Profit Sharing in Portugal: Why Higher Productivity?

The paper studies some characteristics of Portuguese profit‐sharing (PS) firms based on a sample of 192 manufacturing firms. Some issues are examined that could help explain observed productivity differences such as the performance contingency of PS payments and the complementary or substitution nature of these payments regarding wages. The higher productivity found for PS firms seems to be more related to higher total remuneration in these firms than to the specific PS pay formula. The issues of why, how and by whom PS payments are determined could clarify the exact nature of our findings.     

Why will physicians in this new environment replace MHAs?

The competitive forces of managed care, capitated payment, cost constraints, and the formation of health networks are among the major precipitating factors leading to the employment of additional executives and middle managers with clinical backgrounds. These factors will require our health leaders to know how to cut costs without seriously impinging on the accessibility and quality of patient care. Physicians with leadership and management skills, and with prior hands-on patient care expertise, will continue to be sought after in the foreseeable future by various types of health organizations. With this scenario, health services management generalists are predicted to experience increasing difficulties to secure senior positions in the health industry,     

Corporate Governance in Asian Countries: Has Confucianism Anything to Offer?

Although Confucianism is a resilient cultural tradition in Asian societies, its role in their corporate governance systems is ambiguous. Confucian values have been pushed to the periphery because of a preoccupation in these countries to emulate corporate governance systems from the West. This article argues that Confucianism has much to offer in enhancing director conduct and corporate governance standards. As the attention of the global business community turns eastwards, it is opportune to revive interest in Confucianism and to explore ways in which it can be integrated formally into companies' governance systems.     

Regional Development Agencies in Turkey: Are They Examples of Obligated Policy Transfer?

EU requires the candidate states to introduce the necessary legal arrangements and administrative reforms to harmonize with the EU’s regional policy, and the establishment of RDAs is an important element of those administrative reforms. This is an example of “obligated policy transfer,” which is a subtype of policy transfer. In this context, this article aims to analyze the establishment of RDAs in Turkey as an example of obligated policy transfer. Within this perspective, this article primarily explicates the conceptual framework of policy transfer and obligated transfer as a subtype of policy transfer. Second, the place of RDAs within the EU regional policy and Turkey’s view of regional governments and development conception will be briefly dealt with. Finally, establishment of RDAs in Turkey will be analyzed, using official documents, as an example of obligated policy transfer and the role of EU will be demonstrated.

Are Married Women in Turkey More Likely to Become Added or Discouraged Workers?

Abstract. The purpose of this study is to examine the labour market outcomes of married couples to find out which of the added and discouraged worker effects is dominant in urban Turkish families. Using household labour force survey and province‐level data from 1988 and 1994, we look for evidence regarding the dependency of the labour force participation decisions of wives and the employment status of their husbands. On yearly and pooled samples of married couples in their prime ages, bivariate probit estimates indicate that the two decisions are negatively correlated. However, the correlation is found to be statistically significant only in the economic crisis year of 1994. We interpret this finding to mean that the added worker effect dominates the discouraged worker effect.     

Why Do People from Southern Italy Seek Jobs in the Public Sector?

This paper analyses the choice open to a worker seeking a job in the public and private sectors of the labour market. The private sector is identified by a steeper wage profile and by lower job security than the public sector. The reservation wage for the two sectors is calculated in the first part of the paper. The results reveal that the reservation wage for the public sector is higher than that for the private sector. The effect of career prospects, job riskiness and labour demand on optimal time allocation between the search in the two sectors is then analysed. Finally, an empirical analysis is made in order to study Italian workers’ search strategies. It highlights relevant geographical differences which can be interpreted through the theoretical results obtained in the paper.     

Why Does Cell Implementation Stop? Factors Influencing Cell Penetration in Manufacturing Plants

There is little understanding as to why firms have various degrees of cell usage. The intent of this study was to identify factors that had arrested continued implementation of cells at surveyed manufacturing plants. We found no dominant factor that had prevented the firms from continued cellularization. However, by sub‐dividing the plants into those with low and high degrees of direct labor hours spent in cells, short and long experience with cells, and those with and without plans for further cells, a clearer pattern emerged. The inability to find families with high and stable demand, lack of time to implement more cells, the existence of service processes, and the difficulty of cost justifying new cells were the most important factors, although their relative importance varied. The findings support the notion that cellular manufacturing has broad applicability as a form of work organization and that cell users pursue further implementations until no more viable cells with sufficient utilization, demand stability, or economic value can be found.     

Why don't U.S. boards get more involved in strategy?

About 5 years ago there was strong interest in the United States in increasing the role of the Board in corporate strategy development. In practice, these expectations were not met. The reasons include: lack of governmental and other pressures; the lack of conspicuous ‘success’ stories among major companies with active Board committees of this kind; and general reappraisals of the strategic planning process itself. There are continuing grounds for skepticism. Nevertheless, there are some reasons for optimism, including two surveys of Boards of Directors indicating that expectations continue to glow.     

Why do Emerging Market Firms Engage in Voluntary Environmental Management Practices? A Strategic Choice Perspective

In this paper, we investigate firms’ decisions to engage in voluntary environmental management (VEM) practices within an emerging market context. Drawing on the strategic choice and the resource‐based view perspectives, we report results from a survey of VEM practices – a specific form of self‐governance – drawing on a sample of 519 Turkish firms from various industries to identify important strategic antecedents of firms’ decisions to engage in such practices. We find that as firms become more customer focused, more inclined to pursue a differentiation strategy and subject to a higher level of strategy‐oriented stakeholder focus, they tend to implement higher levels of VEM practices, with important implications for research, policy and practice for both emerging and developed markets.     

Fuzziness in Action: What Consequences Has the Linguistic Ambiguity of the Core Competence Concept for Organizational Usage?

Linguistic ambiguity is one of the most prominent characteristics of management fashions. Using the example of one of the most popular management concepts in the 1990s, the core competence approach, we analyse the consequences of linguistic ambiguity on the level of organizational usage. We pursue an in‐depth case study of a German corporation which can be seen as a ‘heavy adopter’ of the core competence concept. A central implication of our study is that the term ‘ambiguity’ itself has several meanings depending on the level of analysis. On a general level the managers interpreted the core competence concept relatively homogeneously. They simplified and generalized it to an organizational principle and perceived it as guiding action. At the same time, each manager defined his or her own set of core competences. Thus, underneath a seeming consensus, a large variety of practices may hide. This novel kind of ‘contextual ambiguity’ does not originate from the linguistic ambiguity of the management fashion but from the plurality of local contexts in which the concept is interpreted. The managers' pragmatic attitude to the core competence ‘principle’ contributed to the high contextual ambiguity and the – compared to the media discourse – high longevity of the fashion within the case company. Our findings urge management fashion scholars to pay more attention to the distributed and polyphonic character of organizations and the organizational nature of the ‘consumption’ of ambiguous management knowledge.     

Why Do Neighbors Have Different Environmental Priorities? Analysis of Environmental Risk Perception in a Beirut Neighborhood

Differences in environmental priorities within an urban neighborhood of Beirut are analyzed. The explanatory capabilities of five categories of contextual variables are compared: socioeconomic status, locality, health, behavior, and environmental beliefs. Semi-structured interviews with key individuals in the community and residents were first conducted. Four environmental issues of concern were identified. A survey was carried out to identify the relative priority accorded by respondents to these four issues, and to measure variables likely to explain differences of opinion. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted for each of the four problems. The 99% confidence interval (CI) of the odds ratio (OR) was used as a test of significance. Respondents suffering from a respiratory disease (OR = 6.94, 99%CI = 1.54-31.25), those living in less crowded houses (OR = 4.88, 99%CI = 1.38-17.24), and those not living close to the neighborhood's industrial street (OR=5.26, 99%CI = 1.01-27.78) are significantly more likely to rank poor air quality first. Significant associations are found between poor water quality as first priority and nonpresence of a smoker in the household (OR = 6.12, 99%CI = 1.84-20.32) and perception of water salinity as a problem (OR = 7.46, 99%CI = 1.50-37.03). Males (OR = 6.94, 99%CI = 1.02-47.62) and tenants versus owners (OR = 10.49, 99%CI = 1.36-80.61) are significantly more likely to rank the residential-industrial mix first. Socioeconomic variables retain their explanatory capability in the studied neighborhood, despite relatively small income disparities. Behavioral variables, such as smoking, may be causative factors of priorities. Analyzing relative priorities, rather than "concern" or lack of it, reveals more complex patterns of association. Identifying environmental-perception divide lines can help develop a more inclusive and effective participatory environmental management.     

Why me? The frog-pond effect,relative deprivation and individual outcomes in the face of budget cuts

Conservation of resources (COR) theory proposes that both individual characteristics and environmental factors predict stress reactions, but does not consider interactions between individual variables and the immediate social context. Using theories regarding the frog-pond effect, which relates to how an individual perceives themselves in relation to that of those around them, and relative deprivation, we tested the hypothesis that employees who were personally more affected by a potential stressor, yet were in an organizational unit less affected by that stressor, would report more negative outcomes than employees who were subjected to the same stress but were in more affected units. Utilizing multilevel modelling and departmental- and individual-level data from a university experiencing severe budget cuts, it was found that both individual perceived budget cut impacts and departmental impacts were related to less job satisfaction, reduced affective commitment, greater perceptions of psychological contract breach and increased turnover intentions, supporting COR theory. Interestingly, as predicted by the frog-pond effect and relative deprivation theory, affected academic staff within departments that were less affected by the cuts had more negative responses than equally impacted individuals in more affected departments. We concluded that the frog-pond effect is relevant to work stress research and practice.     

In Search of Perfect Foresight? Policy Bias,Management of Unknowns,and What Has Changed in Science Policy Since the Tohoku Disaster

The failure to foresee the catastrophic earthquakes, tsunamis, and nuclear accident of 2011 has been perceived by many in Japan as a fundamental shortcoming of modern disaster risk science. Hampered by a variety of cognitive and institutional biases, the conventional disaster risk management planning based on the “known risks” led to the cascading failures of the interlinked disaster risk management (DRM) apparatus. This realization led to a major rethinking in the use of science for policy and the incorporations of lessons learned in the country's new DRM policy. This study reviews publicly available documents on expert committee discussions and scientific articles to identify what continuities and changes have been made in the use of scientific knowledge in Japanese risk management. In general, the prior influence of cognitive bias (e.g., overreliance on documented hazard risks) has been largely recognized, and increased attention is now being paid to the incorporation of less documented but known risks. This has led to upward adjustments in estimated damages from future risks and recognition of the need for further strengthening of DRM policy. At the same time, there remains significant continuity in the way scientific knowledge is perceived to provide sufficient and justifiable grounds for the development and implementation of DRM policy. The emphasis on “evidence‐based policy” in earthquake and tsunami risk reduction measures continues, despite the critical reflections of a group of scientists who advocate for a major rethinking of the country's science‐policy institution respecting the limitations of the current state science.