infonet-economy

In recent years it has become increasingly popular in the German speaking part of Europe to train individuals in so called 'social competences' or 'soft skills', thus presumably enabling both individuals and organizations to better relate with each other and thus 'function' more efficiently and effectively - at least this seems to be the inherent promise...

‘Doing gender' is a popular concept when studying gender, work and organisations and many studies in the field have used this concept. However what is actually meant by ‘doing gender' in different contexts is often quiet diverse. In this article the understanding of ‘doing gender' in empirical research on gender, work and organisations is critically interrogated. The...

We examined the distribution of benefits to partners in multipartner alliances by concentrating on dynamics of partner entry and involvement. Testing hypotheses in the Wi-Fi Alliance, we observed heterogeneity of benefits. In particular, the extent of organizational involvement in this alliance enhanced partners' reputation and market success with related product introductions...

Recent studies provide empirical evidence that family firms are outperforming their non-family counterparts in terms of stock market performance. For the Swiss stock market we find that family firms indeed outperform their non-family counterparts after controlling for firm size and beta. In addition, our data shows that family firms display more stable earnings per share in contrast...

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate, how applying individualistic discourses to social relations in organizations rather hinders than facilitates change in organizations. The initial idea was to find out how social relations are constructed in organizations, thus de-focussing from the increasing popularity of concepts such as 'soft skills' or 'social competences...

We discuss the ongoing liberalization process in the market for addressed letter mail in Switzerland. The core of the paper is an assessment of the liberalization's impact on the financial viability of various universal service obligations with and without access to the incumbent's downstream delivery network for customers and competitors. We propose a simple calibrated...

We investigate the allocation of unemployed individuals to different subprograms within Swiss active labour market policy by the caseworkers at local employment offices in Switzerland in 1998. We are particularly interested in whether the caseworkers allocate the unemployed to services in ways that will maximize the program-induced changes in their employment probabilities. Our...

As early as the 1970s, European Union (EU) member countries implemented rules to coordinate insurance markets and regulation. However, with the more recent movement toward a general single EU market, financial services regulation has taken on new meaning and priority. Solvency I regulations went into effect for member nations by January 2004. The creation of risk-based capital...