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Uncertainty means that transaction costs have to be incurred by organisations whenever they make an agreement. These costs include time and money spent searching, drawing up and enforcing contracts and in dealing with contingencies. The concept of transaction costs is traced from its originator, economist Ronald Coase, to its more recent development by David Kreps. Good reputations, themselves a product of successful corporate communications activities, tend to reduce internal and external transaction costs. Given a competitive environment those firms with lower transaction costs, as a result of high reputations, will tend to survive better than those with weak ones.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework to determine the optimal balance between fixed and variable compensation costs incurred by a firm.

In 2004 Burke and Terry used an economic framework to demonstrate how variable pay can reduce operating leverage and hence increase a firm's value. Their theme is extended to develop a conceptual framework for ascertaining the optimal balance between fixed and variable pay components.

As demonstrated with an example, the choice between fixed and variable pay affects the firm's employee productivity, operating leverage, market risk, cost of capital, and cash flows. The ultimate choice of the variable and fix compensation “mix” should meet the goal of management – maximizing the firm value, and hence the shareholders' wealth.

Evidence suggests there is a growing use of variable pay schemes in firms to increase employee motivation and productivity.

The framework allows a firm's cash flows to vary due to the changes in the variable pay component.

The purpose of the present study was to identify common stressors and the magnitude of stress reactivity in police officers during the course of general duty police work. Using heart rate as a primary indicator of autonomic nervous system activation, coupled with observed physical activity data collected through 76 full shift ride‐alongs, this study differentiates between physical and psycho‐social stress. The results, confirming previous research based on self‐report data alone, demonstrate that police officers experience both physical and psycho‐social stress on the job, anticipating stress as they go about their work, while suffering anticipatory stress at the start of each shift. The results demonstrated that the highest levels of stress occur just prior to and during critical incidents, and that officers do not fully recover from that stress before leaving their shift. Overall, the results illustrate the need to consider stress reactivity and repressors in the assessment of police officer stress while clearly demonstrating the need for debriefing after critical incidents and increased training in stress management and coping strategies.

This paper aims to identify and prioritize the dimensions that impact employee social sustainability in the airline industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The five main criteria (employee well-being, communication, management support, reward and control system and training) and 18 sub-criteria were identified from the literature. The sample comprised four experts covering the HR, finance and training functions from a major UAE airline organization. Applying the analytical-hierarchy-process (AHP) methodology resulted in obtaining priority weights for the factors assigned to employee-social-sustainability implementation.

Management support was found to have the highest priority among the study dimensions impacting employee social sustainability. Surprisingly, reward system was found to be the least important dimension.

The study was carried out on a single airline organization, limiting the generalizability of the findings. Future studies should be extended to cater to different organizational contexts and varying operational conditions.

The findings should be of value to human resource management and policymakers in developing countries, such as the UAE, where employee social sustainability should be sought as a means to develop an efficient and sustainable workforce in different industrial sectors.

This study is among the few pioneering studies that focus on employee social sustainability. The use of AHP to prioritize employee-social-sustainability dimensions is also considered pioneering within the field and is anticipated to support future studies, and a deeper understanding, of employee social sustainability.

A unifying theme apparent at this year's Symposium was the need for balance when lifting the veil of bank secrecy: (1) the need to protect civil liberties versus the need to fight crime; (2) the bank's need to balance its role as policeman while furthering its commercial objectives; (3) the necessity of weighing international cooperation against the awareness that individual nations jealously guard their own legislative regime; (4) the dichotomy of technology that serves both to protect and penetrate secrecy; (5) the balance required when investigating crimes.

User-generated content comprises an important asset for many web sites. The purpose of this study is to show how extraversion, a basic dimension of human personality, is positively related to this activity, both directly and through its impact on social identity expressiveness.

The data come from an online survey of 1,308 online users who actively contribute content to social media.

The results support hypotheses that extraversion and social identity expressiveness are positively related to active use of social media web sites, and that extraversion is related to active use both directly and indirectly through social identity expressiveness.

The findings are limited to the selection of social media to which the participants belong and provide only a partial picture of the motives behind active use of such web sites. Despite the limitations, the findings do identity two active user motivations.

An understanding of the psychology underlying active social media use can aid managers in developing marketing strategies to encourage such use. Strategies that emphasize one's ability to express oneself freely should enhance active use, especially for the more extraverted active users.

This is the first study to combine both extraversion with social identity expressiveness to partially explain active use of social media, thus enhancing the understanding of the motivations for active use of social media.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying differences in the initial and ongoing development of business leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to see if causal links might be identified that could explain the leadership elements that lie beneath the US' productivity advantage.

Research was undertaken on a Fulbright Scholarship to study management and leadership development. The information was gathered through semi‐structured interviews with 45 internationally experienced human resource managers and management and leadership development practitioners in the public, private and not‐for‐profit sectors across eight states in the USA.

The determinates of business success are highly structural in nature. However, analysis indicates that dramatic improvements in productivity are readily, and universally, available to all business enterprises simply through the adoption of globally existing best practices.

The results obtained from this work are the observations of well‐informed, managers and development practitioners. A high proportion of those interviewed had direct personal experience of working with managers in the UK and Ireland. Their views and opinions are, of course, anecdotal in nature but, where possible, they are either validated or rejected with reference to the current academic literature available.

For private enterprise and public sector policy makers alike, there are clear lessons on the value of investment in leadership and management development as one of the most cost‐effective ways to encourage higher levels of business and economic performance.

The paper provides an analysis of some of the factors that contribute to the persistent productivity gap between the USA and the UK and offers a range of action areas that would help to improve business and economic performance.

This paper aims to offer an extensive empirical case study analysis by investigating housing affordability in Turkey as a whole, and in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir over the period of 2006 and 2017 and its sub-periods.

This paper develops a theoretically informed model to assess affordability using complementary methodologies in quantitative analysis. This study seeks to help outline the nature of the problem in aggregate level and in the cities; it also seeks to offer lessons about how to address measurement and modelling challenges in emergent market contexts by constructing aggregate-/city-level housing cost-to-income (HCI) ratio, adjusted HCI (AHCI) ratio, housing affordability index (HAI) and effective HAI sensitive to multiple calculation methodologies and alternative data set involving income distribution and poverty tranches.

HCI, AHCI, HAI and EHAI models generally suggest the parallel results: housing is not affordable in Turkey and in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir except for the highest income groups. The evidence implies that besides macroeconomic instabilities, distorted interest rates and short average mortgage maturity, poverty and unequal income/wealth distributions are the main reasons of the Turkish housing affordability crisis specifically heightened in metropolitan areas such as in Istanbul.

The evidence provides an insight on housing affordability problems in Turkey. However, small sample size and short observation period create a limit for generalisation of the findings. Further analysis would be required to illustrate how housing affordability changes in different cities of Turkey in a longer period.

By using empirical approaches, this paper helps to understand how serious housing affordability problems of Turkey in aggregate and urban levels. This evidence helps to explain declining ownership ratio in low-income groups and in urban areas. Reliable explanations on existing housing crisis of Turkey also help to develop affordable housing policies.

Declining housing affordability and homeownership ratio may translate as the rising housing inequality and insecurity among Turkish households. Moreover, better affordability values of higher income groups suggest that existing inequality, economic/social segmentation, and hence social tension between high and low income groups, may further increase. In this respect, the authors suggest socially important policies such as reducing income/wealth inequalities and increasing affordable housing supply.

This study offers a detailed empirical case study analysis that can be used as an exemplar of how to overcome data constraints in other evolving housing market contexts. This study sets out an approach overcoming the challenges of measurement. This study also combines existing methodological approaches with the modified variables to provide a more realistic aggregate-/urban-level housing affordability picture. The authors calculated some parts of housing affordability ratio and index series using discretionary income, minimum wage and effective minimum wage to show the variations of different measurement approaches. Some constructed series are also sensitive to income distribution and poverty thresholds. Collectively, this empirical approach, developed by using emerging market data, provides a contribution to the literature.

The article introduces Edmund Burke’s world‐view and its implications for public administration. From Burke’s idea about human nature, tradition, law and representation, it has been argued that in a Burkean world, administrative discretion is essential and inevitable. By using their discretionary power, Burke emphasized that public administrators as virtual representatives will meet the ends of the law made by elected representatives. Also to build a tradition and ethical foundation for administration, Burke argued for a unified administration. Given human fallibility and self‐interest such a unified body can internally check administrative actions. Furthermore, in order to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Burke’s thought, the paper compares and contrasts this Burkean view of public administration with the views of other influential scholars in public administration. Important similarities exist that show that his views continue to demonstrate fruitful application in the art of governance.

Sparked by the September 11 event, ethnic and religious diversity in the American culture has opened a new dialogue about tolerance to foreign cultures and religions. Using Burke’s views about morality and religious tolerance, this paper argues how ethical guidelines of public administrators ought to be sought from a universal moral law derived from natural principles and constitutional values of the regime. The argument focuses on Burkean prudence as a practical application of moral law and a guide for public administrators in a diverse global environment. Furthermore, it argues civil law to be inadequate in situations where the majority favors a particular opinion against a minority population. By acknowledging a universal moral law, public administrators can play a dual role as individuals building human relations in a diverse culture, and as public servants upholding Constitutional values to preserve the integrity of public institutions