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Development statistics estimate that three quarters of the poor live in rural areas and most of them depend on agriculture and related activities for their livelihood. Consequently, research focusing on economic growth and poverty reduction has found that sustainable rapid transition out of poverty requires a special emphasis on the agricultural sector. This study contributes to the debate on aid effectiveness by disaggregating total aid into subcategories and specifically investigating the relationship between aid given to the agricultural sector and poverty reduction. If agricultural development is more effective in reducing poverty than some other types of development, then foreign aid directed towards agriculture may be more efficient in increasing the well-being of the poor than aid directed to some other sectors or uses. Our analysis uses panel data for developing aid recipient countries to empirically test this relationship. We find a significant relationship between agricultural aid and poverty reduction in our estimates.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical and empirical understanding of how social ties affect innovation behavior and new product performance in Turkey, which is an emerging economy where high levels of economic and political uncertainties exist.The authors examine whether innovation behavior binds the political and business ties of the firm to new product performance. They also examine if these effects are contingent on variations in the institutional environment and market environment. Design/methodology/approach Structural equation modeling and mediation analyses were used on a sample of 344 small- and medium-sized enterprises in Istanbul. Findings Business ties are positively related to exploratory innovation behavior and political ties hamper such behavior. The authors also show that government support hinders firms’ disruptive innovation while encouraging incremental innovation behavior. The authors further demonstrate that the positive and indirect relation of business ties to new product performance through exploratory and exploitative innovation is largely insensitive to changes in market and institutional environments. Political ties are negatively (positively) and indirectly related to new product performance through exploratory (exploitative) innovation. Practical implications Managers should choose the form of their personal interactions (political and/or business) based on the type of innovation that is being pursued. Additionally, managers should consider both the institutional environment and the market environment as important contingencies in their decision of whether to invest resources in developing social ties to build innovation behavior. Originality/value The authors offer a deeper perspective of how social ties in emerging economies affect new product performance by considering exploratory and exploitative innovation behavior as mediating mechanisms. These mediating effects are conditional on institutional and market environments.

Job security, often measured using the perceived risk of job loss in the near future, is a significant determinant of job satisfaction. We posit that the impact job security has on job satisfaction is not only a function of how likely it is that a worker loses a job but also how likely it is that a worker could find another. The effect this has on worker job satisfaction then is different depending on whether perceived job loss occurs (or not) when job openings are scarce or when job openings are plentiful. We use difference-in-differences analysis of the 1997 and 2008 waves from the National Study of the Changing Workforce to show that three measures of job security increase private sector worker job satisfaction, and reduce worker incentives to quit, more when job openings are relatively scarce (during contractions) than when job openings are relatively plentiful (during expansions). We find that our results are strongest among less-educated workers.

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Purpose Drawing on the literature on dynamic skills, this study builds upon and empirically tests a conceptual model that connects business and political ties, organizational unlearning, organizational learning and firm performance. Specifically, this study suggests that business ties enable and political ties inhibit organizational unlearning (i.e. regenerative dynamic capability), which may, in turn, affect exploratory (i.e. renewing dynamic capability) and exploitative (i.e. incremental dynamic capability) innovation behaviors of the firm. Thus, the purpose of this study is to offer a theoretical framework in which organizational unlearning and learning act as mediating mechanisms between business and political ties and firm performance. Design/methodology/approach Structural equation modeling and mediation analyzes were used on a sample of 302 small and medium-size enterprises in Turkey. Findings This study found that business ties enable organizational unlearning while political ties impede it. This study further demonstrates that business ties positively and political ties negatively relate to organizational learning through organizational unlearning. In addition, this study shows that political ties are mostly negatively and indirectly related to firm performance through organizational learning while business ties positively and indirectly relate to firm performance. Practical implications The findings demonstrate the critical role that personal networks play in organizational learning and firm performance. This study provides evidence to the need to recognize and evaluate the potential and undesirable impacts of political ties on cultivating innovation skills and firm performance. In addition, this study recommends managers to embrace the significance of organizational unlearning in strategic renewal, particularly as it applies to building renewing and incremental dynamic skills for enhanced firm performance. Originality/value This study offers a deeper perspective of the dissected relations of social ties in emerging economies to firm performance by considering organizational unlearning and learning behaviors as mediating mechanisms.