The chinese business negotiation process: a socio-cultural analysis

Hoogovens Steel (HS) is a vertically integrated steel company, which until 1995 was functionally structured. During the eighties the steel market became saturated and more heterogeneous. In order to remain a flexible, market-oriented company, HS changed its organizational structure, by introducing business units responsible for their own financial results. Nevertheless, it remained a vertically integrated steel producer. With the functional structure HS had used cost-based transfer prices. But following the introduction of the business units the question was raised as to whether the transfer pricing system should be changed. A business unit structure implies a decentralization of authority and the delegation of certain activities to the units, but vertically integrated production requires close relations between the various stages. This paper discusses the extent to which the tensions between decentralization and integration can be resolved through the coordination of internal transactions. After introducing the relevant theoretical concepts, the issues which emerged in discussions about the coordination of internal transactions at HS are discussed. Some possible solutions are evaluated on the basis of criteria derived from the theoretical concepts, and the choice made within HS is described. Finally, some conclusions are drawn regarding the significance of the theoretical concepts.

Profit sharing: Consequences for workers

Profit sharing can lead to higher productivity and thus to higher firm profitability and employee wages. It may also enhance employment stability by enabling firms to adjust wages during downturns rather than lay off workers. While adoption of profit sharing increases earnings fluctuations, it also increases earnings growth in the longer term. As with any group incentive plan, profit sharing may result in some workers benefiting from the effort of others without themselves exerting greater effort (“free-rider problem”). However, there is evidence that in team-based production workplaces, profit sharing may reduce shirking and thus contribute to productivity growth

Labour Market Outcomes and Skills Acquisition of High-School Dropouts

We utilize an instrumental variable approach to analyse the effect that dropping out of high school has on 17 outcomes pertaining to wages, employment and subsequent skill acquisition for youths. Our analysis is based on the older cohort of the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) for 2003, an ideal data set because it contains a rich array of outcome measures and their observable determinants as well as variables for instrumenting the dropout indicator (based on a link to the 1999 data). Our analysis indicates that dropouts have poorer wage and employment outcomes, and they do not make up for their lack of education through additional skill acquisition and training. The analysis thereby suggests that policies to curb dropping out could have both desirable efficiency effects (high returns) as well as distributional effects (high returns to otherwise more disadvantaged groups) and potential social spillover affects.Education, Training, Youth, Labour Market Outcomes

Register automata with linear arithmetic

We propose a novel automata model over the alphabet of rational numbers, which we call register automata over the rationals (RA-Q). It reads a sequence of rational numbers and outputs another rational number. RA-Q is an extension of the well-known register automata (RA) over infinite alphabets, which are finite automata equipped with a finite number of registers/variables for storing values. Like in the standard RA, the RA-Q model allows both equality and ordering tests between values. It, moreover, allows to perform linear arithmetic between certain variables. The model is quite expressive: in addition to the standard RA, it also generalizes other well-known models such as affine programs and arithmetic circuits. The main feature of RA-Q is that despite the use of linear arithmetic, the so-called invariant problem---a generalization of the standard non-emptiness problem---is decidable. We also investigate other natural decision problems, namely, commutativity, equivalence, and reachability. For deterministic RA-Q, commutativity and equivalence are polynomial-time inter-reducible with the invariant problem

Chinese Returnees and High-tech Sector Outward FDI: The Case of Changzhou

The rapid growth and high levels of internationalization by Chinese firms, raise a natural interest in the study of the factors which have led the notable international presence of Chinese firms. To contribute to this effort, we use data from the 2008-10 survey of China's High-tech firms, conducted by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, to estimate the determinants of Chinese firm outward FDI (OFDI). In our analysis, the primary independent variables include high-tech intensity, human capital acquisition, and institutional factors. We have also controlled for various firm characteristics such as firm age, total value of fixed assets, and firm ownership. Estimation from our fixed-effects model uncovers a number interesting patterns in OFDI outcomes. Most notable, among the significant determinants of OFDI, the number of Chinese returnees employed by a firm seems to be more important than tax reduction policies. Further, the effects of the Chinese returnees have a stronger effect on non state-controlled firms than they do for state-controlled firms. This finding is intuitive, since the Chinese returnees who were trained in the West have an understanding of product markets, labour markets, financial markets, language and business culture, and trade laws in both China and the West. Their unique skill sets and knowledge appear to serve as an important catalysts in the growth of OFDI and internationalization by Chinese firms

Chinese Unions and Enterprises Performance

This paper uses the national firm level survey data to investigate the effects of Chinese unions on firm performance. We show that Chinese unions have a strong State-Party voice face and a collective voice face but lack of monopoly face. The government influence plays an important role in unionization. The empirical findings on the effectiveness of unions are remarkable: unions in the workplace significantly improve productivity but reduce enterprise profitability. Moreover, the presence of unions in same region and industry generates negative spillovers on enterprise performance

Tunable light-matter interaction and the role of hyperbolicity in graphene-hBN system

Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is a natural hyperbolic material which can also accommodate highly dispersive surface phonon-polariton modes. In this paper, we examine theoretically the mid-infrared optical properties of graphene-hBN heterostructures derived from their coupled plasmon-phonon modes. We found that the graphene plasmon couples differently with the phonons of the two Reststrahlen bands, owing to their different hyperbolicity. This also leads to distinctively different interaction between an external quantum emitter and the plasmon-phonon modes in the two bands, leading to substantial modification of its spectrum. The coupling to graphene plasmons allows for additional gate tunability in the Purcell factor, and narrow dips in its emission spectra

Profit Sharing and Workplace Productivity: Does Teamwork Play a Role?

The conditions under which profit sharing affects workplace productivity have never been fully understood. Using panel data, this paper examines whether there is any link between adoption of an employee profit sharing plan and subsequent productivity growth in Canadian establishments, and whether this relationship is affected by various contextual factors, particularly use of work teams. In so doing, we use both three and five-year panels. Overall, we find a significant link between adoption of a profit sharing program and subsequent productivity growth in both panels, but only among establishments that utilize employee work teams

Chiral plasmon in gapped Dirac systems

We study the electromagnetic response and surface electromagnetic modes in a generic gapped Dirac material under pumping with circularly polarized light. The valley imbalance due to pumping leads to a net Berry curvature, giving rise to a finite transverse conductivity. We discuss the appearance of nonreciprocal chiral edge modes, their hybridization and waveguiding in a nanoribbon geometry, and giant polarization rotation in nanoribbon arrays