The Ultimate Control Group

Empirical research on the organization of firms requires that firms be classified on the basis of their control structures. This should be done in a way that can potentially be made operational. It is easy to identify the ultimate controller of a hierarchical organization, and the literature has largely focused on this case. But many organizational structures mix hierarchy with collective choice procedures such as voting, or use circular structures under which superiors are accountable to their subordinates. I develop some analytic machinery that can be used to map the authority structures of such organizations, and show that under mild restrictions there is a well-defined ultimate control group. The results are consistent with common intuitions about the nature of control in some familiar economic settings.

Collective Choice and Control Rights in Firms

Recent writers have asserted that firms controlled by workers are rare because workers have diverse preferences over firm policies, and thus suffer from high transaction costs in making collective decisions. This is contrasted with firms controlled by investors, who all support the goal of wealth maximization. However, the source of the asymmetry between capital and labor has not been clearly identified. For example, firms could attract labor inputs by selling transferable shares, and well-known unanimity theorems from the finance literature carry over to models of this kind. We resolve this puzzle by arguing that because financial capital is exceptionally mobile, capital markets are sufficiently competitive to induce unanimity. The lower mobility of human capital implies that labor markets are monopolistically competitive and hence that unanimity cannot be expected in labor-managed firms. Moreover, such firms are vulnerable to takeover by investors while capital-managed firms are substantially less vulnerable to takeover by workers.capitalist firms, labor-managed firms, collective choice, preference heterogeneity, unanimity, voting, membership markets, control rights

‘A Nine-Month Head-Start’: The Maternal Bond and Surrogacy

This article analyses how interviewees drew on the ‘natural’ concept of the maternal bond to make nuanced and contingent claims about motherhood and the ethics of surrogacy. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Scotland with people who do not have personal experience of surrogacy, it describes how they used this ‘natural’ concept to make claims about the ethics of surrogacy and compares these claims with their personal experiences of maternal bonding. Interviewees expected that because of the experience of pregnancy, mothers have a ‘nine-month head-start’ in bonding with their children. While this valorises it, it also reproduces normative expectations about the nature and ethic of motherhood.ESRCThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2015.102895

Being Mindful: A Long-term Investigation of an Interdisciplinary Course in Mindfulness

Background: Burnout and work-related stress in health-care professionals (HCPs) is a growing concern to the optimal functioning of the health-care system. Mindfulness-based interventions may be well-suited to address burnout in HCPs. Objective: The purpose of this study was (1) to quantitatively evaluate the effect of a mindfulness-based intervention for interdisciplinary HCPs over time and at a long-term follow-up and (2) to explore perceived benefits, facilitators, and barriers to the practice of mindfulness at the long-term follow-up. Design: A mixed-method, repeated measures, within-subjects design was used to investigate Mindfulness for Interdisciplinary HCPs (MIHP) at baseline, post-MIHP, and a follow-up (6 months to 1.5 years after MIHP). MIHP is an 8-week, group-based course for interdisciplinary HCPs and students, with weekly meditation training, gentle yoga, and discussions on the application of mindfulness to common stressors faced by HCPs. Main outcome measures were the Maslach Burnout Inventory—Health Services Survey and the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire. A semistructured interview was used to explore participants’ perceptions of sustained effects and practice in the context of HCP work at the long-term follow-up. The study protocol was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02736292). Results: Eighteen HCPs (88% female) participated in the study. Significant reductions were found after the intervention for 2 subscales of burnout: depersonalization, F(2, 17) = 5.98, P = .01, and emotional exhaustion, F(2, 17) = 2.64, P = .10. Three facets of dispositional mindfulness showed significant increases at long-term follow-up, act aware: F(2, 15) = 4.47, P = .03, nonjudge: F(2, 15) = 4.7, P = .03, and nonreactivity: F(2, 15) = 3.58, P = .05. Continued practice of skills long term was facilitated by the use of informal practice and perceived improvement in work and personal life. Conclusion: In sum, MIHP improved subscales of burnout and mindfulness. These findings should be further explored with a larger, controlled study. Interventions should focus on developing mindfulness practice that can be integrated into the work of HCPs

The Transition to Agriculture: Climate Reversals, Population Density, and Technical Change

Until about 13,000 years ago all humans obtained their food through hunting and gathering, but thereafter people in some parts of the world began a transition to agriculture. Recent data strongly implicate climate change as the driving force behind the agricultural transition in southwest Asia. We propose a model of this process in which population and technology respond endogenously to climate. The key idea is that after a lengthy period of favorable environmental conditions during which regional population grew significantly, an abrupt climate reversal forced people to take refuge at a few ecologically favored sites. The resulting spike in local population density reduced the marginal product of labor in foraging and made agriculture attractive. Once agriculture was initiated, rapid technological progress through artificial selection on plant characteristics led to domesticated varieties. Farming became a permanent part of the regional economy when this productivity growth was combined with climate recoveryorigins of agriculture, foraging, hunting and gathering, climate change, population density, technical change, domestication, archaeology, anthropology, economic prehistory

Introduction: Nature and Ethics Across Geographical, Rhetorical and Human Borders

ESRCThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2015.102856

Allocating Control Over Firms: Stock Markets Versus Membership Markets

The new institutional economics regards the firm as a set of incomplete contracts among input suppliers. The theory of the firm must therefore explain how decision-making powers are allocated. Two leading candidates for such control rights are capital suppliers and labor suppliers. Most large enterprises in developed economies award formal control to investors rather than workers. I suggest here that this asymmetry can be traced in part to differences between stock markets and membership markets as institutional mechanisms for allocating control over firms. The attractive theoretical properties of membership markets are examined, along with some factors that may account for their rarity in practice. These practical difficulties help explain the rarity of labor-managed firms themselves, along with various facts about their design, behavior, and distribution across industries.Unemployment Insurance, Experience Rating, Layoffs