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This research examines how the cost performance of defense contracts varies among the Air Force, Army, Navy, and the Department of Defense (DoD) and among five major defense contractors: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. Data for these analyses was extracted from the recently established Defense Acquisition Management Information Retrieval (DAMIR) web-based interface for management information on Major Defense Acquisition Programs (MDAP). Note that, in addition to the three military services, MDAP data is also reported for DoD itself.

Data analysis indicates that the Navy ranks last among the military services and DoD in cost performance for MDAP contracts, while the Air Force ranks best. Of the defense contractors, Raytheon ranks last in cost performance and General Dynamics is next to last. Furthermore, the Navy contracts more frequently with Raytheon and General Dynamics than do the other services or DoD. Explanatory factors for poor cost performance may be due to factors such as the Navy's lack of oversight, the quality of the acquisition workforce, the defense contractors’ cost inefficiency, ethical lapses, or weak corporate governance, or combinations of these factors.

In addition, the schedule performance data was also identified. Tests of statistical significance on the schedule performance difference generally yield no results except for one relationship which indicates that the Navy is more likely to have Acquisition Program Baseline (APB) schedule breaches than its counterparts. Finally, cost performance data is examined for statistically significant differences between the two major categories of defense contracts: fixed-price contracts and cost-plus contracts. However, no significant findings were discovered.

Purpose – The negotiated order branch of symbolic interaction used to examine the process by which welfare regulations were dramatically changed in which the forty-year old AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) was abandoned, and a new W-2 (Welfare Works) welfare reform effort was developed and socially negotiated with the Federal government and in the State of Wisconsin. We probe interactions within the mesodomain of four levels of actors: the Federal government; State-level government in both the executive and legislative branches; county-level government; and public and private welfare service delivery agencies.

Method – Qualitative, naturalistic, ten-year field study entailing interviews and archival analyses.

Findings – The reform effort involved the mutual constitution of the W-2 social structure and the social interactions that surrounded it through such strategies as negotiation, conflict, manipulation, coercion, exchange, bargaining, collusion, power brokering, and rhetoric, which were all circumscribed by and interpenetrated with the predecessor AFDC rule system. In turn, the welfare budget was reduced from $652m to $257m. We observed that the macro structure of welfare shaped the micro social actions of a variety of actors, and that micro social action by institutional entrepreneurs reconstituted structure of welfare policy in what proved to be a moving matrix.

Research implications – Implications were directed at extending and refining the negotiated order perspective.

Social implications – Given that the number of welfare recipients was reduced from 300,000 to 10,000, their fate in a weak economy was explored.

Originality – Chapter extends symbolic interaction concepts to examine a contested social domain.

All that we know about the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) labour market in China comes from the studies of public listed companies and State-owned Enterprises (SOEs). This is the first attempt to examine the operation of the CEO labour market across all industrial sectors of the Chinese economy. We find that the influence of the State extends beyond SOEs into many privately owned firms. Government is often involved in CEO appointments in domestic firms and, when this is the case, the CEO has less job autonomy and is less likely to have pay linked to firm performance. Nevertheless, we find that incentive schemes are commonplace and include contracts linking CEO pay directly to firm performance, annual bonus schemes, the posting of performance bonds, and holding company stock. The elasticity of pay with respect to company performance is one or more in two-fifths of the cases where CEOs have performance contracts, suggesting many face high-powered incentives. We also show that State-owned and domestic privately owned firms are more likely than foreign-owned firms to use incentive contracts.

Policymakers worldwide have proposed a new contract – the ‘social impact bond’ (SIB) – which they claim can allay the underperformance afflicting not-for-profits, by tying the private returns of (social) investors to the success of social programs. We investigate experimentally how SIBs perform in a first-best world, where investors are rational and able to obtain hard information on not-for-profits’ performance. Using a principal-agent multitasking framework, we compare SIBs to inputs-based contracts (IBs) and performance-based contracts (PBs). IBs are based on a piece-rate mechanism, PBs on a non-binding bonus mechanism, and SIBs on a mechanism that, due to the presence of an investor, offers full enforceability. Although SIBs can perfectly enforce good behaviour, they also require the principal (i.e., government) to relinquish control over the agent’s (i.e., not-for-profit’s) payoff to a self-regarding investor, which prevents the principal and agent from being reciprocal. In spite of these drawbacks, in our experiment SIBs outperformed IBs and PBs. We therefore conclude that, at least in our laboratory test-bed, SIBs can allay the underperformance of not-for-profits.

The goal of interfirm contract research is to examine how formal contracts impact transaction success, firm relationships, and ultimately individual and collaborative firm performance when two or more firms interact. Most contract literature uses an economic lens to examine contracts: the property rights perspective, agency theory, and TCE. Property rights-based contract research (Coase, 1960; Demsetz, 1967; Alchian & Demsetz, 1973; Cheung, 1969) examines how efficient property rights assignment mitigates ex ante hazards. Similarly, agency theory-based contract research (e.g., Ross, 1973; Jensen & Meckling, 1976; Harris & Raviv, 1979) investigates how incentive alignment between the principal and agent leads to the mitigation of ex ante hazards. In contrast, TCE-based research (Williamson, 1975, 1985) examines contractual safeguards to mitigate both ex ante and ex post hazards (e.g., Joskow, 1985, 1987, 1990; Crocker & Reynolds, 1993). Because the three economic perspectives dominate, most research addresses how contracts are used to mitigate ex ante or ex post hazards. Therefore, many topics still need to be investigated to enhance our understanding of interfirm contracting.

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) creates rights for covered employees, defines conduct that violates those rights, and deems that conduct an unfair labor practice. But while given broad remedial powers under the Act, the Board's options were curtailed by the Supreme Court's limit on the use of deterrence as an express remedial justification. The Board was left with a strongly make-whole, i.e., ex-post, focus to undo the consequences of a violation.

Put differently, the current NLRA remedies reflect a pay-or-play philosophy. The goal is restoration after the fact, using ex-post remedies to give parties the benefit or status quo that they expected. An actor willing to pay may use a cost–benefit analysis and strategically choose to violate the Act, accepting the make-whole remedies later. But the Act created ex-ante statutory rights, not agreed-upon contractual terms. By statutory enactment, employees are given something of value deemed worthy of protection. Assigning value to compliance with the law in the first instance not only prevents sometimes irreparable harm but also reaffirms the inherent value of the right itself.

The impact of the Board's limited remedies is therefore a broad value-driven one. Without ex-ante deterrence, the available ex-post make-whole remedial options make a normative statement about individuals' rights under the Act: those rights may not be inherently worth enough to incentivize legal compliance. The make-whole focus can imply that financial compensation for the portion of harm that can be calculated and “undoing” some nonfinancial effects is sufficient. There is little drive to deter infringement before the fact. By examining the remedial philosophy behind contrasting approaches in the common law of torts and contract, this Article asserts that the current remedial strictures and framework undermine both the Act and the worth of its rights in the eyes of the public and the employees who hold them.

This study examines the economic consequences of non-financial measures of performance in contracts between health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and primary care physicians (PCPs). HMOs have expanded contractual arrangements to give physicians not only financial incentives to control costs, but also to make the physicians accountable for the quality of patient care. Specifically, we examine how quality provisions in HMO–PCP contracts affect utilization (patient length of stay in the hospital), patient satisfaction, and HMO costs. Our results show that quality clauses are associated with a statistically significant increase in utilization (29 more hospital days annually per 1,000 HMO enrollees). Further, inclusion of quality clauses in PCP contracts also led to a significant increase in patient satisfaction, but no associated increase in HMO costs. Overall, these results suggest that quality clauses in PCP contracts can increase value by increasing customer satisfaction without significantly increasing cost.