The link between HR practices, psychological contract fulfillment, and organizational performance:the case of the Greek services sector

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of human resource (HR) practices on organizational performance through the mediating role of psychological contract (expressed by the influence of employer on employee promises fulfillment through employee attitudes). The study is based on a national sample of 78 organizations from the public and private services sector in Greece, including education, health, and banking, and on data obtained from 348 employees. The statistical method employed is structural equation modeling, via LISREL and bootstrapping estimation. The findings of the study suggest that employee incentives, performance appraisal, and employee promotion are three major HR practices that must be extensively employed. Furthermore, the study suggests that the organization must primarily keep its promises about a pleasant and safe working environment, respectful treatment, and feedback for performance, in order for employees to largely keep their own promises about showing loyalty to the organization, maintaining high levels of attendance, and upholding company reputation. Additionally, the study argues that the employee attitudes of motivation, satisfaction, and commitment constitute the nested epicenter mediating construct in both the HR practices–performance and employer–employee promise fulfillment relationships, resulting in superior organizational performance. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Essays on the Role of Government Incentives in the Private Provision of Social Goods

The economic rationale for public intervention into private markets through price mechanisms is twofold: to correct market failures and to redistribute resources. Financial incentives are one such price mechanism. In this dissertation, I specifically address the role of financial incentives in providing social goods in two separate contexts: a redistributive policy that enables low income working families to access affordable childcare in the US and an experimental pay-for-performance intervention to improve population health outcomes in rural India. In the first two papers, I investigate the effects of government incentives for providing grandchild care on grandmothers’ short- and long-term outcomes. In the third paper, coauthored with Manoj Mohanan, Grant Miller, Katherine Donato, and Marcos Vera-Hernandez, we use an experimental framework to consider the the effects of financial incentives in improving maternal and child health outcomes in the Indian state of Karnataka.

Grandmothers provide a significant amount of childcare in the US, but little is known about how this informal, and often uncompensated, time transfer impacts their economic and health outcomes. The first two chapters of this dissertation address the impact of federally funded, state-level means-tested programs that compensate grandparent-provided childcare on the retirement security of older women, an economically vulnerable group of considerable policy interest. I use the variation in the availability and generosity of childcare subsidies to model the effect of government payments for grandchild care on grandmothers’ time use, income, earnings, interfamily transfers, and health outcomes. After establishing that more generous government payments induce grandmothers to provide more hours of childcare, I find that grandmothers adjust their behavior by reducing their formal labor supply and earnings. Grandmothers make up for lost earnings by claiming Social Security earlier, increasing their reliance on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and reducing financial transfers to their children. While the policy does not appear to negatively impact grandmothers’ immediate economic well-being, there are significant costs to the state, in terms of both up-front costs for care payments and long-term costs as a result of grandmothers’ increased reliance on social insurance.

The final paper, The Role of Non-Cognitive Traits in Response to Financial Incentives: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial of Obstetrics Care Providers in India, is coauthored with Manoj Mohanan, Grant Miller, Katherine Donato and Marcos Vera-Hernandez. We report the results from “Improving Maternal and Child Health in India: Evaluating Demand and Supply Side Strategies” (IMACHINE), a randomized controlled experiment designed to test the effectiveness of supply-side incentives for private obstetrics care providers in rural Karnataka, India. In particular, the experimental design compares two different types of incentives: (1) those based on the quality of inputs providers offer their patients (inputs contracts) and (2) those based on the reduction of incidence of four adverse maternal and neonatal health outcomes (outcomes contracts). Along with studying the relative effectiveness of the different financial incentives, we also investigate the role of provider characteristics, preferences, expectations and non-cognitive traits in mitigating the effects of incentive contracts.

We find that both contract types input incentive contracts reduce rates of post-partum hemorrhage, the leading cause of maternal mortality in India by about 20%. We also find some evidence of multitasking as output incentive contract providers reduce the level of postnatal newborn care received by their patients. We find that patient health improvements in response to both contract types are concentrated among higher trained providers. We find improvements in patient care to be concentrated among the lower trained providers. Contrary to our expectations, we also find improvements in patient health to be concentrated among the most risk averse providers, while more patient providers respond relatively little to the incentives, and these difference are most evident in the outputs contract arm. The results are opposite for patient care outcomes; risk averse providers have significantly lower rates of patient care and more patient providers provide higher quality care in response to the outputs contract. We find evidence that overconfidence among providers about their expectations about possible improvements reduces the effectiveness of both types of incentive contracts for improving both patient outcomes and patient care. Finally, we find no heterogeneous response based on non-cognitive traits.

Motivations for the establishment of PNHRs and analysis of the incentives for their creation and management in Mato Grosso do Sul

The development of efficient programs of incentive to voluntary conservation in private lands require an extensive knowledge on the motivations of land owners for conservation and their degree of acceptance on the benefits offered. Thus, this paper intended to evaluate the motivations for the establishment of PNHRs, the difficulties faced by their recognition and the incentives received for their establishment and management in Mato Grosso do Sul, and also to discuss some possibilities of widening the benefits offered. To this end, people responsible for 34 PNHRs were interviewed between March/2008 and March/2009. The results show that conservation is among the main reasons for the creation of these areas, in spite of economical and personal factors also being mentioned. The slowness and the red tape during the process of recognition were also emphasized as problems; on the other hand, several PNHRs received or receive support for their creation or management. Finally, some considerations are made on the benefits offered to owners of PNHRs and their possibilities of widening throughout the state.

A Logic Framework of Normative-based Contract Management

We explore of the feasibility of the computationally oriented institutional agency framework proposed by Governatori and Rotolo testing it against an industrial strength scenario. In particular we show how to encode in defeasible logic the dispute resolution policy described in Article 67 of FIDIC.

Economic incentives for farmers in the Philippine uplands to adopt hedgerow intercropping

Land degradation in the Philippine uplands is severe and widespread. Most upland areas are steep, and intense rainfall on soils disturbed by intensive agriculture can produce high rates of soil loss. This has serious implications for the economic welfare of a growing upland population with few feasible livelihood alternatives. Hedgerow intercropping can greatly reduce soil loss from annual cropping systems and has been considered an appropriate technology for soil conservation research and extension in the Philippine uplands. However; adoption of hedgerow intercropping has been sporadic and transient, rarely continuing once external support has been withdrawn. The objective of this paper is to investigate the economic incentives for farmers in the Philippine uplands to adopt hedgerow intercropping relative to traditional open-field maize farming. Cost-benefit analysis is used to compare the economic viability of hedgerow intercropping, as it has been promoted to upland farmers, with the viability of traditional methods of open-field farming. The APSIM and SCUAF models were used to predict the effect of soil erosion on maize yields from open-field farming and hedgerow intercropping. The results indicate that there have been strong economic incentives for farmers with limited planning horizons to reject hedgerow intercropping because the benefits of sustained yields are not realized rapidly enough to compensate for high establishment costs. Alternative forms of hedgerow intercropping such as natural vegetation and grass strips reduce establishment and maintenance costs and are therefore more economically attractive to farmers than hedgerow intercropping with shrub legumes. The long-term economic viability of hedgerow intercropping depends on the economic setting and the potential for hedgerow intercropping to sustain maize production relative to traditional open-field farming. (C) 1998 Academic Press.

Economic Incentives to Conserve Wildlife on Private Lands: Analysis and Policy

Some believe that provision of private property rights in wildlife on private land can provide a powerful economic incentive for nature conservation because it enables property owners to market such wildlife or its attributes. If such marketing is profitable, private landholders will conserve the wildlife concerned and its required habitat. But land is not always most profitably used for exploitation of wildlife, and many economic values of wildlife (such as non-use economic values) cannot be marketed. The mobility of some wildlife (their fugitive nature) adds to the limitations of the private property approach. While some species may be conserved by this approach, it is suboptimal as a single policy approach to nature conservation. Nevertheless, it is being experimented with in the Northern Territory of Australia where landholders have the possibility of harvesting on their properties a quota of eggs and chicks of red-tailed black cockatoos for commercial sale. This scheme is expected to provide an incentive to private landholders to retain hollow trees essential for the nesting of these birds. Aspects of this approach are analysed using this case, and related ones, from Northern Australia. It is noted that the private property rights approach adopted in southern Africa is unlikely to be equally successful everywhere. The long-term survival of some species depends on their ability to use private lands without severe harassment, either for their migration or to supplement their available resources, for example, the Asian elephant in Sri Lanka. Nature conservation on private land is often a useful, if not essential, supplement to conservation on public lands. Community and public incentives for such conservation are outlined.

Economic incentives for global conservation of wildlife: New international policy directions

Growing economic globalisation by extending the operation of markets is a two-edged sword as far as nature conservation is concerned. In some circumstances, it threatens the conservation of nature and in other cases, it provides economic incentives that foster the conservation of biodiversity. This article shows how global policy directions have altered in that regard. Initially the World Conservation Union (IUCN) favoured bans on trade in endangered species. This view was enshrined in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Subsequently, with the upsurge of support for market-based economic liberalism, IUCN recognised that economic and market incentives, if linked to appropriate property rights, could foster biodiversity conservation. This is reflected in the International Convention on Biological Diversity. While there is conflict between this convention and CITES, its extent has been exaggerated. As explained, in certain cases, trade restrictions of the type adopted in CITES are appropriate for nature conservation whereas the market-oriented policy of the Convention on Biological Diversity can be effective in some different situations. Whether or not the extension of markets in wildlife and wildlife products and growing economic globalisation favours nature conservation varies according to the circumstances.

It's all in the contract: Rethinking feminist critiques of contract

This article examines contemporary feminist arguments about contract. It does not aim to advance new arguments for or against contract but to call into question the dominant feminist position which is that contract has to be cast aside and/or that alternative approaches to contract have to be developed in order to advance the position of women. In a reworking of Elizabeth Kingdom's anti-essentialist approach to rights, Sullivan argues that a feminist but non-essentialist approach to contract is both possible and desirable. Sullivan explores a number of concrete situations in the Australian context where contract approaches have been deployed in law and public policy and demonstrates that contract may be detrimental or advantageous to the position of women. Sullivan argues, therefore, for a strategic and critical feminist approach to the utilisation of the language and practice of contract.