Measuring Involvement of a Network of Customers in NPD

The new product development (NPD) literature is rife with suggestions to involve customers in the innovation process, and many firms collaborate with customers. But the extant literature does not offer much guidance concerning the nature and quality of involving such a network of customers. This paper contributes to the extant literature on customer involvement by identifying a comprehensive set of metrics to measure the involvement of a network of customers in NPD. It introduces metrics describing three aspects of customer involvement: (1) the rationale for involving a network of customers in NPD, (2) the network of customers involved in NPD, and (3) the interaction process between manufacturer and customers at the level of individual customers. These metrics help to understand the roles of customers, the timing of their involvement at each stage in the development process, the type and number of customers that are involved, as well as the frequency and intensity of their involvement. The use of these metrics is illustrated by a study of customer network involvement by Irish business‐to‐business companies. Forty‐six percent of the sampled firms (n = 1400) were actively involved in NPD, but very few of them involved customers in the early stages (n = 77). The involvement of customers in early NPD stages is significant, although manufacturers tend to go back to the same customers repeatedly. The intensity of customer involvement is also extensive, but even more so during the later NPD stages, especially for new products as opposed to product improvements. By incorporating a network perspective, the proposed metrics for customer network involvement provide a new approach for researchers to study the involvement of customers in NPD.     

Labor income dynamics at business-cycle frequencies: Implications for portfolio choice

Young agents with low wealth-income ratios counter factually hold more stock than young, rich agents and old agents using the standard portfolio choice model with i.i.d. stock returns and labor income. This paper matches the countercyclical volatility and procyclical mean of U.S. labor income and finds that, consistent with U.S. data, young, poor agents now hold less stock than both young, rich agents and old agents, and no stock a large fraction of the time. Our results suggest that the predictability of labor income growth at a business-cycle frequency, particularly the countercyclical variation in volatility, plays an important role in a young agent's decision making about her portfolio's stock holding.     

Is There Room at the Bottom for CSR? Corporate Social Responsibility and Nanotechnology in the UK

Nanotechnologies are enabling technologies which rely on the manipulation of matter on the scale of billionths of a metre. It has been argued that scientific uncertainties surrounding nanotechnologies and the inability of regulatory agencies to keep up with industry developments mean that voluntary regulation will play a part in the development of nanotechnologies. The development of technological applications based on nanoscale science is now increasingly seen as a potential test case for new models of regulation based on future-oriented responsibility, lifecycle risk management, and upstream public engagement. This article outlines findings from a project undertaken in 2008–2009 for the UK Government’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) by BRASS at Cardiff University, involving an in-depth survey both of current corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in the UK nanotechnologies industry, and of attitudes to particular stakeholder issues within the industry. The article analyses the results to give an account of the nature of corporate social performance (CSP) within the industry, together with the particular model of CSR operating therein (‘do no harm’ versus ‘positive social force’). It is argued that the nature of emerging technologies requires businesses to adopt particular visions of CSR in order to address stakeholder issues, and that the nanotechnologies industry presents specific obstacles and opportunities in this regard.     

The role and application of social marketing in managing water consumption: a case study

• Water shortages are an increasingly significant social and economic issue in many countries. Increasing the supply of water is one solution (e.g. desalination plants, new dams), but such measures are expensive. Using price to manage household water demand may be viewed as socially unequitable and politically contentious. Social marketing campaigns, where voluntary behaviour change is the goal, provide the potential to foster sustainable consumption of an increasingly scarce yet essential resource. This paper details a case study of successful water demand management in a drought affected region of South‐Eastern Australia. In this region, water consumption was reduced to more sustainable levels through a targeted and successful social marketing campaign. This case is of significant relevance to the field of Social Marketing where there are increasing calls for research into environmental issues in general and water consumption in particular (Kotler, 2011). The extant research literature and this case study are integrated to form several propositions about household water consumption behaviour. Consequently, this paper contributes to the literature by providing a conceptualisation of how residents respond to water conservation related social marketing campaigns. Key issues include the potential for reciprocal behaviour by consumers when a water authority is perceived to manage the water problem effectively, and linking behaviour change through structural approaches (e.g. subsidies and restrictions) and voluntarist approaches (e.g. attitudinal change).

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Initial Technical Violations of Debt Covenants and Changes in Firm Risk

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether initial technical debt covenant violations are associated with significant increases in the equity risk of violating firms. Our results indicate that first-time violations are associated with significant increases in both systematic and unsystematic risk. The increase in systematic risk is attributable primarily to rising levels of financial leverage as opposed to changes in the underlying asset beta. We also find that the change in unsystematic risk experienced by first-time debt covenant violators is a significant predictor of future exchange delisting, even after controlling for other factors typically associated with increasing financial distress.     

Court Intervention as a Governance Mechanism over CEO Pay: Evidence from the Citigroup Derivative Lawsuit

Abstract

We use an unanticipated court ruling in a lawsuit against Citigroup claiming corporate waste related to CEO pay to analyse court intervention as an alternative governance mechanism in cases of excess pay. We find a negative relation between announcement returns and excess pay, consistent with shareholders of these firms perceiving court intervention as net costly. However, we find a positive relation between announcement returns and excess pay accompanied by poor performance, suggesting that intervention is welcome when pay is more egregious. Finally, we find that firms with excess pay and whose shareholders welcome intervention reduce future pay relative to other firms, suggesting that the threat of court intervention is a potential mechanism to control excess pay.     

Beliefs,attitudes and behaviour towards Web advertising

To examine Web users' beliefs, attitudes and behaviour towards Web advertising, Pollay and Mittal's (1993) belief model is tested via structural equation modelling. The results suggest the model is a robust Web advertising effectiveness measurement tool. Underlying the study are the hypotheses that Web users' attitudes towards Web advertising are a function of several belief factors and influence users' behavioural intention. Results indicate the belief factors—product information, hedonic pleasure, and social role and image—related positively to subjects' attitudes towards Web advertising. Web users' beliefs about materialism, falsity/no sense and value corruption related negatively to their attitudes towards Web advertising. Web advertising attitudes impacted on reported behaviour towards Web advertising such that the more positive Web users' attitudes were towards Web advertising, the greater the likelihood that they would respond favourably to Web ads. In addition, the higher the respondents' income and education, the more negative their reported behaviour towards Web advertising.     

Promise-keeping: A Low Priority in a Hierarchy of Workplace Values

Using a sample of over 700 business people and students, this study tested the premise of promise-keeping as a core ethical value in the work place.The exercise consisted of in-basket planning for layoffs within an organization. Only one of the five employees within the group had been given an express commitment/promise of continued employment for a two year period. The layoffs were being considered six months after the two year promise had been made. All five employees were performing their jobs adequately, and each had either personal or work attributes representing competing values that would have made it difficult to choose among them.Clearly, promise-keeping does not matter most in the workplace: subjects overwhelmingly ignored their promises even when legally bound to keep them. Further, promise-keeping consistently was found to rank last in a hierarchy of workplace values. The legal system was suggested as a viable mechanism for encouraging promise-keeping in the workplace. Although the possibility of legal sanctions increased the frequency with which promises were kept, overall fewer than one-third (30%) of the subjects kept their word. Of those respondents who expressly were told that the promise was legally enforceable, the number who stated that they would keep their promise increased to 57%.     

Questioning the impact of the ‘graduatization’ of the managerial labour force upon the management of human resources in the Scottish hotel industry

This paper outlines the findings of a questionnaire survey returned by 125 Scottish hotels from a sample of 500 small and middle‐sized enterprises. We asked questions on the level of impact that hospitality graduates have had upon human resource management practices within individual units. The research reports that, although the cumulative graduatization of the managerial workforce appears to be under way, the main route to a permanent management post still remains one of practical work experience, rather than the attainment of a hospitality‐related degree. Although manpower planning is widely used by line managers for managing the conditions of local/external labour markets and operatives’ jobs, there is less evidence of a systematic approach to the management of graduate careers/skills or of the management of internal job structures and labour market processes in order to improve the quality of customer service. Our work suggests a need for smaller hotels to strike a fresh balance between traditional operationally driven approaches to people management and strategic human resource management frameworks.