Technology licensing contracts features and diversity

Given the nature of knowledge and characteristics of the intellectual property rights system, technological transactions tend to be governed by contracts that are costly and not highly profitable. This explains why there are so few technology licensing agreements. However, in some situations, private and specific institutions tend to enable property rights to be more precise, knowledge transfers to be easier, and technology licensing agreements to be less complex to design and to run. This explains why there is a concentration of technology licensing agreements in some industries and in some relational situations. These shed light on the design of firms’ strategies to valorize intellectual assets and of public policies to stimulate innovation and diffusion.     

Is Leadership in the Eye of the Beholder? A Study of Intended and Perceived Leadership Practices and Organizational Performance

Leadership is a matter of both intentions and perceptions, which do not necessarily always match. Because employees’ motivation and commitment are only affected by leadership if they notice it, employee‐perceived leadership is expected to have a stronger correlation with organizational performance than leader‐intended leadership. This expectation is tested for transformational and transactional leadership, as both types of practices are expected to increase performance. Using a sample of 1,621 teachers and 79 Danish high school principals, the authors find that leader‐intended and employee‐perceived transformational and transactional leadership are only weakly correlated and that only employee‐perceived leadership practices (both transformational and transactional) are significantly related to objectively measured school performance. The results show that it is important to distinguish between intended and perceived leadership and that leaders should be aware of how their practices are perceived.     

House money effects on trust and reciprocity

In a typical laboratory “Investment Game” experiment, participants’ endowments are provided by the experimenter; thus, the worst case for the investor is that she loses all of her “found” money. By contrast, in naturally occurring environments, investment decisions can often lead to a loss of one’s own money. This paper investigates whether “trust” found in one-shot anonymous laboratory interaction is robust to “own money” environments. Our results show that, consistent with previous investment game results, most investors send a positive amount, and most trustees return at least the transfer amount, regardless of whether the investors purchase or are gifted their endowment. However, investments are on average lower when participants use their own money, and the fraction of maximum investments (the most “risky” investment decision) is only half as large under “own money” as it is under gifted endowments. Our results explain why one should exercise caution in placing trust in any government’s ability to spend other people’s money prudently.     

Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React

Legislators claim that how they explain their votes matters as much as or more than the roll calls themselves. However, few studies have systematically examined legislators’ explanations and citizen attitudes in response to these explanations. We theorize that legislators strategically tailor explanations to constituents in order to compensate for policy choices that are incongruent with constituent preferences, and to reinforce policy choices that are congruent. We conduct a within‐subjects field experiment using U.S. senators as subjects to test this hypothesis. We then conduct a between‐subjects survey experiment of ordinary people to see how they react to the explanatory strategies used by senators in the field experiment. We find that most senators tailor their explanations to their audiences, and that these tailored explanations are effective at currying support—especially among people who disagree with the legislators’ roll‐call positions.     

Information Aggregation and Optimal Structure of the Executive

We model two aspects of executives in parliamentary democracies: Decision‐making authority is assigned to individuals, and private information is aggregated through communication. When information is relevant to all policies and communication is private, all decisions should be centralized to a single politician. A government that holds cabinet meetings, where information is made available to all decision makers, outperforms one where communication is private: A multimember cabinet can be optimal; it need not be single peaked around the most moderate politician or ideologically connected. Centralization is nonmonotonic in the degree of ideological divergence. In a large cabinet, all power should be given to the most moderate politician. Even when uncertainty is policy specific and a single politician is informed on each policy, power should never be fully decentralized. Our model provides a justification for centralized authority and cabinet meetings that enhance the quality of policy.     

Regulating forced labour and combating human trafficking: the relevance of historical definitions in a contemporary perspective

Forced labour has been regulated since 1930 on the basis of the ILO Convention on Forced Labour, and since 1957 on the basis of the ILO Abolition of Forced Labour Convention. In 2000 forced labour was included as one form of exploitation covered by the UN Trafficking Protocol, which situated trafficking into a context of transnational organised crime. In 2014 the ILO adopted a Protocol on Forced Labour, making a link between trafficking and forced labour. The aim of this article is to explore how forced labour came to be regulated and defined in these four treaties. The 1930 ILO Convention came about in a specific historical and political context, yet the 1930 definition remains in use even though the interpretation of forced labour, particularly as it relates to trafficking, has changed. This article focuses on the issue of trafficking for the purpose of forced labour within the context of migration and labour exploitation, and discusses the relevance of historical definitions of forced labour in the current discourse that sees human trafficking mainly as a security threat. It argues that a rigid interpretation of forced labour is not always useful in understanding forms of labour exploitation, at least in a contemporary European migratory perspective. The article calls for a broad interpretation of forced labour, which takes into account also subtle forms of control and coercion.     

The impact of online media on stakeholder engagement and the governance of corporations

Online tools such as social media provide new opportunities for citizens and stakeholder groups to be informed, identify common interests, express and share opinions and demands, organize, and coordinate interventions. Therefore, the Internet could be expected to increase stakeholder engagement in corporate affairs and facilitate good governance. In order to provide an overview of current findings on the impact of online media on governance and stakeholder engagement, we conduct a systematic literature review. Our analysis reveals five topical categories of inquiry. We analyze studies from the field of business participation and find a strong bias towards consumer engagement and marketing issues. Only few studies are found to critically explore the effect of online media on power and value distribution between corporations and stakeholders. We then turn to the more established field of political and civic participation in order to further analyze antecedents, forms, and outcomes of online engagement in civic affairs, and derive a framework for future research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.