The ethical profile of global marketing negotiators

As international trade and business opportunities grow globally, insight into trading partners’ strategies is essential. One of the major strategies that impact trading partners’ relationships is negotiation strategy employed by each partner. These strategies assume even greater importance when these strategies have ethical content. This study examines the effects of marketing executives’ preferred ethical ideologies (relativism and idealism), opportunism and Machiavellianism on their perceived appropriateness of unethical negotiation tactics. Utilizing a sample of 995 marketing executives from six countries, cluster analysis and multivariate analysis of variance revealed two types of marketing negotiators: principled and corrupt negotiators. Corrupt negotiators tend to be more Machiavellian, more relativist, more opportunistic and less idealistic than their principled counterparts. Principled negotiators tend to perceive unethical negotiation tactics less favorably than their corrupt counterparts. Implications of these results for practitioners and directions for future research are discussed.     

Wealth effect from real estate and outbound travel demand: the Malaysian case

This study uses quarterly data from Malaysia (2000–2011) to examine the relationship between the wealth effect from real estate (WERE) and outbound tourism while controlling for other relevant outbound tourism determinants. By applying time-series cointegration regressions, the results show that WERE has a positive and significant impact on Malaysian outbound travel demand. Then, we exclude the departures for business purposes from the total departures in order to have a better understanding of the impact of WERE on the consumption of a luxury good like international travel for leisure purposes. Similarly, we find that WERE increases Malaysian international travels for leisure purposes. The findings provide some implications for Malaysian policy-makers as well as tourism and travel agents.     

The effect of banking market structure on the lending channel: Evidence from emerging markets

This paper analyses the extent to which the level of bank competition influences monetary policy transmission. Using a large panel dataset of 978 banks from 55 countries, and employing the Lerner index model as a measure of market structure, our results show that an increase in banking sector competition weakens the effectiveness of monetary policy on bank lending. The findings are robust to a broad array of sensitivity checks including control of alternative measurements of the Lerner index, different samples and different methodological specifications. By extension, these results have important policy implications for regulators in assessing the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission mechanisms.     

Does Religion Matter? A Comparison Study of the Ethical Beliefs of Marketing Students of Religious and Secular Universities in Japan

This study was designed to examine the determinants of and differences between the ethical beliefs of two groups of Japanese students in religious and secular universities. Multiple regression analysis revealed that students of the Japanese religious university perceived that young, male, relativistic, and opportunistic students tended to behave less ethically than did older, female, and idealistic students. Students of the Japanese secular university perceived that male, achievement-oriented, and opportunistic students tended to behave less ethically than did female and experience-oriented students. Opportunism was found to be one of the most important determinants in explaining misconduct. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) revealed that students of the Japanese secular university tended to score higher on achievement and humanism, and lower on theism and positivism than did students of the Japanese religious university. In addition, students of the Japanese secular university were somewhat more sensitive to academic dishonesty practices than were students of the Japanese religious university.     

The Incidence of Public Spending on Healthcare: Comparative Evidence from Asia

The article compares the incidence of public healthcare across11 Asian countries and provinces, testing the dominance of healthcareconcentration curves against an equal distribution and Lorenzcurves and across countries. The analysis reveals that the distributionof public healthcare is prorich in most developing countries.That distribution is avoidable, but a propoor incidence is easierto realize at higher national incomes. The experiences of Malaysia,Sri Lanka, and Thailand suggest that increasing the incidenceof propoor healthcare requires limiting the use of user fees,or protecting the poor effectively from them, and building awide network of health facilities. Economic growth may not onlyrelax the government budget constraint on propoor policies butalso increase propoor incidence indirectly by raising richerindividuals' demand for private sector alternatives.     

Implanting competitive strategy: A contingency approach

Competitive business strategies are often formulated with little regard given to the articulation format. This paper examines the strategy formulation process from a systems perspective and argues that articulation of a competitive strategy, such that sustained competitive advantage is created, requires consistency along the entire business chain. Internal consistency within the business chain is built through inter‐linkages. The inter‐linkages are made through four inter‐connective elements: human resources, technological resources, information resources and financial resources. It is argued in this paper that the human factor is of major importance since it integrates the other inter‐connective elements and therefore represents a key factor in the process of articulation and implementation. In view of the critical role of the human element in articulation of business strategy for competitive advantage, the paper develops a human‐factor related contingency framework. The developed contingency framework examines Porter's (1980, 1985) generic strategies with respect to congruent requisites necessary for building competitive advantage.     

Selection versus evolutionary adaptation: Learning and post-entry performance

This paper examines the maturation process of firms that enter an industry by constructing new plant and investigates the extent to which improvements in the performance of any entry cohort are the result of a selection process that culls out the most inefficient entrants or of a learning process that allows survivors to improve their performance relative to incumbent firms. Both selection and evolutionary learning are found to affect post-entry performance, but selection per se is a more important contributor to the overall growth of a cohort.     

FOREIGN INVESTOR PARTICIPATION IN PRIVATIZATIONS: DOES THE INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT MATTER?

We examine the determinants of foreign investors' participation in the privatization process of developing countries. First, we estimate the probability that foreign investors target privatized firms in a given country. We show that a favorable legal environment where investor protection is higher enhances foreign investors' participation. Foreigners also prefer large, strategic firms from high‐growth economies and socially stable countries with low political risk. Second, we restrict our analysis to privatized firms that foreign investors actually choose and show that the stakes foreigners hold are larger if the firms are privatized by private sales as opposed to public offerings.