Hospital Financial Conditions and the Provision of Unprofitable Services

Increases in hospital financial pressure resulting from public and private payment policy may substantially reduce a hospital’s ability to provide certain services that are not well compensated or are frequently used by the uninsured. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of hospital financial condition on the provision of these unprofitable services for the insured and uninsured. Economic theory provides the conceptual underpinnings for the analysis, and a longitudinal empirical analysis is conducted for an eight-year study period. The results indicate that not-for-profit hospitals with strong financial performance provide more unprofitable services for the insured and uninsured than do not-for-profit hospitals with weaker condition. For-profit hospital provision of these services is not influenced by their financial condition and instead may reflect actions to meet community expectations or to offer a sufficiently broad service array to maintain the business of insured patients.     

Quarterly Earnings Announcements and Market Risk Adjustments

We examine (1) whether there is a shift in beta for individual securities around quarterly earnings announcements, and (2) whether these beta changes relate to certain characteristics of the firms. We find a statistically significant upward (downward) beta shift during the two-day earnings announcement period for 25 per cent (9 per cent) of a sample of 195 US firms. We also find that the beta shift at the time of the earnings announcement is significantly higher for small firms (i.e., more precise announcements).     

A NOTE ON THE OPTIMAL CUTOFF POINT IN BANKRUPTCY PREDICTION MODELS

A modified Bayesian decision model is derived in the study to systematically estimate an optimal cutoff point for bankruptcy prediction models. In addition, a loss function is implemented in the model so that the total error costs instead of the total error probability is minimized. Any dichotomous classification problem with unequal error costs would find this decision model useful.     

Opportunity Discovery, Problem Solving and a Theory of the Entrepreneurial Firm

abstract When should an entrepreneur employ a market to help discover and exploit opportunities, and when should the entrepreneur create a firm to do so? If a firm is created, how should it be organized? In this paper we argue that opportunities equate to valuable problem‐solution pairings, and that opportunity discovery relates to deliberate search or recognition over this solution space. As problem complexity increases, experiential (or ‘directional’) search via trial‐and‐error provides fewer benefits, and cognitive (or ‘heuristic’) search via theorizing becomes more useful. Cognitive search, however, requires knowledge sharing, when knowledge is distributed among specialists, that is plagued by a knowledge appropriation hazard and a strategic knowledge accumulation hazard. Markets, authority‐based hierarchy, and consensus‐based hierarchy then have differential effects on the efficiency of opportunity discovery given the complexity of the associated problem. Those entrepreneurs with exceptional capabilities of opportunity recognition can efficiently adopt authority‐based governance over a wider range of complexity. We thus combine the two major modes of opportunity discovery – search and recognition – onto one framework that can explain different entrepreneurial organizational forms, resulting in an entrepreneurial theory of the firm.     

Intra‐industry bankruptcy contagion: Evidence from the pricing of industry recovery rates

How does bankruptcy contagion propagate among industry peers? We study the debt recovery channel of industry contagion by examining whether the cost of a company's debt is affected by the observed recovery rates of its bankrupt industry peers. Our results show that lower industry recovery rates are associated with higher loan spreads, but only when the contracts were originated during industry bankruptcy waves. Consistent with the debt recovery channel of industry contagion, we find that the negative effects of industry recovery rates are significantly stronger under situations where the effect is expected to be more salient.     

Product-, corporate-, and country-image dimensions and purchase behavior: A multicountry analysis

This research focuses on consumer perceptions that are developed on the basis of a firm’s advertising appeals as well as other factors. In conceptualizing brand-image perceptions, the authors extend the frequent use of productrelated images to include corporate and country images attached to brands. The authors report findings based on secondary economic and cultural data at the macro level and the results of a global brand-image survey conducted in the top 20 international automobile markets at the individual level. The findings suggest that while consumers’ attitudes toward corporate image and country image exert main effects on their brand purchase behavior, the effects of certain product-image appeals are moderated by sociodemographics and national cultural characteristics. The empirical results are broadly supportive of the proposed hypotheses and provide a consumer-based extension of Roth’s work on global brand image. Ming-Huei Hsieh (hmh@saturn.yzu.edu.tw), Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of International Business, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan. She has obtained her Ph.D degree (2002) from Warwick Business school of the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. Prior to her Ph.D. study, she conducted several market research projects for major multinationals, including General Motors, Procter & Gamble, Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, and Prudential in Taiwan. She is currently studying a variety of topics in cross-national consumer research. Specifically, she is exploring topics in brand management. She is also interested in the areas of Internet marketing and customer relationship management (CRM). She has articles published in theJournal of International Marketing, theJournal of Product and Brand Management, and theJournal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce. Shan-Ling Pan (pansl@comp.nus.edu.sg), Ph.D., is an assistant professor and the coordinator of the Knowledge Management Laboratory (http://kmlab.comp.nus.edu.sg) in the Department of Information Systems of the School of computing at the National University of Singapore. He received his MBA degree (1993) from the University of Texas at San Antonio, his MA degree (1996) from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and his Ph.D. degree (2000) from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. His primary research focuses on the recursive interaction of organizations and information technology (enterprise systems), with particular emphasis on organizational issues such as work practices, cultures, structures, decision making, change, and strategy implementation. His research work has been published inInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transaction on Engineering Management, theJournal of the American Society for Information Systems and Technology Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, Information and Organization, theJournal of Strategic Information Systems, theEuropean Journal of Information Systems, andDecision Support Systems. Rudy Setiono (rudys@comp.nus.edu.sg) received his Bachelor of Science degree from Eastern Michigan University and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1984, 1986, and 1990, respectively. He has been with the National University of Singapore since 1990 and he is currently an associate professor in the School of Computing. His research interests include linear programming, nonlinear optimization, and neural networks. He is a senior member of IEEE and serves as an associate editor ofIEEE Transactions on Neural Networks. His publications have appeared in theSIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, theEuropean Journal of Operational Research, theJournal of Optimization Theory and Applications, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions on Data and Knowledge Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics, Neural Computation, Neurocomputing, Connection Science, Management Science, and many other reputable journals.     

The moderating effects of market orientation and launch proficiency on the product advantage-performance relationship

The relationship between product advantage and new product performance has been identified in prior research and cannot be overlooked. However, the moderators between the two constructs have received little attention. This study examines how market orientation and launch proficiency exert contingent influences on the product advantage-performance relationship. Prior research indicates that new product performance is a multi-dimensional concept constituted by different types of performance, yet the way product advantage and its moderators influence certain types of product performance has not been investigated. This study examines the same issues under different dimensions of new product performance. A total of 112 Taiwanese biotechnology firms form the analytical sample. Two interesting findings are revealed. First, product advantage is significantly and positively related to market performance, but has no significant influence on financial performance. Second, market orientation and launch proficiency in tactics indeed moderate the relationship between product advantage and new product performance, either as a whole or in respect to different types of product performance. Obviously, these findings contribute detailed evidence to the theoretical nexus between product advantage and new product performance.     

Classical Ricardian Theory of Comparative Advantage Revisited

According to the classical Ricardian theory of comparative advantage, relative labor productivities determine trade patterns. The Ricardian model plays an important pedagogical role in international economics, but has received scant empirical attention since the 1960s. This paper assesses the contemporary relevance of the Ricardian model for US trade. Cross-section seemingly unrelated regressions of sectoral trade flows on relative labor productivity and unit labor costs are run for a number of countries vis-à-vis the United States. The coefficients are almost always correctly signed and statistically significant, although much of the sectoral variation of trade remains unexplained.     

Examining the Relationships among Motivation,Service Quality and Loyalty: The case of the National Museum of Natural Science

This study explores causal relationships between push and pull motivations, perceptions of service quality and loyalty intention, and examines the moderating role of membership status in the National Museum of Natural Science, the largest museum in Taiwan. Data were collected from 405 paid admission visitors, with a quota and systematic sampling, from two stages of pre- and post-visit corresponding with two questionnaires. The results demonstrate that push and pull motivations impact on service quality perceptions, which in turn influence museum loyalty; the effect of pull motivation on service quality perceptions in the nonmember group was stronger than in the member group; the effect of service quality perceptions on loyalty in the member group was stronger than in the nonmember group. Museum managers could tailor and advertise existing museum products and services to different types of visitors; assuring the museum's continued operation and success.     

How knowledge management mediates the relationship between environment and organizational structure

Literature examining how knowledge management (KM) capability helps organizational structures cope with uncertainty is limited. Thus, this study builds and tests an integrated model to investigate the relationship among environmental uncertainty, KM capability, and organizational structure. Data from 161 firms were collected and analyzed. The results from structural equation model analysis support a mediating KM capability between environmental uncertainty and structural attributes. Environmental uncertainty tends to require firms to increase their KM capability, which in turn manifests itself in structural changes.