Market-based Forces Research Articles

Umbrella protectors? Analysing valuing, hybridity and compromises for Chinese middle managers

PurposeThis paper examines the ways in which Chinese university middle managers evaluate subordinate performance in response to the Chinese Double First-Class University Plan, a national project that ranks the performance of universities. In exploring compromise arrangements, the hybridised valuing activity of middle managers is found to be shaped by emergent and extant macro-foundations.Design/methodology/approachThe qualitative data from 49 semi-structured interviews at five Chinese public universities were conducted. Drawing on macro-foundational studies and the sociology of worth (SW) theory, the analysis helps to identify socially shared patterns of actions and outcomes.FindingsThe findings elucidate the interplay between diverse economic, social, political and institutional values and the compromise-making by middle managers. The authors find that contextual factors restrict Chinese academic middle managers' autonomy, preventing workable compromise. Through the selective adoption of international and local management practices, compromise has evolved into a private differential treaty at the operational level.Originality/valueA nuanced explanation reveals how the macro-foundations of Chinese society influence middle managers who engage with accounting when facilitating compromise. This study helps outsiders better understand the complex convergence and divergence of performance evaluative practices in Chinese universities against the backdrop of global market-based forces and the moral dimensions of organisational life. The findings have wider implications for the Chinese government in navigating institutional steps and developing supportive policies to enable middle managers to advance productive but also sustainable compromise.

Educating hypocrisy: private–public partnerships and management of multicultural projects in Taiwan

ABSTRACT The years following the end of martial law and the democratization of Taiwan have been marked by sizable political and social reform. In the interests of increasing social participation and decreasing direct state control of economic and social development programs, public–private partnerships (PPP) have been emphasized as the primary means to provide public services. Through an investigation into the functioning of a landmark project in the newest wave of educational reform orientated toward the localization and indigenization of elementary school educational materials, this paper will investigate the role that private entities have taken in the provision of education services. The extent that the privatization of education services serves to meet the goals and standards of Indigenous education will be discussed using a theoretical framework developed through the application of Tribal Critical Race Theory and Culturally Responsive Schooling. Semi-structured interviews with administrators, teachers, artists, and editors tasked with developing Indigenous centered learning materials problematize and question the procedural norms, conflicts of interest, and structural bias exacerbated by the increased presence of private entities. Through the experiences and counter narratives of participants, the issues of local alienation, limited consultation, and restricted Indigenous participation are revealed to be core issues in promoting Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, tackling racism, and engaging with Indigenous epistemologies. This rare evaluation of the means by which multicultural education projects are realized by market-based forces acts to highlight the obstacles and practical limitations of PPP in the provision of essential public services in Indigenous areas.

Testing the relative effectiveness of marketing and political strategies

Purpose This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings This research paper concentrates on companies' use of political or marketing strategies in relation to sociopolitical pressures. Managing sociopolitical forces is a practice that's separate from managing other market-based forces, due to this needing a different skillset. Engaging with sociopolitical agents does make firms more likely to attempt to influence threatening government public policy. A relationship-based strategy to engage with social and political agents was reliably shown to elevate the capacity of a company to respond to and manage sociopolitical forces with marketplace consequences, for example, in the arena of health. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Firm receptivity regarding marketplace vs political ties

PurposePrior research has examined the sociopolitical force as simply a part of all types of environmental pressures, yet we argue that this force calls for a unique examination of marketing's role in firm responses to sociopolitical pressures. Understanding the degree to which firms attempt to manage forces and pressures in the external business environment is key to understanding marketing's role in impeding vs aiding public policy initiatives, and is the problem this research investigates.Design/methodology/approachUsing structural equation modeling, data from 71 firms demonstrate that managing the sociopolitical force is, in fact, distinct from managing the other four market-based forces – consumer demand, supplier power, competition and technological shifts. Managing the sociopolitical force is shown to require fundamentally different skills and resources.FindingsResults suggest that firm sociopolitical receptivity drives attempts to influence this unique external business environmental force, in turn limiting marketplace sociopolitical receptivity. Furthermore, attempts to influence such a unique force relies on resource-light marketing resources, which limits resource-heavy marketing.Originality/valueManaging a political force with marketplace ramifications involves strategy that utilizes marketing, but is driven by relationships with social and political agents. This is truly an environmental management concept distinct from the management of the other four market-based forces. The analysis in this study demonstrates that managing another environmental force (i.e. competition force) involves different receptivity influences and marketing tactic outcomes.

Public-Private CEO Wage Gap in Transitional Economies: The Role of Caste in the Market for CEOs

In the context of transitional economies such as India, astronomical differences in pay between public and private sector top executives has been a subject of much public contention. Moving beyond mere market-based explanations of such wage inequalities, social scientists across disciplines have increasingly started to acknowledge the important role of sociological forces such as institutions and social norms in shaping such market based-forces. In this article we suggest that the institution of caste –a hitherto under explored sociological force –significantly influences the executive labor market and consequently the public-private CEO wage gap. Further, we posit that the state’s governance orientation (pro- market vs. pro-society) is an important contingency in this relationship.

The political determinants of executive compensation: Evidence from an emerging economy

In regulated economies, corporate governance mechanisms such as executive compensation are less driven by market-based forces but more subject to political influence. We study the political determinants of executive compensation for all listed Chinese firms in the context of an exogenous shock that removed market frictions in share-tradability. Under strong political constraints, state ownership reduced the managerial pay levels and increased pay-for-performance sensitivity (to asset-based benchmarks). Board independence and compensation committees do not curb managerial pay, and market-based factors do not have a significant influence. However, these effects reversed following the governance shock (removal of market frictions in share tradability).

Do Employers Know the Quality of Health Care Benefits They Provide? Use of HEDIS Depression Scores for Health Plans

OBJECTIVE Dissemination of health quality measures is a necessary ingredient of efforts to harness market-based forces, such as value-based purchasing by employers, to improve health care quality. This study examined reporting of Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) measures for depression to firms interested in improving depression care. METHODS During surveys conducted between 2009 and 2011, a sample of 325 employers that were interested in improving depression treatment were asked whether their primary health plan reports HEDIS scores for depression to the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) and if so, whether they knew the scores. Data about HEDIS reporting by the health plans were collected from the NCQA. RESULTS HEDIS depression scores were reported by the primary health plans of 154 (47%) employers, but only 7% of employers knew their plan's HEDIS scores. Because larger employers were more likely to report knowing the scores, 53% of all employees worked for employers who reported knowing the scores. A number of structural, health benefit, and need characteristics predicted knowledge of HEDIS depression scores by employers. CONCLUSIONS The study demonstrated that motivated employers did not know their depression HEDIS scores even when their plan publicly reported them. Measures of health care quality are not reaching the buyers of insurance products; however, larger employers were more likely to know the HEDIS scores for their health plan, suggesting that value-based purchasing may have some ability to affect health care quality.

Planning the Growth of a Metropolis

The article presents the results of a study investigating the growth of metropolitan London from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present. A high-resolution longitudinal land-use database, assembled from historical Ordnance Survey maps, is used to trace the patterns of land development in a 200 km2 area of West London from 1875 to the present. The land-use database is then employed to develop a cellular automata model, which explores the impact of key forces shaping the patterns of metropolitan growth. The analysis highlights the interplay of three critical factors: (1) the preurban spatial structure determined by the patterns of settlements and infrastructure predating the expansion of the metropolis; (2) the urban code representing a set of consistent rules that describe the spatial interaction of land uses with elements of the built environment; and (3) the mixture of planning and development policies advanced by public and private initiatives related to infrastructure investments, density regulation, and open space preservation. Contrary to the popular view rendering the growth of London as an outcome of uncoordinated private initiatives and market-based forces, the study advances the argument that planning played an important role in shaping the patterns of metropolitan expansion. Our analysis reveals, however, that the impact of planning was strongly conditioned by the elements of the preurban spatial structure and the mechanisms of the urban code.

When does guanxi bolster or damage firm profitability? The contingent effects of firm- and market-level characteristics

This paper advances that a nuanced approach is necessary to understand the effectiveness of managerial ties ( guanxi) in improving firms' financial performance. We take a contingency approach to examine how the effects of managerial ties on performance may be moderated by firm-level factors (i.e., firm age and entrepreneurial orientation) and market-based forces (i.e., demand uncertainty and technological turbulence). Using a survey of 289 firms in China, we find that managerial ties are more salient with regard to enhancing performance for more entrepreneurial-oriented and younger firms. Managerial ties fail to provide performance benefits to firms when high demand uncertainty exists or when the level of technological turbulence is high, which suggests a performance limitation of established ties with government officials, buyers, suppliers, and competitors. The theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are further discussed.

A rural economic development plan to help the USA win its war on cocaine

Since the 1980s, the USA has fought cocaine in the Andes with carrots and sticks: interdiction and crop eradication wield the sticks, while Alternative Development (AD), which offers economic assistance to farmers who voluntarily abandon illicit cultivation, provides the carrots. Yet cocaine continues to permeate US streets, and rural Andean communities remain isolated from the legitimate economy. Many critics blame US belligerence for compounding the Andean drug war. The underlying problem with the existing strategy, however, might not be the aggressiveness of its military sticks, but the flimsiness of its development carrots. The inability of AD to persuade farmers to abandon coca cultivation may be causing US policy makers to over-apply military solutions – often inflaming rural communities and exacerbating regional instability in so doing. Few legal crops can match the earning power of coca. The article therefore suggests that the US carrot could be made more attractive by adopting a Venture Development model which helps rural farmers to process their legal produce into high-quality finished goods that command premium prices. Such a strategy could conceivably choke the cocaine engine by applying market-based forces to address market-based realities.

Pollination and other ecosystem services produced by mobile organisms: a conceptual framework for the effects of land‐use change

Many ecosystem services are delivered by organisms that depend on habitats that are segregated spatially or temporally from the location where services are provided. Management of mobile organisms contributing to ecosystem services requires consideration not only of the local scale where services are delivered, but also the distribution of resources at the landscape scale, and the foraging ranges and dispersal movements of the mobile agents. We develop a conceptual model for exploring how one such mobile-agent-based ecosystem service (MABES), pollination, is affected by land-use change, and then generalize the model to other MABES. The model includes interactions and feedbacks among policies affecting land use, market forces and the biology of the organisms involved. Animal-mediated pollination contributes to the production of goods of value to humans such as crops; it also bolsters reproduction of wild plants on which other services or service-providing organisms depend. About one-third of crop production depends on animal pollinators, while 60-90% of plant species require an animal pollinator. The sensitivity of mobile organisms to ecological factors that operate across spatial scales makes the services provided by a given community of mobile agents highly contextual. Services vary, depending on the spatial and temporal distribution of resources surrounding the site, and on biotic interactions occurring locally, such as competition among pollinators for resources, and among plants for pollinators. The value of the resulting goods or services may feed back via market-based forces to influence land-use policies, which in turn influence land management practices that alter local habitat conditions and landscape structure. Developing conceptual models for MABES aids in identifying knowledge gaps, determining research priorities, and targeting interventions that can be applied in an adaptive management context.

Next generation frequency coordinator

The following analysis contends that the FCC's creation of Guard Band Managers is an important step forward in introducing more market-based forces to radio spectrum management. Guard Band Managers perform the function of a frequency coordinator—they parcel out “odd shaped”, business specific frequency assignments—but on a for-profit basis. The creation of the Guard Band Manager for the 700 MHz Guard Band is an example of the Federal Communications Commission using market-based forces to enhance the efficient use of radio spectrum in a setting constrained by the Commission's desire to put severe limits on how the band is used.

The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First.

Why is common sense so uncommon when it comes to managing people? How is it that so many seemingly intelligent organizations implement harmful management practices and ideas? In his provocative new book, The Human Equation, bestselling author Jeffrey Pfeffer examines why much of the current conventional wisdom is wrong and asks us to re-think the way managers link people with organizational performance. Pfeffer masterfully builds a powerful business case for managing people effectively--not just because it makes for good corporate policy, but because it results in outstanding performance and profits. Challenging current thinking and practice, Pfeffer: reveals the costs of downsizing and provides alternatives; identifies troubling trends in compensation, and suggests better practices; explains why even the smartest managers sometimes manage people unwisely; demonstrates how market-based forces can fail to create good people management practices, creating a need for positive public policy; and provides practical guidelines for implementing high-performance management practices. Filled with information and ideas, The Human Equation provides much-needed guidance for managing people more wisely and more profitably.