Egg Freezing on Company Dollars: Making Biological Clock Irrelevant?

In an attempt to boost gender diversity, two of the technology giants of Silicon Valley, Apple and Facebook, announced in October 2014 that they would cover the costs of freezing eggs, so that women employees who want to pursue both motherhood and a serious career could conveniently ‘time’ their pregnancy. Intel followed suit in October 2015. Unlike other reproductive benefits aiming to cure a biological deficiency such as infertility, employers promote egg freezing as an investment towards women employees’ career success. Women employees may take advantage of this benefit for non-medical reasons to delay pregnancy and childbirth because of the lure of making the biological clock irrelevant on the employers’ dime, perhaps ignoring the possible emotional costs of delaying motherhood. This paper concludes that women should not outsource the responsibility of striking a balance between a rewarding career and a fulfilling motherhood to their employers. Delaying motherhood to achieve other personal goals may produce negative consequences for women and the society in general. Instead of trying to dictate the most private decisions of an employee’s life, employers should recognize parenthood as a natural phenomenon that may happen to both men and women within the span of their employment, and strive to design employee benefits that reflect a commitment to be supportive of parenthood. At the most egg-freezing can be included within an array of other family-friendly benefits such as adoption assistance, flexible work schedule, paid parental leave, infertility treatment and the like

Open Innovation After Initial Coin Offerings - An Empirical Investigation of Crowd Participation and Third-Party Support

This study investigates the relationship between third-party support of young ventures and crowd engagement in open source development projects grounded in signaling theory. It is centered on the empirical analysis of a multi-source secondary dataset of 697 firms which conducted an initial coin offering (ICO) and published their source code online. We find that internal third-party support by technology advisors is positively associated with crowd engagement for open source development projects. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, we find internal support by business advisors and prestigious external support to be negatively related to crowd participation. The study enhances our understanding of antecedents of software co-creation and contributes to IS literature on third-party endorsement in open innovation and ICOs

The present and future state of multi-brand platforms in luxury e-commerce: leveraging digital tools to build customer loyalty

Luxury fashion consumption is changing. For decades, the industry favored premium in-person experiences. Recently, however, luxury brands and consumers have taken notice of online channels, and competition is fiercer than ever. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the industry and specify recommendations for the improvement of a business model employed by major e commerce platforms in luxury fashion, the multi-brand model. Literature, a consumer survey and company records comprise the primary sources of information used to analyze the model and support the elaboration of three major recommendations: integration of metaverse technology, improved customer experience and digital loyalty development

Why hasn't electronic bill presentment and payment taken off?

The delivery and payment of bills over the Internet could offer many advantages—low processing costs and enhanced marketing opportunities for billers, savings in time and postage for customers. Nevertheless, electronic billing has not found favor with potential users. A lack of coordination among billers and customers, combined with the high fixed costs of the new technology, may help account for the cool reception.Electronic funds transfers ; Electronic commerce ; Technology ; Payment systems

In the Trenches at the Talent Wars: Competitive Interaction for Scarce Human Resources - A Qualitative Study

The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms are competing for scarce human resources in the talent wars. First, the paper makes the distinction between responding to labor shortages with investments in recruiting and retention and directly competing against identified labor market competitors for scarce human resources. It appears firms compete with rivals in the open labor market and in initiating and defending against talent raids. The process of identifying and responding to the tactics of labor market competitors is reviewed for both types of direct competition. Firms tend to respond to rivals’ tactics either by changing the employment relationship with threatened employees or engaging in tactics to influence the behavior of the competing firm. Factors that determine the propensity and type of response to competitor’s tactics are reviewed and integrated. The greater the threat posed by the rival’s tactics the greater the likelihood affected firms will respond with externally as opposed to internally oriented tactics. The greater the skill mobility of threatened employees, the more administrative and financial resources will be invested in the counter-response. Finally, firms use a variety of preemptive tactics to reduce the threat of talent raids. These tactics are listed and explained. The paper concludes with recommendations for firms seeking to gain or protect advantage relative to rivals in the war for talent

Aligning Employees Through \u3ci\u3eLine of Sight\u3c/i\u3e

Aligning employees with the firm’s larger strategic goals is critical if organizations hope to manage their human capital effectively and ultimately attain strategic success. An important component of attaining and sustaining this alignment is whether employees have “line of sight” to the organization’s strategic objectives. We illustrate how the translation of strategic goals into tangible results requires that employees not only understand the organization’s strategy, they must accurately understand what actions are aligned with realizing that strategy. Using recent empirical evidence, theoretical insights, and tangible examples of exemplary firm practices, we provide thought-leaders with a comprehensive view of LOS, how it is created, how it can be enhanced or stifled, and how it can be effectively managed. We integrate LOS with current thinking on employee alignment to help managers more effectively benefit from understanding human capital potential

The Looming Crisis in Antitrust Economics

As in so many areas of law and politics in the United States, antitrust’s center is at bay. It is besieged by a right wing that wants to limit antitrust even more than it has been limited over the last quarter century. On the left, it faces revisionists who propose significantly greater enforcement. One thing the two extremes share, however, is denigration of the role of economics in antitrust analysis. On the right, the Supreme Court’s two most recent antitrust decisions at this writing reveal that economic analysis no longer occupies the central role that it once had. On the left, some proposals by Democratic presidential contender seem to be ignorant or at least indifferent about how their proposals will affect important participants in the economy. The antitrust laws speak of prohibited conduct in economic terms, such as “restraint of trade,” “monopoly,” or lessening of “competition.” They do not embrace any particular economic ideology, such as the Chicago School or institutionalism. Nor do they require the use of any particular economic model, such as perfect competition or monopolistic competition. This openness gives policy makers a great deal of room, but it is not an invitation to economic nonsense. Further, economics should not be a tool for picking a winning interest group and then manipulating the doctrine to get that result. On the right, the Supreme Court’s Apple decision slighted the economics of passed on consumer harm, a central component in the analysis of private damage actions for more than forty years. In AmEx, the Court neglected the kind of Coasean transactional analysis that would have uncovered the true injuries in that case, defined the “relevant market” in such a way as to make that term economically incoherent, rejected a superior methodology for assessing power in a vertical case in favor of an inferior one, and completely misunderstood the meaning and appropriate definition of free riding. The progressive left fares no better, however. Although they do a much better job than the conservative Supreme Court majority of identifying the problem, the proposed solutions are calculated to make it worse. The pursuit of business concentration for its own sake will injure consumers far more than it benefits small business, the intended beneficiaries. A proposal to forbid large platforms from selling their own products in competition with the products of others will harm both consumers and small business, although it will benefit some large firms. When used correctly and without excessive ideology, economics is a powerful, neutral tool for helping people identify injuries to competition and appropriate fixes. Indeed, that is the first and best use of antitrust economics. Both extremes in this debate have ignored the first rule of rational antitrust policy: figure out who is getting hurt, and how

Authentic Happiness & Meaning at Law Firms

We advocate that law firms can and should foster authentic happiness and meaning in the professional lives of their associates. Based upon empirical and experimental research in behavioral economics and positive psychology, we consider how law firms can implement policies to promote authentic happiness and meaning in their associates\u27 professional lives. We also believe that law schools can and should help to reduce the anxiety, stress, and unhappiness that individuals feel as law students and help them develop abilities to achieve meaningful careers as law firm associates. We provide a guide as to how law firms and law schools can design policies and procedures to nudge people towards achieving more authentic happiness and meaning in their professional (and personal) lives if people so desire

The alignment of Hr practices and work culture with motivation and preferences of generation Y - a qualitative analysis in the strategy consulting industry

The strategy consulting industry represents the economic movement towards service-orientation. As young talent is the capital of these consultancies, it becomesincreasingly important to examine Generation Y’smotivations and preferences. There by, the alignment of work culture and HR practicesis a relevant lever. Sofar, no industry-and target group-specific action recommendationsexist. Therefore, this study applies inductive thinking: it conducts interviews with the target group and experts and combines the results withexisting theory. Strategy consultancies align with preferences and motivations in some points and constantlywork on initiatives in order tomeet the preferences over the next years