Outward FDI and Home Country Exports: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Evidence

This article reviews the growing body of literature that empirically analyzes the impact of outward FDI on home country exports. Focusing the analysis on the various types of studies and identifying the methods used and the countries analyzed, this study allows us to identify gaps in the literature and make suggestions for future research. Future research efforts should focus on more disaggregated data, particularly at the firm and product levels, and adopt a multilateral approach, which is essential for a complete analysis of the relationship between FDI and exports.     

Organizational Virtue and Performance: An Empirical Study of Customers and Employees

This paper offers the first large-scale empirical study of organizational virtue as perceived by both internal and external stakeholders (employees and customers, respectively) and of the links between these virtues and organizational outcomes such as identification, satisfaction, and distinctiveness. It takes a strategic approach to virtue ethics, one that differs from a more traditional Aristotelian concept of virtue and from Alasdair MacIntyre’s manner of distinguishing between internal and external goods. The literature review compares three different perspectives on the empirical study of organizational virtues, taken by virtue theorists, POS scholars, and strategy scholars. The main study describes an empirical research undertaking that involved the analysis of 2548 usable questionnaires administered to employees and customers of seven organizations in the U.K. A structural equation model was used to test the linkages of the six dimensions of organizational virtue (empathy, warmth, integrity, conscientiousness, courage, and zeal) to satisfaction, identification, and distinctiveness. All the links were significant, with the strongest between virtue and identification. For employees, identification (with a firm) was driven most significantly by integrity, whereas customers’ identification was principally influenced by empathy. The empirical finding also sounds an alarm bell to the global firms who focus on creating a differentiated image based on CSR in the hope that it will lead to satisfaction. The results lead to a discussion of how companies might build favorable stakeholder perceptions of key dimensions of virtue that most shape their identification and differentiation in the marketplace.     

Corporate recidivism in emerging economies

Prior research on corporate misconduct pays extensive attention to single misconduct behaviors. However, little research has addressed recidivism – the repeated behaviors of corporate misconduct. Based on institutional theory and using the context of emerging economies where recidivism plays a considerable role, we propose the path dependency of corporate recidivism and suggest that three influential factors exist: internal preconditioning, inter‐organizational imitation, and the prevailing external evaluation. Our event history analysis of 1,036 listed companies in China over the period 2001–2008 statistically confirms our hypotheses. We conclude the paper by outlining the implications for both theory and practice.     

Government financial statistics and accounting in Europe: is ESA 2010 improving convergence?

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the impact of ESA 2010 on EU member states, looking at countries both individually and as a whole and analysing the global impact of the adjustments and the partial impacts of each category. Changing the system of national accounts has introduced conceptual and methodological changes, but there has not been any significant variation in the convergence/divergence between government financial statistics and budgetary accounting in reporting deficits. The effect on the deficits reported by individual member states was quite marked however.     

An application of padé approximation to volatility modeling

This paper studies the dynamic relationship between future volatility and implied and historical volatility using data from Alegría and Rodríguez [1997]. The methodological approach forms part of the theoretical research being carried out in numerical analysis and especially from the rational Padé approximation. This tool helps to characterize simple computational methods in order to study questions about dynamic modelization of doubly infinite series. Considering noncausal series, where the expectations provided by economic theory or empirical evidence are included in available sample data, leads to dynamic specifications suitable not only from the perspective of fitting available data, but also from their predictive performance when compared to traditionally used formulae based merely on data analysis.     

When consumers struggle: Action crisis and its effects on problematic goal pursuit

When pursuing goals, consumers often face setbacks that force them to reevaluate their goals. Yet, current goal theory offers limited explanations for how people respond to recurring challenges and disengage from their goals. Through five experiments investigating three primary theoretical aims, this research extends the field's understanding of action crisis, a possible goal pursuit stage marked by internal conflict over whether or not to continue, and investigates it in consumption contexts such as patient–physician relationships, weight loss diets, and environmentally friendly purchasing. Experiments 1A–1C show that consumer action crisis encourages more disengagement‐related and less continuation‐supportive cost–benefit thinking than nonproblematic action phase. Experiment 2 replicates this cognitive shift, and connects action crisis to diminished goal‐related evaluations and weakened commitment. Experiment 3 further clarifies action crisis’ influence on consumer goal pursuit by revealing decreased cognitive and behavioral engagement that does not involve a shift in construal level when compared to action phase consumers. Extending understanding of action crisis as a possible mindset and action phase, these five experiments advance goal disengagement theory by connecting changes in cognition, motivation, and behavior to action crisis.     

Information and the Production of Management in a Theory of the Firm

Abstract

I show that the three main contributions to the theory of the business of the last century – those of Cobb and Douglas (1928 Cobb, Charles W., and Paul H. Douglas. 1928. “A Theory of Production.” American Economic Review 18 (Supplement): 139–165. [Google Scholar]), Coase (1937 Coase, Ronald. 1937. “The Nature of the Firm.” Economica 4 (16): 386–405.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), and Lucas (1978 Lucas Jr, Robert E. 1978. “On the Size Distribution of Business Firms.” Bell Journal of Economics 9 (3): 508–523.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) – are actually complementary and can be fitted into a general model of the firm size choice as the solution to a problem of optimal allocation of decision making in the economy. Decisions require information, and the availability and cost of information drives the optimization of firm size by the relevant decision makers - managers and entrepreneurs - pursuing the maximization of profits. Trends in firm size, and their reversals, are shown to depend on the aggregate information/output ratio.     

Organic as a Heuristic Cue: What Spanish Consumers Mean by Organic Foods

One of the strategies employed by companies to differentiate themselves from others, in the food market, has been to market organic products according to the assumption that environmental values are an important influence on people's behavior. However, studies of the behavior of organic food consumers show that there is some debate on this subject. Although some studies associate organic food consumption with motives and attitudes in which the environment plays a predominant role, a greater number conclude that the motives for consuming this type of food are basically egoistic (related to health, food safety, or the quality or flavor of the food). This can lead to problems in deciding the central thrust of the marketing strategy. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the meaning and interpretations placed on the term “organic,” and how they are integrated, as a way to explain consumption behavior. Qualitative research methods were adopted for this purpose. Four focus group sessions with different sociodemographic profiles, held in the cities of Madrid and Seville, in Spain, displayed two evident paradoxes, which could indicate that environmental motives are not important for consumers in this market. It is concluded that the term “organic” plays an important role as a heuristic cue to superiority, irrespective of the consumer's knowledge about the real features of organic food. Three alternative models are presented to explain consumer behavior. These results could be useful to food companies, largely in connection with positioning this type of product and with their communications policy.     

Gender as a determinant of small business performance: Insights from a British study

The performance of small businesses, that is the ability of small firms to contribute to job and wealth creation through business start-up, survival and growth, has been an important area of policy and academic debate in the 1980s. Surprisingly little has been written about gender and small business performance. Our literature search revealed only a small number of studies of any substance on this subject, though over forty made some mention of it, Most studies shied away from direct examination of quantitative performance measures (such as jobs created, sales turnover, annual growth), tending to concentrate on qualitative measures of success or failure. The paper examines small business performance and gender using data obtained from a survey of 600 (300 women, 300 men) Scottish and English small business ownermanagers, part of a three year study on the impact of gender on small business management. Analyses suggest that the relationship between gender and small business performance is complex, but that gender still appears to be a significant determinant even after other key factors are controlled for.