Non‐Manipulable House Allocation With Rent Control

In many real‐life house allocation problems, rents are bounded from above by price ceilings imposed by a government or a local administration. This is known as rent control. Because some price equilibria may be disqualified given such restrictions, this paper proposes an alternative equilibrium concept, called rationing price equilibrium, tailored to capture the specific features of housing markets with rent control. An allocation rule that always selects a rationing price equilibrium is defined, and it is demonstrated to be constrained efficient and (group) non‐manipulable for “almost all” preference profiles. In its bounding cases, the rule reduces to a number of well‐known mechanisms from the matching literature. In this sense, the housing market with rent control investigated in this paper integrates several of the predominant matching models into a more general framework.     

Relationships between stressful work environments and bullying: Results of a large representative study

Abstract

This paper contributes to the relatively sparse knowledge about relationships between stressful work environments and bullying. Relationships between job stressors and leadership behaviour were analysed as possible predictors of bullying at work on the basis of the work environment hypothesis, which states that stressful and poorly organized work environments may give rise to conditions resulting in bullying. Analyses of a representative sample (n=2539) of the Norwegian workforce showed role conflict, interpersonal conflicts, and tyrannical and laissez-faire leadership behaviour to be strongly related to bullying, and that the strength of associations to a high degree differed for various measures of bullying. Support was found for an interactive relationship between decision authority and role conflict at different levels of laissez-faire leadership. Not only targets and bully/targets but also bystanders assessed their work environment more negatively than did non-involved employees, while perpetrators of bullying did not differ significantly from non-involved employees as regards their perception of the work environment. Hence, bullying is likely to prevail in stressful working environments characterized by high levels of interpersonal friction and destructive leadership styles. In addition, bullying is particularly prevalent in situations where the immediate supervisor avoids intervening in and managing such stressful situations.     

Room for climate advocates in a coal‐focused economy? NGO influence on Australian climate policy

Many Australian environmental non‐government organisations (NGOs) have campaigned for greater political action and community awareness on human‐induced climate change for almost two decades. Australian emissions are the highest per person in the world, yet the Government's response is heavily influenced by the economically‐significant fossil fuel industry. NGO campaigners are sceptical of their campaigns' effectiveness. This paper presents three methods for evaluating the effectiveness of NGO climate change campaigns: Moyer's Movement Action Plan, Schumaker's Assessment of Political Effectiveness, and a document analysis of the influence of NGO submissions to climate policy processes. Evaluation is critical for NGO campaigns to improve their effectiveness, and evaluation criteria and methods should ideally be designed in parallel with the campaign strategy. Using these evaluation methods, it is evident that Australian NGO campaigns on climate change have been effective.     

Corporate Financial Strategies for Global Competitiveness

This paper focuses on the role of corporate financial strategies to improve their market valuations and lower their cost of capital. The identification of successful strategies is accomplished within an overall strategic framework. The paper is built on 12 longitudinal case studies from the Nordic countries to illustrate the linkages between business strategy, firm motivation, and various financial strategies.     

In Search of the Lemmus Lemmus: An Investigation into Convergent Competition

This paper explores the reasons for industries converging upon poor strategies. The phenomenon is likened to the periodic mass suicide of the lemmus lemmus (the Norwegian lemming). It gives historic examples of the phenomenon, and evidence of its occurring within a simulated business environment. A literature review shows how it can be explained using theories from economics, psychology and competitive analogies used in business. An inputs-process–outputs model provides a theoretical framework for Lemmus Lemmus strategies and is used to derive hypotheses.     

Privacy encounters in Teledialogue

Privacy is a major concern when new technologies are introduced between public authorities and private citizens. What is meant by privacy, however, is often unclear and contested. Accordingly, this article utilises grounded theory to study privacy empirically in the research and design project Teledialogue aimed at introducing new ways for public case managers and placed children to communicate through IT. The resulting argument is that privacy can be understood as an encounter, that is, as something that arises between implicated actors and entails some degree of friction and negotiation. An argument which is further qualified through the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. The article opens with a review of privacy literature before continuing to present privacy as an encounter with five different foci: what technologies bring into the encounter; who is related to privacy by implication; what is entailed by the spaces of Teledialogue; how privacy relates to projected futures; and how privacy is also an encounter between authority and care. In the end, it is discussed how privacy conceptualised as an encounter is not already there surrounding people or places but rather has to be traced in the specific and situated relations between implicated actors, giving rise to different normative concerns in each case.     

STENO:an expert system for medical diagnosis based on graphical models and model search

Causal probabilistic models have been suggested for representing diagnostic knowledge in expert systems. This paper describes the theoretical basis for and the implementation of an expert system based on causal probabilistic networks. The system includes model search for building the knowledge base, a shell for making the knowledge base available for users in consultation sessions, and a user interface. The system contains facilities for storing knowledge and propagating new knowledge, and mechanisms for building the knowledge base by semi-automated analysis of a large sparse contingency table. The contingency table contains data acquired for patients in the same diagnostic category as the intended application area of the expert system. The knowledge base of the expert system is created by combining expert knowledge and a statistical model search in a model conversion scheme based on a theory developed by Lauritzen & Spiegelhalter and using exact tests as suggested by Kreiner. The system is implemented on a PC and has been used to simulate the diagnostic value of additional clinical information for coronary artery disease patients under consideration for being referred to coronary arteriography.     

Knowledge transfer and R&D in pharmaceutical companies: A case study

This paper analyzes the consequences for the knowledge transfer and the organization of R&D of pharmaceutical companies after the acquisition of biotech companies. Based on four in-depth case studies, this paper comes to the conclusion that there is no systematic biotechnological know-how transfer from the biotech to the pharmaceutical company after the acquisition. Instead, the biotech companies remain independent and take over the role of centers of excellence for R&D within the pharmaceutical companies because that is the only way of preserving the innovative capabilities of the biotech company.