Behavioral assumptions and management ability

The paper explores the consequences that relying on different behavioral assumptions in training managers may have on their future performance. We argue that training with an emphasis on the standard assumptions used in economics (rationality and self-interest) is good for technical posts but may also lead future managers to rely excessively on rational and explicit safeguarding, crowding out instinctive relational heuristics and signaling a “bad” human type to potential partners. In contrast, human assumptions used in management theories, because of their diverse, implicit and even contradictory nature, do not conflict with the innate set of cooperative tools and may provide a good training ground for such tools. We present tentative confirmatory evidence by examining how the weight given to behavioral assumptions in the core courses of the top 100 business schools influences the average salaries of their MBA graduates. Controlling for the self-selected average quality of their students and some other schools’ characteristics, average salaries are seen to be significantly greater for schools whose core MBA courses contain a higher proportion of management courses as opposed to courses based on economics or technical disciplines.Evolutionary psychology, economics, management, relational heuristics, rationality, self-interest.

The trade-offs between labour productivity and decarbonisation

In a recent paper, we show how decarbonisation in industrial plants interacts with efficiency-driven initiatives regarding flow management, waste reduction and workforce commitment, which represent three key fields in which high-performance shop floors strive. Inventory turnover reflects our measure for improvements in flow. The ratio of the total manufacturing cost to the cost of materials indicates how efficiently firms carry out [...

¿Es rentable «pensar por pensar»? Evidencia sobre innovación en España

ResumenLa evolución significativamente creciente de la investigación básica privada en EE. UU., Europa y Japón sugiere una fuerte asociación entre la capacidad de innovación y las actividades de investigación de las empresas destinadas estrictamente a trabajar en la vanguardia del conocimiento científico. Este trabajo indaga en las posibles razones de esta asociación utilizando una muestra de 8.416 empresas incluidas en el Panel de Innovación Tecnológica. Nuestros resultados ponen de manifiesto que la investigación básica mejora la habilidad de las empresas para asimilar, integrar y valorizar el conocimiento ajeno, y que de esta forma muestran sistemáticamente mayores niveles de innovación. Además, el artículo sugiere que esta capacidad para explotar el conocimiento externo puede llegar a condicionar la estrategia de la empresa a la hora de decidir operar en ciertos entornos con sistemas de propiedad intelectual más o menos desarrollados. Desde el punto de vista de la política pública, los resultados cuestionan el apoyo a las actividades de innovación más cercanas al mercado en detrimento de otras políticas con mayor capacidad para abordar externalidades relacionadas con el desarrollo del capital humano, la reducción de la incertidumbre de las inversiones, las asimetrías de información entre agentes o los problemas derivados de spillovers tecnológicos no deseados.AbstractThe significantly increasing evolution of private basic research in the U.S.A., Europe and Japan suggests a strong association between the capacity for innovation and research activities aimed strictly to work at the forefront of scientific knowledge. This paper explores the possible reasons for this association using a sample of 8,416 companies in the Spanish Technology Innovation Panel. Our results show that basic research enhances the ability of firms to assimilate, integrate and enhance other businesses’ knowledge, thus leading consistently to higher levels of innovation. In addition, the article suggests that the ability to exploit external knowledge can condition the business strategy when deciding to operate in certain environments with more or less developed intellectual property systems. From the standpoint of public policy, results question the support for innovation activities closer to the market to the detriment of other policies with greater capacity to address externalities related to the development of human capital, reducing the uncertainty of investments, addressing information asymmetries between agents or solving the problems inherent in accidental technology spillovers