An empirical study of the relationship between a self-service technology investment and firm financial performance

More and more enterprises are taking advantage of self-service technologies (SSTs) in their customer-related operating activities, especially service firms. Although research on SSTs is prevalent, few studies have examined the impact of SSTs on firm financial performance. Given the growing importance of SSTs in the service industries in general and in the banking industry in particular, we therefore empirically examined the impacts of ATMs, one of the most widely accepted SSTs, on bank financial performance. Contrary to the existing literature, our results show ATMs have a positive relationship with profitability. However, we find no association between ATMs and growth performance.     

Linking long-term capacity management for manufacturing and service operations

For firms that combine manufacturing and service operations in one system, the task of managing capacity is not straightforward. New goods and services may not have the same set of competitive priorities, and the models and concepts available in the literature for service operations differ from those for manufacturing operations. We address this problem and review the concepts and models for capacity management in the long term in both streams of literature, i.e. manufacturing and services, to develop a unified framework for manufacturing and service operations. The framework creates transparency between new goods manufacturing and service operations, since the same long-term capacity management structure is used for both product types, as well as between capacity strategy and planning strategy, since new goods and services are treated simultaneously. In the framework, the concepts of chase and level strategies are redefined for service operations to allow for integration with manufacturing operations. A case study demonstrates the usefulness of the integrated approach for long-term capacity management.     

Non‐linear Effects of Comparison Income in Quit Decisions: Status versus Signal!

This research note utilizes German matched employer–employee data to investigate the relationship between mobility and relative wage positions within establishments for workers without university degrees. The main innovation involves the examination of non‐linear effects, because previous literature mainly analyses mean linear effects. Our random‐effects probit estimates of mobility suggest a non‐linear U‐shaped effect with respect to relative standing. This is plausible because workers in low relative wage positions might quit because of their low status and those in high relative wage positions because of their low career advancement opportunities. Consideration of non‐linearities, thus, is a major improvement for the analysis of the effects of relative wage positions.     

Critical success factors in managing modular production design: Six company case studies in Hong Kong, China, and Singapore

Many researchers have explored the advantages of modular product design, its design methods and its effects on product performance. Modular design is, for example, required for product platform, mass customization and postponement in order to achieve greater product variety and differentiation. However, a few empirical studies explicitly examine how to coordinate modular product design in a managerial way. This paper addresses it by conducting multiple case studies with six companies which have successfully adopted modular product design for five years. Seven critical factors are explored in the management of modular product design. These are pre-defined product advantage, selectively used design rules, module definition, system integration, technological newness, internal communication, and supplier and customer involvement. While most of the literature studies the technical dimension of modular design within a firm, this study focuses on the managerial side across the supply chain. It gives new insights on how to manage modular product design and proposes future research opportunities.     

Gender bias in performance evaluations: The impact of gender quotas

The intention behind imposing quotas for women on corporate boards is to close the gender gap in economic participation and help women to be promoted within organizations. However, the broader social psychological literature lends support to ideas that affirmative action policies, such as quotas, may do more harm than good for the beneficiaries. We extend this idea beyond the affected beneficiaries and ask whether this unintended negative effect spills over to women who are not immediate targets of the quota, by signaling incompetence. We develop an experimental design to investigate whether the announcement (study 1) and the implementation (study 2) of a quota for women have a direct negative effect on performance evaluations and hence reinforce the existing gender bias in evaluation. We observed that the performance of women was evaluated significantly lower than that of men. However, this gender bias was limited to sequential (rating) evaluations and was not evident in joint (ranking) evaluations. The quota did not significantly influence the amount of this bias. In addition, we observed more pronounced sexism in males compared to females. Results of study 2 gave a hint to an association between higher sexism and lower evaluations of women’s performance. We also found some evidence for a stronger evaluation bias in females when controlling for sexist attitudes. Hence, our results imply that the bias, which is overall quite robust and strongly pronounced, is still affected by individual gender-related characteristics.     

货币反替代视角下的M2/GDP畸高研究

改革开放以来,中国的M2/GDP不断攀升,已成为宏观经济领域的一个难解之谜.即使在流动性过剩、通货膨胀升高、经济持续过热的2007年,M2/GDP仍然高达1.6166,这就与以往学者研究结论出现了矛盾.基于货币反替代视角对中国M2/GDP畸高进行分析及实证检验,研究结果表明:过高的外汇储备以及在现有的外汇管理体制下,我国冲销机制不力是导致M2/GDP升高的主要原因.因此必须对现行的外汇管理体制加以改革,有效降低M2/GDP水平,央行的信用创造能力和银行体系的支付能力才能得以改善,宏观经济和资本市场才能进一步稳定健康发展.     

开放格局下的外资并购和国家经济安全

近两年随着国内市场的进一步开放,外资在国内的并购,对影响国家经济发展的关键行业和领域相关的龙头企业斩首策略的成功,致使我国的关键行业面临着被跨国资本整合进而成为其全球产业链的一环．民族产业将失去其经济体系的独立性和自主性。尽快出台反垄断与并购方面的专门法律,从国家法律的高度全面而有效的保护我国民族产业体系的独立与完整,对于维护和保障国家经济安全,保障我国市场经济的健康发展,具有深远的意义。     

《蝴蝶君》对性别和种族的解构

美籍华裔剧作家黄哲伦的作品《蝴蝶君》自问世以来广受关注,剧中通过性别角色的转换和种族关系的颠覆来阐述解构主义思想,表达了要求东西方平等相待的愿望。     

中国企业跨国并购中的文化冲突与整合研究

中国企业跨国并购文化冲突有各种表现。民族文化差异、社会制度文化差异、经营思想和经营方式差异是产生文化冲突的主要原因。文化冲突会给中国海外并购企业带来整合困难、人才流失和效益低下等问题。塑造目标企业发展愿景、协调不同文化背景员工的行为、激励员工与企业共同发展和创造有利于企业持续发展的文化环境是化解文化冲突的重要途径。     

Prediction in moving average processes

For the stationary invertible moving average process of order one with unknown innovation distribution F, we construct root-n   consistent plug-in estimators of conditional expectations E(h(_Xn+1)|_X1,…,_Xn)$E(h(X_{n+1})|X_1,\dots ,X_n)$. More specifically, we give weak conditions under which such estimators admit Bahadur-type representations, assuming some smoothness of h or of F. For fixed h it suffices that h   is locally of bounded variation and locally Lipschitz in _L2(F)$L_2(F)$, and that the convolution of h and F   is continuously differentiable. A uniform representation for the plug-in estimator of the conditional distribution function P(_Xn+1?·|_X1,…,_Xn)$P(X_{n+1}?·|X_1,\dots ,X_n)$ holds if F has a uniformly continuous density. For a smoothed version of our estimator, the Bahadur representation holds uniformly over each class of functions h that have an appropriate envelope and whose shifts are F-Donsker, assuming some smoothness of F. The proofs use empirical process arguments.