A commonly held perception is that an elite graduate degree can “scrub” a less prestigious but less costly undergraduate degree. Using data from the National Survey of College Graduates from 2003 to 2017, this article examines the relationship between the status of undergraduate degrees and earnings among those with elite postbaccalaureate degrees. Few graduates of non-selective institutions earn postbaccalaureate degrees from elite institutions, and even when they do, undergraduate institutional prestige continues to be positively related to earnings overall as well as among those with specific postbaccalaureate degrees including business, law, medicine, and doctoral. Among those who earn a graduate degree from an elite institution, the present value of the earnings advantage to having both an undergraduate and a graduate degree from an elite institution generally greatly exceeds any likely cost advantage from attending a less prestigious undergraduate institution.

For decades, the U.S. Air Force has contemplated replacing the A-10 Thunderbolt II “Warthog” with a newer fighter aircraft. However, a quantitative analysis comparing the Warthog’s performance and costs with those of its intended replacement, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, shows that retiring the Warthog would be operationally unsound and fiscally imprudent. The rationale for the replacement is that it would increase airpower capability while controlling costs. That rationale does not withstand scrutiny. An effectiveness analysis based on results from a survey of joint terminal attack controllers indicates that the A-10 vastly outperforms the F-35 in providing close-air support (CAS), a critical requirement for future conflicts against terrorists and insurgents. A cost analysis demonstrates that replacing the A-10 before its service life ends in 2035 would cost at least $20.9 billion. The replacement plan would waste substantial resources and seriously impair U.S. military capabilities. Given that constrained future budgets and low-intensity conflicts requiring precision CAS can be expected, the U.S. air fleet should include the A-10 Thunderbolt II.

This study examines the impact of employability on turnover intention by differentiating internal and external employability, and considering the possible moderating roles of perceived organizational support (POS) and career orientation. Using a sample of 411 responses to a two-wave questionnaire survey generated from six cities in China, we find that external employability positively influenced turnover intention, but internal employability negatively influenced turnover intention. The results also indicate that POS had a positive moderating effect only on the relationship between external employability and turnover intention. Furthermore, for employees with disengaged career orientation, external employability exerts a strong impact on turnover intention. This study adds to the limited research empirically linking employability and turnover intention, whereas the findings can be used by HRM practitioners to factor in organizational support and career orientation initiatives that improve the retention of employees with high external employability.

In 1992, Congress passed The Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act with the goal of “full restoration of The Elwha River Ecosystem and native anadromous fisheries.” As part of that act, the federal government was required to produce a benefit-cost analysis on dam removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams, which was published in 1994. This article revisits that initial 1994 benefit-cost analysis; background on its methods and assumptions is given, comparisons are made to current state-of-the-art techniques in benefit-cost analysis, and an ex post benefit-cost analysis of the project is conducted for comparison purposes. We find that the cost and scope of the project exceeded original expectations, the cost of the foregone electricity generation was less than expected, and that anticipated recreational and fisheries benefits were both delayed, and lower, than expected. Furthermore, issues such as the value of hatchery-spawned versus wild anadromous fish seem not to have been anticipated in the original analysis, highlighting the fact that in doing an ex ante analysis, researchers must expect that unexpected factors may influence the ex post results of any project.

How do political economic institutions and different types of institutional complementarity in particular influence firm behavior? Existing studies do not offer much help in answering this question. In this research, we systematically connect institutional complementarity and its two distinct logics (the logic of reinforcement and the logic of compensation) to firm performance. Using a sample of more than fourteen thousand firms from twenty advanced industrial democracies, our empirical analysis finds that institutional complementarity is related to firm performance in a distinct way. That is, the different logics of institutional complementarity apply only to specific segments of the economy. While the logic of reinforcement works for small firms and labor-intensive firms, the logic of compensation favors large firms and capital-intensive firms. The empirical novelty of our research lies in offering a cross-national, firm-level and large-n analysis of institutional complementarity. Theoretically, our finding of firm heterogeneity helps in establishing the boundary conditions of institutional complementarity and hence advances the general understanding of the subject.

This study contributes to management scholarship by unpacking the relationship between employees' exposure to workplace incivility and their exhibition of depersonalization towards co-workers, according to the mediating effect of job-related anxiety and the moderating effects of gender and education. Time-lagged data from employees in Pakistani organizations show that an important reason workplace incivility enhances depersonalization towards co-workers is that employees feel anxious about their jobs. This mediating role of job-related anxiety is particularly salient among male and higher-educated employees, possibly because they suffer from resource losses in the form of dignity threats when they are treated with disrespect. For organizations, this study accordingly pinpoints a key mechanism by which disrespectful workplace treatment can escalate into depersonalization towards co-workers (enhanced job-related feelings of anxiety), as well as how the strength of this mechanism might depend on individual factors.

This article investigates corporate responses to environmental regulation of fish farming in Norway, the world's largest producer and exporter of salmon. We note a puzzling strategic divergence within the industry: whereas small firms have strongly opposed new standards, large and multinational firms have supported or even demanded stricter regulation. Traditional models for business response strategies can explain this divergence only partly. We develop a supplementary, explanatory perspective focusing on company size and predatory opportunities, to show how large and dominant corporate players can use environmental regulation strategically to strengthen their competitive advantages at the expense of small and weaker rivals. This highlights a neglected dimension of regulatory effects and motives behind corporate demand for strict and costly standards. It aso shows how environmental regulations may cause trade-offs with local development concerns, relevant to other natural resource-based sectors evolving from smaller-scale production towards full-fledged industrialization.