Quantitative content analysis as a method for business ethics research

The aim of this article is to discuss quantitative content analysis as established in communication sciences as a method for research in business ethics. We argue that communication sciences and business ethics are neighboring disciplines, which allow the transfer of quantitative content analysis from communication sciences to business ethics. Technically, quantitative content analysis can be applied through human as well as software coding. Examples for both applications are provided and discussed. We make reference to the software solutions ‘Leximancer’, ‘Crawdad’, and ‘Wordle’, and examine their suitability and limitations with regard to ethical questions for researching business ethics. We recommend a mixed-method approach, combining human and software coding. Furthermore, we propose a three-step process that discusses quantitative content analysis as a method for business ethics, including an ethical research objective, and most importantly, concluding with ethical reasoning and interpretation of the quantitative results.     

Resource-based theory in marketing

The use of resource-based theory (RBT) in marketing research has increased by more than 500% in the past decade, which suggests its importance as a framework for explaining and predicting competitive advantages and performance outcomes. This article provides a comprehensive review of RBT, including a contemporary definitional foundation for relevant terms and assumptions and a synthesis of empirical findings from marketing literature. This multidimensional analysis of RBT also evaluates extant marketing research according to four perspectives: the marketing domains that use RBT, the characteristics and uses of market-based resources that differentiate it from other research contexts, the extension of RBT to the “marketing exchange” as a unit of analysis, and the connection of RBT to related theories. This analysis also reveals some common pitfalls associated with prior research, offers tentative guidelines on how to improve the use of RBT in marketing, and suggests research directions to advance the theorization and empirical testing of RBT in the future.     

Accounting education in Russia today

The West has not perhaps appreciated the role of the command or planned economy on the provision of education. The extent and detail of that involvement is first reviewed in respect to accounting education. The changes which are already under way are described and future trends in which Western academics may participate are outlined. Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union (FSU) is in the process of changing a well-established, clear structure of education for a less rigid but more idiosyncratic approach. Accountants and accounting educators in other countries should be aware of the history and emerging structures in Russia and the FSU if their involvement is to be worthwhile.     

An alternative measure of intergenerational income mobility based on a random coefficient model

We propose an alternative measure of the degree to which income status is transmitted from one generation to another. Our indicator of intergenerational income mobility is based on a random coefficient model, which allows for variation in intergenerational mobility across families due to multiplicative unobserved family‐specific characteristics. This alternative measure suggests that intergenerational income persistence is typically stronger than when intergenerational income mobility is measured using the standard elasticity of sons' income with respect to fathers' income. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Value co‐creation between foreign firms and indigenous small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kazakhstan's oil and gas industry: The role of information technology spillovers

Study related to the extractive sector still plays a limited role in the mainstream international business (IB) and management literature, with even less focus on ongoing liberalization and digitalization in the industry. This article was motivated by the question of how collaboration between foreign and indigenous oil and gas (O&G) companies can support small‐sized and medium‐sized indigenous technological development. The main contribution of this article is the development of a model that explains how different actors can cocreate value in the ecosystem of the O&G industry through digital technologies. A three‐stage qualitative–interpretive method based on interviews with industry experts was adopted to build three vignette case studies. This article proposes what companies and the government could do to increase the competitiveness of the local economy, diversify from O&G into high technological industries, and support industrial development through information and communication technologies (ICT).     

Determinants of Internationalization Strategies of Emerging Market Firms: A Multilevel Approach

Recently, debates about uniqueness of emerging market firms’ (EMFs) internationalization strategies were a focus of research. Yet, findings regarding their determinants are mixed, and conclusions on how EMFs’ internationalization strategies can be theoretically explained vary greatly. This article elaborates on the underlying reasons for these inconclusive results and addresses them by the development of a multilevel theoretical framework allowing for a better understanding of integrative influence of institutional, sector, and firm-specific determinants of EMFs’ internationalization strategies. This framework is validated by evidence from Russia, and a multiple case study approach is adopted to investigate the determinants of internationalization strategies of Russian firms.     

Teacher characteristics and academic achievement

Identifying the impact of teacher characteristics on academic achievement has been a salient and reoccurring topic in education. We employ a twin-by-year identification strategy using matched teacher-student data from North Carolina to credibly estimate the impact of teacher characteristics such as experience, certification, and advanced degrees on academic achievement in math and reading. By using within-family variation the estimates from our model improve upon on earlier work by for time varying unobservable family shocks to non-schooling inputs. Our findings reveal that teacher experience and National Board certification have positive and significant effects on achievement in reading and math; however, we find inconclusive effects for advanced degrees. Notably, we show that teacher experience has the largest effects on student achievement, but our effects are smaller than the standard estimates in the literature. Overall, our estimates provide lower upper bounds for these key teacher characteristics.     

Precautionary money demand in a business-cycle model

Precautionary demand for money is significant in the data, and may have important implications for business-cycle dynamics of velocity and other nominal aggregates. Accounting for such dynamics is a standing challenge in monetary macroeconomics: standard business-cycle models that have incorporated money have failed to generate realistic predictions in this regard. In those models, the only uncertainty affecting money demand is aggregate. We investigate a model with uninsurable idiosyncratic uncertainty about liquidity need. The resulting precautionary motive for holding money produces substantial improvements in accounting for business-cycle behavior of nominal variables, at no cost to real variables.