infonet-economy

The debate on volunteering has paid insufficient attention to the relationship between public spending and volunteering. Recently, the importance of this relationship was highlighted by the current British government's "Big Society" plan, which asserts that withdrawing public agencies and spending will be compensated by an increase in volunteering. This idea is based…

Decisions in supply chain management (SCM) are subject to various conflicting criteria and multiple objectives must be considered in the decision process. Fur-thermore, a group, rather than a single decision maker, is often involved in the process. For such decisions, methods in multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) are certainly appropriate. However, an overview concerning…

In the domain of dynamic modeling and simulation, the assurance of model validity is a prominent challenge. An extensive number of contributions concerning model tests, terminology, and the epistemological foundations of validation have been elaborated. These contributions, however, do not fully answer the questions for novice modelers, namely, which validation tests to choose, when…

This paper examines the type and temporal development of language in the process of corporate responsibility (CR) standardization. Previous research on CR standardization has addressed the proliferation and organizational embedding of material practices but neglected the analysis of underlying ideational dynamics. Departing from this practice, we introduce a narrative perspective…

As any empirical method used for causal analysis, social experiments are prone to attrition which may flaw the validity of the results. This paper considers the problem of partially missing outcomes in experiments. Firstly, it systematically reveals under which forms of attrition - in terms of its relation to observable and/or unobservable factors - experiments do (not) yield causal…

Innovative firms are frequently credit constrained and tend to earn an above normal return on capital. This paper considers a discrete R&D decision that splits firms into innovative and standard ones. Active intermediaries can facilitate access to credit and improve capital allocation. We find that (i) financial development boosts innovation and welfare; (ii) ACE and cash-flow…

In this paper we examine how the notion of systemic relevance challenges bandwidth efficiency and efficacy of middle managers of financial service organizations and what managers can do to coop with increasingly complex environments of the firm. As the envisaged merger of The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE Euronext) with Deutsche Börse Group is revitalizing debates concerning…

Purpose - The purpose of the present study is to introduce the elements characterising the work context of high responsibility teams (HRTs) operating in high reliability contexts such as medicine or aviation. Based on these elements, the authors reflected on the function of teamwork in these contexts, which is strongly dominated by a notion of flexibility under complexity, based on…

This paper deals with the representation of the conceptual structure of mental models of dynamic systems (MMDS). Until today, this structure has not been consistently defined. Consequently, studies about MMDS continue to use different conceptual structures to measure mental models. Even such properties as feedback loops and delays, which lie at the core of dynamic systems, are often…