Exploring the Attitudes of Bottled Wine Distributors Toward Wine Producers in the Portuguese Wine Sector

The wine sector has unique features that have not been deeply studied. This study aims to explore the attitudes of bottled wine distributors toward wine producers in the Portuguese wine sector. Eleven interviews (about 60 min each) were carried out with all major wine distributor managers. The transcribed interviews were analyzed using qualitative software. Content analysis shows that distributors develop six main attitudes toward producers: (a) Long-term Relationship, (b) Cooperation, (c) Interdependence, (d) Product Quality, (e) Trust, and (f) Brand Image. Findings may help managers of the wine sector and promote favorable relationships with the distributing customers.     

Physician's Advice Affects Adoption of Desirable Dietary Behaviors

Due to the prevalence of and economic costs associated with poor dietary behaviors, the purpose of our research is to investigate the relationship between receipt of physician's dietary advice and the individual's tendency to adopt the desirable dietary behavior. Using a trivariate probit model, we find that physician's advice has dramatic positive effects on the probability of both eating fewer high fat and high cholesterol foods and on eating more fruits and vegetables to reduce risk of developing heart disease or stroke.     

Farmers' Preferences and Social Capital Regarding Agri‐environmental Schemes to Protect Birds

The steady decline of birds living in cereal steppe lands is a worrying situation that the European Common Agricultural Policy is attempting to remedy through the application of agri‐environmental schemes (AES). We assess farmers' preferences towards these AES, which call for a number of environmental practices to protect birds. Using a face‐to‐face survey in farming communities in Aragón (Spain), and through the estimation of an Ordered Logit model (OL), we assess the ranking of AES attributes, and obtain their economic valuation according to the farmers' preferences. We find that social factors are also important in determining farmers' decisions. In particular, the importance of social trust and expectation of compliance by other neighbours, encourage farmers to sign up to AES. These and other results may be used to design more effective AES and help to solve this important biodiversity problem.     

Nothing ventured,nothing gained! How and under which conditions employers provide employability-enhancing practices to their older workers

Employability-enhancing practices usually refer to training or courses, but also practices directed towards older workers to sustain their work capability can be embraced by this term. In the context of an ageing population and workforce, older workers' labour market participation gains an increasingly important role. Therefore, the importance of employability-enhancing practices is noted as a solution to sustain their employment. In this study, we focus on employer-provided employability practices for older workers. We answer the following research question: which practices do employers use to enhance their older workers' employability and under which conditions are these practices adopted. Analyses on Dutch corporate data (N = 860) show that employers mainly provide employability-enhancing practices that are easily implemented and not expensive. This finding replicates prior research and clarifies that job redesign should be considered as a possibility to keep older workers in the labour market. Furthermore, our study shows that both organizational and labour market characteristics affect employers' decisions whether to provide employability-enhancing practices for their older workers. This suggests that policy measures might be necessary to assimilate investments in employability-enhancing practices across organizations.     

Multinational companies and high-performance work practices in the Spanish manufacturing industry

In this paper we use data from industrial plants to establish whether there are differences in the adoption of high-performance work practices (HPWPs) between subsidiaries of multinational firms and indigenous firms. We use a unique data set that consists of a sample of manufacturing establishments located in Spain. We consider 14 HPWPs and find that multinational firms adopt HPWPs more intensively than non-multinationals. We also find that the country of origin of the multinational firm is not so important.     

Sex Differences in Perceived Weight-Based Employment Discrimination When Weight Discrimination is Illegal

The reported study explores sex differences in both overt and subtle forms of perceived weight discrimination in employment using original data from a telephone survey of 1,010 randomly selected residents of Michigan, the only U.S. state with a law prohibiting weight discrimination. Sex differences in the experience of overt forms of weight discrimination (e.g., refusing to hire a person) that have been consistently found in other work and non-work settings were not found in this unique legal context. However, overweight women reported experiencing subtle forms of weight discrimination (e.g., verbal harassment, exclusion from social activities) to a significantly greater extent than men. Implications for employers’ discharge of their responsibilities and for policy makers’ consideration of greater legal protection against weight discrimination are discussed.     

Output complexity, environmental conditions, and the efficiency of municipalities

Over the last few years, many studies have analyzed the efficiency of local governments in different countries. An accurate definition of their output bundles—i.e., the services and facilities they provide to their constituencies—is essential to this research. However, several difficulties emerge in this task. First, since in most cases the law only establishes the minimum amount of services and facilities to provide, it may well be the case that some municipalities go beyond the legal minimum and, consequently, might have an uncertain effect on efficiency when compared to other municipalities which stick to the legal minimum. Second, municipalities face very different environmental conditions, which raises some doubts about the plausibility of an unconditional analysis. This study tackles these problems by proposing an analysis in which the efficiency of municipalities is evaluated after splitting them into clusters according to various criteria (output mix, environmental conditions, level of powers). We perform our estimations using order-m frontiers, given their robustness to outliers and immunity to the curse of dimensionality. We provide an application to Spanish municipalities, and results show that both output mix and, more especially, environmental conditions, should be controlled for, since efficiency differences between municipalities in different groups are notable.     

Startup team contributions and new firm creation: the role of founding team experience

The likelihood of nascent entrepreneurs making the transition from a new venture idea to a profitable business is argued to be contingent on the breadth of the resources available within the startup team. Team industry and startup experience are deemed to influence the entrepreneurs’ ability to profitably establish the venture in the market via the mobilization of team resources. Using a sample of nascent entrepreneurs in the USA, we show that team resource heterogeneity has a positive impact on profitable firm creation. Moreover, this positive effect is greater as the team has more experience in the industry in which the new business will compete.     

Implicit leadership in an intercultural context: theory extension and empirical investigation

Prior literature highlights that subordinates' identification with their leader is important for leader success. This study explores new mechanisms of implicit leadership and their effects on identification by subordinates. Using data from two sources – subordinates from five regional clusters and expatriate leaders – this study reveals that a leader's underfulfilment of subordinates' expectations of leadership harms their leader identification. Moreover, simple fulfilment of subordinates' expectations toward leadership does not affect their identification; to do so requires overfulfilment. Furthermore, the effects of underfulfilment strengthen with greater collectivism and low power distance, whereas overfulfilment effects are mitigated by these cultural dimensions.     

Extending Institutional Analysis through Theoretical Triangulation: Regulation and Activity-Based Costing in Portuguese Telecommunications

Abstract

This paper examines why a Portuguese telecommunications company – Marconi – adopted activity-based costing (ABC). The focus lies in new institutional sociology (NIS), particularly the institutional change model of Dillard et al. (Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 17(4), pp. 506–542, 2004), supplemented by theoretical triangulation involving economic, labour process and actor network theories to enrich observations and extend theory. Why Marconi adopted ABC lay in a complex, interrelated chain of institutions, including the parent company, management consultants, national and European Union regulators, financial markets and consumer associations during market liberalization. ABC was a means and symbol of improved competitiveness and efficiency but its diffusion and adoption also involved mimetic, coercive and normative factors. In regulated environments external legitimacy and efficiency were intertwined and demonstrating efficiency using accounting symbols is problematic. The results confirm criticisms of early NIS research for dichotomizing economic and institutional pressures, assuming private organizations are exempt from institutional pressures and neglecting internal organizational dynamics. The Dillard et al. model accommodated many features of institutionalization but needed extension to incorporate the public interest, the role of boundary spanners across social levels and how intra-organizational factors and properties of the technology derived following translation and praxis play a part.