二元学习与创新绩效的作用机制——组织内部协作网络的调节作用

组织学习是驱动企业创新、实现技术追赶与超越追赶的关键因素,如何合理组织企业的利用式和探索式学习是企业构建研发体系的关键问题。学界对二元学习是否有利于企业的创新绩效存在截然不同的观点。同时,组织内部的情境因素是影响组织二元学习和创新绩效关系的最根本因素,组织内部研发协作网络是二元学习的重要载体。基于美国半导体行业企业十年间的专利数据,实证研究发现,不同维度的二元学习对企业创新绩效具有不同的影响,联合二元学习能够积极影响企业的创新绩效,平衡二元学习则会降低企业的创新绩效;内部研发协作网络密度在二元学习和创新绩效的关系中具有显著的调节作用,企业的内部协作网络密度越高,联合二元学习对企业创新绩效的积极影响越弱,平衡二元学习对创新绩效的负影响则加剧。     

社会自主性的三种提升路径

社会自主性是现代化进程中的重要一维,社会自主性对市场侵蚀的抵抗和对国家权力的制约有利于形成均衡性的治理结构。现代化进程的历史维度、关系范畴的相对维度和治理现代化的功能维度构成理解社会自主性的3种视角。中国经由长期历史沉淀形成的是国家本位主义传统,改革开放打破了国家-社会的同构状态并塑造了一个相对自主的社会。中国社会缺乏自治机制的文化土壤和理念基础,社会自主性的提升需要国家以主动塑造方式,通过输入路径、合作路径和培育路径进行治理推动。     

农民合作社的反脆弱性及其贫困治理能力

农民合作社作为农村发展的重要经济载体,其反脆弱性在农村贫困治理领域具有不可忽视的作用。 在联结农民个体、聚拢闲散资源方面,农民合作社是重要抓手:一方面,通过把单个的农民集合起来,增加农民群体共同抵御社会风险的能力,提高农民群体面对市场经济带来的不确定性和不稳定性的抗逆力;另一方面,农民合作社发挥实体平台作用,将农村较为优良的资源聚集起来,发挥资源整合效应,提高农村优质资源的利用率,提高农产品的市场竞争力,降低农产品的市场交易成本,提高农产品的市场占有率。 文章剖析农民合作社社员在组织能力、管理能力、自我发展能力等方面的反脆弱性,探讨农民合作社在整合经济、社会以及文化等资源方面的反脆弱性发展,进而论述在农村反贫困战略中,农民合作社的贫困治理能力。 农民合作社的反脆弱性,为其参与贫困治理提供了可能性,其反脆弱性发展为农村贫困治理增加了可及性,农民合作社的贫困治理能力日趋提高。     

Sensitivity,uncertainty, and decision analyses in the prioritization of research

The evaluation of hazards from complex, large scale, technologically advanced systems often requires the construction of computer implemented mathematical models. These models are used to evaluate the safety of the systems and to evaluate the consequences of modifications to the systems. These evaluations, however, are normally surrounded by significant uncertainties related to the uncertainty inherent in natural phenomena such as the weather and those related to uncertainties in the parameters and models used in the evaluation.

Another use of these models is to evaluate strategies for improving information used in the modeling process itself. While sensitivity analysis is useful in defining variables in the model that are important, uncertainty analysis provides a tool for assessing the importance of uncertainty about these variables. A third complementary technique, is decision analysis. It provides a methodology for explicitly evaluating and ranking potential improvements to the model. Its use in the development of information gathering strategies for a nuclear waste repository are discussed in this paper.     

How to Evaluate Government Performance while Building a Rule of Law Government in China*

Building a law-based government is a central element of the comprehensive framework for promoting the rule of law in China, while using evaluation to catalyze growth is in line with the incentive principle of management studies. Since China started to implement reform and opening up over thirty years ago, rule of law development and organizational evaluation have gone through several stages, each with different characteristics. Efforts to build a law-based government have met with success, but what the country now has is essentially still goal-oriented assessment. At present, this suffers from the lack of a clear goal orientation or definition of functions, an imperfect technical system and unsound motivation mechanisms, not to mention the practical problems of each government department going its own way, duplicating evaluations or being left rudderless. Drawing on a combination of value rationality and instrumental rationality and using government performance evaluation to promote the building of a law-based government not only conforms to the spirit of the rule of law and value rationality in government performance, but also strengthens the role of evaluation as an instrument for organizational management. Therefore, we need to create new evaluation theories, expand public participation, introducing diversified evaluating entities, improve technical systems, strengthen institutional buildup, and foster a performance-based culture. In addition, replacing goal-oriented assessment with performance evaluation will help the emergence of a new discipline—the performance evaluation of rule of law government, thus promoting multidisciplinary efforts to integrate and create new public administration theories in China.     

Practical procedures to deal with common support problems in matching estimation

This paper assesses the performance of common estimators adjusting for differences in covariates, such as matching and regression, when faced with the so-called common support problems. It also shows how different procedures suggested in the literature affect the properties of such estimators. Based on an empirical Monte Carlo simulation design, a lack of common support is found to increase the root-mean-squared error of all investigated parametric and semiparametric estimators. Dropping observations that are off support usually improves their performance, although the magnitude of the improvement depends on the particular method used.     

Work performance and tax compliance in flat and progressive tax systems

Different tax systems, and their impact on work motivation and tax compliance are significant issues in contemporary political and economic debates. The proportional feature of a flat tax system is assumed to lead to higher performance, while the fairness of the redistributive progressive tax system is assumed to result in higher tax compliance. However, empirical findings on the topic are inconclusive. Both work performance and tax compliance under different tax systems were examined in an experiment, with special attention devoted to the effect of a change in tax systems. A flat tax system was supposed to induce greater work performance, whereas a progressive tax system was expected to increase tax compliance based on fairness perceptions, allowing for the opposite effect due to higher complexity. Furthermore, it was assumed that performance and tax payments would be influenced by motives of self-interest. The design included 20 rounds with a real-effort task in each round, determining participants’ experimental income. Participants (N = 191) made decisions about their tax payments from round-to-round in four different experimental conditions: (1) a flat tax system, (2) a progressive tax system, (3) starting with a flat and changing to a progressive, and (4) starting with a progressive and changing to a flat tax system. Results indicate higher work performance in a progressive system. However, a change from a progressive tax system to a flat system led to increased tax compliance.     

Stakeholder Performance Measurement in Nonprofit Organizations

According to recent findings, nonprofit organizations should address the relationships of nonprofit service quality, satisfaction, loyalty, and organizational identification when planning and evaluating donor surveys. This article presents a donor satisfaction barometer that can be used to gain insights into the strength of these key relationships and thereby establish a basis for calculated relevant indices. With such indices, nonprofit organizations can compare stakeholder performance over time and benchmark themselves against other organizations. Data from 2,599 blood donors to one section of the German Red Cross, collected through the proposed donor satisfaction barometer, show that service quality drives satisfaction, and donor satisfaction and organizational identification both exert significant positive effects on donor loyalty. Therefore, nonprofit organizations should use a combined strategic approach that improves both donor satisfaction and organizational identification to increase donor loyalty. The successful application of the donor satisfaction barometer also suggests its value for other nonprofit industries and offers important insights for managers.     

Whither practice-near research in the modernization programme? Policy blunders in children's services

In this article, we lament the effects of practice-distant research and associated policy initiatives on contemporary children's services in England. In the last decade, as a result of high profile inquiries into non-accidental child deaths, statutory children's social care services in the UK have been subject to a wide-reaching ‘modernization’ programme. We studied decision-making in the high blame environment of local authority children's services. Our research sought to examine the relationship between performance management and the impact of anticipated blame within the decision-making practices of those providing, supervising and managing these services. We show that systems and technologies can be developed which both assist the users in their daily work and achieve desired organizational goals, but without an ethnographically informed, practice-near approach, unsafe work regimes and practices can ensue.     

Smooth tail-index estimation

The two parametric distribution functions appearing in the extreme-value theory – the generalized extreme-value distribution and the generalized Pareto distribution – have log-concave densities if the extreme-value index γ∈[?1, 0]. Replacing the order statistics in tail-index estimators by their corresponding quantiles from the distribution function that is based on the estimated log-concave density ? f _n leads to novel smooth quantile and tail-index estimators. These new estimators aim at estimating the tail index especially in small samples. Acting as a smoother of the empirical distribution function, the log-concave distribution function estimator reduces estimation variability to a much greater extent than it introduces bias. As a consequence, Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that the smoothed version of the estimators are well superior to their non-smoothed counterparts, in terms of mean-squared error.