NGOs and international business research: Progress,prospects and problems

Civil society, and non‐government organizations (NGOs) in particular, have become a research interest in international business (IB). The purpose of this paper is to review scholarly understandings of the nature and significance of NGOs in IB. Contributions from complementary research domains are also explored with a view to encouraging greater interdisciplinary integration in analysing the NGO sector and in particular its relations with multinational enterprises (MNEs). These domains are: strategic alliances and resource dependency; global governance and multilateralism; public management; and regulation theory. The primary argument is that such interdisciplinarity may facilitate more innovative IB treatments of the role of NGOs, reflecting more adequately their strategic environment and motivations. Moreover, including a multitude of perspectives helps to address broader issues identified by scholars as pivotal to the future standing of the field: the nature of strategic agency among organizations other than MNEs; the interpretation of globalization and its implications for organizations; and whether IB is too isolated from the other social sciences.     

The Transition from Temporary to Permanent Employment: Evidence from Tuscany

Abstract. In this paper, by distinguishing between the decisions made by the workers and those made by the firms, we provide a probabilistic evaluation of the transition from temporary to permanent employment in a regional context. Specifically, by exploiting a multinomial nested logit strategy of estimation, we find that the transition to a permanent job is far from certain, especially for women and older workers.     

Pre-commitment and flexibility in a time decision experiment

An agent with dynamically inconsistent preferences may deviate from her plan of action as the future draws near. An exponential discounter may do exactly the same when facing an uncertain future. Through an experiment we compare preference-based vs. uncertainty-based explanations for choice reversal over time by eliciting choices for pre-commitment and flexibility. Evidence of widespread commitment favors a preference-based explanation.

Inequality aversion,impartiality and utilitarianism

Egalitarianism presents the problem of baseline-dependence: egalitarianism from where? No collective choice can be egalitarian for all choices of a baseline. So the question arises as to whether and how the egalitarian program can be weakened in order to be compatible with baseline-independence. I characterize the set of choices that satisfy a minimal degree of inequality-aversion, embodied in the generalized Lorenz criterion, independently of the choice of a baseline. It turns out that this set coincides with the Lorenz-Utilitarian set, the set of Utilitarian choices which are not Lorenz dominated for any choice of baseline. Either this set is empty or it coincides with the Utilitarian set (when this is a singleton). Moreover, I also characterize the full Utilitarian set by using a standard requirement of impartiality (the Suppes-Sen criterion).     

Robust multivariate transformations to normality: Constructed variables and likelihood ratio tests

The assumption of multivariate normality provides the customary powerful and convenient ways of analysing multivariate data: if the data are not normal, the analysis may often be simplified by an appropriate transformation. In this context, the most widely used test is the likelihood ratio, which requires the maximum likelihood estimate of the transformation parameter for each variable. Given that this estimate can only be found numerically, when the number of variables is large (> 20) it is impossible or infeasible to compute the test. In this paper we introduce alternative tests which do not require the maximum likelihood estimate of the transformation parameters and prove algebraically their relationships. We also give insights both using theoretical arguments and a robust simulation study, based on the forward search algorithm, about the distribution of the tests previously introduced.     

基于中国制度环境的智力资本测量研究

在文献回顾的基础上,探讨了智力资本在西方制度环境下的测量逻辑和测量的制度基础,并将其与中国制度环境的特殊性对比,进而分析和评价了智力资本的3个维度和测量指标在中国制度环境下的适用性,并在此基础上提出基于中国制度环境的智力资本测量指标的修正。     

Measuring the Integration of Immigrants: Critical notes from an Italian experience

This paper describes an instrument developed in Italy by the ISMU Foundation to measure the level of integration of immigrants present in the country. The instrument consists of an index based on data collected by means of a structured questionnaire. The paper first describes the technical characteristics of this instrument and the main results obtained from its first, experimental use with the administration of over 12,000 interviews in Italy. There follow some critical notes on the limits and potential of the application of synthetic indexes in the analysis of migratory processes, and particularly in study of the integration of immigrants.