Private Sector Firms Research Articles

Keeping up with the Max Plancks? Germany’s quest for university excellence and the role of public research institutes in doctoral education

AbstractDoctoral education is a crucial stage in the academic socialization of early-career researchers. Prior research has shown that career paths and activities of Ph.D.s are shaped by the universities and departments in which they were trained. To widen this focus, we analyze the role of public research organizations (PROs) and private-sector firms as organizational employment contexts of doctoral education. The empirical context of our study is Germany, where PROs and firms employ large numbers of doctoral candidates and provide the organizational environment for their dissertation research. Utilizing a novel process-generated dataset that covers about 40,000 STEM Ph.D.s who graduated from 1995 to 2011, we find that Ph.D.s employed at PROs during doctoral education are more likely to stay in academia than their university-employed peers. Despite extensive policy efforts that sought to strengthen the research performance of German universities, doctoral candidates employed at basic research-oriented PROs had the strongest cross-cohort increase in their post-graduation academic employment share. This group also experienced the most pronounced fall in the share of high post-graduation income owners. Industry-employed doctoral candidates are unlikely to migrate to the academic sector and have the highest likelihood of obtaining high post-graduation incomes.

Five paradoxes navigated by incumbent private sector firms moving towards climate-oriented innovation in food systems

The role of large private sector firms in rerouting our food systems towards sustainability through climate-oriented innovation is highly contested. The contestation has resulted in a portrayal in academic literature of these incumbents as either the key driver of sustainability transitions or as fundamentally contradictory to addressing climate change in food systems. Controversies and tensions can reinforce stalemates, which hamper progress towards climate-oriented innovation. This study explores the utility of a paradox lens which shifts the research gaze to the emergence of unavoidable and persistent tensions in encounters of distinct logics and lines of action, and opens space to examine how these encounters can nevertheless be used productively and creatively in overcoming stalemates. Based on reflexive practice and interviews with professionals from seven purposefully selected incumbent private sector firms in the agri-food sector, we identify five paradoxes: the paradox of direction—between mitigation and adaptation; the paradox of justification—between exploration and exploitation; the paradox of internal alignment—between mainstreaming and specialization; the paradox of external alignment—between collaboration and competition; and the paradox of evidence—between accountability and learning. Our analysis of how agri-food firms navigate paradoxes focuses on considerations, tensions, and decisions in organizing climate-oriented innovation. In our discussion, we examine whether and how paradoxical thinking enables civil society practitioners to accelerate climate-oriented innovation in food systems through interactions and collaborations with the private sector. We conclude that a paradox lens affords researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to move beyond the binary view on the role of incumbents’ climate-oriented innovation, and instead provides strategic insights for engaging incumbents and their inherent contradictions in transforming our food systems under a changing climate.

A Comparative Study on Workplace Morale and Team Work in Public and Private Sector Organizations

This research examines and contrasts the dynamics of cooperation and workplace morale in businesses in the public and private sectors. By examining the variables that affect employee morale and its effect on organizational performance, the study seeks to comprehend the variations in teamwork practices and morale across various industries. The research uses a mixed-methods approach, collecting data from workers in a range of public and private sector firms using surveys, interviews, and qualitative analysis. Results show clear trends in cooperation techniques and workplace morale across the two industries, providing insight into the underlying causes of these variations. The research adds to the body of knowledge already available on organizational behavior and provides managers and legislators with useful advice on how to improve workplace morale and the efficacy of collaboration across industries.

Innovation in public organizations: the role of human capital

ABSTRACT Public sector innovation (PSI) has (re)emerged as a research topic among academics and practitioners. However, although a vast body of research exists analysing the key role played by human capital in the private sector, only a paucity of research exists with an analogous focus in the public sector. This paper addresses this anomaly by linking human capital to innovation types using data from 29 European countries (n = 2,650 public organizations). The results provide compelling empirical evidence that human capital, and particularly innovation training, plays a vital role in innovative activity in the public sector, just as it does in private-sector firms.

Digital transformation and corporate ESG information disclosure herd effect

This study investigates how digital transformation influences the tendency of companies to engage in herd behavior regarding the disclosure of ESG information. The findings indicate that digital transformation notably increases herd behavior in ESG information disclosure among these companies. Additional analysis considering different types of companies shows that this effect is stronger in private sector firms and those operating in highly competitive environments. The research offers practical insights and serves as an empirical and theoretical resource to support the advancement of digital transformation in businesses, contributing to the broader goal of achieving high-quality economic growth.

Advanced Digital Technologies in Unionized Firms

AbstractThis work examines how workplace employee organizations causally affect the adoption of advanced digital technologies in Italy. It does so by using information from the survey “Rilevazione Imprese e Lavoro” conducted by the National Institute for Public Policy Analysis on a nationally representative sample of Italian firms in the non-agricultural private sector in 2018. It shows that workplace employee organizations increase the probability of advanced digitalization by around 15 percentage points per year, and the number of different technologies adopted by 0.41. The empirical strategy follows an IV approach that eliminates simultaneity bias and builds upon a lagged internal instrument combined with a NUTS-3 measure of altruism—namely, per capita blood donations. Results survive when cybersecurity is excluded from the analysis and prove robust when the internal instrument is left alone, combined with an index of tolerance or with propensity score matching.

Lost mind, lost job? Unequal effects of corporate downsizings on employees

We investigate whether employees with mental health disorders are likelier to be laid off during corporate downsizings. Our study uses nationwide administrative data from all private sector firms and their employees in Finland from 2001 to 2017 and focuses on firms with at least 20 employees that reduced their workforce by at least 20% over two consecutive years. We analyse whether the employees who were laid off had more diagnosed mental health disorders prior to downsizing compared than those who were not laid off. Controlling for employee characteristics, our baseline results show that a mental health disorder diagnosis in the 3 years before downsizing increases the likelihood of being laid off by about 6 percentage points. This highlights the increased vulnerability of employees with mental health disorders in mass layoff situations.

Capital Adequacy and Earnings and Profitability Analysis of Life Insurance Companies: (A Comparative Study of ICICI Prudential and SBI Life Insurance)

Insurance is seen as a dependable instrument for mobilizing public funds and has been playing a significant role in both developed and developing countries. The insurance industry in India has experienced a lot of transformations, including nationalization, privatization, deregulation, regulation, and globalization. Numerous private firms with the backing of foreign investors have been able to enter the market as a result of liberalization. A fierce rivalry between private and public sector firms, as well as among private sector competitors, has defined the Indian life insurance market since 2000. In light of this, the purpose of this study is to use metrics from the CARAMEL framework to investigate the capital adequacy profitability and earnings performance of ICICI Life and SBI Life from 2017–18 to 2021-22. A t-test is used to analyze the data further, and the findings show that there is no considerable difference in the financial results of particular insurers.

Effects of listing on the financial behavior of private-sector firms in China

In China, non-listed private-sector firms are discriminated against in terms of access to funding. Initial public offerings (IPOs) change this situation and, likely, the investment behavior of such firms. Utilizing data from 1998 to 2020 regarding both listed and never-listed firms, we establish the causal impact of listing on the financial behavior of private-sector firms in China. Our results are as follows. First, IPOs cause private-sector firms to increase not only newly issued equity financing but also their reliance on debt finance. Second, IPOs enable firms to enjoy lower interest rates on bank loans than never-listed firms. Third, IPOs motivate private-sector private firms to accelerate investment in assets. This generates increased demand for funding sources. Fourth, IPOs increase private-sector firms' reliance on debt finance and accelerate their investment, and this occurs through two mechanisms that we elucidate. Our results suggest that tight regulation on approvals for IPOs of private-sector firms with good prospects should be loosened.

Still waters run deep: differences in employee empowerment between public and private sector firms in India

The different structural contexts of public and private sector firms frame the specific organizational work environment. However, public-private comparative studies have been unable to isolate how these differences influence aspects of organizational work, such as employee empowerment, with similarities and differences among key constructs. We develop a contingency view of employee empowerment, theoretically arguing and empirically demonstrating how authentic leadership with different levels of organizational politics influences employee empowerment in different contextual settings, namely public vs. private sector firms. We present evidence of a three-way interaction. We surveyed 173 senior Indian managers working in public and private sectors to measure their perceptions of empowerment, authentic leadership, and organizational politics. Employing ordinary least-square regression, we tested for simple and complex interactions. We found that authentic leadership had interactive effects on how organizational politics and public-private differences impact empowerment. The differences in the effect of authentic leadership on employee empowerment between public and private firms became more, with an increase in organizational politics.

Paying for Legitimacy: Autocracy, Nonmarket Strategy, and the Liability of Foreignness

Although the liability of foreignness has been shown to present real economic barriers for foreign firms in various contexts around the globe, scholars continue to debate what drives this liability in different market contexts: lack of information due to institutional distance, lack of social embeddedness, discrimination, or something else. In this study, we propose a new theory, that in corporate lobbying within the nonmarket strategy context, the liability of foreignness is driven in no small part by a values-based ideological conflict stemming from the divide between democracy and autocracy. Private-sector firms from autocratic countries face costs of illegitimacy in Washington, D.C., and professional corporate lobbyists charge such firms a fee premium, in effect, to pay for legitimacy. We conduct an empirical study of the lobbying fees charged by professional corporate lobbyists in Washington, D.C., to their domestic and foreign firm clients, and the results strongly support the predictions of our theory. We also show that the liability of foreignness in this context endures for foreign firms from autocratic countries over the 15-year length of our sample period. Offering a new theoretical perspective as well as new empirical findings regarding the liability of foreignness, our study has practical implications for managers of foreign firms and may also generalize to other market contexts.

Enhancing Soft Skills for Employee Success in the Private Service Sector

Soft skills are critical to employee success in the private sector. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relevance of soft skills and their influence on individual and organizational performance in the industry. A mixed-methods study strategy was used, which included surveys and interviews with a large sample of employees from various private sector firms. The study emphasizes the important link between soft skills and employee effectiveness, stressing the obstacles and possibilities for improving these talents.

Do pro-diversity beliefs enhance OCB? The joint effects of gender diversity and diversity beliefs on group organizational citizenship behavior through collective personality fit

PurposeThis paper investigates the interaction effects of gender diversity and diversity beliefs on group-level personality fit (“collective personality fit”) and group organizational citizenship behavior (GOCB). It seeks to provide a sufficient understanding of the under-researched area, such as how group composition impacts group behavioral outcomes.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 453 employees and their leaders in 63 teams of Korean private sector firms using a moderated-mediation model.FindingsThis study found that high diversity beliefs can weaken the negative effects of gender diversity on collective personality fit and further enhance GOCB. The results confirm the moderated-mediation effect of diversity beliefs in the relationship between gender diversity and GOCB.Practical implicationsManagement should realize that the negative effect of workforce diversity on GOCB can be reduced by boosting collective personality fit in the team. In this process, enhancing diversity beliefs may relieve the adverse effects on GOCB caused by workgroup gender differences.Originality/valueThis study develops a group-level model proposing that the interaction effects of gender diversity and high diversity beliefs enable a high level of collective personality fit, enhancing GOCB. It attempts to investigate the effects of gender diversity at the group level under boundary conditions.

Bureaucracy and labor market inefficiency: A contest model

The theory of bureaucracy describes the internal rent-seeking incentives in government agencies. A consequence is that a government agency competing with other agencies for budgetary funding will value rent-seeking ability rather than individual productiveness when choosing who to hire. With private-sector firms valuing personal productiveness, I look at labor-market incentives when job seekers facing employment options can choose effort at becoming productive and effort at becoming better rent seekers. A nested lottery contest with the two types of effort is used to show that, under reasonable conditions, prospective employees invest in the latter type of effort more than in the former. The productiveness of labor is therefore diminished in the private sector when a government agency is hiring in the same labor market.

The Impact of Innovative Financial and Banking Development on the Economic Growth of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract Achieving sustainable economic growth is one of the main goals of economic policy in modern countries. As previous research has shown, the development of financial system has a significant influence on economic growth. The importance of the innovative banking sector in developing countries becomes particularly important due to the insufficient evolvent of other parts of the financial system. The subject of this paper is the analysis of the impact of the banking sector of Bosnia and Herzegovina on economic growth in the period from 2000 to 2021. The aim of the study is to quantify this relationship. In this study we apllied ARDL model to determine long-term and short-term relationship between observed variables. The results show that the increase in total loans granted by the banking sector to companies from the non-financial sector has a positive impact on the development of GDP. Namely, a 1% increase in total bank credit to non-financial private sector firms leads to an increase in GDP of about 0.08% in long run and about 0.20% in short run.

Biopharmaceutical Financialization and Public Funding of Medical Countermeasures (MCMs) in Canada During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Analysing the Canadian government's efforts to support the development of COVID-19 "medical countermeasures" (MCMs), this article seeks insights into political economy as a driver of pandemic response. We explore whether Canadian public funding policy during the pandemic involved departures from established practices of financialisation in biopharmaceutical research and development (R&D), including the dominance of private sector involvement in an intellectual property (IP) intensive approach to innovation underscoring profit, and governance opacity. We interrogate public funding for MCMs by analyzing how much the Government of Canada (GoC) spent, how those funds were allocated, on what terms, and to whom. We identify the funding institutions, and the funds awarded between February 10, 2020, and March 31, 2021, to support the research, development, and manufacturing of MCMs, including diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics, and information about clinical management and virus transmission. To collect these data, we conducted searches on the Internet, public data repositories, and filed several requests under the Access to Information Act (1985). Subsequently, we carried out a document-based analysis of electronically accessible research contracts, proposals, grant calls, and policy announcements. The GoC announced CAD$ 1.4 billion for research, development and manufacturing of COVID-19 MCMs. Fully 68% (CAD$ 959 million) of the announced public funding was channelled to investment in private sector firms. Canadian public funding showed a consistent focus on early and late stage development of COVID-19 MCMs and the expansion of biopharmaceutical manufacturing capacity. Assessing whether Canada's investments into developing COVID-19 MCMs safeguard affordable and transparent access to the products of publicly funded research, we found that access policies on IP management, sharing of clinical data, affordability and availability were not systematic, consistent, or transparent, and few, if any, mechanisms ensured long-term sustainability. Beyond incremental change in policy goals, such as public investment in domestic biomanufacturing, the features of Canadian public policies endorsing financialization in the biopharmaceutical sector remained largely unchanged during the pandemic.

Understanding New Zealand firm innovation: exploring human resource factors by firm size and strength

ABSTRACT Firm innovation is of vital importance to New Zealand’s economy, but we understand little about how different human resource (workforce) factors influence innovation approaches (product/services innovation, process innovation, and innovation speed). We explore three human resource (HR) factors: workforce knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs), workforce attraction, and workforce retention, using a sample of New Zealand private sector firms (n = 402). Regression analysis shows all HR factors are significant predictors of all innovation approaches. Further analysis shows workforce KSAs is dominant towards product/service innovation, workforce attraction is dominant towards process innovation, and workforce retention is dominant towards innovation speed. Moderating effects by firm size are found showing small-sized firms out innovate large-sized firms when workforce KSA are high, despite small-sized firms having, on average, weaker HR factors and innovation approaches than large-sized firms. We highlight the organisational implications across small – and large-sized firms.

The performance of politically connected firms in South East Europe: state capture or business capture?

ABSTRACT This article investigates the effects of the political connectedness on the business performance of private sector firms in South East Europe. This question is relevant to contemporary ideas about the importance of ‘state capture’ in the region, and the article provides a new perspective on the nature and consequences of this phenomenon. Analysis of survey data reveals that political connections tend to undermine the business performance of connected firms, with a potential negative impact on the economic development of the countries concerned. It is argued that this process is better described as ‘business capture’ rather than ‘state capture’. The terminology is important as it suggests how policies might be used to manage this issue. The negative effect on business performance is substantial, especially in service sectors and in countries of the Western Balkans. The EU member states of the region are relatively immune from the negative effects of business capture.

The Doctor Knows Best?: Reconsidering the Role of Expert Discretion in the False Claims Act

In 2021, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Care Alternatives v. United States, leaving open a circuit split regarding the intersection of expert testimony and the falsity element of the False Claims Act. This uncertainty could lead to significant civil liability not only for Medicare/Medicaid service providers, but also for any private parties that receive money from the federal government. This Note outlines three potential solutions that can resolve this circuit split to balance between the interests of the federal government in countering fraud from the contracting process, and the interests of private sector firms in facilitating ease of doing business with the public sector.

Exploring the Determinants of Energy-Saving Innovation Uptake among Private Sector Firms in India

Exploring the Determinants of Energy-Saving Innovation Uptake among Private Sector Firms in India