Qualität in der Personalberatung am Beispiel von Instrumenten der Personalauswahl

Empirical evidence shows that personnel selection methods positively contribute to the quality of the personnel selection process, which is one of the main fields of activity of personnel consultants. Unfortunately it is repeatedly mentioned in literature that selection methods could be implemented more efficiently. Personnel-consulting agencies and self-employed consultants bear a lot of responsibility regarding these aspects: they should recommend proven selection methods to their clients. In this article it is discussed how the selection process can achieve consistent quality.     

Do Central Bank Liquidity Facilities Affect Interbank Lending Rates?

In response to the global financial crisis that started in August 2007, central banks provided extraordinary amounts of liquidity to the financial system. To investigate the effect of central bank liquidity facilities on term interbank lending rates near the start of the crisis, we estimate a six-factor arbitrage-free model of U.S. Treasury yields, financial corporate bond yields, and term interbank rates. This model can account for fluctuations in the term structure of credit and liquidity spreads observed in the data. A significant shift in model estimates after the announcement of the liquidity facilities suggests that these central bank actions did help lower the liquidity premium in term interbank rates.     

Pietät und Profit

Under what conditions do new markets emerge? This question is usually answered by referring to technological innovations, price changes, and political interventions. We take the historical development of the funeral market since the seventeenth century as an example to show that cultural changes are an equally important prerequisite for market formation. We distinguish three stages of market development, each coming about with far-reaching cultural, demographic, and institutional changes that created the precondition for the emergence of a market for funeral services. Market formation cannot be explained solely by technological, economic, or political changes, but relies on cultural preconditions that evolve historically.     

Mindful leadership: mindfulness as a new antecedent of destructive and transformational leadership behavior

Purpose: While previous research has well-examined the stress reducing effects of mindfulness, much less is known, evidentially, about the impact that it might have on working behavior, particularly in the context of leadership. Against this background, the goal of our study was to examine whether mindfulness influences leadership behavior.Design: To answer this question, we used a two-source survey study consisting of 60 teams, examining trait mindfulness of leaders via self-evaluation and their leadership behavior through the eyes of their subordinates. To analyze the given data, we conducted regression analyses.Results: Our findings confirmed the hypothesized relationships. We found a negative relationship between leaders’ mindfulness and destructive leadership, as well as a positive one between leaders’ mindfulness and transformational leadership.Implications: The results of our study underline the importance of mindfulness as a potential tool to optimize leadership quality. In order to prevent destructive and promote transformational leadership, organizations should help to develop leaders’ mindfulness capacities.     

Permutation tests — A revival?!

It is shown that permutation tests have optimum properties for interesting classes of continuous distributions as well as for discrete ones. General conditions sufficient for uniformly maximal power on subclasses are given. Moreover, a variety of examples is presented. Research supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) grant No. Schm 677/5-1     

Trust and adaptive learning in implicit contracts

Trust is a phenomenon that still is quite rarely investigated in agency theory. According to a common intuitive reasoning, trust should develop over time and it should evolve even in finite implicit-contract relationships. However, if the contracting parties are fully rational, theory cannot explain this. We therefore extend the standard model and develop a model of a finite relationship where the principal promises to pay a voluntary period-by-period bonus if the agent has worked according to the implicit agreement. The agent is boundedly rational and unable to foresee the principal’s future bonus decisions. The principal is, with some probability, honest and pays a promised bonus even in situations where ex-post cheating would be optimal. Based on the agent’s adaptive learning process, we show how trust evolves depending on the principal’s bonus-payment strategy. Depending on different levels of the agent’s bounded rationality, we derive the principal’s optimal pure strategy as part of a unique equilibrium. In an extension we show that the results are robust if the agent has bounded recall. The optimal strategy pattern mirrors a subset of trigger strategies which is exogenous in the standard model. Our findings imply that subjective incentives are more effective with increasing tenure of employees, or, that the optimal level of trust depends on how fast work environments change.     

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.