英雄与门

<正> 有一位青年人,经过3个月的跋山涉水,在深山里的一间小木屋里,终于找到了日思夜想的智者。青年人走上前去敲门:“我不远万里而来,就是想弄明白一个问题:怎样才能成为正在的英雄?”智者在屋里面说:“现在晚了,你明天再来吧!”第2天一早,年青人又去敲门。智者说:“现在太早了,我还没到起床的时候,你明天再来吧!”第3天一早,年青人又去敲门。智者说:“现在你来得太迟了,我要去晨运,你明天再来吧!”青年人第六次去敲智者的门时,智者又说:“我要休息了,你明天再来吧!”青年人怒从心起,大声说:“每次你都这样推三推四,我何时才能成为真正的英雄?”青年人说着踢开了智者的门,直冲进屋里去。智者笑眯眯地看着怒发冲冠的     

快公司成长宝典（十二）：成长型企业的“造人工程”——经营之神 “造人”先于造物

曾有一次印象很深的采访,一位以领导创业期企业闻名的CEO说：“没战斗力的团队,即使在一个好的策划里,也会把”方子“做坏了;而好的团队,就是遇到一个差的策划,也能杀出一条血路来!”     

"五一"购车该出手时就出手

“开上新车的感觉，爽!”老冯在自己QQ的个性签名栏里留下了这样一句“很俗、很直白”的话。     

笑一笑

下冰雹的时候老爸望着窗外感慨道:“庄稼呀,这冰雹得砸坏多少庄稼呀!”老妈望着窗外感慨道:“菜呀,明天的菜价因为冰雹又要上去了!”小弟望着窗外感慨道:“女友呀,我顶着冰雹去接你,你必须得感动呀!”我望着窗外感慨道:“我的爱车呀,你受了冰雹的伤害,保险公司可一定得赔呀!”老婆望着窗外感慨道:“浪漫呀,牵着爱人的手在冰雹里漫步多美呀!”儿子望着窗外感慨道:“我的天呀,这冰雹里要是加了糖该有多好吃呀!”晚餐邀请一个病人将在第二天做一个小手术,他问一位漂亮的女护士:下星期六他身体恢复后,能否邀她共进晚餐。护士小姐甜甜地一笑,答道…     

双汇该死吗

所有的标语,10分钟之后全变成了讽刺!无论是双汇集团总部的“双汇,开创中国肉类品牌”,还是济源双汇食品有限公司（下称“济源双汇”）的“诚信立企,德行天下”;无论是双汇连锁店里的“十八道检验,十八个放心”,还是冷鲜肉专卖店里的“要吃优质放心肉.     

老婆饼的由来

起源自广东潮州的点心老婆饼,外皮烤成诱人的金黄色,里头一层层的油酥薄如棉纸,一口咬下去碎屑便掉了满地,每一口都是蜜糖般的香甜滋味!相传在广州,有一间创办于清朝末年的老字号茶楼,以各式点心及饼食驰名;某日,茶楼里的一位潮州籍的点心师傅,把店里的各种招牌点心拿回家给老婆吃,想不到老婆吃了之后,竟说:“茶楼的点心竟如此平淡无奇,没一样比得上我娘家的点心冬瓜角!”师傅听了之后心里不服气,就叫他老婆作个“冬瓜角”给他尝尝!老婆就用冬瓜蓉、糖、面粉,作出了焦黄别致的“冬瓜角”;潮州师傅一吃,风味果然清甜可口,连夸老婆能干!隔日,…     

教父2

炎热的夏季到来了,在这么炎热的天气里还有什么室外活动可做呢?也就是在家里玩儿玩儿电脑,看看VCD。一声枪响,让我在睡梦中惊醒。睁开眼睛,看了看正在播放的VCD影片,哈哈!是马龙·白兰度主演的“教父”。不知道谁正在看这部影片,无事干也就把它看完了!之后,有一种冲动也想当一回黑社会的角色。回想起前几天朋友送的几张游戏盘中似乎有一张“教父2”,忽然有了兴趣!那么,我也过一回黑社会老大的隐吧! 游戏的开始有一会段精     

电脑医院

两机大串联我近日购得一台p233的台式机,想和家中另一台台式机用直接电缆连接,用了95里的“直接电缆连接”LTP并行端口,毫无反应请指教!先谢了! 郑州小武蒙古大夫:好羡慕同时有两台电脑的家庭,请在“设置/控制面板”中选“添加/删除程序”再在里面选“安装WINDOWS”,在所列的众多选项中选“通讯”中的“直接电     

地方政府屡扮“房托”很危险

在笔者的印象中,确实有些官员缺乏人道官德,不事赡养,虐待长辈,欺老辱老。但毕竟是极端的少数。而在愚的思想烙印里,更深的是有不少的官员“一人得道,鸡犬升天”,鸡犬都能够升天了,何来虐待长辈之理？“夫荣妻贵”,自不消说;“子官父耀”,更不鲜见!君不见,某县的“父母官”之父母死了,惊动上下,动员（其实用不着动员,一个眼神,秘书一个电话便可!）     

陈三卖瓜

陈三的瓜摊占了巷口最当阳的位置，进巷出巷的人甭管你买不买瓜，打从瓜摊旁经过时，个大滚圆的西瓜一个劲儿地朝人眼皮里钻。这不，一大早热得够呛，陈三才摆摊，就有人来照顾生意了。是位老头，他说：“小伙子，劳驾你挑个瓜吧!”“好呢，您老等着吧!”陈三从身边篓子里捞起一只，麻利地拍了拍，再凑在耳边弹了弹，说：“老人家，这只保管熟。”他正往秤盘里放。“慢着，”老人说，“摊上多的是，小伙子，你咋到篓里捞呢?”陈三心里咯登一声：“这老家伙忒精哩，难道瞧出了名堂?”“老人家，您有所不知，这摊上的多带夹生，篓里呢，才全是…     

Complaint management and the role of the chief executive

The aim of this paper is to encourage a new stream of research into complaints and the role of the chief executive officer (CEO). The objectives of this paper were firstly to assess the intensity of dissatisfaction driving customers to complain directly to the CEO and secondly to ascertain if the reasons for complaining to the CEO were different to those of complainants using ‘normal’ channels. A leading financial services company in the UK provided access to its complaint letters and its CEO. Based on analysis of a sample of 100 letters sent to the CEO and 100 standard complaint letters, it was found that customers complaining directly to the CEO have a significantly greater intensity of dissatisfaction. However, unexpectedly, despite the greater positional power of the CEO, the reasons for complaining to the CEO were little different to the reasons for using the ‘normal’ channels. Interestingly most of the complainants to the CEO had multiple reasons for complaint suggesting that complaints to the CEO are motivated by multiple underlying service failures.     

Legal Requirements for the Personalization of Commercial Internet Applications in Europe

Most electronic-commerce (e-commerce) applications require the collection and storing of information about customers. As a consequence, the performed transactions involve legal issues. For 3 years, we have been involved in a project that has studied the potentials of personalization of e-commerce systems from the particular angle of small- and medium-sized enterprises. In this article, we pick up a couple of scenarios that many e-commerce vendors face when implementing personalization on their Web sites. The specific focus of the discussion is the legal use of costumer profiles for e-commerce applications. Because most legal issues are difficult to understand for nonlawyers, in this article, we make use of a case study, which shows explicitly what e-commerce vendors need to keep in mind when implementing personalization on their Web sites.     

Why Do Firms Enter into a New Niche Market? An Integrated View of Objective and Subjective Antecedents of Strategic Decisions

This study is based on behavioral theories and has the purpose of determining the predictors and contingencies of strategic decision making within the strategic tripod framework and CEO age effect. Furthermore, we focus on the effect of the interaction of these aspects on strategic decisions. Multiple theories and concepts are applied in this paper, such as the institution-, industry-, and resource-based view, upper echelons theory, socio-emotional wealth, empathy, and so on. Specifically, we focus on why Chinese real estate firms decide to enter the aged housing market. By conducting an empirical study using panel data from 134 listed Chinese real estate companies, we make the following conclusions: Institutional pressure and competitor numbers positively affect, whereas slack harms, the likelihood of entry. Ceteris paribus, the resource effect is strongest when the institutional effect is the most significant. When facing institutional pressure, a firm with a CEO older than 50 is significantly more likely to enter the aged housing market than firms with a CEO that is younger.Relieving institutional pressure and avoiding cutthroat competition are helpful in making strategic decisions but not for digesting slack resources. The CEO makes strategic decisions by replying to institutional pressure but likely not from engagements in resource or competitive affairs.     

Customers focus and impulse buying at night markets

This study conducted a survey on impulse buying at several international night markets in Taiwan and obtained 1053 responses. The data were analysed by partial least squares structural equation modelling. The model was composed of several constructs: attitude towards impulse buying, impulse buying tendency, and variables of customer focus, including insight ability (vendors’ insight into customer needs), customer information, response and feedback, and vendor enthusiasm. The analytical results revealed that insight ability, customer information, response and feedback, and enthusiasm have direct and significant positive effects on attitude towards impulse buying. Additionally, multi-group comparisons in partial least squares analysis revealed partial but statistically significant differences in the path relationships between male customers (568) and female customers; (485); foreign (465) and domestic (588) customers, among night market visitors. This study contributes to the literature by providing a more precise overview of the influence of customer focus on impulse buying tendency within a limited time frame and a crowded space.     

Mitigating transaction risk for cross-border e-commerce firms: A multiagent-based simulation study

The industry of cross-border electronic commerce (CBEC) has experienced rapid development in recent years, however it has also faced severe challenges concerning the managerial risks taking place across national borders. The aims of the study are two folds: first examine the effects of applying different risk mitigation strategies on the market performance of international online vendors (IOVs) and utilities of consumers; second explore whether consumers’ choices among vendors from different nations based on psychic distance are affected by the risk mitigation strategies of platforms or by the actual frequency of vendors making default moves. A dynamic simulation has been conducted based on four combinations of platform strategies determined by two dimensions of ex ante intervention and ex post investigation. The results indicate that (i) once increasing the frequency of ex post investigation of risk events, customers will suffer less default losses, and both IOVs and customers will gain more utilities; (ii) the profits of ordinary vendors will increase marginally when reducing the frequency of ex ante intervention of high-risk orders, causing a lower degree of shopping concentration; (iii) when platforms adopt risk mitigation strategies of more frequent intervention or higher investigation intensity toward IOVs, the psychic distances of consumers towards IOVs from the same nation and from relatively closer nations become closer.     

Timing is money: managing the floor in sales interaction at street-market stalls

Abstract

This article considers ‘pricing’, that is, offers and requests for the price of sales items, as a communicative practice deployed by vendors and customers during sales interaction on street markets. It examines the organisation of sales interaction by pursuing the question of how and when market participants, vendors and customers alike, embed offers and requests for price information within their interaction. The analysis suggests that pricing is deployed as a technique to manage the ‘floor’ and the interaction at the stall. For example, offers for items are being tailored to customers’ display of interest and commitment to particular items, and requests for price information are deployed in ways that challenge anticipated offers, that is, offers that are about to be made by a vendor. The data, field observation and video-recording have been gathered at market stalls in London and Berlin.     

CEOs’ regulatory focus and firm internationalization: The moderating effects of CEO overconfidence,narcissism and career horizon

While the international business literature has mainly focused on the firm- or industry-level antecedents of internationalization strategies, scholars have recently advocated a greater focus on the microfoundations of firms’ strategic decisions. Building on the regulatory focus theory, this study focuses on how CEO promotion and prevention foci impact firm internationalization. Looking into dispositional and situational attributions, this study also theorizes how these factors moderate the relationship between a CEO’s psychological motivations and firm internationalization. Using data from publicly traded US firms listed in the Fortune 500, the findings of this study show that a CEO’s promotion focus is positively associated with the extent of a firm’s internationalization, whereas a CEO’s strong prevention focus limits the extent of a firm’s internationalization. The findings also reveal that the relationship between a CEO’s regulatory focus and the extent of a firm’s internationalization is moderated by a CEO’s overconfidence, narcissism, and career horizon. These findings have important research and managerial implications for firms engaged in international business.     

Corporate Portals for Supply Chain Collaboration

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the technological capabilities offered by the portal industry's key software vendors to support inter-firm design collaboration and supply chain integration. An analysis of the technology coverage and gaps is presented, with a focus on the opportunities available for portal software improvement. Challenges for collaboration and supply chain software, including security, external access and capabilities, bandwidth and communication standards are discussed, particularly in context with the demands of portal software users. As well, a picture of the current and future state of the marketplace is developed from an analysis of the market position and product direction of a selection of eight enterprise portal vendors.     

Value‐driven Internet shopping: The mental accounting theory perspective

When faced with competition and the ease with which customers can compare prices across sellers, Internet vendors often lower prices in a bid to increase sales. However, recent research reports that even price‐sensitive customers do not always purchase from Internet vendors offering the lowest prices. In contrast, value has been considered a key motivator of customer decision making in economics and marketing. However, little is known about the role and effect of value in Internet shopping. This study examines online customer purchase decision making from the value perspective based on mental accounting theory. This study also identifies monetary (perceived price) and non‐monetary (perceived risk, convenience, and pleasure) determinants of value. This study further explains how the individual determinants affect online purchase decision making directly and indirectly though value perception. The findings of this study offer Internet vendors practical suggestions for increasing online sales. This study, with its results, also helps advance knowledge of electronic commerce. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The role of customer values in accepting information technologies in the public information service sector

Many government agencies have outsourced their information systems to software vendors. Firms in the information service industry have to realize the needs of customers in the public sector. This study investigated the causal relationship between users' perception and information technology acceptance. Empirical results suggest that the perceived value of users plays an important and mediating role in the causal relationship among social influence process, cognitive instrumental process, and intention to use.