Analysis of individual- and time-specific covariate effects on survival of Serinus serinus in north-eastern Spain

We developed models for the analysis of recapture data for 2678 serins ( Serinus serinus ) ringed in north-eastern Spain since 1985. We investigated several time- and individual-specific factors as potential predictors of overall mortality and dispersal patterns, and of gender and age differences in these patterns. Time-specific covariates included minimum daily temperature, days below freezing, and abundance of a strong competitor, siskins ( Carduelis spinus ) during winter, and maximum temperature and rainfall during summer. Individual covariates included body mass (i.e. body condition), and wing length (i.e. flying ability), and interactions between body mass and environmental factors. We found little support of a predictive relationship between environmental factors and survival, but good evidence of relationships between body mass and survival, especially for juveniles. Juvenile survival appears to vary in a curvilinear manner with increasing mass, suggesting that there may exist an optimal mass beyond which increases are detrimental. The mass-survival relationship does seem to be influenced by at least one environmental factor, namely the abundance of wintering siskins. When siskins are abundant, increases in body mass appear to relate strongly to increasing survival. When siskin numbers are average or low the relationship is largely reversed, suggesting that the presence of strong competition mitigates the otherwise largely negative aspects of greater body mass. Wing length in juveniles also appears to be related positively to survival, perhaps largely due to the influence of a few unusually large juveniles with adult-like survival. Further work is needed to test these relationships, ideally under experimentation.     

Statistical methods for the analysis of high-throughput data based on functional profiles derived from the Gene Ontology

The increasing availability of high-throughput data, that is, massive quantities of molecular biology data arising from different types of experiments such as gene expression or protein microarrays, leads to the necessity of methods for summarizing the available information. As annotation quality improves it is becoming common to rely on biological annotation databases, such as the Gene Ontology (GO), to build functional profiles which characterize a set of genes or proteins using the distribution of their annotations in the database. In this work we describe a statistical model for such profiles, provide methods to compare profiles and develop inferential procedures to assess this comparison. An R-package implementing the methods will be available at publication time.     

Scale versus specialization: banking strategies after the euro

The euro will transform the competitive landscape of European banking. This paper discusses some of the strategic effects of the euro on banks. In particular, it explores two questions: the rationale behind mergers and acquisitions and the universal banking model. The strategic analysis of the forces for change in banking leads to some conclusions: scale will not be the key success factor in European banking, the euro will increase the role of financial specialists in Europe and the universal banking model will face numerous challenges in the new context.     

IT'S WHAT YOU SAY,NOT WHAT YOU PAY: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF MANAGER‐EMPLOYEE RELATIONSHIPS IN OVERCOMING COORDINATION FAILURE

We study manager‐employee interactions in experiments set in a corporate environment where payoffs depend on employees coordinating at high effort levels; the underlying game being played repeatedly by employees is a weak‐link game. In the absence of managerial intervention subjects invariably slip into coordination failure. To overcome a history of coordination failure, managers have two instruments at their disposal: increasing employees' financial incentives to coordinate and communication with employees. Synthesizing methods drawn from psychology and economics, we quantify the impact of specific types of communication on workers' effort levels and manager's profits. This methodology allows us to rigorously compare the efficacy of communication and direct incentives in an environment where both are available. We find that communication is a more effective tool than incentive changes for leading organizations out of performance traps. Examining the content of managers' communication, the most effective communication strategy is quite simple: specifically request a high effort, point out the mutual benefits of high effort, and imply that employees are being paid well. (JEL: C92, D23, J31, L23, M52)     

Asylum Migration in OECD Countries: In Search of Lost Well-Being

Social Indicators Research - Alongside the economic determinants and unobserved structural forces that drive migration flows, asylum migration faces additional natural and man-made hazards, which...     

From Intended to Actual and Beyond: A Cross‐Disciplinary View of (Human Resource Management) Implementation

Despite increasing interest in human resource management (HRM) implementation as an explanation for the association between HRM and firm performance, considerable confusion remains about what implementation means. In order to develop conceptual definitions of HRM implementation and implementation effectiveness, this study builds on three different literatures outside the HRM field (strategy, innovation, and change management), which have addressed this topic extensively. As a result, implementation is characterized as a dynamic process, involving the interaction among multiple actors, starting with the adoption of a new practice and ending with its routinization. This is distinguished from implementation effectiveness as an outcome of that process. The study helps to achieve construct clarity, hence providing a more solid basis for future research and allowing for a better consolidation of findings. The authors also develop an agenda for further research by reviewing a number of theoretical and methodological approaches that have been used in implementation research across fields, including HRM. Overall, the study aims to establish implementation research as a highly relevant academic and practical quest not only in HRM, but also in other management literatures.     

Public relations anthropologies: French theory,anthropology of morality and ethnographic practices

The protagonists of this article are Lucien Matrat and the group of academics he led, known as the “European doctrine (or school) of public relations” (Boiry, 2004, p. 1). These public relations academics and professionals, who were mainly French, represented a body of knowledge which was characterised by an ethical and anthropological approach to public relations. It is this approach that led to Matrat's drafting of the Code of Athens and the creation of a theory of public relations based on human beings. The European doctrine also advocated the application of ethnographic methods to create corporate culture, such as the projet d’entreprise (corporate project). This paper analyzes, from a historical and theoretical viewpoint, this anthropological approach to public relations.     

Stochastic Dominance and Absolute Risk Aversion

In this paper, we propose the infimum of the Arrow–Pratt index of absolute risk aversion as a measure of global risk aversion of a utility function. We show that, for any given arbitrary pair of distributions, there exists a threshold level of global risk aversion such that all increasing concave utility functions with at least as much global risk aversion would rank the two distributions in the same way. Furthermore, this threshold level is sharp in the sense that, for any lower level of global risk aversion, we can find two utility functions in this class yielding opposite preference relations for the two distributions.This paper has benefited from insightful comments made by James Mirrless, two anonymous referees, and by seminar participants at IAE and Simposio de Análisis Económico in Salamanca. They should not bear any responsibility for the remaining errors. Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and FEDER through grants SEC2003-306 and SEC2003-1961, from the Generalitat of Catalonia through the Barcelona Economics program (CREA) and grants 2005SGR00447 and 2005SGR00626 is gratefully acknowledged. This paper is part of the “Polarization and Conflict” project, contract 3CIT2-CT-2004-506084 funded by the European Commission.