Cross‐Functional Integration: Concept Clarification and Scale Development

The centrality of cross‐functional integration (CFI) to supply chain theory and practice has long been recognized. Yet researchers continue to struggle with consistently defining or measuring the CFI construct, thus limiting the utility of CFI research. This research develops (1) a comprehensive definition of CFI that synthesizes previous supply chain research and (2) a valid set of scale items that measure the conceptual domain outlined by this definition. The goal is to build a common foundation for extending knowledge on CFI's antecedents and consequences, and ultimately to improve scholars’ ability to guide a broader practitioner community still struggling to achieve integration in their organizations.     

Uncertainty in Prerelease Advertising

Firms frequently advertise products and services before they are launched. Yet how to best design such advertisements is not well understood. The current article investigates how consumers respond to uncertainty in prerelease advertisements. Across five studies, including both field and lab studies, we first provide evidence for the positive effect of uncertain prerelease advertisements using real consumer behavior on Facebook and YouTube and at the box office. Next, we uncover the mechanism underlying this effect (i.e., inflated outcome expectancies), outline a managerially relevant boundary condition (i.e., the positive effect reverses when a preorder opportunity is offered), and demonstrate that the effect of uncertainty on consumer response differs in prerelease versus postrelease advertisements depending on consumers’ perceived risk. Finally, we discuss implications for marketing research as well as for the design of prerelease advertisements for stimulating prerelease buzz and word of mouth.     

Real Incentive Effects of Soft Information

Both soft, noncontractible, and hard, contractible, information are informative about managerial ability and future firm performance. If a manager's future compensation depends on expectations of ability or future performance, then the manager has implicit incentives to affect the information. We examine the real incentive effects of soft information in a dynamic agency with limited commitment. When long-term contracts are renegotiated, the rewards for future performance inherent in long-term contracts allow the principal partial control over the implicit incentives. This is because the soft information affects the basis for contract renegotiation. With short-term contracts, the principal has no control over the basis for contract negotiation, and thus long-term contracts generally dominate short-term contracts. With long-term contracts, the principal's control over implicit incentives is characterized in terms of effective contracting on an implicit aggregation of the soft information that arises from predicting (forming expectations of) future performance. We provide sufficient conditions for soft information to have no real incentive effects. In general, implicit incentives not controllable by the principal include fixed effects, such as career concerns driven by labor markets external to the agency. When controllable incentives span the fixed effects of career concerns, the latter have no real effects with regard to total managerial incentives—they would optimally be the same with or without career concerns. Our analysis suggests empirical tests for estimating career concerns that should explicitly incorporate noncontractible information.     

Working days in a London construction team in the eighteenth century: evidence from St Paul's Cathedral

This article provides new information and data on the work and pay of skilled and semi-skilled men on a large London construction project in the early 1700s. It offers firm-level evidence on the employment relation in the construction industry at the time and sheds some light on the number of days worked per year and per week, showing that employment was more irregular and seasonal than current estimates of income infer. The patterns are considered in the context of new debates about industriousness and economic growth.     

Tobacco retail licences and state formation in early modern England and Wales

This article addresses one under‐studied aspect of Charles I's finances during his Personal Rule: the licensing of tobacco retailers. While it was ultimately a failed project, the tobacco retail licence project was fiscally successful before the transformative events of the 1640s triggered its demise. The project enabled tobacco retail licensees to establish commercial outlets for the marketing of tobacco throughout England and Wales, and cooperation with pre‐existing officeholders contributed to the apprehension of unlicensed retailers. Ultimately, the geographic breadth of tobacco licences translated into much‐needed royal revenue which, when added to other projects and patents, contributed to the king's financial survival. The evidence presented here suggests that we may want to rethink some of our assumptions for how the process of state formation worked and that earlier seventeenth‐century ‘prototypes’ of taxation were more fiscally successful than previously recognized.     

Class structure and inequality during the industrial revolution: lessons from England's social tables, 1688–1867

This article measures the size and incomes of six major social classes across the industrial revolution using social tables for England and Wales in 1688, 1759, 1798, 1846, and 1867. Lindert and Williamson famously revised these tables, and this article extends their work in three directions. First, servants are removed from middle‐ and upper‐class households in the tables of King, Massie, and Colquhoun and tallied separately. Second, estimates are made for the same tables of the number and incomes of women and children employed in the various occupations, and, third, incomes are broken down into rents, profits, and employment income. These extensions to the tables allow variables to be computed that can be checked against independent estimates as a validation exercise. The tables are retabulated in a standardized set of six social groups to highlight the changing structure of society across the industrial revolution. Gini coefficients are computed from the social tables to measure inequality. These measures confirm that Britain traversed a ‘Kuznets curve’ in this period. Changes in overall inequality are related to the changing fortunes of the major social classes.     

Advancing environmental productivity: Organizational mindfulness and strategies

This study investigates the importance of mindfulness‐based organization systems and policies on the organization's continuous efforts to become a greener company. The study is devised as a pooled cross‐sectional time series analysis of productivity in energy consumption, water utilization, and waste generation and recycling of U.S. companies. The data set taken from U.S. Newsweek 500 recorded 600 companies dispersed into 63 industries during the period of 2012–2014 and provided 1,498 company–industry–year observations. The study found that systems and policies (e.g., deployment of third‐party auditors for its environmental metrics report; linkage of the remuneration of company's senior executive team with the achievement of environmental performance targets; and establishment of a committee at the Board of Directors' level whose mandate includes sustainability of the company in environment‐ and resource‐related matters) connect the company's mindfulness to its effort in improving the environmental quality through the company's productivity in energy consumption, water utilization, and waste generation and recycling. The relationships are positive and significant. Also, systems and policies serve as a motivator for the firm to continue to improve upon the current achievements. The study emphasizes the importance of translating organizational and individual mindfulness into organization policies and systems in order to motivate the organization to continuously improve its productivity in energy consumption, water utilization, and waste generation and recycling leading to improvements in environmental quality.