Sustainability as corporate culture of a brand for superior performance

Sustainability research highlights new challenges and opportunities for businesses. This paper reviews the literature to understand the ability of sustainable green initiatives when practiced as a corporate culture to individually create new opportunities for operations, management and marketing. According to current research, business opportunities exclusively available to different functions of a firm can drive its performance. The role of marketing in the achievement of superior performance by virtue of sustainability practices is also explained by the existing literature. Branding literature, however, fails to explain the influence of a brand on sustainability-driven opportunities available to a firm for superior performance. The objective of this study is to explore if a brand can strengthen the ability of sustainability-based green initiatives of managers to drive opportunities available to a firm for superior performance. A conceptual framework grounded in the triple bottom line theory is presented based on the assumption that brand as a stimulating factor can accelerate the conversion of opportunities available to a business into superior performance. Academic and managerial perspectives have been used to draw upon the implications of the model. Both practitioners and academic researchers will benefit from future research on this topic.     

Financial competence,overconfidence, and trusting investments: Results from an experiment

Financial transactions sometimes occur in an environment where third-party enforcement is lacking. Behavioral explanations typically allude to the social preferences, where an individual’s utility is directly affected by another’s outcome, as the driver of the trusting investments and reciprocal returns. We hypothesize that, in part, these decisions are determined by an individual’s financial literacy and overconfidence in one’s knowledge. Experimental evidence is coupled with an innovative financial literacy assessment, which measures general competence, numeracy skills, and overconfidence in one’s knowledge. Results indicate that overconfidence is a significant determinant of behavior. Specifically, overconfident individuals make larger contributions in the investment game. We also document that there is an escalated effect in overconfident individuals who are also exhibit risk loving preferences.     

Group-based pay-for-performance plans and firm performance: The moderating role of empowerment practices

As the popularity of group-based pay-for-performance plans persists, compensation researchers are exploring the conditions under which these plans contribute to the financial performance of firms. Based on a sample of 1,933 employees from 415 companies in South Korea, we found that group-based pay-for-performance plans enhance both objective and subjective measures of firm performance. Furthermore, consistent with the contingency perspective of fit, we found that empowerment practices positively moderate the relationship between group-based pay-for-performance plans and firm performance. These findings suggest that empowerment can enhance the effectiveness of such pay plans. We discuss implications for research and practice.     

The out-of-sample forecasting performance of nonlinear models of regional housing prices in the US

This article provides out-of-sample forecasts of linear and nonlinear models of US and four Census subregions’ housing prices. The forecasts include the traditional point forecasts, but also include interval and density forecasts, of the housing price distributions. The nonlinear smooth-transition autoregressive model outperforms the linear autoregressive model in point forecasts at longer horizons, but the linear autoregressive and nonlinear smooth-transition autoregressive models perform equally at short horizons. In addition, we generally do not find major differences in performance for the interval and density forecasts between the linear and nonlinear models. Finally, in a dynamic 25-step ex-ante and interval forecasting design, we, once again, do not find major differences between the linear and nonlinear models. In sum, we conclude that when forecasting regional housing prices in the United States, generally the additional costs associated with nonlinear forecasts outweigh the benefits for forecasts only a few months into the future.     

Explaining constitution-makers’ preferences: the cases of Estonia and the United States

This article is concerned with the effects of the kinds of framers involved in constitution-making on the content of constitutional provisions proposed during the drafting process. It tests the hypotheses that predict framers’ constitutional preferences on the basis of their institutional position, partisan background and constitutional expertise with two specific cases: the Constitutional Assembly of Estonia (1991–1992) and the Federal Convention (1787) of the United States. The case studies show that most of the hypotheses find only partial confirmation in both instances of constitution-making. The institutional position of a framer (being a member of existing legislature or executive) and constitutional expertise does not necessarily influence his or her constitutional preferences in the predicted way. The only theoretical proposition that is corroborated in both cases concerns the importance of group interest in a constitutional choice of electoral system and modes of representation: in the Estonian case, the design of the constitutional electoral rules was strongly influenced by partisan interest; in the US case, the interests of territorial subunits played a major role.