Subject: Human Resource Management

Compiled by Susan LaCette.HumanResourceManagement.pdf: 5527 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

The fragility of functional work systems in steel

The I/N case offers insight into the interrelationship between work systems, living standards and performance. It demonstrates that a high road approach and functional work systems positively impact stakeholders’ lives, improve production efficiency and benefit the local and macro-level economies and societies in which they are embedded. It also shows that such work systems can be implemented in contexts with a history of adversarial labor-management relations. However, broader external forces can conspire to make it very difficult for firms to sustain functional work systems despite initial successes in specific contexts. Financial markets in particular make long term commitment to stakeholder groups other than shareholders (i.e. employees, suppliers and communities) conditional on profit maximization and share price appreciation. Yet the logic of profit maximization for the benefit of shareholders leads to short termist decisions that undermine the very commitments that were so necessary for creating a new work system: security is threatened, training is put on the back burner; trust is irreparably undermined. Indeed, because of the inherent contradiction between strategic approaches to maximizing stock market and long term product market success, these high road systems are fragile in national frameworks that subject them to low road pressures without a forum for resolving the difficulties that arise from opposing market pressures and responses

Estimation of Marginal Abatement Cost of Air Pollution in Durgapur City of West Bengal

Air pollution in industrial cities with emissions from firms is a growing problem in India. Durgapur, one of the growing industrial cities in eastern India, covering a host of industries, suffers from similar problems. The paper estimates the marginal abatement cost of air pollution of industries in Durgapur, West Bengal. We model the technology of a firm with output-distance function. Here the linear programming approach is adopted to estimate the shadow prices and distance values. Results reveal that there is a wide variation in shadow prices of Suspended Particulate Matter and distance values between firms under particular category of industries thus indicating the variability in the degree of compliance, use of resources and the vintages of capital. In this context the paper suggests policies for air quality management in urban industrial areas of West Bengal which will help to achieve sustainable industrial development.Output Distance Function, Shadow Prices, Distance Values

Strategic implications of critical fixities under continuous technological change

Includes bibliographical references (p. 27-28)

Causes and Consequences of Collective Turnover: A Meta-Analytic Review

Given growing interest in collective turnover (i.e., employee turnover at unit and organizational levels), the authors propose an organizing framework for its antecedents and consequences and test it using meta-analysis. Based on analysis of 694 effect sizes drawn from 82 studies, results generally support expected relationships across the 6 categories of collective turnover antecedents, with somewhat stronger and more consistent results for 2 categories: human resource management inducements/investments and job embeddedness signals. Turnover was negatively related to numerous performance outcomes, more strongly so for proximal rather than distal outcomes. Several theoretically grounded moderators help to explain average effect-size heterogeneity for both antecedents and consequences of turnover. Relationships generally did not vary according to turnover type (e.g., total or voluntary), although the relative absence of collective-level involuntary turnover studies is noted and remains an important avenue for future research

Endogenous competences and linkages development

In this paper we analyze empirically the influence of firms’ endogenous competences in the existence, quality and results of the linkages between firms and different types of agents. Using survey data from 170 firms belonging to the steel making and automotive production networks in Argentina, we show that the level of endogenous competences influences the linkages’ quality, objectives and results. Higher level of competences generates more virtuous linkages and influences the objectives that firms are after when interacting. Without certain minimum competences, firms only relate commercially and do not form links aimed to exchange knowledge or innovate. Better standing in terms of competences positively affects the probability of being involved in technological transfer agreements and cooperation agreements aimed at innovation. Being involved in useful interations requires previous competences, defining a vicious circle that calls for public intervention and policy implementation.Linkages; Networks; Endogenous Capacities

Evaluating the case for export subsidies

Now that import-substitution policies have failed and been discredited, there has been a shift in favor of interventions on behalf of export interests. The author argues that close scrutiny reveals these arguments to be as flawed as the old arguments for import substitution. Among other things, the author concludes that: 1) Under perfect competition, a country trying to retaliate against a trading partner's export subsidies by instituting its own export subsidies, will only hurt itself. 2) The argument that export subsidies may be useful for neutralizing import tariffs, is spurious. In most practical situations, this is not possible. Removal of tariffs is a far superior policy. 3) In principle, a case can be made for protecting infant export industries in the presence of externalities. But the empirical relevance of externalities remains as illusory for export industries as it was for import-substituting industries. 4) Adverse selection and moral hazard can lead to the thinning of the market for credit insurance, but that is not a case for government intervention. 5) India's experience shows export subsidies to have little impact on exports. Brazil and Mexico's experience shows export subsidies to be a costly instrument of export diversification. 6) Those who argue that pro-export interventions were important in East Asia have not provided convincing evidence of a casual relationship between the interventions and growth.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Tax Law,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Tax Law,Banks&Banking Reform,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT

Swedish Industry and Kyoto An Assessment of the Effects of the European CO2 Emission Permit Trading System

We assess the effects on Swedish industry input and output demands of different climate policy scenarios connected to energy policy induced by the Kyoto protocol. A unique data set containing firm level data on outputs and inputs during the years 1991 – 2001 is used to estimate a factor demand model, which is then simulated for different policy scenarios. Sector specific estimation suggests that the proposed quadratic profit function specification exhibit properties and robustness that are consistent with economic theory; that is, all own-price elasticities are negative and all output elasticities are positive. Furthermore, the elasticities show that the input demands are, in most cases, relatively inelastic. Simulation of the model for 6 different policy scenarios reveal that the effects on Swedish base industry of a EU level permit trade system is dependent on (i) removal or no removal of current CO2 tax, (ii) the established price of permits, and (iii) what will happen to the electricity price. Our analysis show that changes in electricity price may be more important than the price of permits for some sectors.CO2-emissions; factor demand; fossil fuels; tradable permit market

Swedish Industry and Kyoto – An Assessment of the Effects of the European CO2 Emission Permit Trading System

We assess the effects on Swedish industry input and output demands of different climate policy scenarios connected to energy policy induced by the Kyoto protocol. A unique data set containing firm level data on outputs and inputs during the years 1991 – 2001 is used to estimate a factor demand model, which is then simulated for different policy scenarios. Sector specific estimation suggests that the proposed quadratic profit function specification exhibit properties and robustness that are consistent with economic theory; that is, all own-price elasticities are negative and all output elasticities are positive. Furthermore, the elasticities show that the input demands are, in most cases, relatively inelastic. Simulation of the model for 6 different policy scenarios reveal that the effects on Swedish base industry of a EU level permit trade system is dependent on (i) removal or no removal of current CO2 tax, (ii) the established price of permits, and (iii) what will happen to the electricity price. Our analysis show that changes in electricity price may be more important than the price of permits for some sectors.CO2- emissions; factor demand; fossil fuels; tradable permit market