Business Commons^™

Development Of Generic Key Performance Indicators For Pmbok® Using A 3d Project Integration Model, Craig Langston

Craig Langston

Since Martin Barnes’ so-called ‘iron triangle’ circa 1969, much debate has occurred over how best to describe the fundamental constraints that underpin project success. This paper develops a 3D project integration model for PMBOK® comprising core constraints of scope, cost, time and risk as a basis to propose six generic key performance indicators (KPIs) that articulate successful project delivery. These KPIs are defined as value, efficiency, speed, innovation, complexity and impact and can each be measured objectively as ratios of the core constraints. An overall KPI (denoted as s3/ctr) is also derived. The aim in this paper is to set …

Loving: Who Can The Irs Regulate?, Robert D. Probasco

Robert Probasco

L’Emploi Informel Dans Les Économies Développées Et En Développement: Quelles Perspectives, Quelles Interventions?, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

The Dollars And Sense Of Coastal Valuation In Australia, David Anning, Geoff Withycombe, Dale Dominey-Howes, Michael Raybould

Michael Raybould

No abstract provided.

Beach And Surf Tourism And Recreation In Australia: Vulnerability And Adaptation, Michael Raybould, David Anning, Dan Ware, Neil Lazarow

Michael Raybould

No abstract provided.

Beach, Sun And Surf Tourism, Neil Lazarow, Michael Raybould, David Anning

Michael Raybould

Beaches are arguably the most valuable of coastal tourism assets. Around beaches, communities develop and tourism markets expand, often resulting in intimate human interaction with diverse environments. This chapter provides an overview of economic research on beach and surf recreation and tourism in existing and expanding markets, including a description of the techniques most commonly used to estimate the economic impact and value of beach recreation and some of the challenges around developing accurate estimates of use and value. Better understanding of the drivers and values for beach and surf tourism is an important consideration for optimal management of coastal …

A Travel Cost Model Of Local Residents' Beach Recreation Values On The Gold Coast, Michael Raybould, Neil Lazarow, David Anning, Dan Ware, Boyd Blackwell

Michael Raybould

The beach is generally recognised as the most important recreation amenity in the region for Gold Coast residents, as well as tourists. However, there is very little data to support the role that this amenity plays in the life of over 500,000 (ABS 2011) Gold Coast residents. This paper reports the results of a survey that set out to collect data from Gold Coast residents regarding their beach use and the values they associate with the beach, and to develop estimates of the economic value of the beach to residents. A mail survey of 8,000 households resulted in 1,862 responses. …

Beaches As Societal Assets: Council Expenditure, Recreational Returns, And Climate Change, Boyd Blackwell, Michael Raybould, Neil Lazarow

Michael Raybould

Drawing on expenditure and survey data from the Gold and Sunshine Coasts in Queensland, Australia, this chapter compares expenditures on beaches relative to their recreational benefits. Beaches are found to be exceptional investments. The comparison of the two councils also provides insights into their relative capacity to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change. The Gold Coast can rely to some extent on historical large investments in infrastructure to defend itself against change. In contrast, the Sunshine Coast has more options which may lower the cost of adaptation e.g., it can rely more heavily on retreating from change in …

Behavioural Responses To Beach Erosion And Climate Change, David Anning, Michael Raybould, Dan Ware, Neil Lazarow

Michael Raybould

No abstract provided.

Is A Wide Beach More Valuable? -The Impact Of The Tweed River Entrance Sand Bypass Project On Nearby Property, Dan Ware, David Anning, Michael Raybould, Neil Lazarow, Rodger Tomlinson

Michael Raybould

No abstract provided.

Valuing Beach And Surf Tourism And Recreation In Australian Sea Change Communities, David Anning, Dan Ware, Michael Raybould, Neil Lazarow

Michael Raybould

Many of Australia’s iconic sandy beaches are already under pressure due to coastal development and the impacts of severe storm or flood events. These impacts are likely to be exacerbated by projected climate changes such as elevated water levels and potentially increased storm intensity. Beaches provide important recreation services for both residents and tourists but few studies in Australia have attempted to place economic values on this service. Thus, coastal authorities that are forced to make investment decisions relating to beach protection and restoration have insufficient data to conduct cost-benefit evaluations of projects where recreation values are significant. This paper …

Estimating Consumer Surplus Values For Beach Recreation In Australia Using Travel Cost Methods, Michael Raybould, David Anning, Dan Ware, Neil Lazarow

Michael Raybould

No abstract provided.

Earnings Response Coefficients Of Oecd Banks: Tests Extended To Include Bank Risk Factors, Mohamed Ariff, Cheng Fan Fah, Soh Wei Ni

Mohamed Ariff

We investigate two issues: Do share prices of banks in European markets respond to unexpected accounting earnings disclosures? Are share prices as well as unexpected earnings changes correlated with bank-relevant risk factors? Results reveal that bank share prices respond to unexpected earnings changes at the time of accounting reports in the same manner as the shares of the more widely-researched non-bank firms. Apart from finding significant earnings response coefficients in eight countries, we find that credit risk, price risk, exchange rate risk, and solvency risk are significantly correlated with share price changes. Third, three bank risk factors are significantly correlated …

Investor Responses To Dividends Received Deductions: Rewarding Multinational Tax Avoidance?, Sebastien J. Bradley

Sebastien J Bradley

Central to the debate over U.S. international tax reform is understanding how multinational tax avoidance behavior might respond to a reduction in taxes on repatriated foreign-source earnings. Beginning in early 2009, several attempts have been made to re-institute a temporary 85 percent dividends received deduction that would have reduced such taxes for U.S. multinational corporations. Despite an intense lobbying effort, the measure was ultimately cast aside in late 2011, temporarily yielding to the criticism, in part, that the original such provision enacted under the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 offered a generous reward for international tax avoidance. Exploiting the …

The Institutional Entrepreneur As Modern Prince: The Strategic Face Of Power In Contested Fields, David Levy, Maureen A. Scully

Maureen Scully

This paper develops a theoretical framework that situates institutional entrepreneurship by drawing from Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to understand the contingent stabilization of organizational fields, and by employing his discussion of the Modern Prince as the collective agent who organizes and strategizes counter-hegemonic challenges. Our framework makes three contributions. First, we characterize the interlaced material, discursive, and organizational dimensions of field structure. Second, we argue that strategy must be examined more rigorously as the mode of action by which institutional entrepreneurs engage with field structures. Third, we argue that institutional entrepreneurship, in challenging the position of incumbent actors and stable …

Corruption, Democracy And Asia-Pacific Countries, Neil Campbell, Shrabani Saha

Neil Campbell

This paper argues that the relationship between democracy and corruption is nonmonotonic. When a country shifts from autocratic rule to highly imperfect democracy (an ‘electoral democracy’) it is frequently perceived that the level of corruption increases. Conversely, when the democracy level is already relatively high (approaching ‘mature democracy’) an increase in the level of democracy is typically expected to decrease the level of corruption. To assist with our discussion of these issues, before going on to the empirical part of the paper, we look specifically at the case of South Korea to illustrate how corruption responded to an increasing level …

Financial Liberalization, Market Structure And Credit Penetration, Felipe Balmaceda Assoc Prof., Ronald Fischer Full Professor, Felipe Ramirez

Felipe Balmaceda

This paper shows that the effects of financial liberalization on the credit market of a small and capital constrained economy depend on the market structure of domestic banks prior to liberalization. Specifically, under perfect competition in the domestic credit market prior to liberalization, liberalization leads to lower domestic interest rates, in turn leading to increased credit penetration. However, when the initial market structure is one of imperfect competition, liberalization can lead to the exclusion of less wealthy entrepreneurs from the credit market. This provides a rationale for the mixed empirical evidence concerning the effects of liberalization on access to credit …

Open Data As A Foundation For Innovation: The Enabling Effect Of Free Public Sector Information For Entrepreneurs, Erik Lakomaa, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

Public open data access has a direct impact on future IT entrepreneurs' perception of ability to execute their business plans. Using high quality (50%–98% response rate) survey data from 138 Swedish IT-entrepreneurs, we find that access to public open data is considered very important for many IT-startups; 43% find open data essential for the realization of their business plan and 82% claim that access would support and strengthen the business plan. The survey also indicates a significant interest in, and willingness to pay for, public sector information data from companies that do not intend to commercialize data themselves but intend …

Labor Force Migration, Unemployment And Job Turnover, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] In this paper, we show how labor turnover considerations can be integrated into the human investment theory of migration and demonstrate that such a model provides a much better explanation for migration rates into major metropolitan areas than the conventionally-used unemployment rate. The method used here may be of interest as well to researchers working on other human investment problems that also have a multi-period dimension.

Strategic Effects Of Three-Part Tariffs Under Oligopoly, Yong Chao

Yong Chao

The distinct element of a three-part tariff, compared with linear pricing or a two-part tariff, is its quantity target within which the marginal price is zero. This quantity target instrument enriches the firm's strategy set in dictating the competition to a specific level, even in the absence of usual price discrimination motive. With general differentiated linear demand system, the competitive effect of a three-part tariff in contrast to linear pricing depends on the degree of substitutability between products: competition is intensified when two products are more differentiated, yet softened when two products are more substitutable.

Property Tax Salience And Payment Delinquency, Sebastien J. Bradley

Sebastien J Bradley

Despite only modest supporting evidence, shocks to households' personal finances are commonly cited as one of the principal causes of homeowner defaults. In this paper, I investigate the extent to which different component sources of annual variation in property tax obligations influence the probability and magnitude of property tax delinquency|a precursor to mortgage default. Under Michigan's system of property tax limitations, rational homeowners should readily anticipate changes in tax liability, making such changes an unlikely cause of delinquency, regardless of the underlying source. Looking at tax payment records for the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan for the period 2006-2009, I …

Employment Risk, Returns, And Entrepreneurship, Sarah A. Low, Stephan Weiler

Sarah A. Low

Comparing local employment portfolios against entrepreneurship, this paper finds local wage and salary job market prospects shape incentives for potential entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship may thus be more attractive in areas featuring high employment risk and/or low returns. This paper contributes to the existing regional employment portfolio literature by using more disaggregated data, at both the county and commuting zone levels. Commuting zones in particular represent a broader spectrum of labor market agglomerations across both rural and urban areas to provide the most stringent and revealing tests of the inter-relationship between local employment portfolios and the choice to pursue entrepreneurship. We find …

Conclusion: Looking To The Future, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] A number of important themes emerge from the chapters in Governing Academia. First, decentralization gives individual units—be they university campuses within a state system, colleges within a university, or departments within a college—an incentive to act in their own best interests, but less of an incentive to work toward the common good. As Heller points out, at the level of a state system, decentralization of control may lead to wasteful overlap between campuses. As Wilson shows, decentralized budgeting in the form of responsibility center management models may cause units not to maximize the quality of the education they are …

Evaluation Research And National Social Policy: An Academic Practitioner's Perspective, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Society has limited resources and many competing uses for them. I therefore take it as being an almost obvious proposition that at any point in time policy makers should strive to maximize the social benefits produced by the available funds they have to spend. This proposition implies that evaluation research should be undertaken either by or for government agencies. Policy makers need to know what benefits are being produced by each social program and the resource costs involved. They need to know which aspects of which programs are working and which programs need to be replaced.

Dead-End Jobs And Youth Unemployment: Comment, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Charles Brown has very ambitiously attempted to analyze whether the existence of "dead-end jobs" contributes to the youth unemployment problem. He assumes that the average rate of wage growth of individuals initially employed in an occupation and the proportion of these individuals who remain employed in the same industry for five years are both inversely related to the probability that individuals initially employed in the occupation find themselves in dead end-jobs. His basic methodological approach involves using data from the 1/100 sample of the 1970 Census of Population to calculate both of these variables for each three-digit occupation, merging …

Who Pays For Pensions In The State And Local Sector: Workers Or Employers?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert S. Smith

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] In 1974 Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). This complex piece of legislation, which applies only to private-sector pension plans, contains several provisions which tend to increase employers' costs of providing pensions. These include liberalized vesting rules, stringent funding requirements, and increased fiduciary responsibility and accountability. The analysis in this paper will focus on the likely effect of these provisions if they are applied to state and local government employee retirement systems. Although a public-sector variant of ERISA has yet to be passed, public employee retirement systems have recently become subject to scrutiny by various governmental …

Work Injuries And Wage Losses For Partially Disabled California Workers: Discussion, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Wayne Vroman's paper is a modest preliminary report, which is derived from an ongoing research project concerned with permanent partial disabilities and workers' compensation. The larger project will develop and implement methods for projecting postinjury earnings losses, compare actual compensation measures to these projected losses, and draw conclusions as to the adequacy and equity of workers' compensation benefits. One cannot question the usefulness of the larger project and the profession should be indebted to Vroman and his collaborators for undertaking it. One should stress, however, that the key to the success of the project will lie in their ability …

Introduction To The Book Governing Academia, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] During recent decades tuition for undergraduate students has risen at rates substantially higher than the rate of inflation at both public and private colleges and universities in the United States. These high rates of tuition increases led Congress to establish the National Commission on the Costs of Higher Education in 1997 to conduct a comprehensive review of college costs and prices and to make recommendations on how to hold tuition increases down. Parents of college students, taxpayers, and government officials all wanted to know why academic institutions can't behave more like businesses—cut their costs, increase their efficiency, and thus …

Labor Market Data Needs Relating To Antidiscrimination Activity: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Barbara Bergmann's background paper divides data needs in the antidiscrimination area into data that would be useful in the formulation of national policy and data that would be useful as an aid in enforcing the laws and executive orders against discrimination. Although the former are likely to be of greatest concern to the commission, she has performed a valuable service by discussing these interrelated needs in one place. I find much to agree with, and very little to disagree with or question, in her paper. The presentation is, in the main, an objective one and she tempers her desire …

Collective Bargaining In American Higher Education, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Daniel B. Klaff, Adam T. Kezbom, Matthew P. Nagowski

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] No discussion of governance in higher education would be complete without a consideration of the role of collective bargaining. Historically, most researchers interested in the subject have directed their attention to the unionization of faculty members. Given several recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that leave open the possibility that unionization of faculty in private colleges and universities may increase in the future, we discuss collective bargaining for faculty in the first section (Leatherman 2000, A16). Recently, however, attention has been also directed at the unionization of two other groups in the higher education workforce. Activists …