Search

Background: The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) is an incentive scheme for general practice, which was introduced across the UK in 2004. The Quality and Outcomes Framework is one of the biggest pay for performance (P4P) scheme in the world, worth £691 million in 2016/17. We now know that P4P is good at driving some kinds of improvement but not others. In some areas, it also generated moral controversy, which in turn created conflicts of interest for providers. We aimed to undertake a meta-synthesis of 18 qualitative studies of the QOF to identify themes on the impact of the QOF on individual practitioners and other staff. Methods: We searched 5 electronic databases, Medline, Embase, Healthstar, CINAHL and Web of Science, for qualitative studies of the QOF from the providers' perspective in primary care, published in UK between 2004 and 2018. Data was analysed using the Schwartz Value Theory as a theoretical framework to analyse the published papers through the conceptual lens of Professionalism. A line of argument synthesis was undertaken to express the synthesis. Results: We included 18 qualitative studies that where on the providers' perspective. Four themes were identified; 1) Loss of autonomy, control and ownership; 2) Incentivised conformity; 3) Continuity of care, holism and the caring role of practitioners' in primary care; and 4) Structural and organisational changes. Our synthesis found, the Values that were enhanced by the QOF were power, achievement, conformity, security, and tradition. The findings indicated that P4P schemes should aim to support Values such as benevolence, self-direction, stimulation, hedonism and universalism, which professionals ranked highly and have shown to have positive implications for Professionalism and efficiency of health systems. Conclusions: Understanding how practitioners experience the complexities of P4P is crucial to designing and delivering schemes to enhance and not compromise the values of professionals. Future P4P schemes should aim to permit professionals with competing high priority values to be part of P4P or other quality improvement initiatives and for them to take on an 'influencer role' rather than being 'responsive agents'. Through understanding the underlying Values and not just explicit concerns of professionals, may ensure higher levels of acceptance and enduring success for P4P schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impacts of price cap regulation—weighted average cost of capital reductions determined by The Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat)—on the internal actions of regulated water companies in England and Wales through an application of the theory of institutional isomorphism. More specifically, the paper examines the potential impacts of the most recent 2014 PR14 reduction on (1) potential homogeneity of regulated firm behavior and (2) the likely impact on stakeholders, including shareholders, consumers, and employees of regulated water companies. We hypothesize that firms face isomorphic pressures in the wake of WAAC reductions that influence firm behavior regarding financing, investment decisions, profitability and returns to shareholders, service quality and consumer price, and impact on employees and employment levels. The methods utilized include a targeted analysis of available reported water industry annual reports and financial statements and semi-structured interviews with industry professionals. Interview results reveal that companies will utilize debt to fund investment in the future, with a smaller proportion of retained earnings, and that the PR14 reduction would result in downward pressure regarding water companies' credit ratings. Interviewees stated that the WACC had minimal impact on investment decision-making, but may reduce profitability and returns to shareholders. Regarding service levels and quality, interviewees predict that service levels will remain the same, while consumer prices will decrease or remain the same. Trends towards potential employee reductions were evident through redundancies or the merging of departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incentive structures affect people's decisions. But what are the implications of the resulting choices that people make for the level of risk within the economy? This paper reviews the literature in this area and attempts to draw out practical work that can be taken forward in assessing risk-taking incentives in the UK. Understanding the principal–agent problem is key to explaining many of the incentive structures that emerge. The paper provides an exposition of this before considering its implications in the managerial and financial markets. Within both these markets the paper considers how incentive structures alter principals' behaviour, before considering possible solutions to the common problem of asymmetric information. The paper concludes that the implications for risk-taking are unclear, as incentive structures can lead to both increased and decreased risk-taking. It therefore makes a number of suggestions for future research into the effect of incentive structures in existence in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the effects of 'welfare to work' and 'making work pay' policies such as tax credits on job quality in the wider labour market. It examines the consequences of two policy approaches to the problem of work incentives for the unemployed. One approach is greater conditionality of benefits systems, of which the extreme case is workfare; the other is transfers to supplement low wages. It is argued that both approaches, individually or in combination, threaten to set up vicious circles, creating yet more of the problems they attempt to solve. Through qualitative interview material from Britain, France, Germany and Belgium, from a recent international project supported by the EU,[sup 1] the paper illustrates how the responses of the unemployed to the four countries' benefits systems and insertion programmes structure the effects of these policies on the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In British retail cooperatives, workers have long had the opportunity to participate financially in their enterprises, through such mechanisms as employee ownership, and to serve on boards. Using data from a 1978 sample of 50 cooperatives, the author of this paper presents econometric estimates of the effects on co-op productivity of these channels of participation. He finds that the presence of worker directors modestly increases productivity, whereas, surprisingly, financial participation in the firm by employees reduces productivity. The net impact on productivity of both forms of participation is small but positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The English National Health Service (NHS) announced a new programme to incentivize use of the NHS Safety Thermometer (NHS ST) in the NHS Operating Framework for 2012/13. For the first time, the NHS is using the Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) scheme, a contract lever, to incentivize ALL providers of NHS care to measure four common complications (harms) using the NHS ST in a proactive way on one day per month. This national CQUIN scheme provides financial reward for the collection of baseline data with a view to incentivizing the achievement of improvement goals in later years. In this paper, we describe the rationale for this large-scale data collection, the purpose of the instrument and its potential contribution to our current understanding of patient safety. It is not a comprehensive description of the method or preliminary data. This will be published separately. The focus of the NHS ST on pressure ulcers, falls, catheters and urine infection and venous thromboembolism is broadly applicable to patients across all healthcare settings, but is specifically pertinent to older people who, experiencing more healthcare intervention, are at risk of not one but multiple harms. In this paper, we also describe an innovative patient-level composite measure of the absence of harm from the four identified, termed as "harmfreecare" which is unique to the NHS ST and is under development to raise standards for patient safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the pay-performance relationship between executive cash compensation (including bonuses) and company performance for a sample of large UK companies, focusing particularly on the financial services industry, since incentive misalignment has been blamed as one of the factors causing the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. Although we find that pay in the financial services sector is high, the cash-plus-bonus pay-performance sensitivity of financial firms is not significantly higher than in other sectors. Consequently, we conclude that it unlikely that incentive structures could be held responsible for inducing bank executives to focus on short-term results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional arrangements for the governance of CEO pay and turnover in English NHS Hospital Trusts replicate best practice for listed companies but with the additional feature of centrally imposed performance measurement. In this paper we investigate the impact of this unique combination of incentives on the relationship between CEO pay/turnover and Trust financial and operating performance in the period 1998–2005. We identify a strong association between poor Trust performance and CEO turnover but find little evidence that remuneration committees relate pay to performance in the best performing Trusts. Our findings raise questions about the economic rationale for remuneration committees in the governance of NHS Hospital Trusts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe the hypothesis of effort-based career opportunities as a situation in which profit maximising firms create incentives for employees to work longer hours than the bargained ones, by making career prospects depend on working hours. The paper aims to test some implications of this hypothesis using UK data. Design/methodology/approach - The empirical analysis uses the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and panel data estimators to investigate the existence of a robust correlation between working hours and workers' expected probability of promotion in the current job. Findings - The analysis shows the existence of a robust positive correlation between working time and workers' expected likelihood of promotion in the BHPS data even when controlling for several individual characteristics and for workers' unobserved heterogeneity. Research limitations/implications - Although the paper uses panel data, the BHPS does not allow for the identification of the firms in which individuals work, and therefore to control for firm fixed effects. Employer-employee datasets would have allowed a better assessment of the hypothesis. Originality/value - The paper provides a theoretical explanation for the empirically observed positive association between working time and expected promotion probability and, unlike previous papers that used pooled OLS estimates, it exploits the panel structure of BHPS data to control for individual unobserved heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In agency theory, the remuneration packages of executive directors in large companies are seen as an attempt to give them a pattern of rewards that aligns their interests more closely with shareholders as a whole. The sensitivity of total executive rewards to share price performance has become the conventional yardstick for judgements concerning whether reward packages do indeed serve shareholders' interests or executives themselves. Long-term incentive plans (LTIPs) introduced in the UK from 1995 have imposed new, firm-specific performance conditions on senior managers. While LTIPs are designed to increase performance-pay sensitivity, however, they also give executives new opportunities to manipulate the terms of LTIPs in their own favour, at the expense of shareholders and stakeholders in general. This paper presents the first estimates of UK total executive rewards that include detailed LTIP valuations. It finds that, while increasing average total rewards, the presence of LTIPs is actually associated with reductions in the sensitivity of executives' total rewards to shareholder return. This raises doubts concerning both the effectiveness of the LTIP instrument and the validity of an agency perspective in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using incentive pay to improve public‐sector efficiency is an important component of the UK government's public‐service modernization agenda. In this paper, we review the important issues in performance pay in the public sector, and summarize the evidence on its effects. We consider how optimal incentives for public‐sector workers may differ from those in the private sector and, if they do, what types of incentives are more appropriate for the public sector. We investigate the reasons for the infrequent use of explicit incentives in the public sector. We summarize evidence of particular relevance to the public sector, on issues such as the impact on output of incentive pay schemes, gaming and dysfunctional behaviour, multiple principals, intrinsic motivation, and teamwork. Finally, we comment on the design of new policies being introduced in the UK public sector in the light of the theoretical arguments and the evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Labour 'flexibility' is often portrayed as important to competitive success. Using evidence from an original survey of UK firms, this paper investigates the relationships between firms' use of, on the one hand, various flexible work practices, human resource management techniques, and industrial relations systems and, on the other hand, the innovative activities of those firms. Our results suggest that the sort of 'low road' labour flexibility practices encouraged by labour market deregulation—short-term and temporary contracts, a lack of employer commitment to job security, low levels of training, and so on—are negatively correlated with innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large number of empirical studies have tested for the presence of convergence for a variety of economic variables. This paper examines the evolution of labour's reward across regions of the EU to identify whether factor price convergence has occurred. Density diagrams are used to illustrate static distributions while transitional matrices are employed to identify movements of the distribution over time. The results presented suggest that the evolutionary paths of average regional pay are fairly stable with stratification and persistence identified as important characteristics. There was uninterrupted convergence of average regional pay between 1980–1992. However, between 1992–1994 this process reversed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the culturally expressed viewpoints of shop-floor workers and their managers in two multinational chemical companies in terms of the way that they make sense of their organizations' payment systems. Using interview data from ethnographic study in two production sites, contrasts are made between the discourse of managers, characterized by developmental humanism, and that of the shopfloor workers, who retain attachment to economistic principles regarding their employment. The paper suggests that the introduction of all-salaried systems and annualized hours removes traditional 'line of sight' between hourly pay for physical effort. Performance-pay schemes, on a group and individual level, have met with worker resistance in a way which suggests a lack of shared basic values. Managerial responses to pay conflict differ according to business context, suggesting that employee development gives way to a 'managing of the headcount' as chemical industry companies deal with environmental and market pressures. Removal of short-term incentives on the shop-floor during the 1980s, without due attention to the reward mechanisms that might replace them, could leave a 'black hole' in terms of the work orientations of these blue-collar employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to develop, within a decentralized planning framework, a system of incentive payments to firms as a means of correcting labor misallocation in an economy of labor-managed or cooperative firms. This scheme, we believe, may offer certain advantages over existing proposals.
This paper has been mostly concerned with presenting an incentive scheme to remove the inefficiency owing to labor market imperfections in the cooperative economy which has long been recognized in the literature. The significance of the incentive scheme can be seen in two ways. First, it can be considered as a decentralized planning analog to the other proposed solutions to the problem, and thus as a contribution to the theoretical analysis of the inefficiency question. Second, it can be viewed as a policy prescription. However, if this latter viewpoint is taken a number of qualifications have to be made owing to the implicit and explicit assumptions of the model we have been using. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is concerned to establish the status ranking of ten different sectors of manufacturing and non-manufacturing industry through analysis of the background and education of managers in these sectors. The ranking is then given confirmation by salary data. It is suggested that this ranking is based on differences between industries in science and technology, with corresponding differences in knowledge and skill needs and thus in the meaning of 'management', in sources of managerial recruitment, and in qualifications and requirements for education and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the comments and answers of Jennifer Dixon to the issues raised by Elizabeth Murray on her essay. Dixon reiterates that her paper was focused on reduced unavoidable emergency admissions for the policies of the National Health Service system in Great Britain. She agrees on Murray that there are similar arguments for public health initiatives but points out that the most practical reason in designing health reform is to present economic arguments focusing on raising incentives.

Wholesale 'ladder pricing' involves setting the wholesale price retailers face as a nonlinear (generally increasing) function of price chosen by retailers. This form of wholesale pricing occurred recently in UK Telecoms, and the issue became extensively debated in the law courts. A major concern in deciding the merits of the case lay with the question of whether or not the introduction of tiered wholesale pricing created incentives for retailers to actually reduce their prices. This paper examines the incentive for the case where the wholesale tariff is a non-linear continuous differentiable function. It is shown that so long as the tariff is strictly increasing, convex, and positive only for retail prices greater than the maximum retailer marginal cost, then there is indeed an incentive to reduce price, whatever the actual gradient of the tariff schedule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Creaming’ and ‘parking’ are endemic concerns within quasi-marketised welfare-to-work (WTW) systems internationally, and the UK's flagship Work Programme for the long-term unemployed is something of an international pioneer of WTW delivery, based on outsourcing, payment by results and provider flexibility. In the Work Programme design, providers’ incentives to ‘cream’ and ‘park’ differently positioned claimants are intended to be mitigated through the existence of nine payment groups (based on claimants' prior benefit type) into which different claimants are allocated and across which job outcome payments for providers differ. Evaluation evidence suggests however that ‘creaming’ and ‘parking’ practices remain common. This paper offers original quantitative insights into the extent of claimant variation within these payment groups, which, contrary to the government's intention, seem more likely to design in rather than design out ‘creaming’ and ‘parking’. In response, a statistical approach to differential payment setting is explored and is shown to be a viable and more effective way to design a set of alternative and empirically grounded payment groups, offering greater predictive power and value-for-money than is the case in the current Work Programme design. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

UK prisons have a very poor record in preventing reoffending. This paper attempts to identify a desirable kind of prison system. It discusses privatisation and payment-by-results programmes. Novel suggestions include the potential for charity-, faith- or community-based organisations to run prisons, and a possible voucher scheme for use by prisoners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a quality improvement project implemented in the United Kingdom (UK).The aim ofthe study was to reduce inconsistencies of care in general practice in managing early chronic kidney disease (CKD) using a care bundle approach. Areas under scrutiny are prevalence recording of CKD, proteinuria measurement, blood pressure control, cardiovascular risk recording and self-management opportunities for patients. Early results have shown improvements in reliability using a Plan- Do-Study-Act methodology. The integration ofa Patient and Service User Advisory Group into the project team has been invaluable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the position of special advisers (SpAds) in British government has become routinised, above all since 1997, we still know little about how they affect everyday life at the top of Whitehall departments. This paper, based on the first ever survey of SpAds, explores what they do and how they interact with policy-makers. SpAds fill a mix of ‘commissar’ and ‘fixer’ roles, and there is no evidence of a sharp division of labour between different types of SpAds. The commissar role they fill might be expected to bring SpAds into conflict with civil servants, yet there is surprisingly little evidence of conflict or rivalry. A variety of features of the special adviser's job appear to create incentives among both SpAds and civil servants to avoid conflict with each other. Since the influence of SpAds appears to depend on their relationship with the minister, claims that SpAds are a new, powerful group that shapes policy, are likely to be highly misleading. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Coalition government's consultation paper on welfare reform has attracted negative criticism, being seen by some as 'more stick than carrot'. Roy Sainsbury argues that the paper's confused approach to three distinct strands of welfare policy risks obscuring the great potential for a radical simplification of the UK's benefits system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of managerial incentives and corporate governance on capital structure using a large sample of UK firms during the period 1999–2004. The analysis revolves around the view that managerial incentives are important in determining a firm's leverage. However, we argue that the exact impact of these incentives on leverage is likely to be determined by firm-specific governance characteristics. To conduct our investigation, we construct a simple corporate governance measure using detailed ownership and governance information. We present evidence of a significant non-monotonic relationship between executive ownership and leverage. There is also strong evidence suggesting that corporate governance practices have a significant impact on leverage. More importantly, the results reveal that the nature of the relation between executive ownership and leverage depends on the firm's corporate governance structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study focusing on benchmarking customer service quality in electricity distribution networks in Great Britain. It also examines the impact of a specific recent energy regulatory requirement also known as information and incentives project on the organizational management of an exemplar electricity distribution company. It also discusses how the sector has tried to learn from benchmarks from various literary disciplines such as economics, marketing service quality, and total quality management. It states that the two-year longitudinal research project explored the implications of regulation policy incentives for strategic control in the management of regulated monopoly network utilities in Great Britain.

Current UK skills policy is centred on the need to drive up qualification obtainment and make the system more employer-led with Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) being given the role of articulating the 'voice' of employers. Through a study of recruitment and selection processes in the fitness industry, this paper explores employers' attitudes to existing qualifications and whether their skill needs are being identified by their SSC. It also considers the broader implications of an employer-led system. The research is based upon interviews undertaken in 17 gyms, focusing on the occupation of fitness instructor. The findings reveal that managers adopt a wide range of approaches in how they recruit, train and value qualifications in the labour market. Although qualifications in this sector are important, the over-supply of 'qualified' workers means there is little incentive for most employers to tackle low wages or improve opportunities for training and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have found mixed evidence on whether hedging increases firm value. Some studies have shown that managerial incentives may influence firm hedging. In this paper we provide evidence that when hedging is based upon incentives from managers' options, firm value decreases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the factors that influence the decision to change the status of a publicly quoted company to that of a private company. We find that firms that go private are more likely to have higher CEO ownership and higher institutional ownership. In relation to their board structures, firms going private tend to have more duality but there is no statistical difference in the proportion of non-executive directors. They do not show signs of having excess free cash flows but there is some evidence of lower growth opportunities. We do not find that firms going private experience a greater threat of hostile acquisition. The results are therefore consistent with incentive and monitoring explanations of going private. Calculation of the probability of going private shows that incentive effects are stronger than the monitoring effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the role of judgement in the formation of forecasts in commercial property markets. The investigation is based on interview surveys with the majority of UK forecast producers, who are using a range of inputs and data sets to form models to predict an array of variables for a range of locations. The findings suggest that forecasts need to be acceptable to their users (and purchasers) and consequently forecasters generally have incentives to avoid presenting contentious or conspicuous forecasts. Where extreme forecasts are generated by a model, forecasters often engage in ‘self‐censorship’ or are ‘censored’ following in‐house consultation. It is concluded that the forecasting process is significantly more complex than merely carrying out econometric modelling, forecasts are mediated and contested within organisations and that impacts can vary considerably across different organizational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a theoretical framework to study the issues of competition and incentives without relying on the standard profit‐oriented ‘market’ model in the context of the debates about public‐service reform in the UK. It uses the idea that the production of public services coheres around a mission, and discusses how decentralized service provision can raise productivity by matching motivated workers to their preferred missions. Our focus on competition and incentives cuts across traditional debates about public versus private ownership and allows for the possibility of involving private non‐profit organizations. We also address concerns about the consequences of allowing more flexibility in mission design and competition on inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on the literature on social comparison and equity theories, this paper analyses the determinants of, and the relationships between, the cash pay awards of CEOs and other board members for a sample of large UK companies over the period 1992-95. Our results suggest that external labour market and internal (i.e., within board) pay comparisons are important in explaining both CEO and other directors' pay awards. In the case of CEOs, however, there is evidence of an asymmetric adjustment to prior period pay anomalies, whereby the pay of the relatively underpaid executives displays significantly greater sensitivity to external market comparison pay levels. This asymmetric adjustment process results in a 'bidding-up' of average CEO pay relative to other board members over the four year period investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between executive pay and corporate performance. First, we focus on the pay-for-performance sensitivity (PPS), review recent evidence (mainly UK) and outline a methodology for calculating the PPS itself. Secondly, we review the evidence on tournament theory. Tournament models predict that career concerns generate incentives for executives and can explain observed variations in pay outcomes in the boardroom. Thirdly, we provide evidence on the distribution of the PPS for 532 executives within 100 large UK stock market companies for 1997. Unlike prior work, we include non-CEO executives in the analysis. We show that the PPS increases through organizational levels. Also the statistic is not constant across firms. Finally, we consider the relationship between corporate performance and incentives. We show, consistent with prior evidence, that there is a positive relationship between firm performance and the effective ownership of stock-based compensation by management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically assesses models and policies of pay flexibility as applied to the public sector. Examination of the arguments for greater pay flexibility across three dimensions -- external labour market flexibility, organizational flexibility, and macroeconomic flexibility -- reveals a number of weaknesses, rooted in a failure to problematize the conflicting motives for greater pay flexibility in the context of pressures internal and external to the organization. An alternative 'model' of changing pay systems is developed and applied to the case of the UK health sector where there have been attempts to introduce various forms of flexible local pay arrangements. Drawing on interviews conducted during the mid-1990s with personnel and HRM managers at fifteen NHS Trusts, a number of issues are examined, such as: the impact of differential external labour market conditions of workers on the development of strategies designed to tie local pay to improved performance; the introduction of performance-related pay as a means to institutionalize wider earnings differentials within the organization; and the potential conflict between pressures to link local pay structures with local labour market conditions, on the one hand, and customary employee-held norms that link pay to occupational skills and professional status, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the attitudes of the top managers within one large financial services organization in the UK to fixed and variable components of their compensation package. The rationale for performance-related pay for senior managers is to align their interests with those of the shareholders, but little is known about the views of top managers on the effectiveness of such incentives. The results suggest that the design of effective bonus systems is not just a technical issue: perceptions of market fairness with respect to the compensation package and the clear communication of goals are important in getting senior managers to focus on shareholder interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in pay and employment conditions might differ significantly among the various types of employers. In a developing country, such differences could be due to ascriptive factors which are enabled by the historical development of colonialism. As foreign employers continue to dominate indigenous ones, the latter are put at a disadvantage in the conditions offered to employees. This paper provides evidence on the strength and persistence of such features in Nigeria by attempting a differentiation of the assessments of employees of British multinationals and other types of employers in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a systematic assessment of the incentives to capital investment in UK enterprise zones. It compares different investment projects between industrial sectors, types of asset, sources of finance and type of investor using the 'costs of capital' methodology. In addition micro-economic and macro-economic effects are compared, as are EZs in round 1 and round 2, and the relative importance of capital allowances and property tax relief is considered. The paper demonstrates that capital allowances are the more important incentive, particularly in round 2 EZs. The greatest incentives are to building assets, for commerce, financed by debt and tax exempt institutions. The greatest benefits offer an increase of between 7.6 and 8.7% in real rates of return on investments.
Since 1981 a number of Enterprise Zones (EZs) have been designated in the UK as a means for promoting capital investment in new industrial projects on older industrial sites. Although primarily aimed at providing incentives to capital, no systematic analysis has yet been undertaken of these incentives. This paper seeks to provide such an evaluation of incentives, offered to different assets, sectors, sources of finance and ownership of investments, and from this to compare the relative contribution of the different components of the EZ scheme. The methodology of this evaluation is based on the 'costs of capital' approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the use of performance related pay (PRP) as a means of control over the relationship between effort and reward. Taking a critical perspective, it describes how the implementation of PRP in a UK-based electronics company has been used as a device to remove trade union influence in wage-setting arrangements and to effect changes in employee behaviour. The opinions of supervisors, line managers, personnel managers and shop-floor staff are discussed and the implications for management control are assessed. The paper concludes that from management's perspective the PRP system appears to have been a success, for it has in some cases `commercialized' the relationship between effort and reward, and has pre-empted expressions of employee resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increased interest in the widespread dissemination of outcome performance data to secure enhanced strategic control of public sector organizations. This paper adumbrates the rationale for such schemes, and outlines the potential distortions induced by excessive reliance on outcome-related performance indicators, inferred from experience in the management control and Soviet literature. The paper gives an outline of the performance review process in the United Kingdom National Health Service, and presents the results of a case study of the impact of the publication of outcome performance data in the maternity services. The research detected many of the expected distortions arising from reliance on performance indicator schemes, and concludes that they may have significant dysfunctional consequences. The paper does not however advocate the abandonment of performance audit in the public sector. Instead, it warns that great attention should be given to the managerial incentives implicit in any strategic control scheme, and that the style with which the scheme is applied will have important bearings on its effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the employee shareholding schemes in Great Britain. Although employee shareholding schemes are becoming an important feature of industrial life in other countries, in Britain they have been neglected by employers and cold-shouldered by unions. In France such schemes have been required in law since 1967 for companies employing more than 100 employees; in Sweden the movement has been going strongly for over 25 years, culminating in the Meidner Plan which would have required certain companies to hand over 20 per cent of their profits to union-controlled employee funds; 18 million workers in West Germany benefit under employee share schemes and in the United States the movement flourishes more than anywhere else. By comparison Great Britain is notably backward, so much so that employee share schemes rarely come into the public debate on worker participation and industrial regeneration. The Bullock Report, for example, chose to ignore them, for reasons which are not far to seek. The Liberal Party includes the profit-sharing idea in its bag of goodies and has done for some time but it has not managed to raise the topic to any level of excitement either among its own members or in the mind of the public at large. The Labour Party and the TUC remain either divided on or hostile to the movement, for reasons which are mainly ideological.

This paper reports on attempts to explain the level of fixed investment in plant and machinery in manufacturing industry in the United Kingdom. Particular emphasis is laid on measuring the impact of various governmental incentive schemes which have been employed over the past decade to stimulate investment.[2] The approach adopted here is to distinguish between the nominal price of an asset as paid by the investor and its effective price after allowing for any applicable allowances. This effective price is then incorporated into the neoclassical investment theory developed and applied by Jorgenson [7], [8].[3] However, the formulation used here differs from that of Jorgenson in that the elasticity of the desired capital stock with respect to relative prices is not assumed to be unitary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the interrelationships among carbon performance, CEO Pay, executive compensation, financial performance and market value. Using data relating to non‐financial firms from UK FTSE 350 from 2009 to 2018, our findings are fourfold. First, our results suggest that actual carbon performance is negatively associated with financial performance and market value of firms. Second, we document that self‐reported carbon performance has no effect on financial performance. By contrast, we observe that self‐reported carbon reduction initiatives performance has positive impact on market value. Third, our results suggest that CEO Pay, and executive compensation have positive moderating effect on the association between self‐reported carbon performance and financial performance. In addition, we show that self‐reported carbon performance–market value nexus is positively moderated by CEO Pay and executive compensation. Fourth, we observe that CEO Pay, and executive compensation have no moderating impact on actual carbon performance–market value nexus. Our findings demonstrate that while firms appear to employ compensation incentives to symbolically enhance their self‐reported carbon performance, this does not result in actual carbon emission reduction. Our findings have key implications for policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Financial incentives are often applied to motivate desirable performance across organisations in healthcare systems. In the 2016/2017 financial year, the National Health Service (NHS) in England set a national performance-based incentive to increase uptake of the influenza vaccination among frontline staff. Since then, the threshold levels needed for hospital trusts to achieve the incentive (ie, the targets) have ranged from 70% to 80%. The present study examines the impact of this financial incentive across eight vaccination seasons. Design A retrospective observational study examining routinely recorded rates of influenza vaccination among staff in all acute NHS hospital trusts across eight vaccination seasons (2012/2013-2019/2020). The number of trusts included varied per year, from 127 to 137, due to organisational changes. McCrary's density test is conducted to determine if the number of hospital trusts narrowly achieving the target by the end of each season is higher than would be expected in the absence of any responsiveness to the target. We refer to this bunching above the target threshold as a 'threshold effect'. Results In the years before a national incentive was set, 9%-31% of NHS Trusts reported achieving the target, compared with 43%-74% in the 4 years after. Threshold effects did not emerge before the national incentive for payment was set; however, since then, threshold effects have appeared every year. Some trusts report narrowly achieving the target each year, both as the target rises and falls. Threshold effects were not apparent at targets for partial payments. Conclusions We provide compelling evidence that performance-based financial incentives produced threshold effects. Policymakers who set such incentives are encouraged to track threshold effects since they contain information on how organisations are responding to an incentive, what enquiries they may wish to make, how the incentive may be improved and what unintended effects it may be having. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the standard principal-agent model, the optimal composition of pay should balance the provision of incentives with the individual demand for insurance. Do income taxes alter this balance? We show that the relative share of Performance-related pay (PRP), on total pay is reduced by higher average and marginal income taxes. Empirical evidence based on the British Household Panel Survey is consistent with the theoretical predictions of the tax-augmented principal-agent model. Our estimates suggest that a 10% reduction in the marginal income tax rate, holding the average tax rate constant, increases the share of PRP in total pay by 2.25-3.02%, depending on the empirical specification. Similarly, a 10% reduction in the average income tax rate, holding the marginal tax rate constant, increases the share of PRP in total pay by 5.10-5.27%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In April 2001, the UK government introduced Stakeholder Pensions – a new private pension arrangement. The reform also changed the structure of tax-relieved pension contribution ceilings, increasing their generosity for lower-earners. We examine the impact of these changes on private pension coverage using individual level data. We use a difference-in-differences strategy with an estimator that is modified to allow for dichotomous outcomes. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that the Stakeholder Pension reforms had little or no impact on saving behaviour, our results indicate that the change to the contribution ceilings affected private pension coverage rates among lower-earners, especially among women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen an increase in the number of innovation labs, purpose-built physical facilities designed to enhance and support creativity and innovation in organizations. This rising phenomenon may be driven by the increasing emphasis placed on innovation as the key to the survival of modern day organizations. Innovation labs are attracting greater attention from organizations, yet little is known about their effectiveness. Using a mixed-method approach this paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a major UK-based facility in enhancing creativity and to explore users' attitudes towards this rising organizational phenomenon. The findings have implications for the management of existing innovation labs and those in the planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carter, Ittner and Zechman (2009) examine the use of explicit relative performance evaluation (RPE) conditions in performance-vested equity plans in a sample of United Kingdom (U.K.) firms in 2002. They find that factors suggested by economic theories (for example, removal of common shocks, tournament theory) are more closely associated with specific features of the plan than with the firm-level decision to use an RPE equity plan. My discussion focuses on the interpretation of these findings and the opportunities and implications for future research. I also summarize the views of five U.K. directors who were involved in the design and use of performance-vested equity plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the development of Great Britain's Tool for Assessing Decision-making Systems (ToADS) to help business enterprises assess decision-making systems (DMS) within their set-ups and DMS. It reports that the tool was developed as part of work carried out for the knowledge and information management through life (KIM) grand challenge, which was aimed at manufacturing industrial domains. It states that the new product-service projects have led to new challenges in decision making and new demands placed on companies to come up with operational support strategies, which in turn requires knowledge management and DMS. It highlights that decision making in business is determined by many external and internal factors like organizational structures and incentive policies.

The article discusses how intellectual property rights (IPR) and patents affected the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. The author comments on how technological innovation and change may require the marginalization of IPR and discusses how Britain's patent system provided incentives to inventors. He notes debates regarding access to information and 18th-century attitudes toward monopolies. Costly filing procedures for patents in Britain are noted. The author suggests many inventors declined to utilize the patent system during the Industrial Revolution for reasons of principle.

This article concerns rates of wage growth among women and minority groups and their impact on pay gaps. Specifically, it focuses on the pay progression of people with more than one disadvantaged identity, and on the impact of merit pay. Recent research indicates that pay gaps for people in more than one disadvantaged identity category are wider than those with a single-disadvantaged identity. It is not known whether these gaps are closing, at what rate, and whether all groups are affected equally; nor is it known whether merit pay alleviates or exacerbates existing pay gaps. In addressing these issues, the analysis draws on longitudinal payroll data from a large UK-based organization. Results show that pay gaps are closing; however, the rate of convergence is slow relative to the size of existing pay disparities, and slowest of all for people with disabilities. When the effect of merit pay is isolated, it is found to have a small positive effect in reducing pay gaps, and this effect is generally larger for dual/multiple-disadvantaged groups. These findings run counter to the well-established critique of merit pay in relation to equality outcomes. The implications of this are discussed, and an agenda for research and practice is set out. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]