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on Project, Program and Portfolio Management |
| By: | Michalis Drouvelis (Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.); Daniele Nosenzo (Department of Economics, University of Nottingham.); Martin Sefton (Department of Economics, University of Nottingham.) |
| Abstract: | We study, experimentally, how two alternative incentive mechanisms affect team performance, and how a team chooses between alternative mechanisms. We study a group incentive mechanism, where team output is shared equally among team members, and a hierarchical mechanism team output is allocated by a team leader. Our experiment examines these mechanisms in both homogeneous teams, where workers have identical productivities and in heterogeneous teams, where workers vary in their productivity. Our results are robust to whether teams are homogeneous or heterogeneous. We find that output is higher when a leader has the power to allocate output, but this mechanism also generates large differences between earnings of leaders and other team members. When team members can choose how much of team output is to be shared equally and how much is to be allocated by a leader, they tend to restrict the leader’s power to distributing less than half of the pie. |
| Keywords: | Team Production, Leadership, Reward Power, Delegation, Experiment |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcdx:2015-05&r=ppm |
| By: | Sophie BOUTILLIER (Clersé (UMR-CNRS 8019), Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale); Dimitri UZUNIDIS (UTC, Greece) |
| Abstract: | Depuis le début des années 1980, la société entrepreneuriale a émergé. L’emploi salarié reste dans les économies développées la forme principale d’emploi, mais l’emploi devient plus précaire (travail intérimaire, contrat de travail à durée déterminée, augmentation du chômage, etc.). D’un autre côté, la création d’entreprise est conçue dans le cadre de politiques économiques comme un moyen de créer des emplois, d’innover ou de créer une activité économique dans des régions et les secteurs en déclin. L’objet de ce document est de présenter les caractéristiques de la société entrepreneuriale et et d’analyser de façon critique les politiques publiques d’aide à l’entrepreneuriat. Since the beginning of the 1980s the entrepreneurial society has emerged. In developed countries salaried employment is still the main form of employment, but it has become more precarious, due to factors such as an increase in unemployment, temporary employment, fixed-term contracts, etc. On the other hand new business start-ups are now understood by politicians as constituting a tool for job creation, innovation, and the redevelopment of areas or sectors in crisis. The purpose of this document is to present the characteristics of the entrepreneurial company and discuss public policies to support entrepreneurship.lization of new product technologies and services. Codification processes, knowledge sharing and transfer, project financing, informational and risk sharing asymmetries have all been affected by that trend towards opening up innovation models. In that view, the co-evolution of innovation models and knowledge management processes represents a major challenge for firms. This joint evolution raises important issues that both economists and organizational theorists that this contribution seeks to address. |
| Keywords: | Entrepreneur, Entrepreneuriat, Salariat, Innovation, Changement |
| JEL: | L26 E2 O3 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rii:rridoc:45&r=ppm |
| By: | Omotola Awojobi (Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus); Glenn P. Jenkins (Queen’s University, Canada and Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus) |
| Abstract: | Hydropower investments have been subject to intense criticism over environmental issues and the common experience with cost uncertainty. In this study we address the issue of uncertainty in cost projections by applying reference class forecasting (RCF) in order to improve the reliability of costs used for making decisions under uncertainty. This technique makes it possible to closely link contingency estimates to the likely incidence of uncertainty of construction costs for hydroelectric dams. A case study, the Bujagali dam in Uganda, is used to demonstrate how investment appraisal can be enhanced to better account for the risk of cost overruns. While this project has suffered from cost overruns, the net benefits of the dam are still expected to be substantial. We conclude that if historical information from the major financiers of dams is accessible, learning from the past can help to reduce the cost of uncertainty in power planning worldwide. |
| Keywords: | Hydropower; cost uncertainty; investment appraisal; reference class forecasting; Bujagali. |
| JEL: | D81 O21 |
| Date: | 2015–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qed:dpaper:278&r=ppm |
| By: | ONISHI Koichiro; OWAN Hideo; NAGAOKA Sadao |
| Abstract: | Using novel panel data on Japanese inventors, we investigate how monetary incentives affect corporate inventors' behavior and performance, as well as how they interact with the strength of intrinsic motivation. In order to identify the effects, we exploit inventors' responses to a policy change in Japan in the early 2000s that forced firms to strengthen monetary incentives for inventors. Our major findings are as follows: (1) while introducing or increasing revenue-based payments is associated with a small improvement in patent quality, such schemes significantly decrease the use of science in research and development (R&D) projects; (2) the above positive effect of revenue-based payment on patent quality is smaller and the negative effect on scientific intensity is greater in research areas where risk heterogeneity among potential projects is greater; (3) the strength of intrinsic motivation is significantly associated with the inventor's patent productivity; and (4) strong intrinsic motivation weakens the marginal effect of monetary incentive on inventive productivity, and reinforces the negative effect of monetary incentive on scientific intensity in research areas where risk heterogeneity among potential projects is sufficiently large. The results are consistent with our model predictions and imply that strengthening monetary incentives changes project selection toward less risky and less exploratory ones. |
| Date: | 2015–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:15071&r=ppm |
| By: | AfDB AfDB |
| Date: | 2015–04–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:adb:adbwps:2160&r=ppm |
| By: | Amel ATTOUR (Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion (GREDEG UMR 7321) - Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis); Pierre BARBAROUX (Centre de recherche de l’Armée de l’air (CReA)) |
| Abstract: | Dans un environnement économique turbulent, marqué par l’extension géographique des marchés et l’intensification de la concurrence, les firmes ont peu à peu adapté leurs modèles d’organisation des activités d’innovation. Ces adaptations se traduisent par l’émergence de nouvelles formes organisationnelles facilitant la collaboration entre parties prenantes du processus d’innovation. Pour rendre compte de ces changements, les chercheurs ont renouvelé les cadres d’analyse du management stratégique de l’innovation. Innovation collaborative, innovation ouverte, communautés d’innovation, living labs … autant de concepts développés par la recherche pour étudier les changements opérés par les entreprises pour gérer leurs activités innovantes. Ce renouvellement des cadres théoriques ne concerne pas uniquement les modes d’organisation de l’innovation. Les dispositifs de gestion des connaissances déployés par les firmes pour innover changent également de nature. Le changement concerne l’ensemble des processus cognitifs impliqués lors des différentes phases du processus d’innovation, de l’invention à la commercialisation de nouveaux produits, services, technologies, procédés et organisations. Sont particulièrement concernés les processus de création, de partage, et d’intégration des connaissances mobilisées pour innover, mais également de protection de la propriété intellectuelle, de financement des projets innovants, de gestion des asymétries cognitives et informationnelles, et de partage des risques associés. Cette évolution conjointe des modèles d’organisation de l’innovation et des processus de gestion des connaissances représente un défi majeur pour les entreprises, ainsi qu’un objet de recherche naissant que cet article se propose d’explorer. In a turbulent economic environment, characterized by the geographical extension of markets and hyper-competition, firms gradually adapted their innovation models. New organizational forms thus emerged, in which innovative firms collaborate with a variety of stakeholders (e.g., suppliers, customers, universities, R&D companies, consultants, users’ communities, financial organization, public actors…) to develop innovation. The foregoing renewal does not concern innovation models only. Knowledge management processes deployed by firms to innovate also evolve. By adapting their innovation models, firms altered the various cognitive activities supporting the invention and commercialization of new product technologies and services. Codification processes, knowledge sharing and transfer, project financing, informational and risk sharing asymmetries have all been affected by that trend towards opening up innovation models. In that view, the co-evolution of innovation models and knowledge management processes represents a major challenge for firms. This joint evolution raises important issues that both economists and organizational theorists that this contribution seeks to address. |
| Keywords: | Innovation ouverte, Innovation collaborative, Gestion des connaissances |
| JEL: | D85 O32 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rii:rridoc:44&r=ppm |
| By: | Löwenstein, Wilhelm; Shakya, Martina; Hansen, Marc; Gorkhali, Sanjay |
| Abstract: | Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can work as an effective means towards minimising business risk and maintaining amicable relationships with diverse groups of stakeholders. While many studies have examined the impacts of CSR on firm value and customer perceptions, little is known about the effects of a philanthropic engagement of the private sector on external stakeholder groups, such as local communities in developing countries. This paper examines welfare effects of six community-based water supply projects that were supported by a thermal power plant in Sri Lanka as part of the company's CSR strategy. The implications of these CSR activities are analysed from the perspective of the project beneficiaries, the majority of them poor smallholder farmers. Household production and labour income functions are estimated from survey data to analyse two pathways through which the water projects affect the beneficiaries' lives. First, the households get individual access to water that allows for the irrigation of home gardens, increases land productivity and changes households' farm output and income (irrigation channel). Second, the projects have an indirect effect on households' income via a time channel, i.e. the effect that due to the individual water access the households save time as there is no need any more to fetch water from far away water bodies or wells. This allows for a reallocation of labour time for other productive income-generating activities. Despite the considerable costs that households have to bear for an individual water connection, the study finds a systematic, positive net income effect of the projects on the beneficiaries via both the irrigation and the time channel. Qualitative evidence supports these findings and also reveals additional positive, non-monetarised project impacts. As the water projects would not have been realised without the subsidiary financial support of the power plant, it is concluded that the company's CSR engagement is increasing the welfare of the beneficiary communities. |
| Keywords: | Corporate Social Responsibility; Productivity Method; Theory-based Impact Evaluation; Club Goods; Stakeholder; Smallholder Farmers; Community-Based Water Supply; Sri Lanka; Welfare Changes |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bom:ieewps:210&r=ppm |
| By: | Elisabetta Iossa (DEF and CEIS, Università di Roma "Tor Vergata" - IEFE-Bocconi, CEPR) |
| Abstract: | We review international practice in concession-based public private partnerships (PPPs) for highways, in the light of the economic theory of incentives, procurement and regulation. In particular, we analyse alternative funding mechanisms to cover highway costs, and their impact on demand risk allocation, incentives, cost of capital, and likelihood of renegotiation. We note how real tolls must pursue a number of contrasting objectives, which may be best served by introducing tariff discrimination. We discuss alternative tariff regulations used in practice and warn against tariff mechanisms that transfer demand risk to users and depart from the principles of price cap regulation. We highlight that it is desirable to transfer some traffic risk to the concessionaire but the level of risk transfer should be lower at the beginning of the contract, especially for greenfield projects where little demand information is initially available. We discuss the procurement of highway PPPs, focusing on the choice of the bidding variables, and on the distortions that renegotiations introduce at bidding stage. We stress the importance of strong institutions and absence of political interference in regulatory matters, and we highlight the benefit of respecting and standardizing contract terms. |
| Keywords: | contracting out, highways, incentives, procurement, regulation, transport |
| JEL: | D21 L2 L33 L5 L9 |
| Date: | 2015–06–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:345&r=ppm |
| By: | Eduardo A. Haddad; Michael Lahr, Dina N. Elshahawany, Moises Vassallo |
| Abstract: | We develop an interregional computable general equilibrium model to help assess the ex ante impact of transportation infrastructure policies in Egypt. The model is integrated with a GIS network. We illustrate the analytical capabilities of the model by looking at the domestic integration of the country. Improvements of transportation costs among Egyptian governorates and of their links to the broader world economy are considered in stylized simulations. The results provide quantitative and qualitative insights (general equilibrium effects) into trade-offs commonly faced by policy makers when dealing with transportation infrastructure projects in a spatial context. In the case of Egypt, there seems to be an important trade-off between efficiency and regional equity: projects that produce potential higher impacts on national GDP also tend to contribute more to regional concentration. |
| Keywords: | Transportation cost; infrastructure; regional analysis; spatial general equilibrium. |
| JEL: | R11 R13 R4 |
| Date: | 2015–06–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spa:wpaper:2015wpecon10&r=ppm |