Organizational capacity for change and firm performance in a transition economy

This study explored some human resource and human systems' aspects of the competitive dynamics for firms attempting to survive and prosper within Russia, a highly volatile transition economy. Overall, this study adds to our understanding of international strategic human resource management, dynamic capabilities, and the generation of competitive advantage within transition economies.

We found that a relatively new construct derived from the dynamic capabilities and organizational change literatures, known as ‘organizational capacity for change,’ is positively associated with firm performance within a wide variety of Russian firms. Furthermore, we find that the relationship between organizational capacity for change and firm performance is stronger when there are relatively high levels of uncertainty with the task environment. Finally, we found that organizational capacity for change is an important attribute in all sizes of organizations, not just for large organizations as hypothesized.     

Investigation of causality based on complex use of statistical methods (case study of social research)

The article deals with the problem of revealing cause–effect relations in the social research by a complex of statistical methods. The ways for solving the problem for experimental and non-experimental data are regarded. In the research the role of the statistical methods in formation of causal relation hypotheses is revealed and the methods of hypotheses verification in conditions of experiment or upon latent structure modelling are discussed. The possibilities of the use of the factor analysis and the analysis of variance in revealing cause–effect relations are also considered. Special attention is paid to the interpretation of the analysis results depending on the character of the empirical data and the conditions they were obtained in. The approaches to causal relations revealing based on the development of the schemes of the complex analysis of the empirical data by the statistical methods aimed at investigation of the cause and effect relation in a long-term research are suggested. We take into account the hierarchical structure of the schemes reflecting the structure of the subject of cognition, the specificity of which requires the use of “rigid” and “flexible” models in combination. Its variant could be the method of structural equation modelling. The article gives an example of the research of causal relations in the assessment of the quality of education services in higher institution. Each stage of the assessment is provided with building of certain “rigid” or “flexible” mathematical models. Their combination allows using the obtained quality parameters as an instrument of regulation of interaction between education service providers and clients.     

Assessing the greenness of environmental advertising claims made by multinational industrial firms

Growing skepticism about green advertisements calls for a thorough investigation of the environmental claims made by firms. This is particularly important in the context of industrial and international markets, where research on the subject is virtually non-existent. By employing legitimacy theory, this article develops several research hypotheses linking various dimensions of environmental claims made in green advertisements (i.e., focal points, evaluation areas, leverage aspects, driving forces) with advertising greenness (i.e., shallow, moderate, deep). It then tests these hypotheses with data obtained from a content analysis of 383 green magazine advertisements by multinational firms producing industrial goods. In accord with legitimacy theory, the results indicate that, the stronger the greenness of an advertisement: (a) the greater the use of focal points relating to a product, processes, image, and facts; (b) the more specific, strong, substantive, and acceptable are the issues raised; (c) the higher the employment of rational, emotional, and moral points to leverage environmental matters; and (d) the sharper the driving forces relating to the planet and its flora, fauna, and human entities. Several important conclusions, managerial implications, and directions for future research are derived from these findings.     

An analysis of risk factors associated with road crash severities in Namibia

Abstract

Road crash is a leading cause of death and disabilities in Namibia and other developing countries. Based on recent trends, the World Health Organization indicated that progress to realize Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 3.6 – which calls for a 50% reduction in the number of road traffic deaths by 2020 – remains far from sufficient. To contribute to efforts in reducing road fatalities in Namibia, this study examined risk factors associated with the severity of crashes recorded in the country. Mixed logit modelling methodology was adopted to address the problem of unobserved heterogeneity in injury severity analysis. Model estimation results reveal that collision with pedestrians, head-on collisions, ran-off road collisions and crashes involving high occupancy passenger vehicles were more likely to result in fatalities and severe injuries. The findings and recommendations of this study are expected to enhance countermeasure implementation to reduce road crashes in Namibia.     

LATE CAREER JOB LOSS AND THE DECISION TO RETIRE

This article provides an empirical analysis of the effect of involuntary job loss on the lifetime income and labor supply of older workers. I develop and estimate a dynamic programming model of retirement with savings, costly job search, and exogenous layoffs. The average cost of job loss is equivalent to one year of predisplacement earnings, 70% due to the wage reduction and 30% to the search frictions. Displaced workers on average retire 14 months earlier. Workers who approached retirement during the Great Recession will work approximately five months longer in response to the contemporaneous financial and labor market shocks.     

Should Mobile Marketers Collect Data Other Than Geo‐Location?*

We take today's mobile marketing data landscape as a starting point and consider a duopoly model of third‐degree price discrimination in which firms can complement geo‐location information with data on consumer flexibility of varying quality. We show that, depending on consumer heterogeneity, higher‐quality flexibility data affect profits according to three different patterns. In equilibrium, both firms tend to acquire data if the data are of high quality, while only one acquires data if the data quality is low. Firms are likely to gain from additional data if consumers have similar preferences and/or when data are precise. Although social welfare (weakly) improves, consumers can be harmed.     

Property rights in land and output growth in Russia

This paper tests whether the implementation of a key market‐oriented reform in post‐Soviet Russia, property rights in land, proxied by the percent of privatized land by region, affected the pace of sub‐national economic growth during two unprecedented expansion periods: 2001–2008 and 2010–2014. Individuals gained the Constitutional right to own land in 1993, but implementation was stalled. The pace of land privatization can be explained by arguably exogenous factors such as distance to Moscow, as well as climate and also regional political culture, proxied by concentration of votes in the 2004 presidential election. We show that this rate of land privatization in Russia's regions was significantly associated with output growth in 2010–2014, confirming the policy importance of this measure for developing economies. Regions where private holdings expanded most rapidly with the enforcement of property rights in land, gained a competitive advantage in the growth process through increased investment in fixed assets and private consumption.     

Glaubwürdigkeit in der CSR-KommunikationCredible CSR communication

Credibility is a central and well-established concept in communication science, particularly in public relations (PR) research. When it comes to the communication about their corporate social responsibilities (CSR), companies are under public scrutiny and should therefore be eager to communicate in a credible fashion with their stakeholders. However, existing concepts of credibility in PR research do not account for the specific demands of ethical CSR theory. Thus, this article develops a concept of credibility that embraces sender, message, and recipient and the central concept of corporate legitimacy at the same time. Based on the political-normative approach to CSR, this concept builds on the theory of communicative action and the validity claims of the ideal speech situation. This novel approach to credibility in CSR communication is normative, but also opens promising paths for future empirical research in the field.     

Takeover duration and negotiation process

We study the relations between takeover negotiations duration, competition and learning, focusing on the private phase of bidder-initiated transactions. While the negotiation goes on, both parties learn about true deal synergies. At any moment, rival bidders can show up and compete for the target. Using a discrete-time finite-horizon dynamic programming approach, we derive the equilibrium relations between the negotiation duration, the pressure of potential competition and the learning process. Next, we perform a calibration exercise on a large sample of merger negotiations with hand-collected data from the Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Our results provide evidence of a very competitive M&A (Mergers and acquisitions) market.