HANDLING NONRESPONSE IN LOGISTICS RESEARCH

Assessing and controlling for nonresponse bias is critical for the validity and reliability of survey‐based logistics research. In order to gain a better understanding of how researchers assess and report nonresponse bias in their studies, we analyzed articles published from 1998 through 2007 in three top logistics journals (International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, Journal of Business Logistics, Transportation Journal). We describe and explore how nonresponse has been handled in these articles. Our findings show that first, survey response rates have declined over time; this influences the generalizability of survey results in case of nonresponse. Second, an average of 44% of published mail survey articles does not mention tests for detecting nonresponse bias.     

The influence of media,positive perception,and identification on survey‐based measures of corruption

This study examines the influence of some suspected sources of bias on perceptions of public sector corruption. These sources include dependence on two types of media as information sources about corruption: traditional and social media, positive perception of public employees, and social identification with public employees. Data were collected through a face‐to‐face survey of the general public in South Korea. The sample comprised 472 respondents evenly dispersed across the country. Through regression analysis, we found that dependence on traditional media—but not social media—significantly increased the perceived level of corruption. However, positive perceptions of and social identification with public employees were negatively associated with it, showing that these factors may skew respondents' perceptions of corruption. The results have implications for practitioners and researchers who design, implement, or evaluate anti‐corruption policies, suggesting the need for caution when making use of survey results.     

Self‐reporting vs. observation: some cautionary examples from parent/child food shopping behaviour

Most studies on decision‐making in relation to consumption are based on self‐reported behaviour. This approach assumes that consumers can account for their decision‐making processes. However, several studies show that consumers are not always aware of what happens when they purchase goods because of the role of habit and routines, or a lack of willingness to account accurately for their purchases. A clear example of this is family decision‐making about food shopping. It is well documented that parents know that their children influence what they buy in supermarkets but it is also found that parents and children do not agree on just how much influence children have. Thus, a gap exists in the knowledge about what is actually happening in this grey zone of grocery shopping which seemingly cannot be solved through retrospective data collection. Family shopping is neither a completely rational nor conscious process, which makes the use of self‐reported behaviour problematic. This study discusses the limits of survey and interview approaches to parents' and children's shopping decisions in comparison with observations. An observational study of parent/child supermarket shopping in Denmark is used to exemplify the strengths of observation. Findings show that both parents and children are juggling a number of roles and apply a range of negotiation strategies which can explain why it is hard to account for who decided what afterwards. The article concludes that mapping certain types of consumer actions calls for other methods than self‐reported behaviour.     

Detecting gender item bias and differential manifest response behavior: A Rasch-based solution

Although gender is a salient variable in consumer research, researchers largely overlook whether, and how, it influences consumer response to indicators measuring latent variables. The authors therefore extend the framework of measurement equivalence assessment to the largely overlooked issue of differential item response behavior between men and women. This paper demonstrates the efficacy of using item response theory to investigate the presence of gender item bias. This methodological approach affords researchers the means of objectively disentangling actual gender differences and gender bias. Ignoring the possibility of gender item bias has the potential to bias means and thereby compromise any substantive gender-based mean comparisons. The authors conclude with solutions to address gender item bias both pre and post survey construction.     

The 4Ps of Relational Marketing,Perspectives, Perceptions,Paradoxes and Paradigms

SUMMARY

The aim of this paper is to explore how different underlying worldviews in marketing affect the perception of the environment and how these impact the choice between transactional or relational offerings. Furthermore, we aim to show that not only positivistic and interpretivist paradigms are present in all of the management disciplines, in strategy, in organizational theory, in marketing, etc., but also that managerial disciplines seem to be moving from the reign of the positivistic schools, through the emergence of the interpretativist schools, and now towards a pluralistic approach. The analysis of the underlying worldviews is important for relationship marketing in practice because it may provide another, deeper-level explanation for the choices that managers make regarding transactional, relational and pluralistic offerings. At the theoretical level, it may help explain how and why the new RM paradigm developed in the marketing.     

The social desirability response bias in ethics research

This study examines the impact of a social desirability response bias as a personality characteristic (self-deception and impression management) and as an item characteristic (perceived desirability of the behavior) on self-reported ethical conduct. Findings from a sample of college students revealed that self-reported ethical conduct is associated with both personality and item characteristics, with perceived desirability of behavior having the greatest influence on self-reported conduct. Implications for research in business ethics are drawn, and suggestions are offered for reducing the effects of a socially desirable response bias. Donna M. Randall is an Associate Professor in Management and Systems at Washington State University. Her research interests include organizational commitment, media coverage of elite crime, and ethical issues in management. Her publications have appeared in such journals as Decision Sciences, Academy of Management Review, and Journal of Business Ethics.Maria F. Fernandes is a doctoral student in the Department of Management and Systems. Her research interests lie in the area of business ethics and equity theory. Her current research explores cognitive processes involving ethical decision making.     

Understanding factors affecting consumer intention to shop in a virtual world

The objectives of this study were to understand that factors affecting consumer intention to shop in a virtual world and to analyze the relationships among these factors. Particularly, this study explored consumer innovativeness (consumer novelty seeking, consumer independent judgment making) as an external variable that influences consumer intention indirectly through its effects on consumer experiences with the virtual world application (ease of use, control, concentration, enjoyment). The findings indicated that consumers’ perceived enjoyment and control positively influenced their shopping intentions. While consumer novelty seeking had no significant effect on shopping intention consumer independent judgment making significantly affected consumers’ intention to shop in a virtual world indirectly through its positive effects on perceived control, enjoyment, and ease of use.     

The Effect of Context on Moral Intensity of Ethical Issues: Revising Jones's Issue-Contingent Model

Jones's (1991) issue-contingent model of ethical decision making posits that six dimensions of moral intensity influence decision makers' recognition of an issue as a moral problem and subsequent behavior. He notes that "organizational settings present special challenges to moral agents" (1991, p. 390) and that organizational factors affect "moral decision making and behavior at two points: establishing moral intent and engaging in moral behavior" (1991, p. 391). This model, however, minimizes both the impact of organizational setting and organizational factors on these experiences of ethical issues. In this theory, context is modeled as affecting the moral intent and behavior of the actor rather than directly affecting the issue's moral intensity. Here we look specifically at the effect of context on the moral intensity of ethical issues through a phenomenological study. Our results indicate that in certain environments, context may be critical in affecting the moral intensity of ethical issues. Thus, researchers should consider it more fully when assessing these issues' moral intensity.     

Are the Direct and Indirect Growth Effects of Remittances Significant?

Development economists believe that migrant workers’ remittances are an important source of funds for long‐run growth. Therefore, recent studies have investigated the growth effects of remittances but reached different conclusions. In these studies, the rate of growth of output is simply regressed on both remittances and the channels through which remittances affect growth. Thus, no distinction has been made between the indirect and direct growth effects of remittances. Such regressions may give unreliable estimates because the channels may also capture some growth effects of remittances, making the growth effects of remittances insignificant. In this study, we make a distinction between the indirect and direct growth effects of remittances. Our model is estimated with panel data of 40 high remittance recipient countries with the system generalized method of moment. We found that remittances have no direct growth effects but they have small indirect growth effects.     

Does Hindsight Bias Change Perceptions of Business Ethics?

Ethical decision theory may not be sufficiently well developed to furnish reliable guidelines to people involved in complex decision making that involves conflict between ethical considerations and business imperatives such as making a profit. In conditions of ethical uncertainty hindsight bias may occur, and this study reports on an exploration of hindsight bias effects among participants in continuing education in business programmes. Perceptions of business ethics were found to differ among groups within the sample depending on what they thought had been the outcome of the ethical decision concerned.     

Commentary on “Common Method Bias in Marketing: Causes,Mechanisms, and Procedural Remedies”

Common method bias is a potentially serious methodological problem in research in marketing. Several statistical remedies have been proposed in the literature, and used by academic researchers. MacKenzie and Podsakoff (2012) identify the causes of common method bias, and then provide a set of procedural remedies that might prevent the occurrence of the problem. In this commentary, we expand on their contribution by articulating the different types of measurement error that could occur in survey research, how a procedural remedy might simultaneously affect more than one type of error, and how common method bias might manifest itself in the domain of stimulus-centered measures.     

项目评估法定国有资产之价

关于国有资产定价问题,各种方案从不同角度被提出并实践着,但其实际效果并不理想。追其原因,除了体制、内外环境因素等外,一个比较重要的原因就是:国有资产的价值没有真正厘定清楚。价格的确定是各种方案实施之前不容忽视的、是较难处理的问题,也将是解决国有企业、国有资产问题的关键。     

Buying Groceries in Brick and Click Stores: Category Allocation Decisions and the Moderating Effect of Online Buying Experience

The large majority of online grocery shoppers are multichannel shoppers who keep visiting offline grocery stores to combine convenience advantages of online shopping with self-service advantages of offline stores. An important retail management question, therefore, is how these consumers divide grocery purchases across the retailer's online and offline channel. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of category characteristics on the allocation pattern of multichannel grocery shoppers and find that category allocation decisions are affected not only by marketing mix differences between the online and offline channel, but also by intrinsic category characteristics like perceived purchase risk and shopping convenience. In addition, we examine the effect of online buying experience. In line with expectations, we find that it can affect allocation patterns in different ways: (i) it attenuates the perceived risk of buying sensory categories online, thereby reducing differences in online category share, (ii) it reinforces marketing mix (assortment) effects, thereby making online category share differences more pronounced, and (iii) it has no effect for factors such as promotions that are easy to evaluate without experience, thereby leaving the online category share stable. In addition to different experience effects across allocation factors, we also observe variations in experience effects across consumer segments.     

Attention All Shoppers,Queer Customers in Aisle Two: Investigating Lesbian and Gay Discrimination in the Marketplace

In this paper, drawing on epistemologies in social and behavioral sciences, we discuss the tenuous social-cultural climate of sexual minorities within markets. Discourses across disciplines address the socio-political and cultural evolution of sexual minorities, most notably self-identified and out lesbians and gay men. Yet, consumptive and marketing spheres offer mixed metaphors about the value and desirability of lesbians and gays, and often work to enact the homophobic at an institutional level. We review research on homonegative bias and heteronormativity within psychological and sociological domains, and then illustrate how homonegativity toward perceived lesbians and gays is structurally enacted within the marketplace. We posit four methodological strategies that may be used to further research queries in these domains, and comment on the ethical parameters of using deception to investigate discriminatory behavior against (perceived) lesbians and gay men.     

Reforming European Merger Review: Targeting Problem Areas in Policy Outcomes

This paper is an attempt to derive priorities for the reform of European merger policy from observed problems with decision making in merger cases. We identify problems in the application of theory and empirical method as well as the impact of resource constraints and the potential for systematic decision bias. In contrast to the intense debate about the merits of a switch from a dominance criterion to a significant lessening of competition test, we find that such a switch would not effectively address any of the problems in Commision decision making on mergers. Similarly, the lack of an efficiency defense does not seem to explain any of the weaknesses of European merger policy. In contrast, we find that most of the problem areas identified in current merger control practice can be effectively addressed by reforming the merger procedure, the internal organization of merger control in the Commission, as well as addressing resource issues. Together with carefully crafted merger guidelines these should have strong priority for the reform of merger policy in Europe.     

The ethics of creative accounting some Spanish evidence

Creative accounting involves accountants in making accounting policy choices or manipulating transactions in such a way as to convey a preferred and deliberately chosen impression in the accounts. Although it is regarded as unethical by most observers, a defense of creative accounting can be based on the assumption that users of accounts can identify bias in accounting policy choices and make appropriate adjustments. In this paper we take the example of the Barcelona Football Club where the club management made three key accounting policy choices that resulted in the presentation of a favourable position, and a supporters club presented an alternative report choosing three alternative accounting policies that presented an unfavourable position. We presented each of these financial reports to one of two groups of Spanish bank loan officers: we found that the more favourable set of accounts was significantly more likely to attract a positive response to a loan request. This result undermines the validity of defending creative accounting based on the argument that accounts users can identify manipulation.     

项目反应理论在实时网络风险评估中的应用

为提高传统网络风险评估方法的准确性,针对大部分网络风险评估方法未考虑攻击能力值的问题,提出了一种基于项目反应理论的实时网络风险评估方法。该方法利用项目反应理论引入的攻击能力值参数以及服务安全等级参数,对传统攻击威胁值和攻击成功概率计算方法进行改进,并采用三标度层次分析法构建出更准确的服务重要性权重,最终获得符合网络环境的评估态势。仿真结果表明：该方法可以提高评估结果的准确度,并实时地绘制更符合真实网络环境的安全态势图。     

The role of existentialism in ethical business decision‐making

This paper presents an integrated model of ethical decision‐making in business that incorporates teleological, deontological and existential theory. Existentialism has been curiously overlooked by many scholars in the field despite the fact that it is so fundamentally a theory of choice. We argue that it is possible to seek good organisational ends (teleology), through the use of right means (deontology), and enable the decision‐maker to do so authentically (existentialism). More specifically, we provide a framework that will enable the decision‐maker to integrate the various ethical schools of thought available to them and to apply this framework in the ethical decision‐making process. The model presented makes explicit the existential position of choice and takes into account other contextual moderating factors. Negative Option Marketing is used as a running application to illustrate the role of existentialism in the decision‐making process.