Pure meat – Public perceptions of risk reduction strategies in meat production

Experience has shown that both the assessment and implementation of new technologies in food production are challenged by negative assessments of the technologies by the public. This article seeks to deepen our understanding of the concerns that may underlie negative attitudes to various kinds of risk reduction strategy in meat production, with the aim of distinguishing between forms of risk reduction in terms of their acceptability. The paper reports the result of a focus-group study. Six focus groups with Danish citizens (N: 5–9) were conducted during May 2006. The design of the groups took a bottom-up approach and included elements of meat quality, meat safety and risk reduction strategies. The study shows the dilemma risk reduction presents to members of the public. On the one hand, people want safe meat; on the other, the study showed that with the exception of hygiene practices, people generally have an aversion to risk reduction strategies. Some variation was found, however, in the rejection of the strategies. Thus, more acceptable strategies are characterised by a low degree of technological interference, and by being close to the consumer’s experience in everyday life and/or familiar to the participants’ picture of meat production. It is also important that the strategy does not alter the quality of the end-product (meat) in an unfavourable way. The implications of the results and the inherent dilemma for meat safety policy formation are discussed.     

Innovation Economy,Productive Public Expenditure and Economic Growth

Multidisciplinary innovation is the main engine of growth for an increasing number of economies. Innovation requires the participation of and interaction between all economic agents. It also requires public spending on education, research and infrastructures. Our main goal is to emphasize the government's role in a growing innovation economy. Developing a non‐scale, idea‐based, one‐sector growth model with complementarities and productive public expenditure, we analyse theoretically the growth effects of an increase in productive public expenditure, which we find positive in the short, medium and long run.     

Identifying business opportunities for sustainable development: Longitudinal and experimental evidence contributing to the field of sustainable entrepreneurship

Which factors facilitate the identification of business opportunities for sustainable development? To answer this question, we develop a process model of sustainable opportunity identification. We argue that sustainable opportunity identification is a process with transitions from problem to solution identification and from solution to sustainable opportunity identification. Moreover, the transitions are facilitated by two factors—awareness of adverse consequences and entrepreneurial attitude—providing motivation and direction in the process. We tested our model in a field study (N = 107) and two experiments (N = 53 and N = 69). Our findings show that awareness of adverse consequences and entrepreneurial attitude influence the process of sustainable opportunity identification, explaining under which conditions people are more likely to identify business opportunities for sustainable development. Our study thus contributes to the field of sustainable entrepreneurship.     

Place attachment,host–tourist interactions,and residents’ attitudes towards tourism development: the case of Boa Vista Island in Cape Verde

A clear understanding of residents’ attitudes towards tourism development and its determinants is a crucial pillar for designing tourism development strategies to promote sustainable development. The literature on the influence of host–tourist interactions and place attachment on residents’ attitudes towards tourism development in developing countries is still scarce. To extend knowledge in this field, this study aims at developing and testing a structural model to examine direct and indirect causal effects of place attachment, host–tourist interaction, and perceived positive and negative tourism impacts on the residents’ attitudes towards tourism development in an island tourism destination – Boa Vista Island in Cape Verde. Results suggest that the residents’ attitudes are positively affected by place attachment, host–tourist interaction, and perceived positive impacts; and negatively affected by perceived negative impacts. Host–tourist interaction emerges as the strongest (direct and indirect) determinant of the residents’ attitudes towards tourism development. Moreover, although both positive and negative perceptions of tourism impacts have significant impacts on the residents’ attitudes, the influence of the former is stronger than that of the latter. The paper ends with relevant theoretical and practical implications to promote positive residents’ attitudes towards tourism development in Boa Vista.     

Reviewing the Field of External Knowledge Search for Innovation: Theoretical Underpinnings and Future (Re-)search Directions

The field of external knowledge search for innovation has a long tradition and has inspired several schools of thought resulting in a rich and burgeoning body of research. However, the field suffers from two key limitations. First, the pluralism of research across multiple disciplines impedes our attention to the field as a whole, including its intellectual structure and core ideas. Second, recent developments in the business environment and key new ideas in the field complement taken-for-granted approaches and provide new opportunities for knowledge search. Based on a systematic co-citation analysis, we provide a reflective review of the literature and make several contributions. We integrate existing research across disciplines and offer a synthesis of a fragmented research landscape to present a global view of the field. Moreover, we propose a novel external search concept and introduce the idea of “decoupled search.” Leveraging our synthesis and conceptualization further, we recommend future research directions for the entire field of external knowledge search for innovation.     

Press freedom and jumps in stock prices

Press freedom varies substantially across countries. In a free environment, any news immediately becomes public knowledge through mediums including various electronic media and published materials. However, in an unfree environment, (economic) agents would have more discretionary powers to disclose good news immediately, while hiding bad news or releasing bad news slowly. We argue that this discretion affects stock prices and that stock markets in countries with a free press should be better processors of economic information. Using an equilibrium asset-pricing model in an economy under jump diffusion, we decompose the moments of the returns of international stock markets into a diffusive risk and a jump risk part. Using stock market data for a balanced panel of 50 countries, our results suggest that in countries with a free press, the better processing of bad news leads to more frequent negative jumps in stock prices. As a result, stock markets in those countries are characterized by higher volatility, driven by higher jump risk and more negative return asymmetry. The results are robust to the inclusion of various controls for governance and other country- or market-specific characteristics. We interpret these as good stock market characteristics because a free press improves welfare and increases economic growth.     

Response style corrected market segmentation for ordinal data

Survey data collected for market segmentation studies is typically ordinal in nature. As such, it is susceptible to response styles. Ignoring response styles can lead to market segments which do not differ in beliefs, but merely in how segment members use survey answer options and which possibly occur in addition to the belief segments. We propose a finite mixture model which simultaneously segments and corrects for response styles, permits heterogeneity in both beliefs and response styles, accommodates a range of different response styles, does not impose a certain relationship between the response style and belief segments, and is suitable for ordinal data. The performance of the model is tested using both artificial and empirical survey data.     

New product development in foreign customer relationships: a study of international SMEs

Abstract

This study identifies a gap in research concerning how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can benefit from pursuing locally (rather than globally) oriented internationalization strategies. Becoming overly dependent on one single foreign market could potentially reduce the inflow and diversity of new knowledge that can serve as input for new product development. This study discusses how this risk can be minimized. In this endeavour we create a theoretical model that investigates how the local sales concentration and relationship-specific commitment of SMEs relates to new product development. To do this we draw on the behavioural internationalization process framework. The theoretical model is tested on an effective sample of 188 Swedish SMEs. The results show that relationship-specific commitment mediates the effect of local sales concentration on new product development. The implication is that investments which enable collaboration in important business relationships are crucial requisites for keeping firms innovative and in pace with market fluctuations. The findings thus contribute to international business literature by showing that a local market scope of operations combined with a relationship orientation are beneficial for new product development in international SMEs.     

Eco-innovation and business performance: the moderating effects of environmental orientation and resource commitment in green-oriented SMEs

Drawing on the eco-innovation and resource-based view, this research attempts to contribute to the eco-innovation-performance debate by examining the effects of eco-innovation on business performance. In particular, we propose that the eco-innovation–performance relationship is contingent on environmental orientation and resources commitment. The analysis of 83 green-oriented SMEs in New Zealand suggests that eco-innovation has a positive effect on business performance. More interestingly, the findings show although environmental orientation does not directly influence business performance, it enhances the positive effect of eco-innovation on business performance. The results further suggest that green-oriented firms will reap more performance benefit of eco-innovation when they commit more organizational resources.     

The Role of Corporate Value Clusters in Ethics, Social Responsibility, and Performance: A Study of Financial Professionals and Implications for the Financial Meltdown

This article delves into a potential mindset that may be responsible for the recent financial meltdown. Research relating to this mindset from different perspectives is reviewed. The findings from this literature review are used to create a conceptual framework for the empirical, ethical, and corporate social responsibility study of financial professionals. Data were collected from a survey of the professional membership of a large national association of financial professionals. This article reports the results of the analysis of data relative to the relationships among the four constructs—financial professionals’ perceived organizational value clusters, ethics, corporate social responsibility, and corporate performance. The findings indicate that organizational core values significantly affect corporate ethics, social responsibility, and financial performance. We propose that organizations in the financial industry can move toward being more ethical and socially responsible by adopting organic core values (e.g., democratic, open, trusting, enterprising, creative, stimulating) and moving away from mechanistic values (e.g., structured, regulated, procedural, authoritarian, closed, callous). We also found the adaptation of organic core values does not require the organization to suffer a loss in financial performance.