The Management of Redundancies in Europe: The Case of France

The paper presents the findings of comparative and interdisciplinary legal and economic study on managing labour redundancies in seven EU member countries. It is structured for comparability between the systems examined. The introductory section contains an account of the evolution of the French labour market, with special reference to redundancy trends, of the features of the programmes for managing redundancies, of the roles of firms and the ‘external environment’ in handling workforce adjustments. The second section presents a map of policies that work to prevent labour redundancies (preventive measures) such as flexibility, training etc. Next, the instruments for handling temporary labour redundancies (retentive measures) are examined (e.g. short-time working, temporary layoffs etc.). The following section is devoted to instruments and programmes involved in the management of permanent labour redundancies (expulsive measures), e.g. collective dismissals, severance pay etc. The final section provides an overall assessment of the French system for managing labour redundancies, and briefly discusses the national debate on the prospects for reform, in light of the principles and policies of convergence set forth by the European Union.     

New developments in behavioral pricing research

Behavioral pricing extends traditional price theory by exploring consumers’ reactions to prices from a psychological perspective. With the constant and substantial evolution of this research field, we review the progress on the state of knowledge on consumers’ processing of price information and price behavior. To this end, we develop a framework to classify the advances made in behavioral pricing research during the past decade. We discuss conceptual developments, the contribution of the adoption of new theories, and new relationships and pricing phenomena. We show that several concepts have undergone conceptual developments (e.g., price search) while other concepts are new to the literature (e.g., participative pricing mechanisms). Regarding theoretical developments, the adoption of theories from other disciplines has contributed to enhance understanding of price-related effects. Finally, new pricing phenomena, such as the zero price effect or the placebo effect of price promotions, challenge the traditional view of consumers’ response to price information. Furthermore, a number of recent empirical findings contradict existing knowledge on price-related concepts and phenomena. Thus, it is of prime importance to integrate the latest findings with prior literature. From the key findings in the literature, we derive directions for future research.     

Observing the Observer

Previous research has demonstrated that individuals improve their performance of a task after observing and evaluating others perform that task, a phenomenon known as the observer effect. Most of the research has demonstrated this when the observers were aware that their performance of the task was also being observed, suggesting that reactivity may play an important role. The current study examined this by evaluating the impact that observing others’ safety performance had on the observers’ subsequent safety performance under reactivity and nonreactivity conditions. Results suggest that the observer effect might be more robust when observers are aware that their performance is also being evaluated.     

Systematisierung der Erfolgsfaktoren von Wissensmanagement auf Basis der bisherigen empirischen Forschung

Zusammenfassung  Der vorliegende Beitrag leitet aus einer umfassenden Bestandsaufnahme der empirischen Forschung zum Wissensmanagement einen Bezugsrahmen der Erfolgsfaktoren ab. Ziel ist die Zuordnung der identifizierten Erfolgsfaktoren zu übergeordneten Aggregationsniveaus (Untersuchungsfelder, Kategorien und Dimensionen) und damit die Reduzierung von Komplexit?t und Systematisierung der bisherigen Befunde. Weiterhin sollen aus den Ergebnissen der vorliegenden Analyse Implikationen für die weitere Forschung im Wissensmanagement abgeleitet werden. Als Ergebnis resultiert ein Modell, welches die Inhalte als auch die hypothetischen Beziehungen zwischen den identifizierten Aggregationsebenen veranschaulicht. Er bildet damit Grundlage für eine weitere Analyse der Erfolgsfaktoren, ihrer Auspr?gungen und Interdependenzen. Aus der Heterogenit?t der Studien konnten weitere Implikationen für die theoretische Wissensmanagement-Forschung abgeleitet werden.

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Knowledge management factors of success: A review of empirical findings and a model for future research

Summary  This paper derives a framework of key success-factors from an in-depth review of empirical research in knowledge management. Our first objective was to reduce the complexity of previous findings in the field of knowledge management by developing a model-structure that focuses on the interdependencies of the identified variables and to develop a framework that would allow for further research. We thus iteratively aggregated the identified factors of success to superior fields of analysis (named research fields, categories and dimensions). Our second objective was to extract from the analysis further implications for future research. The derived hypothetical framework maps the identified levels of aggregation and its describing factors, as well as the hypothetical interdependencies among them. Therefore this framework not only structures the findings, but also provides a basis for further analysis that aims at sound confirmation of the knowledge management factors of success, their characteristics and interdependencies. The observed heterogeneity of existing research points towards further research implications for knowledge management theory.

Forschungsschwerpunkte: Mergers & Acquisitions, Projektmanagement, Wissensmanagement     

Pricing and upper price bounds of relax certificates

Relax certificates are written on multiple underlying stocks. Their payoff depends on a barrier condition and is thus path-dependent. As long as none of the underlying assets crosses a lower barrier, the investor receives the payoff of a coupon bond. Otherwise, there is a cash settlement at maturity which depends on the lowest stock return. Thus, the products consist of a knock-out coupon bond and a knock-in claim on the minimum of the stock prices. In a Black-Scholes model setup, the price of the knock-out part can be given in closed (or semi-closed) form in the case of one or two underlyings only. With the exception of the trivial case of one underlying, the price of the knock-in minimum claim always has to be calculated numerically. Hence, we derive semi-closed form upper price bounds. These bounds are the lowest upper price bounds which can be calculated without the use of numerical methods. In addition, the bounds are especially tight for the vast majority of relax certificates which are traded at a discount relative to the corresponding coupon bond. This is also illustrated with market data.     

After the Storm: How Race,Class, and Immigration Concerns Influenced Beliefs About the Katrina Evacuees*

Objective. In September 2005, approximately 150,000 Gulf Coast residents fled to Houston, Texas, seeking shelter following Hurricane Katrina. Since the majority of evacuees were poor African Americans, the political and social consequences of the storm inspired a national dialogue on race and class. However, in Houston, the discourse on Katrina evacuees also involved immigration concerns. The city's distinction as a gateway to new arrivals influenced the dialogue on the evacuees' impact on the local area. This article assesses the extent to which race, class, and immigration concerns influenced Houstonians' beliefs about the Katrina evacuees. Methods. We analyze data from the 2006 and 2008 Houston Area Survey in order to assess attitudes toward these newcomers at two distinct time periods: within six months of their arrival and then again more than two years later. Results. Our findings show that both national and local factors influenced beliefs about the Katrina evacuees. Conclusions. The dynamics of race/ethnicity and apprehension toward immigrants drove largely antagonistic beliefs about the mostly poor, mostly black new arrivals.     

Clean and green organizing in urban neighborhoods: Measuring perceived and objective outcomes

ABSTRACT

One way in which urban community organizations attempt to improve neighborhood health is through cleaning and greening efforts. Few studies have evaluated how such efforts are related to changes in both residents’ perceptions of neighborhoods and objective community-wide cleaning and greening indicators over time. Drawing upon quantitative and qualitative data collected during an evaluation of a community-building initiative in two communities, results show how neighborhood changes in cleaning and greening were reflected in perceived and objective measures and how these measures compare across different time periods and sub-groups of residents within the two target communities. We provide suggestions for additional ways that future evaluations of urban cleaning and greening efforts can examine the impact.     

Presenting DEA graphically

This paper introduces a methodology that permits presentation of the results of data envelopment analysis (DEA) graphically. A specialized form of multi-dimensional scaling, Co-Plot, enables presentation of the DEA results in a two-dimensional space, hence in a clear, understandable manner. When plotting ratios rather than original data, DEA efficient units can be visualized clearly, as well as their connections to specific variables and/or ratios. Furthermore, Co-Plot can be used in an exploratory data analysis to identify outliers, whose data require additional scrutiny, and potentially inconsequential variables that could be aggregated or removed from the analysis with little effect on the subsequent DEA results.     

Understanding the role of facial asymmetry in human face identification

Face recognition has important applications in forensics (criminal identification) and security (biometric authentication). The problem of face recognition has been extensively studied in the computer vision community, from a variety of perspectives. A relatively new development is the use of facial asymmetry in face recognition, and we present here the results of a statistical investigation of this biometric. We first show how facial asymmetry information can be used to perform three different face recognition tasks—human identification (in the presence of expression variations), classification of faces by expression, and classification of individuals according to sex. Initially, we use a simple classification method, and conduct a feature analysis which shows the particular facial regions that play the dominant role in achieving these three entirely different classification goals. We then pursue human identification under expression changes in greater depth, since this is the most important task from a practical point of view. Two different ways of improving the performance of the simple classifier are then discussed: (i) feature combinations and (ii) the use of resampling techniques (bagging and random subspaces). With these modifications, we succeed in obtaining near perfect classification results on a database of 55 individuals, a statistically significant improvement over the initial results as seen by hypothesis tests of proportions.