Oil rush may destabilise Somali politics

Significance Although production is not expected for another decade or so, initial signing bonuses and speculative futures are already influencing domestic political processes as foreign and domestic actors position themselves to secure advantage, influence and control over the nascent sector. Impacts A rushed licensing process could undermine progress on debt relief, which includes clear benchmarks on oil legislation. Speculation will intensify confrontations with regional neighbours, especially Kenya, over transport corridors and maritime borders. A scramble for infrastructure and logistics contracts will blur the lines between development needs, security and geostrategic interests.

Who Should Sign a Professional Baseball Contract? Quantifying the Financial Opportunity Costs of Major League Draftees

Players selected in the annual Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft have a choice of whether to enter the system or pursue a career outside of professional baseball. As with any choice, there are opportunity costs associated with their decision. The purpose of this study was to analyze those opportunity costs by comparing draftees’ expected, non-signing-bonus income to the income of standard laborers. We estimated expected income over the first six seasons of players’ careers by combining minor and major league salary data with the probabilities obtained from C5.0 classification models that were applied to a large set of player-related data. Unlike traditional classification methods that produce the probabilities for landing in one of two classes, C5.0 classification models are able to produce the simultaneous probabilities of a player landing in several different classes, or out of professional baseball, in each season. The results show that, all else equal, college fielders drafted in the first 89–90 picks and college pitchers drafted in the first 32 picks (college graduates) or 171 picks (some college) should sign contracts. Pitchers drafted out of high school should sign contracts if they are picked in the first 78 picks, as should fielders selected in the top 118 picks. Beyond these ranges, signing bonuses or higher levels of performance are needed to limit the opportunity costs of pursuing professional baseball. Such findings are relevant to draftees making contract decisions and baseball stakeholders dealing with recent calls for improved wages and labor conditions in the minors.

Strategies for Recruitment and Retention of Secondary Teachers in Central U.S. Rural Schools

This study sought to identify differences in strategies used for teacher recruitment and retention by successful and non-successful rural high schools. According to data from the 2003-2004 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), small towns and rural areas in the central U.S. states did have relatively more difficuly in recruiting teachers than did larger communities. However, when the successful and unsuccessful school districts were compared on the strategies and benefits included in the SASS, the only difference was with signing bonuses, which were offered significantly more often in the unsuccessful group than the successful group. The researchers also interviewed seven principals identified as successful by their state agencies. Their responses revealed minimal reliance on the strategies addressed in the SASS. however, there was some alignment between many of the strategies they did use and the three approaches investigated in previous research: grow-your-own, using federal funding opportunities, and using targeted incentives.

Factors Associated With Successfully Filling Faculty Vacancies in Family Medicine

Background and Objectives: Faculty vacancies are a concern for chairs of academic family medicine departments who regularly face having to recruit new faculty. Faculty physicians who report lack of support for research and teaching or excessive time in activities that are not meaningful may experience burnout resulting in leaving academic medicine. Methods: Data were collected via a Council of Academic Family Medicine Educational Research Alliance (CERA) survey of US family medicine department chairs. To determine characteristics associated with success in hiring new physician faculty, chairs answered questions about the number of vacancies in the previous 12 months, the number of vacancies filled in the previous 12 months, the months the longest vacancy was open, starting salary, whether signing bonus was offered, and the full-time equivalent (FTE) for clinical, research, teaching, and administrative time. Results: The response rate was 52%. Chairs reported an average of 3.9 vacancies in the previous 12 months, and an average of 2.5 (66%) were filled. Chairs who didn’t offer protected time for teaching filled a higher percentage of their vacancies, but they did not fill them faster than departments that did offer teaching time. Higher salary and a signing bonus were associated with filling positions faster. Chairs who offered a signing bonus filled positions nearly 4 months sooner than those who didn’t. Conclusions: Offering protected time for teaching or research and FTE allocation for clinical, teaching, research, and administrative time were not associated with success in hiring new faculty. Chairs who offered higher salaries and signing bonuses were able to hire faculty more quickly than those who didn’t.

Best in Class: The Returns on Application Endorsements in Higher Education

While scholars have shown that well-connected applicants are advantaged in selection processes, less understood is whether such applicants produce important returns to the organization when key decision makers favor them. We begin to address this gap by investigating whether and why application endorsements―an informal practice whereby certain individuals (i.e., endorsers) advocate for particular applicants―affect organizational selection during the screening of applicants. Through the analysis of the population of 21,324 applicants to a full-time MBA program over a seven-year period, we find that even after controlling for individual qualifications and competencies, endorsed applicants are advantaged over non-endorsed applicants in admissions interview and offer decisions. In seeking to explain this advantage, we develop and test four key theoretical explanations pertaining to the potential returns on application endorsements for the organization. We find inconsistent evidence that endorsed applicants are “better qualified” compared with non-endorsed applicants during screening: while endorsed applicants are sometimes assessed to be stronger “on paper,” they generally receive lower competency assessments than non-endorsed applicants later, during the admissions interviews. Further, our analysis of data on matriculating MBA students reveals that those endorsed as applicants are not “better performers” academically (measured by grade point average) or in the job market after graduation (measured by full-time salaries or signing bonuses) compared with non-endorsed individuals. In contrast, individuals endorsed as applicants appear to be “better citizens” upon joining the organization—in our research setting, they are more likely to participate in student club leadership roles than non-endorsed individuals. We also find that they are “better alumni”―that is, they make larger monetary donations to the school after graduating than their non-endorsed counterparts. We conclude with implications for understanding the impact of application endorsements on labor and educational markets.

Can Offering a Signing Bonus Motivate Effort? Experimental Evidence of the Moderating Effects of Labor Market Competition

ABSTRACT Employers often rely on informal controls such as trust to motivate organizationally desirable behaviors from their workers by appealing to the latter's reciprocity. Notably, trust and reciprocity can promote a “gift exchange” between employers and workers. Using an experiment, I investigate whether labor market competition moderates the emergence of a gift exchange in labor markets in which signing bonus offers serve as a potential signal of trust and the duration of the employment relationship is endogenously determined. I find that offering a signing bonus more positively affects both workers' beliefs about the employer's trust in them and their effort when there is an excess supply of workers than when there is an excess demand for workers. I also find that the initial effects of signing bonuses may not persist over time. Additional analyses suggest that both employers' and workers' expectations may affect whether and how trust and reciprocity develop over time.