Although existing literature assumes that the human capital intensity of professional services leads to small and flimsy firms, several professional services feature large, long-lived firms. To develop insights about firm size and industry structure in human capital intensive industries, I...

Does public ownership have negative consequences for professional service firms by reducing employee incentives? I address this question with a panel of advertising agencies. Public ownership was associated with inferior performance for small agencies but not for large agencies; and there was no...

Abstract: We discuss deregulation (liberalization) and some of the international institutions that influence the management of people in airlines. As a point of departure, we summarize contrasting models from successful lsquo;new entrant' airlines: Ryanair and Southwest. We consider examples of...

Does commercial success diminish creativity? With arguments both for and against, the question remains one the biggest of puzzles in the study of creativity. In this paper, using novel measures of creativity and success, we identify the causal impact of success on subsequent levels of...

This chapter discusses the variety of approaches to the management of people in airlines from the Asia / Pacific / Middle East region in the face of increasing deregulation. We identify key differences between the institutional environment for airlines in the US versus those in Asia-Pacific...

Professions have long debated the desirability of outside investment and public ownership in particular. The traditional view holds that outside investors undermine professional ethics, and this fear underpins bans on public ownership. Others argue such restrictions are a way to reduce...

A growing literature on professional service firms is hindered by the ambiguity of its central concept, which leads to an overly-narrow empirical focus and to over-generalizations that may tout inefficiencies as best practice. To address this ambiguity, I develop a theory of the distinctive...

The crisis in the airline industry and its labor relations system creates a window of opportunity to introduce changes that are essential to successful industry recovery. This paper summarizes the results of our research on labor relations conducted as part of the MIT Global Airline Industry...

We examine competing theoretical arguments regarding whether union representation, shared governance, wage levels and two features of the quality of labor relations - workplace culture and conflict in negotiations - lead to better or worse outcomes for airlines and test them with a mix of...

A growing body of research examines whether and how university research parks (URPs) enhance the performance of their tenants, and foster regional innovation. As the findings in the literature are inconclusive, we argue that the URP construct requires closer conceptual examination, especially in...