Arms-length Relationship Research Articles

Someone on my side: The experiences of high-achieving, underserved high school students in an e-mentoring college access intervention

ABSTRACT Lower-income students with outstanding academic credentials often lack the knowledge and support to apply to highly ranked colleges and universities that they would be eligible to attend. This study investigated a national e-mentoring program, CollegePoint, that provided one-to-one mentoring to low- and moderate-income, high-achieving high school students. The 15-month mentoring program covered college choice, application, and financial aid processes. We employed a human ecology theoretical framework that highlights interactions among mentoring experiences, individual characteristics, and multiple environmental contexts. Results of 13 focus groups with e-mentors and interviews with 123 student participants and 8 project directors indicated that the virtual mentoring format was comfortable and often preferable to students. The remote mode of communication allowed for considerable variation in engagement, however, with some students consistently in contact with their mentors and others dropping out temporarily or permanently. Students who remained highly engaged with their mentors were those who needed help, felt a connection to their mentor, and appreciated the arms-length relationship enabled by the virtual format. For these students, e-mentoring gave them a realistic sense of their eligibility for admission to a range of selective colleges and helped them complete time-sensitive tasks and make thoughtful decisions. Consonant with ecological theory, CollegePoint appeared to act as a bridge between students’ immediate contexts and the policies, structures, and procedures related to college admissions and financial aid. When e-mentors were able to engage all aspects of students’ ecology, CollegePoint had the potential to transform the college application experience and even the self-concept of students.

Working without Wages: Network Structure and Migrant Construction Workers’ Protests in China

AbstractMigrant construction workers are among the most vulnerable working populations in China as they are prone to facing the problem of wage arrears under the multi-tier subcontracting system. Based on ethnographic research of migrant construction workers in Tianjin, Shenzhen, Nanchang and Shaoguan, we examine workers’ divergent responses to wage arrears. While extant literature focuses on the positive role of informal networks in facilitating collective action, our findings indicate that the network structure between labour subcontractors and migrant workers plays a key role in enabling or constraining labour protests. We identify two network structures: the satellite network – characterized by arm's-length relationships between subcontractors and clusters of workers; and the spider-web network – characterized by strong relationships between subcontractors and their workers. We found that workers in satellite networks were prone to stage protests over wage arrears, but those in spider-web networks never held collective actions when facing the same problem. We argue that strong guanxi is a double-edged sword for the mobilization of labour protests and that workers’ responses to wage arrears are mediated through the network structure. Future studies may further scrutinize the role of a social network and its operating mechanisms in shaping workers’ working conditions and labour politics.

Assessing the Promise and Performance of Agencies in the Government of Canada

AbstractCanada has not escaped trends in most liberal democracies with the rapid growth of agencies created by government to deliver public goods, often justified on elements of their mandate—service delivery, adjudication of disputes, regulatory oversight, among others—benefiting from an arm's-length relationship to the government of the day. Yet Canadian studies of this phenomenon remain mostly absent from the robust comparative literature theorizing and documenting the emergence of widespread “agencification” and its relationship to performance. This article draws on the Government of Canada's Public Service Employee Survey (PSES) microdata from 2017 to test key hypotheses advanced by proponents of agencification, specifically that agencies are more innovative, autonomous and efficient public organizations. We discover that those working in agencies generally report less climate of innovation and less work autonomy than those working in departments, though some types of agencies—namely regulatory and parliamentary ones—defy these trends.

Surgeons and Administrators Co-creating Value.

Surgeons and Administrators Co-creating Value.

The Social and Institutional Contexts Underlying Landlords’ Eviction Practices

Abstract This article examines how and why landlords vary in their uses of eviction filings. Drawing on over four million property tax records, business filings, and court-ordered eviction documents over fifteen years in Boston, Massachusetts, I show that large landlords file evictions at two to three times the rates of small landlords, and this disparity is not driven by the characteristics of the tenants they rent to. Not only do large landlords file more often, but also over less money owed and more often as a rent collection strategy. Drawing on analyses of the interpersonal conflict during eviction and a range of landlord characteristics, I show that these divergent eviction practices derive from the disparate social and institutional contexts within which landlords make eviction decisions. For small landlords, organizational informality and personal relationships with tenants make eviction a morally fraught decision, while for large landlords, formal decision-making and arms-length relationships with tenants make eviction a routine business practice. By showing both how and why landlords use evictions differently, this article contributes to the sociological understanding of residential instability and of landlord behavior.

Employee Engagement and the Ethic of Friendship

The failure of managers and supervisors to earn the trust and followership of the employees with whom they work is well documented in recent research about employee engagement (Clifton & Harter, 2019). Without that employee commitment, organizations inevitably struggle to compete in the global marketplace and fail to achieve their potential (Cameron, 2012). Although much has been discussed in the light of the findings of concerned scholars (HR Research Institute, 2019), disagreement nonetheless exists about the factors which make up employee engagement, as well as the most effective approach that can be taken to increase engagement and those factors. Though there has not been full agreement about the nature of employee engagement, it is widely accepted that the failure of organizations to engage employees has been a serious deterrent to achieving organization results (Clifton & Harter, 2019).Objective: The purposes of this paper are to offer insights into the precise nature of employee engagement and to identify the value of employers adopting the Ethic of Friendship – an ethical perspective that has begun to be written about more frequently in the management literature.Methods: We begin the paper by proposing an integrated and updated definition of employee engagement – identifying nine factors which contribute to its makeup.Results: We suggest that each of these nine factors significantly impact employee engagement and warrant increased attention by organizational leaders. We then address the Ethic of Friendship and its increasingly important role in today’s arms-length and transactional relationship between employers and employees.Conclusions: The paper then clarifies how the Ethic of Friendship addresses all nine of the factors which constitute employee engagement and explains how the Ethic of Friendship can increase the ability of organization leaders, managers, and supervisors to bridge the gap of distrust that often exists in the modern organization. After identifying five important contributions made by this paper, we conclude by encouraging leaders to adopt the Ethic of Friendship’s commitment to treating employees as valued partners and, by so doing, create a culture in which employee engagement is likely to thrive.

Embeddedness of Inter‐firm Ties and Knowledge Creation†

This study examines consequences for knowledge creation due to differences in embeddedness of inter‐firm ties, more specifically, between informal or Arm's Length Relationships (ALRs) and formal collaborations. Qualitative data from 41 respondents across 22 SMEs is used to examine knowledge conversion processes comprising the SECI (Socialisation, Externalisation, Combination, Internalisation) framework of knowledge creation. We show a difference based on embeddedness of ties for how knowledge creation unfolds. Implications for spin off between ties and for firm attention to deliberating and managing a varied portfolio of ties for superior performance, are also drawn.

A Historical Sociology of the New Cultural Diplomacy

Although the term ‘cultural diplomacy’ is familiar, it was infrequently used before the end of the Cold War. In fact, practitioners avoided the term and preferred ‘cultural relations’. This paper explains the rise of ‘cultural diplomacy’ via a historical sociology of the broader field of ‘cultural statecraft’. The analysis shows that during the Interwar Period, two modes of cultural statecraft emerged with distinct organizational configurations; ‘cultural relations’ that embedded ‘culture’ within the field of foreign policy and ‘intellectual cooperation’ that sought to de-nationalize culture. Within the cultural relations area, the key relationship was between foreign ministries and semi-autonomous implementing agencies. In this context ‘cultural relations’ served to manage the arms-length relationship between the two sides. At the end of the Cold War, changing policy ideas and the emergence of an organizational model based on projects brought new actors into the field for whom old sensitivities around cultural diplomacy no longer applied.

Transparency as a Driver for Logistical Efficiency in WEEE Collection and Transport

Inefficiency in complex reverse-logistical operations, such as the collection and transport of various wastes, can often be traced to two related factors. Adversarial and arms-length relationships between service providers and customers are commonplace, alongside surprisingly limited understanding of the cost base. This study investigated transparency and shared understanding as drivers for higher efficiency and lower costs. Observation and intervention in contractual negotiations was combined with analyses of cost and sensitivity, and a post-contractual transparency exercise with bidders where findings were shared with all parties. The work yielded both immediate efficiency gains and a longer-term infrastructure for cost evaluation and negotiation. Ongoing work is extending the approach into yet more complex and broader areas of municipal waste management.

Scientific Advice at a Time of Emergency. SAGE and Covid-19.

The challenge for experts in government is often described as one of speaking unwelcome truths to a resistant power. Yet, just as problematic can be instances where the advice is welcome and so left unchallenged. Two such cases in which the UK government followed flawed expert advice are considered: intelligence assessments and military advice leading up to the 2003 Iraq War and the role of SAGE (the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) during the first stages of the Covid‐19 pandemic in 2020. Governments need to interrogate advice and make sure that they understand its underlying assumptions and implications. It remains vital to protect the independence of the experts, but to get the best out of their advice early and active political engagement is required rather than an arms‐length relationship.

The Improved Health Outcomes Program (iHOP): A Unique Model to Promote Provider-Driven Research in a Medicaid Population.

We describe an effort to improve the care of Medicaid and uninsured individuals through a three-way partnership between a Medicaid managed care insurer, front-line providers, and an academic university. The project provided annual funding over eleven years, for research, pilot programs, and demonstration projects. Projects were provider-driven in design and methods. The Medicaid-managed care insurer-funded proposals were vetted by a neutral university team experienced in grant writing and community-based research and scored by a community-based review panel. The grant program ran from 2007 to 2018, funding 41 projects, totaling USD 2,097,842. The partnership of an insurer, a university, and frontline providers was not only viable and sustainable for over a decade, but also flexible, free of project selection issues, and well-received by all stakeholders. Funded providers worked in both urban and rural settings and included hospitals, community non-profits, outpatient clinics, academic and community health partnerships, and public health agencies. The projects generally reflected common issues in the Medicaid and uninsured population needs, such as childhood obesity, and they were consistent with the targeted goals of the program. Broad health foci included child and/or maternal health, chronic conditions, mental health, preventive health, screening, system effectiveness, special populations including refugees, Latinos, and rural individuals, and substance use disorders. Details of the awarded grantee goals, the grants management process, and lessons learned from the partnership are presented. The partnership triad model was effective and stable, with each partner adding unique value. The use of the academic institution to administrate the program provided an arms-length relationship between the insurer and the providers in project selection and allowed assistance to less experienced researchers in community settings.

Firm boundaries, incentives, and fund performance: Evidence from a private pension fund system

The private pension fund system in Turkey presents a unique institutional structure where bank holding companies can own both private pension companies and asset management firms. More often than not, pension companies delegate their operational mandates to the asset management arm of the same bank. This practice exposes the retail investor to a double agency problem and raises questions about conflicts of interest and fiduciary duty. Our analysis reveals that the funds set up and managed under the same bank holding company perform worse on a risk-adjusted basis than the funds with an arm's length relationship between the pension company and the asset manager. We show that this relative underperformance is not simply a bank effect; bank-affiliated pension companies and asset managers do just as well, if not better than their peers, when they are not operating under the same roof. Unfortunately, this inefficient institutional structure is not eliminated by market discipline because these funds attract more flows from retail investors, and the underperformance is not discernible in raw returns.

Outsourcing Property Management? An Evaluation of the Rationales and Motivations

This paper investigates the operation of outsourced property management delivery. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with senior professionals responsible for property management outsourcing in Finland, Netherlands and the UK, it is found that the perceived advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing property management are broadly consistent with existing work on broader business process outsourcing. In particular, the ability to transfer fixed into variable costs and, so, to externalize operational risks were perceived as key advantages. In addition, due to the size of third party providers, it was possible to benefit from their economies of scale and to gain access to expertise in specific real estate sectors and specialisms. Arms-length relationships with third party providers, relatively short contractual periods and service level agreements are perceived to facilitate more formal quality assurance and performance monitoring procedures. Cost savings did not emerge as a key issue in the property management context but a recurring theme was the trade-off between cost and service quality and the need to maintain the latter in the context of pressures to obtain operational efficiencies. Common outsourcing problems such as information leakage and loss of control of the customer relationship also emerged from the research.

IMPACT OF INTERNATIONALIZATION ON THE PROCESS OF SAUDI STARTUP BUSINESS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

ABSTRACT This study aimed to explore the impact of internationalization on the process of Saudi startup business. Three startup companies have been selected to explore the objective of this study concerning the internationalization motives, paths and obstacles of Saudi startups. Thematic analysis has been performed by establishing themes based on the objectives of the study. The digital media & marketing, the education and the payment processing startups in this study were found to be internationally incentivized by domestic market stability, prior contractual arm-length relationships with international counterparts, competitiveness of foreign markets, existence of untapped niche international markets, vision realization and other factors. Motives, paths and obstacles based implications were discussed and avenues for future research were suggested in this study. Keywords Internationalization, Enterprises, Startups, Saudi Arabia, Obstacles

Corrigendum.

John-Baptiste A, Schapira MM, Cravens C, et al. The role of decision models in health care policy: A case study. Med Decis Making. 2016;36(5):666-679. Original DOI: 10.1177/0272989X16646732 On page 667, in the paragraph beginning "In May 2008…" the article did not fully describe the process of requesting decision models for the study. A more complete and accurate description is given below: The coverage and analysis group (CAG) requested a report from The Technology Assessment Program (TAP) at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). AHRQ assigned this report to the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Network (CISNET) consortium modeling groups. AHRQ staff also provided guidance on the model approach and inputs and ensured an arms-length relationship with the Centers for Medicate and Medicaid Services (CMS) and independence of the researchers.

Buyer-supplier relationship and trust theory in innovative green procurement practices

In the '80s, buyers used to maintain an arms-length relationship with suppliers. However, in the early nineties a dramatic change has occurred and buyers started treating close suppliers as business partners. This paper aims to examine how buyer-supplier relationship management can contribute to innovative green procurement performance through the improvement of trust in the South African context. The hypotheses of this study were tested with the data from 50 South African manufacturing companies. Data collection involved convenience sampling and survey methodology in a research setting using procurement managers as subjects. The construct measures were based on existing measures and previous research studies. The reliability and validity of items were tested using exploratory factor analysis and an overall measurement model was assessed with mediating regression analysis using SPSS 22.0 version. The paper finds that trust plays a critical and mediating role in the relationship between buyer-supplier relationship and innovative green procurement performance. The present study is unique in terms of scope and its contribution to both buyer-supplier relationship theory and practice.

Firm Boundaries, Incentives and Fund Performance: Evidence from a Private Pension Fund System

The private pension fund system in Turkey presents a unique institutional structure where bank holding companies can own both private pension companies and asset management firms. More often than not, pension companies delegate their operational mandates to the asset management arm of the same bank. This practice exposes the retail investor to a double agency problem and raises questions about conflicts of interest and fiduciary duty. Our analysis reveals that the funds set up and managed under the same bank holding company perform worse on a risk-adjusted basis than the funds with an arm's length relationship between the pension company and the asset manager. We show that this relative underperformance is not simply a bank effect; bank-affiliated pension companies and asset managers do just as well, if not better than their peers, when they are not operating under the same roof. Unfortunately, this inefficient institutional structure is not eliminated by market discipline because these funds attract more flows from retail investors, and the underperformance is not discernible in raw returns.

Factors influencing Japanese auto suppliers’ predictions about the future of new technologies – An exploratory study of electric vehicles

This article investigates the effects of different characteristics of supplier–customer relationships in the Japanese automotive industry, and how these influence predictions about future technologies of a disruptive nature, such as Electric Vehicles (EVs). We conducted a survey of a broad set of suppliers in the Japanese automotive industry and another survey of suppliers registered with Toyota's two supplier associations. The data were used to analyse the influence of particular relationships and practices on information gathering about new technologies, preparations for R&D and production of new components, and predictions about new technologies. The study shows that suppliers’ R&D intensity and the usage degree of the drawing-supplied parts system lead to predictions favouring the uptake of new technologies. Moreover, communication between automakers and suppliers and arm's-length relationships simultaneously lead to favourable views on the future of new technologies, especially with regard to EVs. Moreover, we find that Japanese-style cooperative relationships, arm's-length relationships, communication between automakers and suppliers, and communication among suppliers all lead to less favourable views on new technology uptake (in this case, EVs). We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice, specifically for EVs.

The co-evolution of supplier relationship quality and product quality in the U.S. auto industry: A cultural perspective

Strategic buyer-supplier relationships have been credited with vital outcomes such as lower costs, faster lead times, and better product quality. As such, by the 1990s, U.S. automakers have been moving away from traditional arm's length relationships—and towards strategic relationships—with their suppliers. Despite such shifts, perceptions persist that U.S. automakers consistently produce lower quality vehicles than their Japanese counterparts. Thus, an unanswered question is the extent to which better supplier relationships lead to better product performance. Using a longitudinal approach with secondary data, we explore the co-evolution of relationship quality and product quality among six major automakers (the U.S. and Japanese Big Three). Our results point to previously unidentified boundary conditions on the association between strategic supplier relationships and product quality. For example, strategic supplier relations precede product quality only when relationship quality meets or exceeds a given threshold. Moreover, for Japanese automakers, high relationship quality tends to precede high product quality whereas for U.S. automakers, only those who improve supplier relationships faster than competitors appear to benefit from strategic supplier relationships. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Law as an equalizer

Law as an equalizer