Glenn Pransky, Stan Finkelstein, Ernst Berndt, Margaret Kyle, Joan Mackell and Dan Tortorice
The purpose of this paper is to assess the feasibility and comparability of daily self‐report and objective measures of work performance in complex office tasks, and factors…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess the feasibility and comparability of daily self‐report and objective measures of work performance in complex office tasks, and factors affecting the correlation between these measures.
Design/methodology/approach
Medical bill auditors provided daily information for 12 weeks through interactive voice response (IVR) on their speed, concentration and accuracy at work, compared to their best job performance.
Findings
The paper found that 124 of 142 recruited subjects (87 percent) completed > 50 percent of daily IVR reports. Concentration, speed and accuracy were highly inter‐correlated (R=0.75), and right‐skewed (mean speed=7.7, SD=1.5). Mean adjusted daily productivity rate (MAP) was 34 bills/hour (range 4.7 to 111, SD12.6, 61 percent within‐person variation). Subject‐specific speed – MAP correlation varied from R=−0.20 to +0.75 (mean, 0.28). Health status, years on job, age, IVR completion rate, site, month of study, or total hours worked were not associated with these variations.
Originality/value
This paper provides an unprecedented level of detail in the comparison of self‐reported and objective daily measures of work performance, demonstrates the feasibility of data collection and analysis, and identified significant inconsistencies among workers in the correlation between the two types of measures. Results demonstrated that daily self‐reports cannot be used as a direct surrogate for objective performance measures.
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This chapter provides both methodological and cultural insights from an empirical research in German trade unions. In my chapter, I explore to what extent organizational research…
Abstract
This chapter provides both methodological and cultural insights from an empirical research in German trade unions. In my chapter, I explore to what extent organizational research profits from linking procedures of narrative analysis to Symbolic Interactionism (SI) and explain the analytical outcome connected with it. In order to understand the great empirical variety of “becoming a trade union worker,” its regularities and sense for trade unions as a culture, a theoretical approach was needed that would grasp social processes, especially educational and learning processes in social groups and organizations. Therefore, SI is a useful methodological soil. This chapter clarifies the relationships between social group socialization through life course and everyday member work in German trade unions. It points out what is specific for German trade unions, what kind of deviations are peculiar for them, and why we have to think of them as a cultural order of trade unions at least in Germany. This study introduces a theoretical model on German trade unions, which is quite different from usual organizational studies, because it grasps not only some of their aspects, which prevails in association research rather than the organization as a whole.
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Steven J. Cochran and Robert H. DeFina
This study uses parametric hazard models to investigate duration dependence in US stock market cycles over the January 1929 through December 1992 period. Market cycles are…
Abstract
This study uses parametric hazard models to investigate duration dependence in US stock market cycles over the January 1929 through December 1992 period. Market cycles are determined using the Beveridge‐Nelson (1981) approach to the decomposition of economic time series. The results show that both real and nominal cycles exhibit positive duration dependence. The implication of this finding is that actual prices revert to their permanent or trend level in a non‐random manner as the cyclical component dissipates over time. This process is consistent with mean reversion in price and suggests that predictable periodicity in market cycles may exist. Only limited evidence is obtained that discrete shifts or trends in mean cycle duration exist. The length of market cycles appears not to have changed over the 1929–92 period.
Despite objections, “one of the more durable empirical relationships uncovered in statistical investigations of firm and industry profitability, is the tendency for profitability…
Abstract
Despite objections, “one of the more durable empirical relationships uncovered in statistical investigations of firm and industry profitability, is the tendency for profitability to be relatively high in high‐advertising consumer goods industries.”
At the center of its core, Health Care is the application of a general body of knowledge to the needs of a specific patient. For centuries, this knowledge was generally regarded…
Abstract
At the center of its core, Health Care is the application of a general body of knowledge to the needs of a specific patient. For centuries, this knowledge was generally regarded as the property of the healing professions and the individual clinician, not necessarily of the health care delivery organization. Managerial practice also had a tendency to treat this knowledge as an attribute of the provider, thus focusing on the resources clinicians used as they provided care and on the hotel-type functions associated with inpatient institutions. That is, there was a deliberate differentiation between management practice, focused on business processes, and clinical practice, focused on the activities and decisions of diagnosis and treatment. Though often described as bureaucratic and incrementally changing, health care is also a very dynamic and innovative field. Around the globe, research scientists, private industries, academics, and governmental and nongovernmental agencies continue to work in innovating new ways to provide better care, find cures, and improve health. At the same time, health care delivery has been undergoing a gradual but important change. Patient care, once the domain of the individual practitioner, is becoming the domain of the care delivery organization. Additionally, the mission of these organizations is shifting. As science, technology, care processes, and care teams have become more complex and diverse, the way in which the activities of care are organized and the institutional context in which they occur have become an increasingly important determinant of the effectiveness and efficiency of that care. As a result, the object of management has changed. In response to these changes, health care managers have started focusing on the management of the care as well as the management of the institutions in which the care takes place, thereby creating a set of ‘Best Practices’ which are briefly described in this paper along with how the process of innovation is developing in the health care system.
Matthew G. Nagler, Fredi Kronenberg, Edward J. Kennelly and Bei Jiang
This paper aims to explore the role of observable product characteristics and label wording in consumers' valuations for credence goods, products for which key characteristics may…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the role of observable product characteristics and label wording in consumers' valuations for credence goods, products for which key characteristics may not be fully evaluated even after purchase. The objective is to draw conclusions with relevance to pricing policy.
Design/methodology/approach
Hedonic price equations are estimated for a dietary supplement called black cohosh, taken by women for relief from menopausal symptoms.
Findings
Consumers respond in expected ways to label words that directly indicate product characteristics: for example, paying more for a product labeled as suitable for vegetarians. But surprising results occur for some nonspecific label words (e.g. “guaranteed” is associated with lower prices), suggesting that consumers view these words as indirect signals with respect to unobservable qualities. Additionally, consumers pay more for packages containing more units (e.g. tablets) even when the time supply of product is held constant; this outcome is consistent with the notion that sheer quantity reassures consumers about value and could indicate a reaction to uncertainty in the overall value proposition.
Research limitations/implications
The study relies on list prices in place of transacted prices, so consumers' true valuations may not be reflected with complete accuracy. The study should be repeated in the future using scanner data on actual product transactions.
Practical implications
The indirect signals transmitted by label words and other observable attributes play a key role in consumers' valuations for credence goods, and so are highly relevant to pricing strategy.
Originality/value
Previous studies have considered willingness‐to‐pay for label‐indicated credence qualities, but have not looked at the role of indirect signals/indicators.
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Several high-profile prescription drugs have been withdrawn from the U.S. market in the last decade, yet there is no direct evidence of how a prescription drug withdrawal affects…
Abstract
Several high-profile prescription drugs have been withdrawn from the U.S. market in the last decade, yet there is no direct evidence of how a prescription drug withdrawal affects consumers’ use of remaining drugs within the same therapeutic class. In theory, remaining drugs in the therapeutic class could enjoy competitive benefits or suffer negative spillovers from the withdrawal of a competing drug. Using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we test for spillovers following prescription drug withdrawals in six therapeutic classes between 1997 and 2001. Results vary, but we find stronger evidence of negative spillovers than competitive benefits. We conclude with a discussion of the characteristics of drugs and classes that may influence how remaining drugs are affected by a withdrawal in the class.
Traditionally, mainstream cross‐cultural accounting research has applied a societal norms and values measure to the examination of differences in culture. This approach is…
Abstract
Traditionally, mainstream cross‐cultural accounting research has applied a societal norms and values measure to the examination of differences in culture. This approach is limited, however, because it effectively disfranchises the culture of minority groups such as indigenous peoples within nations. Our paper provides evidence of cultural differences between indigenous Australian values and the Western capitalist values implicit in the language of accounting and accountability. Utilising an alternative yin/yang framework developed for accounting by Hines, we argue that the core indigenous yin values of sharing, relatedness and kinship obligations inherent in indigenous conceptions of work and land, are incompatible with the yang values of quantification, objectivity, efficiency, productivity, reason and logic imposed by accounting and accountability systems. This conflict of values then brings into question the impact of accounting and accountability systems on the indigenous peoples of Australia whose beliefs, norms and values are organised differently. The need to address such a conflict is critical for all of the world’s indigenous peoples. Perhaps even more so for the Australian indigenous peoples because of the insistence by governments, at both the state and federal levels, that the extreme social and economic disadvantages experienced by the Australian indigenous peoples can be dissipated by the imposition of strict financial accountability measures for all indigenous organisations and representative bodies. We argue that the demonstrated conflict of values is a significant reason for the inability of accounting and accountability systems to deliver such social and economic outcomes. The research findings of non‐indigenous researchers are largely drawn on in this paper. The two authors of this paper are not indigenous people and therefore we are speaking “of” indigenous culture and not “speaking for” them.