualprocess model for the effects of occupational stress

This study examined the antecedents of job strain (emotional exhaustion, health complaints) and withdrawal behaviour (e.g. lowered organizational commitment) among a cross-sectional sample of 131 academic staff members of the law department of a large Dutch university. Conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989) provided the theoretical background for this study. Strains and withdrawal behaviours were expected to be most prominent among those who reported having few resources and/or who reported high job demands. Structural equation modelling revealed that this was indeed the case. As predicted, differential patterns of effects emerged for job demands and job resources. Analysis of the effects of four job-specific stressors revealed that especially the structural aspects of a staff member's teaching task (e.g. the number of students in their classes) contributed strongly to perceived job demands. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.     

Dermal Uptake of 18 Dilute Aqueous Chemicals: In Vivo Disappearance‐Method Measures Greatly Exceed In Vitro‐Based Predictions

Average rates of total dermal uptake (K_up) from short‐term (e.g., bathing) contact with dilute aqueous organic chemicals (DAOCs) are typically estimated from steady‐state in vitro diffusion‐cell measures of chemical permeability (K_p) through skin into receptor solution. Widely used (“PCR‐vitro”) methods estimate K_up by applying diffusion theory to increase K_p predictions made by a physico‐chemical regression (PCR) model that was fit to a large set of K_p measures. Here, K_up predictions for 18 DAOCs made by three PCR‐vitro models (EPA, NIOSH, and MH) were compared to previous in vivo measures obtained by methods unlikely to underestimate K_up. A new PCR model fit to all 18 measures is accurate to within approximately threefold (r = 0.91, p < 10^?5), but the PCR‐vitro predictions (r > 0.63) all tend to underestimate the K_up measures by mean factors (UF, and p value for testing UF = 1) of 10 (EPA, p < 10^?6), 11 (NIOSH, p < 10^?8), and 6.2 (MH, p = 0.018). For all three PCR‐vitro models, log(UF) correlates negatively with molecular weight (r² = 0.31 to 0.84, p = 0.017 to < 10^?6) but not with log(vapor pressure) as an additional predictor (p > 0.05), so vapor pressure appears not to explain the significant in vivo/PCR‐vitro discrepancy. Until this discrepancy is explained, careful in vivo measures of K_up should be obtained for more chemicals, the expanded in vivo database should be compared to in vitro‐based predictions, and in vivo data should be considered in assessing aqueous dermal exposure and its uncertainty.     

Systems Resilience for Multihazard Environments: Definition,Metrics, and Valuation for Decision Making

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction reported that the 2011 natural disasters, including the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, resulted in $366 billion in direct damages and 29,782 fatalities worldwide. Storms and floods accounted for up to 70% of the 302 natural disasters worldwide in 2011, with earthquakes producing the greatest number of fatalities. Average annual losses in the United States amount to about $55 billion. Enhancing community and system resilience could lead to massive savings through risk reduction and expeditious recovery. The rational management of such reduction and recovery is facilitated by an appropriate definition of resilience and associated metrics. In this article, a resilience definition is provided that meets a set of requirements with clear relationships to the metrics of the relevant abstract notions of reliability and risk. Those metrics also meet logically consistent requirements drawn from measure theory, and provide a sound basis for the development of effective decision‐making tools for multihazard environments. Improving the resiliency of a system to meet target levels requires the examination of system enhancement alternatives in economic terms, within a decision‐making framework. Relevant decision analysis methods would typically require the examination of resilience based on its valuation by society at large. The article provides methods for valuation and benefit‐cost analysis based on concepts from risk analysis and management.     

Employees' perceptions of organizational restructuring: the role of social support

Organizational change and restructuring is often perceived as leading to increased occupational stress, impacting negatively on the psychological well-being of employees. This pragmatic study investigates the role of social support and dispositional affect as moderators of role stress post-restructuring for employees in a public utility company. A total of 176 employees, including 37 managers, 60 graded staff and 78 industrial staff completed a self-report questionnaire, approximately 1 year postrestructuring, retrospectively assessing role conflict, ambiguity, overload and positive and negative feedback pre- and post-restructuring. Results suggested that overall role stress increased for managers/ senior officers and graded staff, but not for industrial staff. Social support was linked with lower role stress, more positive feedback and less negative feedback at post-restructuring. For certain role stressors this impact was moderated by dispositional affect, but the effect was not consistent across occupational groups. Positive affect enhanced the effect of manager support in reducing role conflict for graded staff, and the effect of co-worker support in increasing positive feedback and reducing negative feedback for industrial staff. Findings suggest that managers should pay particular attention to support and feedback for employees during periods of chronic occupational stress following organizational restructuring.