Voting Technology,Political Responsiveness,and Infant Health: Evidence From Brazil

This paper studies the introduction of electronic voting technology in Brazilian elections. Estimates exploiting a regression discontinuity design indicate that electronic voting reduced residual (error‐ridden and uncounted) votes and promoted a large de facto enfranchisement of mainly less educated citizens. Estimates exploiting the unique pattern of the technology's phase‐in across states over time suggest that, as predicted by political economy models, it shifted government spending toward health care, which is particularly beneficial to the poor. Positive effects on both the utilization of health services (prenatal visits) and newborn health (low‐weight births) are also found for less educated mothers, but not for the more educated.     

基于制度逻辑视角的中国工会改革路径分析研究

立足中国工会改革实践,通过采集1949~2020年间《人民日报》的工会新闻报道和相关期刊文献,采用扎根理论方法提炼出中国工会的制度逻辑构成,并从制度逻辑的互动和演化来剖析中国工会改革过程中的本土特征和内在运行规律。研究结果发现:中国工会具有社会治理逻辑、员工服务逻辑和企业管理逻辑三重逻辑,且其在目标导向、行动基础、合法性和人性假设上存在差异;社会治理逻辑、员工服务逻辑和企业管理逻辑贯穿中国工会改革的全过程,共同推动工会改革历经社会治理逻辑的主导→社会治理逻辑与员工服务逻辑的竞争→三重制度逻辑的平衡融合3个阶段,且呈现出复杂性、动态性的演化特征;中国工会的组织结构和管理体系存在制度惯性的约束,导致其内部逻辑的演变始终滞后于外部制度环境变化。     

从自利到德行:商业组织的制度逻辑变革研究

近年来,商业组织的"社会脱嵌"问题越来越受到学者关注,学者们从多个角度对造成这一问题的原因进行了反思,可是这些反思大多只触及了商业组织局部性问题。实际上,商业组织令人失望的社会表现根植于其自利主义制度逻辑之中,而非是局部性的问题。本文认为解决商业组织"社会脱嵌"问题,采用德行制度逻辑替代自利主义制度逻辑是可行道路。在回顾了哲学、积极组织行为学和积极组织学术对德行的探索的基础上,进一步讨论了德行制度逻辑相比于自利主义、社会责任制度逻辑在商业组织场域的优势,指出采用德行制度逻辑替代自利主义制度逻辑的合理性和可能性。最后,针对现有文献对德行替代自利主义的制度逻辑变革过程鲜有讨论的现状,本文建立了多层次、多进程的制度逻辑变革模型,对"谁将变革"、"如何变革"和"为何变革"等重要理论问题进行了探索。     

Estimates of the Health Risk Reductions Associated with Attainment of Alternative Particulate Matter Standards in Two U.S. Cities

As part of its periodic re-evaluation of particulate matter (PM) standards, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated the health risk reductions associated with attainment of alternative PM standards in two locations in the United States with relatively complete air quality data: Philadelphia and Los Angeles. PM standards at the time of the analysis were defined for particles of aerodynamic diameter less than or equal to 10 microm, denoted as PM-10. The risk analyses estimated the risk reductions that would be associated with changing from attainment of the PM-10 standards then in place to attainment of alternative standards using an indicator measuring fine particles, defined as those particles of aerodynamic diameter less than or equal to 2.5 microm and denoted as PM-2.5. Annual average PM-2.5 standards of 12.5, 15, and 20 microg/m3 were considered in various combinations with daily PM-2.5 standards of 50 and 65 microg/m3. Attainment of a standard or set of standards was simulated by a proportional rollback of "as is" daily PM concentrations to daily PM concentrations that would just meet the standard(s). The predicted reductions in the incidence of health effects varied from zero, for those alternative standards already being met, to substantial reductions of over 88% of all PM-associated incidence (e.g., in mortality associated with long-term exposures in Los Angeles, under attainment of an annual standard of 12.5 microg/m3). Sensitivity analyses and integrated uncertainty analyses assessed the multiple-source uncertainty surrounding estimates of risk reduction.     

Alternative tourism : Towards a new style in North-South relations

This paper defines the scope, purpose and rationale of alternative tourism (AT) — a form of tourism in which the client receives accommodation in the home of the host. AT appears to offer a range of social and economic opportunities, particularly for the developing countries. The aims and methods of a research project into AT potential are specified, and the preliminary research results are reported.     

Temporary Agency Workers in Italy: Alternative Techniques of Classification

Abstract. Cluster analysis and the classification tree technique are applied to investigate the relationship between the individual characteristics of Italian temporary help agency (THA) workers and their probability of achieving a temporary job. The application aims to show some advantages of these techniques with respect to traditional econometric tools. Sketches of the most common profiles among Italian THA workers are obtained as a result. Besides the typical THA worker pointed out by previous studies (young male workers, with a medium–high level of education, living in the Northern regions), two new profiles have been identified: the first comprising male manual workers with previous job experience, whose average age is over 30 and whose educational level is low; the second comprising young female workers with a medium–high level of education, working in the service sector or in the public sector. The results are compared with the more usual logit analysis and show their robustness.     

Demonstrating the Need for Effective Business Ethics: An Alternative Approach

Since the financial crisis, the malfeasance of business leaders has been a recurring theme in the news, along with calls for increased regulation and oversight. This focus on the ethics of the business community raises a concern about the ethics of those in business or going into business. The ethics of business people and business students has been explored by a number of researchers using survey techniques. We propose and report the results of an alternative method for investigating unethical behavior by students. In a motivated economic experiment with introductory level students, we find that business students were almost twice as likely to lie for a monetary reward as students in other disciplines, demonstrating the need for effective business ethics.     

Knowledge Accession and Knowledge Acquisition in Strategic Alliances: The Impact of Supplementary and Complementary Dimensions

This paper advances the concepts of knowledge accession and knowledge acquisition in strategic alliances by identifying supplementary and complementary dimensions to these knowledge transfer modes. Complementary knowledge transfer reflects the similarity of knowledge that the partners have and is conducted in pursuit of higher efficiency and productivity to enhance partner firms' existing competitiveness. Supplementary knowledge transfer occurs when partners each possess distinctive core competences and the information that is acquired or accessed increases the business scope of partners. As knowledge accession entails knowledge amalgamation that does not involve organizational learning, costs associated with the transfer process are lower and trust is easier to establish than in the case of knowledge acquisition. The paper reviews the implications of these transfer modes on trust building in alliances and their costs implications and presents a number of propositions for further exploration.     

Situated Experiments in Organizations: Transplanting the Lab to the Field

Both laboratory and field experiments have limitations that likely account for the recent decline in their usage among organizational researchers. In this article, we introduce situated experiments as an experimental approach that optimizes the strengths of both laboratory and field experiments in organizational research while mitigating the weaknesses of each. We highlight four recently published studies using situated experiments. Drawing on these examples, we illustrate how the proper use of situated experiments can minimize threats to internal validity and ensure the ethical treatment of research participants.     

Health care costs: saving in the private sector

Robeson offers a number of options to employers to help reduce the impact of increasing health care costs. He points out that large organizations which employ hundreds of people have considerable market power which can be exerted to contain costs. It is suggested that the risk management departments assume the responsibility for managing the effort to reduce the costs of medical care and of the health insurance programs of these organizations since that staff is experienced at evaluating premiums and negotiating with third-party payors. The article examines a number of short-run strategies for firms to pursue to contain health care costs: (1) use alternative delivery systems such as health maintenance organizations (HMOs) which have cost-cutting potential but require marketing efforts to persuade employees of their desirability; (2) contracts with third-party payors which require a second opinion (peer review), a practice which saved one labor union over $2 million from 1972 to 1976; (3) implementation of insurance coverage for less expensive outpatient care; and (4) the use of claims review. These strategies are compared in terms of four criteria: supply of demand for health services; management effort; cost; and time necessary for realized savings. Robeson concludes that development of a management plan for containing health care costs requires an extensive analysis of alternatives, organizational objectives, existing policies, and resources, and offers a table summarizing the cost-containment strategies that a firm should consider.     

Strengthening Local Governance in Developing Countries: Partnership as an Alternative Approach

One of the major current concerns in administrative science is the scarcity of partnership-based administration in developing countries, where the capacity of local government is generally weak. Due to the impact of globalisation, the growth of information technology and the rise of third sector organisations, public administration has adopted a new paradigm but given it different names i.e., partnership, public-private partnership, networking, sound governance, good governance etc. As a result, the notion of partnership has emerged as one of the key approaches to meeting the governance challenges of the new millennium focusing, in particular, on building and strengthening the capacity of local governance. As a model, the sustainability of a social system based solely on state capacity has failed in most developing countries. As such, this paper intends to analyse the prospects for partnership based local governance in the developing countries. We argue that there is no alternative to building partnerships at the local government level between the state, private and civil society in order to improve the capacity of local government, enabling it to better attain sustainability, ensure good governance and promote participation in an attempt to mitigate the problems of social exclusion and fragmentation in the delivery of services and products.     

What Happens in the Field Stays in the Field: Exploring Whether Professionals Play Minimax in Laboratory Experiments

The minimax argument represents game theory in its most elegant form: simple but with stark predictions. Although some of these predictions have been met with reasonable success in the field, experimental data have generally not provided results close to the theoretical predictions. In a striking study, Palacios‐Huerta and Volij ( 2008 ) presented evidence that potentially resolves this puzzle: both amateur and professional soccer players play nearly exact minimax strategies in laboratory experiments. In this paper, we establish important bounds on these results by examining the behavior of four distinct subject pools: college students, bridge professionals, world‐class poker players, who have vast experience with high‐stakes randomization in card games, and American professional soccer players. In contrast to Palacios‐Huerta and Volij's results, we find little evidence that real‐world experience transfers to the lab in these games—indeed, similar to previous experimental results, all four subject pools provide choices that are generally not close to minimax predictions. We use two additional pieces of evidence to explore why professionals do not perform well in the lab: (i) complementary experimental treatments that pit professionals against preprogrammed computers and (ii) post‐experiment questionnaires. The most likely explanation is that these professionals are unable to transfer their skills at randomization from the familiar context of the field to the unfamiliar context of the lab.     

Manufacturing feature-based cost management system: a case study in Brazil

Feature costing is a topic of recent discussion related to cost management systems (CMSs) aimed at understanding how product features influence production process costs. It raises as a key issue in mass customisation environments where a single product model can present hundreds of menu options. In this study, we explore the concept of feature costing beyond the use of activity-based costing (ABC). We propose a CMS based on features and common elements as costing objects instead of products. In our model, we use the unit of production effort method to organise the direct manufacturing costs, ABC method to address the indirect cost and the standard methods to compute raw materials costs. We illustrate the method in the production of bus seats in a Brazilian manufacturing company. This study gives different perspectives to the international academic community on the use of a different CMS used by many Brazilian companies.     

Gift Exchange in the Field

This study reports evidence from a field experiment that was conducted to investigate the relevance of gift exchange in a natural setting. In collaboration with a charitable organization, we sent roughly 10,000 solicitation letters to potential donors. One‐third of the letters contained no gift, one‐third contained a small gift, and one‐third contained a large gift. Treatment assignment was random. The results confirm the economic importance of gift exchange. Compared to the no gift condition, the relative frequency of donations increased by 17 percent if a small gift was included and by 75 percent for a large gift. The study extends the current body of research on gift exchange, which is almost exclusively confined to laboratory studies.     

Alternative marketing systems for the apparel wool textile supply chain: filling the communication vacuum

Analysis of secondary data and information gathered from interviews with downstream wool supply chain members suggests that problems exist with the sourcing of raw wool for the apparel textile industry. Specific problems relate to ‘hard’ attributes, such as contaminated fibres and fibre diameter, as well as ‘soft’ attributes, such as origin of the wool and the nature of wool production systems. These problems may arise due to inadequate communication of quality attributes between chain members. The authors argue that more effective communication in the apparel wool supply chain requires the removal of ‘functional silos’, where supply chain members fail to look outside (upstream and/or downstream) their specific sectoral interests, and the continued dominance of the auction as the primary marketing system. The authors conclude that the apparel wool industry needs to co-operate to compete in dynamic, global markets increasingly dominated by synthetic fibres, in which vertically co-ordinated supply chains are the norm, auctions non-existent and communication is seen as a strength, rather than a weakness.     

Alternative Service Delivery in Developing Countries: NGOs and Other Non-Profits in Urban Areas

This paper examines NGOs and other non-profits (NONPROs) as alternatives to government service-delivery in developing urban areas. Reconfiguration is suggested in a three-way ironic triangle including host governments and external donors. Examples are given as well as requisites for strengthening of NONPROs. Service-provision will become increasingly indigenous and bottom-up if cooptation can be avoided and NONPROs can increase their capacities.     

Measuring the Performance of Corporate Acquisitions: An Empirical Comparison of Alternative Metrics*

The choice of performance measure has long been a difficult issue facing researchers. This article investigates the comparability of four common measures of acquisition performance: cumulative abnormal returns, managers' assessments, divestment data and expert informants' assessments. Independently each of these measures indicated a mean acquisition success rate of between 44–56%, within a sample of British cross‐border acquisitions. However, with the exception of a positive relationship between managers' and expert informants' subjective assessments, no significant correlation was found between the performance data generated by the alternative metrics. In particular, ex‐ante capital market reactions to an acquisition announcement exhibited little relation to corporate managers' ex‐post assessment. This is seen to reflect the information asymmetry that can exist between investors and company management, particularly regarding implementation aspects. Overall, the results suggest that future acquisitions studies should consider employing multiple performance measures in order to gain a holistic view of outcome, while in the longer term, opportunities remain to identify and refine improved metrics.     

The Changing Informal Labour Market in Brazil: Cyclicality versus Excessive Intervention

Although following an anti-cyclical behaviour over the last decade, Brazil's informal sector seems to have grown recently as a response to excessive government intervention in the productive system. Despite high inflation and sluggish economic performance, Brazil continues to live with low unemployment and only sporadic social unrest. A substantial informal sector is thought to be acting as a cushion to help minimize labour market instability. This paper reviews the main concepts and methodologies proposed in the literature, summarizes the results obtained by different authors, and presents some additional information on the recent informalization of the Brazilian labour markets.     

Short‐Run Subsidies and Long‐Run Adoption of New Health Products: Evidence From a Field Experiment

Short‐run subsidies for health products are common in poor countries. How do they affect long‐run adoption? A common fear among development practitioners is that one‐off subsidies may negatively affect long‐run adoption through reference‐dependence: People might anchor around the subsidized price and be unwilling to pay more for the product later. But for experience goods, one‐off subsidies could also boost long‐run adoption through learning. This paper uses data from a two‐stage randomized pricing experiment in Kenya to estimate the relative importance of these effects for a new, improved antimalarial bed net. Reduced form estimates show that a one‐time subsidy has a positive impact on willingness to pay a year later inherit. To separately identify the learning and anchoring effects, we estimate a parsimonious experience‐good model. Estimation results show a large, positive learning effect but no anchoring. We black then discuss the types of products and the contexts inherit for which these results may apply.