We conducted a survey covering 20% of villages with 200-1000 population in rural Guinea-Bissau. We interviewed household heads, care-givers of children, and their teachers and schools. We analysed results from 9,947 children, aged 7-17, tested for literacy and numeracy competency. Only 27% of...

This paper studies the role of intrinsic motivation, reputation, and reciprocity in driving open source software innovation. Unlike previous literature based on survey data, we exploit the observed pattern of contributions - the .revealed preference. of developers - to infer the underlying...

This paper examines the nature of virtual teams and their place in the networked economy. It presents a framework for categorising virtual teams and argues that fundamental changes have taken place in the business environment which force people and organisations to operate in 'two spaces'...

After a characterization of the cost-oriented assembly line balancing problem it will be shown that by loading the stations maximally the cost-oriented optimum can be missed. Instead of loading the stations maximally the criterion two-stations-rule a has to be used. For generating optimal...

This paper is focused on the solution quality and computing time requirements of heuristic methods for cost-oriented assembly line balancing. It is based on a recent paper (Amen, International Journal of Production Economics 68 (2000), which describes in detail the solution process of existent...

This paper is concerned with cost-oriented assembly line balancing. This problem occurs especially in the final assembly of automotives, consumer durables or personal computers, where production is still very labour- intensive, and where the wage rates depend on the requirements and...

The current study examined the impact of the human resource function and financing strategyon the financial performance of 104 UK manufacturing firms. Hypotheses are drawn from aresource-based perspective on human resource management and a financial theoryperspective on capital structure....

Contingency formulations of Human Resource Management (HRM) theory suggest thatthe effectiveness of HRM practices should vary across firms. This study examinedwhether the relationship between HRM practices and productivity in manufacturingcompanies is contingent upon organizational climate and...

Consistent with a growing number of models about affect and behaviour and with arecognition that perception alone provides no impetus for action, it was predicted thatassociations between company climate and productivity would be mediated by average levelof job satisfaction. In a study of 42...

The present paper develops a basic framework for evaluating and optimizing profits in a business operation. In developing a business we are often faced with an infinity of choices ranging from what products or services to sell and what customers to target to how to structure and manage the...