BUSCADOR RECOLECTA

Theoretical debate suggests at least three strategies for firms to provide training to employees in the same job position: individualized and egalitarian with or without adaptation to the abilities of the recruited employees. The article provides a formal framework for deriving distinctive empirical implications regarding the relationship of these strategies with the firms' selection policies, which are tested using a dataset of blue-collar workers in Spanish industrial plants. The evidence is consistent with the empirical implications of the egalitarian strategy with adaptation. This strategy entails providing the same level of training to all workers in the same job position and setting this level according to the average ability of recruited workers. Paradoxically, this strategy has not been used to interpret the results of the existing empirical literature., Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (R&D project: ECO 2017-86305-C4-2-R) is gratefully acknowledged.

Interconnected autonomous teams (IAT) reflect a human resources policy of organizing employees into a network of autonomous teams and allowing individuals to work on more than one of those teams. This paper studies how such a policy influences the productivity effects of profit sharing (PS). We first argue that the presence of IAT could mitigate the 'free rider' problem in each team of the network. Next, using the European Working Conditions Survey, we document a positive relationship between employee productivity and the interaction between PS and IAT. We interpret this result as a confirmation that IAT might indeed alleviate the 'free rider' problem associated with profit sharing schemes., Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (R&D projects ECO 2017-86305-C4-2-R and PGC2018–093542–B–I00)

The paper analyses three underexplored issues in the entrepreneurship capital spillover literature, namely, its local nature, the generators and the receptors of such spillovers. For that purpose, we take advantage of the Ecuadorian census of establishments. Unlike previous evidence, we can estimate the spillovers at the establishment level, compute the entrepreneurship capital at the local level, and compare different permissiveness levels in the application of registration and tax legislation to businesses (i.e., the relative importance of the informal economy). In general, we find entrepreneurship capital spillovers at the local level. The spillover effects are lower when the entrepreneurship capital has been accumulated in informal businesses. By contrast, informal, large and more technologically developed establishments benefit more from these spillover effects. The paper discusses the implications of those findings for the design of public policies for promoting entrepreneurship.

We investigate whether the impact of direct support for business investment in R&D and innovation varies over the business cycle. We address several questions: whether firms that obtain public support in a recession differ from firms that obtain it during expansions; whether the impact of support is smaller in recessions than in expansions, and whether effects vary with the treatment pattern. Using firm-level data from Spain during the period 2005 to 2014, we combine propensity score matching and difference-in-differences methods to estimate firms' response to direct support in different phases of the cycle. Two findings stand out. First, while the impact of support on monetary investment in innovation is pro-cyclical, it is countercyclical in terms of the employee-time allocation to innovation activities. Second, the additionality of a one-year treatment is smaller than that of longer treatments, or repeate program participation. Firms receiving public support during the recession have assigned more employee time to innovation activities than a matched control group, preventing a decline of knowledge capital during the big recession

Research Question/Issue In this comprehensive literature review, we synthesize and analyze the current state of academic research regarding the relatively understudied relationship between the type of owners and board governance. Research Findings/Insights Our review of the existing literature at the intersection of ownership and board governance research discusses how six distinct ownership types pertaining to family, lone founder, corporation, institutional investor, state, and venture capitalista shape board governance, defined as board structure, composition, and processes. We also uncover the influence of ownership type on board functional performance (i.e., monitoring, resource provision, and strategic involvement) and the implications of these owner-board relationships for a variety of firm outcomes (related to performance and compliance). Theoretical/Academic Implications We present identifiable patterns in board governance and functional performance associated with each ownership type and their respective implications for a wide range of firm outcomes. We then propose seven core emerging themes that deserve further scholarly attention. Practitioner/Policy Implications Our analysis cautions against the application of the "one-size-fits-all" best-practices approach in board governance advocated by policy makers, scholars, and corporate governance activists and underscores the need to consider the contingent effects of different owners' behaviors and interests in shaping and assessing board governance.

While it has long been recognized that boards of directors perform two primary functions - monitoring and resource provision - little research has systematically examined the relationship between these two functions in public corporations. Given the growing external emphasis on the monitoring function by investors and advocates of corporate governance reforms, it is important to understand how such an emphasis impacts the resource provision function. In addition to identifying the composition of the nominating committee as a key to understanding the relationship, we propose two mechanisms through which the formation of an independent nominating committee in response to the external emphasis on monitoring leads to a decline in board resource provision. One mechanism is through a decline in information sharing between top managers and the nominating committee in new director selection, which results in a divergence between board capital and the firm's specific resource needs. The other is through decreased trust between the CEO and the board, which results in a less collaborative CEO-board relationship. To alleviate this negative impact that an external emphasis on monitoring has on resource provision, we propose that boards can bring non-CEO executives back onto nominating committees as inside directors. Our theoretical analysis contributes to the understanding of how the composition of the nominating committee influences board monitoring and resource provision, and has important implications for corporate governance research and practices.

[EN] This paper studies the effects of legal reforms associated with defence and public procurement on firm performance. With this aim, a theoretical framework for the reaction of defence firms to regulatory changes is developed. Its predictions have been empirically assessed using the last reforms implemented in Spain. Our results suggest that these new regulations have allowed the main defence contractors to outperform the other defence contractors in terms of productivity, having no effect on profitability. These findings are in line with theoretical priors. Therefore, it can be claimed that governmental interventions have had an effect on firm performance. We also provide evidence that, while the procurement procedures and the contract law put into place in 2011 have principally affected the productivity of large firms, the centralization process established in 2014 has exerted a higher influence on SMEs., This work was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science through grants ECO2016-76255-P and ECO2017-86305-C4-2-R, RTI2018-095799-B-I00; Government of Aragon - Spain-and FEDER COMPETE (S52_17R) research group and the Defence University Centre Zaragoza grants 2017-21 and 2018-12.

[EN] We propose an Income Contingent Loan that defers the payment of university fees and charges a fixed proportion of gross income for 30 years or until the debt is written off. Under these conditions, some participants in the scheme will have insufficient income to fully repay their loan balances. The deficit will be covered by the taxpayer, who ultimately bears the risk of investing in higher education. We then propose to transfer this risk to the student by adding a mandatory personal insurance policy to the individual loan. We calculate the premium required for the system to break even in Spain when everybody pays the insurance cost. Alternatively, the payment of the premium can be deferred, adding it to total debt. Then, some participants in the scheme will have insufficient income to even pay the insurance cost, and the premium needs to be increased to maintain the sustainability of the program. Although these mechanisms imply redistribution towards borrowers who end up being low earners, we show that middle-income individuals contribute a higher proportion of their incomes to covering for those unable to repay. To provide the system with more internal progressivity, we propose to impose a minimum period of repayment., This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science [grant numbers ECO2016-76255-P, ECO2017-86305-C4-2R] and the Regional Government of Aragon, and FEDER [grant number S52_17R: Compete Research Group].

[EN] The Spanish army has recently implemented a new integrated educational curriculum to train officers by bringing together excellent and up-to-date technical knowledge, with a special emphasis on leadership, careful physical preparation and a solid moral foundation. The new curriculum is part of a carefully renovated human resources policy to develop a new type of leadership capable of adapting and performing successfully in the flexible and uncertain environments where national armies operate. The objective of the paper is to carry out an analysis of the implementation of the new educational system following the framework of Wright and Nishii (2006) that allows evaluating the implementation of new initiatives aimed at changing human resources policy. The main axes of the new system are critically analyzed and, based on this analysis; its implementation is evaluated by means of a survey carried out on its users. The survey is made to the first promotion that has been formed in the new curriculum once completed their training at the University Center of Defense and before going to the special academies. Information is required regarding three fundamental areas: training at the center, internal practices and external practices. The results of the survey allow affirming that the design, communication and implementation of the curriculum is positively evaluated by the cadets. However, non-curricular training actions, such as external and internal practices and the development of leadership activities in real situations, which are considered complementary to formal education, receive a low evaluation, considering them not related to leadership. This evidence suggests aspects to be reviewed in the new education system with the aim of improving its effectiveness., Funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, ECO2016-76255-P y ECO2017-86305-C4-2-R; Reference research group COMPETE (S52_17R) and Grupo Psicologia: procesos cognitivos y social (S24_17R) Gobierno de Aragon - Espana-and FEDER 2014-2020 "Construyendo Europa desde Aragon"; Universidad de Zaragoza, UZCUD2018-SOC-04 y UZCUD2018-SOC-O1; Centro Universitario de la Defensa, 2017-21 y 2018-12.

The role of public administrations as leading agents for the provision of public services has gained increased attention as a result of the economic challenges that followed the economic downturn that hit most countries after 2008. These policy efforts have materialized in economic reforms that condition the funding & performance evaluation of public services. In parallel, scholars & policy observers have fueled the debate on what elements form the objective function of public service providers as well as on how to model the technology of public services for evaluation purposes. These concerns have become evident in the approach adopted by many academic studies dealing with efficiency assessments in a number of public services (e.g. education, health care, local governments)., Peer Reviewed

Purpose – This paper investigates how past performance changes, prior CEO replacements and changes in the chairperson impact CEO turnover in public and large private businesses.
Design/methodology/approach – We analyze 1,679 CEO replacements documented in a sample of 1,493 Spanish public and private firms during 1998–2004 by computing dynamic binary choice models that control for endogeneity in CEO turnovers.
Findings – The results reveal that different performance horizons (short- and long-term) explain the dissimilar rate of CEO turnover between public and private firms. Private firms exercise monitoring patience and path dependency characterizes the evaluation of CEOs, while public companies’ short-termism leads to higher CEO turnover rates as a reaction to poor short-term economic results, and alternative controls—ownership and changes in the chairperson—improve the monitoring of management.
Originality/value – Our results show the importance of controlling for path dependency to examine more accurately top executives’ performance. The findings confirm that exposure to market controls affects the functioning of internal controls in evaluating CEOs and shows a short-term performance horizon that could be behind the recent moves of public firms going private or restraining shareholders’ power., Peer Reviewed

We employ the ‘benefit of the doubt’ approach rooted in non-parametric techniques to evaluate the entrepreneurial ecosystem of 71 countries for the period 2016. By scrutinizing the relative efficiency of countries’ entrepreneurial ecosystems, the proposed analysis of composite indicators allows the computation of endogenous (country-specific) weights that can be used for developing more informed policy making. The results show that countries prioritize different aspects of their national system of entrepreneurship which confirms that, contrary to homogeneous prescription, tailor-made policy is necessary if the objective is to optimize the resources deployed to enhance the countries’ entrepreneurial ecosystem. The findings of the empirical application reveal significant improvements in the quality of the entrepreneurial ecosystem can be realized by targeting the policy priorities of the local entrepreneurship system identified by the ‘benefit of the doubt’ weights. By analyzing the variation in economic and entrepreneurship outcomes over the seven-year period centered on the study year (period 2013–2019), we found a significant positive correlation between quality improvements in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and venture capital investments., Peer Reviewed

The Spanish army has recently implemented a new integrated educational curriculum to train officers by bringing together excellent and up-to-date technical knowledge, with a special emphasis on leadership, careful physical preparation and a solid moral foundation. The new curriculum is part of a carefully renovated human resources policy to develop a new type of leadership capable of adapting and performing successfully in the flexible and uncertain environments where national armies operate. The objective of the paper is to carry out an analysis of the implementation of the new educational system following the framework of Wright and Nishii (2006) that allows evaluating the implementation of new initiatives aimed at changing human resources policy. The main axes of the new system are critically analyzed and, based on this analysis; its implementation is evaluated by means of a survey carried out on its users. The survey is made to the first promotion that has been formed in the new curriculum once completed their training at the University Center of Defense and before going to the special academies. Information is required regarding three fundamental areas: training at the center, internal practices and external practices. The results of the survey allow affirming that the design, communication and implementation of the curriculum is positively evaluated by the cadets. However, non-curricular training actions, such as external and internal practices and the development of leadership activities in real situations, which are considered complementary to formal education, receive a low evaluation, considering them not related to leadership. This evidence suggests aspects to be reviewed in the new education system with the aim of improving its effectiveness.

Military training has always been considered as an education system with its own characteristics that distinguished it from the rest of higher education. However, different initiatives have been developed in order to integrate military education in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). This paper analyses the European system of military institutions of higher education (MHEI). Results indicate MHEI sector has distinctive features that have increased the diversity of European HEIs. Further, the emergence of the MHEI sector can have benefits for both the European defence and their educational attainment. From a defence point of view, it can help the development of a European strategic culture and increase cooperation between countries in defence and security. From the education area modernisation, it will improve defence and security related research and may enhance defence knowledge transfer. In this way, the MHEI sector will be positioned as key player in the development of the Common Security and Defence Policy and a European strategic culture.

This paper studies the effects of legal reforms associated with defence and public procurement on firm performance. With this aim, a theoretical framework for the reaction of defence firms to regulatory changes is developed. Its predictions have been empirically assessed using the last reforms implemented in Spain. Our results suggest that these new regulations have allowed the main defence contractors to outperform the other defence contractors in terms of productivity, having no effect on profitability. These findings are in line with theoretical priors. Therefore, it can be claimed that governmental interventions have had an effect on firm performance. We also provide evidence that, while the procurement procedures and the contract law put into place in 2011 have principally affected the productivity of large firms, the centralization process established in 2014 has exerted a higher influence on SMEs.