Examining the Impact of Brand Transgressions on Consumers' Perceptions of Celebrity Endorsers

Prior research has extensively explored the impact of celebrities' transgressions on the brands that they endorse. However, little research exists examining the impact of brand transgressions on consumers' perceptions of the celebrities that endorse these products. This research addresses this oversight and finds that transgressions committed by a brand negatively impact consumers' attitudes toward the endorsing celebrity. Moreover, we find this effect is sequentially mediated by perceptions of responsibility and moral reputation. Finally, we identify two response strategies that a celebrity can employ to mitigate the negative effects of the brand's transgression on the celebrity's reputation. However, the effectiveness of these strategies may be dependent upon perceptions of endorser expertise.     

Chinese employees’ leadership preferences and the relationship with power distance orientation and core self-evaluation

Informed by implicit leadership theories, this study investigates contemporary Chinese employees’ preferences for paternalistic leadership (including three components: moral leadership, benevolent leadership and authoritarian leadership) and transformational leadership. It further examines the relationship between power distance orientation, core self-evaluation (CSE) and leadership preferences. The study finds that contemporary Chinese employees most prefer moral leadership, but are also highly receptive to transformational leadership. They prefer authoritarian leadership least. Moreover, preferences for authoritarian leadership are predicated on followers’ power distance orientation. However, the opposite is true for moral leadership. CSE is positively related to followers’ preference for authoritarian leadership, benevolent leadership and transformational leadership, but not except for moral leadership. A positive interaction effect is found between power distance orientation and CSE with regard to authoritarian leadership preference. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Global consumer tendencies

A great deal of the international consumer behavior and market segmentation literature has focused on the most effective means by which consumers in multiple markets can be understood and those markets organized for successful operations. One of the assumptions in much of this literature is the existence, and increasing influence, of global consumers whose social and cultural differences are overshadowed by their similarities in terms of psychological consumer tendencies. Unfortunately these global consumers' tendencies are generally shown to exist through anecdotal or surrogate evidence. Virtually no direct empirical support that demonstrates the existence of such a phenomenon has been produced. The purpose of this study was to explore the notion that consumers around the globe are becoming more similar in terms of psychological consumer tendencies. The results show that, across several generally accepted psychological consumer tendencies, there may be empirical evidence to support the existence of global consumers. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Can trade costs in goods explain home bias in assets?

A debate has raged in the general equilibrium literature on the impact of trade costs on portfolio home bias. In all of these models there is a simple, easily observed covariance–variance ratio. We compute this term using data on real exchange rates and asset returns. The resulting portfolio home bias is close to zero, implying that GE models that create home bias through trade costs are not grounded in empirical reality. Our results enable the GE literature to move forward, but in a way in which the theoretical models are not at odds with an easily observed empirical regularity.     

Customization of Product Technology and International New Product Success: Mediating Effects of New Product Development and Rollout Timeliness

Offering a standardized product for different country markets may enable companies to accomplish fast product development and multicountry rollout, whereas also enjoying substantial cost benefits. However, not all manufacturers serving multicountry markets can adopt a standardized product strategy. Where technological requirements, standards, and approval procedures vary substantially across countries, manufacturers invariably must adapt the product's technology to fit individual country requirements. Extensive customization may lead to longer new product development and rollout times and increase the likelihood of delays in the entire project, hence adversely affecting overall new product outcome. This study examines the relationships between product technology customization, the timeliness in completion of both the new product development effort and international market launches, and new product success. The study that reports on new product launches across European markets, is based on personal interviews with senior managers in 30 multinational companies. The authors show that timeliness in new product development and timeliness in rolling out the new product into different country markets mediate the link between product technology customization and overall new product success. Customization of product technology increases the likelihood of delays in the completion of new product development projects and multicountry rollout. Additionally, the timeliness in new product development mediates the relationship between product technology customization and timeliness in international new product rollout. This means that if the NPD project runs behind schedule, a fault‐free multicountry rollout program becomes increasingly unlikely, as problems encountered during product development spillover into the rollout program. The results imply that international product managers must assign greater priority to assessing the relative advantages of customizing new product technology and to consider the timing implications for both the NPD effort and subsequent rollout. Managers must set realistic schedules and allocate sufficient resources to ensure both tasks can be accomplished within planned time scales. Finally, managers should not underestimate the complexities and time involved in customizing new product technologies, including the completion of disparate country technical approval procedures.     

Designing Ethical Management Control: Overcoming the Harmful Effect of Management Control Systems on Job-Related Stress

Journal of Business Ethics - Ethical aspects of management control systems (MCS) are attracting increasing attention among scholars and practitioners. Much of the work centers on their aims. We...     

Evaluating the Stability of School Performance Estimates over Time

When using school performance indicators for the purposes of accountability and school choice, it is very important that measures are stable over time. This issue is very relevant when the system is based on the allocation of students to the same teachers for the whole educational cycle (e.g. at primary school level). Using administrative data provided by the National Evaluation Committee for Education (INVALSI), we explore the stability of performance estimates for Italian primary schools. We first construct school performance metrics using INVALSI standardised tests, by taking advantage of a rich array of individual‐level variables (including prior achievement) that allow us to estimate a school effect in a ‘value added’ perspective. We assess differences in performance across schools and the persistence of these differences across cohorts. We find that controlling for compositional differences is important; therefore, estimates of school performances are unstable across metrics, and correlations across cohorts decline over time.     

Are migrants in/from emerging economies more entrepreneurial than natives?

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - The academic debate in migrant entrepreneurship has mainly focused on movements from emerging economies into developed economies. Anecdotal...     

Worker autonomy and performance: Evidence from a real-effort experiment

Worker flexibility in effort allocation is a crucial factor for productivity and optimal job design. This paper runs a real-effort experiment that manipulates both the degree and type of autonomy individuals have in scheduling their effort, and it examines the causal effects of these manipulations on final performance. The main findings come from comparing subjects with different levels of cognitive ability. Using individual data on scheduling decisions, I find significant baseline differences in performance and effort-allocation strategies between high- and low-cognitive ability subjects. Moreover, the experiment shows that high-ability individuals reach higher performance when they have full scheduling flexibility while limiting any task-ordering possibility increases the performance of low-ability individuals. Overall, this paper provides new and robust evidence on the importance of cognitive ability in explaining effort-allocation decisions, and it identifies job design interventions to increase the performance of high- and low-ability workers.