Internal and external linkages in the MNC--the case of R&D subsidiaries in Japan

"Paper presented at symposium on Management of the MNC, Brussels, June 1987."Bibliography: leaves 24-27.D. Eleanor Westney

CIRAS News, Spring 2012, Vol. 47, no. 3

CIRAS is to enhance the performance of Iowa industry, and associated entities, through education and technology-based services. This newsletter holds information regarding these services

Community Preparedness for Site Development

Site development is an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. Proper planning is critical. This book\u27s goal is to help communities prepare sites for business development. We will focus primarily on industrial and wholesale commercial sites. Our goal is not to go through a step-by-step physical development process that focuses on how to physically construct an industrial site. A separate Web Book by Steven McBride provides some of this information. Instead, we focus here on the tremendous effort required to lead up to physical site development, that is, the steps leading up to ground-breaking. It is during this time period that many communities make expensive mistakes.https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/rri-web-book/1024/thumbnail.jp

What Does Affirmative Action Do?

We use data from a survey of employers to investigate how Affirmative Action in recruiting and hiring influences hiring practices, personnel policies, and ultimately employment out- comes. Our results show that Affirmative Action increases the number of recruitment and screening practices used by employers, raises their willingness to hire stigmatized applicants, increases the number of minority and female applicants as well as employees, and increases employers’ tendencies to provide training and to formally evaluate employees. When Affirmative Action is used in recruiting, it does not lead to lower credentials or performance of women and minorities hired. When it is also used in hiring, it yields female and minority employees whose credentials are somewhat weaker, though performance generally is not. Overall, then, the more intensive search, evaluation, and training that accompany Affirmative Action appear to offset any tendencies of the policy to lead to hiring of less-qualified or less-productive women and minorities.

Caught in the Web: Entrapment in Cyberspace

Cyberspace presents a new forum for criminal activity, including the distribution of child pornography. Law enforcement has responded with creative undercover techniques to catch on-line pedophiles and other lawbreakers. But who is policing the police? This Note applies existing entrapment law to police deception in this novel setting, discusses the current state of the law, and demonstrates that the judicially created doctrine is inadequate to curb police abuses. It suggests that legislative action is needed to modify entrapment law to accommodate the special aspects of cyberspace, and identifies the threshold issues which such legislation must address

Government Clubs: Theory and Evidence from Voluntary Environmental Programs

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established numerous voluntary environmental programs over the last fifteen years, seeking to encourage businesses to make environmental progress beyond what current law requires them to achieve. EPA aims to induce beyond-compliance behavior by offering various forms of recognition and rewards, including relief from otherwise applicable environmental regulations. Despite EPA\u27s emphasis on voluntary programs,relatively few businesses have availed themselves of these programs -- and paradoxically, the programs that offer the most significant regulatory benefits tend to have the fewest members. We explain this paradox by focusing on (a) how programs\u27membership screening corresponds with membership rewards, and (b) how membership levels correspond, in turn, with membership screening. Our analysis of three major case studies, as well as of data we collected on all of EPA\u27s green clubs, shows that EPA combines greater rewards with more demanding membership screening, which in turn corresponds with lower participation. EPA\u27s behavior can be understood as a response to the political risks the agency faces when it recognizes and rewards businesses it otherwise is charged with regulating. Given the political constraints on EPA\u27s ability to offer significant inducements to business, we predict participation in all but the most inconsequential voluntary environmental programs will remain quite low, thereby inherently limiting the ultimate value of voluntary programs as a strategy for advancing environmental protection

Goal-directed versus outcome-based financial incentives for weight loss among low-income patients with obesity: rationale and design of the Financial Incentives foR Weight Reduction (FIReWoRk) randomised controlled trial.

IntroductionObesity is a major public health challenge and exacerbates economic disparities through employment discrimination and increased personal health expenditures. Financial incentives for weight management may intensify individuals' utilisation of evidence-based behavioural strategies while addressing obesity-related economic disparities in low-income populations. Trials have focused on testing incentives contingent on achieving weight loss outcomes. However, based on social cognitive and self-determination theories, providing incentives for achieving intermediate behavioural goals may be more sustainable than incentivising outcomes if they enhance an individual's skills and self-efficacy for maintaining long-term weight loss. The objective of this paper is to describe the rationale and design of the Financial Incentives foR Weight Reduction study, a randomised controlled trial to test the comparative effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of two financial incentive strategies for weight loss (goal directed vs outcome based) among low-income adults with obesity, as well as compared with the provision of health behaviour change resources alone.Methods and analysisWe are recruiting 795 adults, aged 18-70 years with a body mass index ≥30 kg/m2, from three primary care clinics serving residents of socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods in New York City and Los Angeles. All participants receive a 1-year commercial weight loss programme membership, self-monitoring tools (bathroom scale, food journal and Fitbit Alta HR), health education and monthly check-in visits. In addition to these resources, those in the two intervention groups can earn up to $750 over 6 months for: (1) participating in an intensive weight management programme, self-monitoring weight and diet and meeting physical activity guidelines (goal-directed arm); or (2) a ≥1.5% to ≥5% reduction in baseline weight (outcome-based arm). To maximise incentive efficacy, we incorporate concepts from behavioural economics, including immediacy of payments and framing feedback to elicit regret aversion. We will use generalised mixed effect models for repeated measures to examine intervention effects on weight at 6, 9 and 12 months.Ethics and disseminationHuman research protection committees at New York University School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine and Olive-View-UCLA Medical Center granted ethics approval. We will disseminate the results of this research via peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations and meetings with stakeholders.Trial registration numberNCT03157713