Dealing With Uncertainties When Governing CSR Policies

As corporate social responsibility involves a voluntary business endeavour to address social and environmental issues beyond legal compliance, governments cannot fall back on hierarchical command-and-control policies to support it. As such, it is complementary with the increasing popularity of public policies known as New Governance policies, where the government is engaged in a horizontal inter-organizational network of societal actors and where public policy is both formed and executed by the interacting and voluntary efforts from a multitude of stakeholders. However, such policies are known to generate substantive uncertainty about the content of CSR and its related issues, strategic uncertainty regarding the behavior of the actors involved and institutional uncertainty related to the interaction process involved in the institutional change. We explore New Governance policy instruments to address these uncertainties in the context CSR and discuss the experiences with these methods in the European Union. Jan Lepoutre is a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Economics at Ghent University, Belgium. In his dissertation, he focuses on the competences associated with small business social responsibility and networks as governmental means to build competences among small businesses. Nikolay A. Dentchev is an independent research fellow at Ghent University, Belgium, and a project coordinator at the corporate venturing department of Fortis Group (Fortis Venturing). He holds a Ph.D. in business economics from Ghent University. His current research is related to entrepreneurship, instrumental stakeholder theory, and management challenges of corporate social responsibility. Aimé Heene is a professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at Ghent University, Belgium. He teaches strategic management for private and public organizations and currently focuses his research on (competencebased) management in public and social profit organizations.     

Hierarchical Bayesian conjoint models incorporating measurement uncertainty

The authors explore situations where consumers supplement their judgments with a measurement of uncertainty about their own preferences, either implicitly or explicitly, and develop two sets of hierarchical Bayesian conjoint models incorporating such measurements. The first set of models uses the relative location of a rating to determine the importance or weight given to the rating, in a regression setting. The second set uses interval judgment as a dependent variable in a regression setting. After specifying the models, the authors perform a theoretical comparison with a basic Bayesian regression model. They show that, under different conditions, the proposed models will yield more precise individual-level partworth estimates. Two simulated data examples and data from a conjoint study are used to illustrate the gains that could be obtained from modeling uncertainty. In the empirical application, the authors show that model fit improves when ratings for items that respondents do not like are given more weight compared to ratings for items that they do like. Electronic Supplementary Material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Uncertainty and Growth of the Firm

Using data from a survey of 1,097 small and medium-sized non-listed Dutch firms we investigate the relation between growth of the firm and uncertainty. We focus on the impact of sales uncertainty on various types of investment. We find that sales uncertainty, measured by the conditional variance, has a mixed impact on various investment decisions. We include an analysis of the relevance of financial structure and firm size on the growth-uncertainty relation.     

Role of Forgetting in Memory-Based Choice Decisions: A Structural Model

We propose a structural model to investigate the impact of forgetting on consumers' brand choice decisions in frequently purchased products. Forgetting results in consumers imperfectly recalling their prior brand evaluations when making a purchase decision in the category. We conceptualize the imperfect recall by positing that consumers recall their prior evaluations with noise. Based on prior research in the behavioral area, we characterize the extent of forgetting as an increasing and concave function of time. Our framework generates analytical results on the impact of forgetting on consumers' brand evaluations and their consequent purchase behavior. We calibrate our model using scanner panel data for liquid detergents. Furthermore, we obtain insights into the consumers' extent of forgetting in the category, extent of learning, predicted price elasticities and implications on state dependence and habit persistence. Our results underscore the importance of modeling consumers' ability to recall only imperfectly.     

Value of information analysis in healthcare: a review of principles and applications

Background:

Economic evaluations are increasingly utilized to inform decisions in healthcare; however, decisions remain uncertain when they are not based on adequate evidence. Value of information (VOI) analysis has been proposed as a systematic approach to measure decision uncertainty and assess whether there is sufficient evidence to support new technologies.

Scope:

The objective of this paper is to review the principles and applications of VOI analysis in healthcare. Relevant databases were systematically searched to identify VOI articles. The findings from the selected articles were summarized and narratively presented.

Findings:

Various VOI methods have been developed and applied to inform decision-making, optimally designing research studies and setting research priorities. However, the application of this approach in healthcare remains limited due to technical and policy challenges.

Conclusion:

There is a need to create more awareness about VOI analysis, simplify its current methods, and align them with the needs of decision-making organizations.     

刺激还是抑制：企业负债对广告投入影响的理论与实证研究

以布莱德和莱维斯的理论为基础,假设广告具有拓展效应和窃取效应,研究企业负债与市场地位对企业广告投资的影响。结果显示：企业资本市场行为影响其产品市场竞争,负债具有竞争策略性;企业负债刺激其广告投入,而竞争对手负债抑制其广告投入;寡头垄断市场,企业初始市场份额抑制其广告投入;广告投入具有行业差异,且非制造业内部差异更大。研究结论拓展布莱德和莱维斯研究的同时,也给企业广告投资提供参考价值。     

中国跨国企业如何适应新兴市场的不确定性?

在"VUCA"特征愈加凸显的新全球化时代下,企业赖以生存的海外市场环境和发展路径遭到破坏,能否更好地适应和应对海外市场的环境不确定性,成为企业生存与发展的关键。本文基于组织注意力视角,选取特变电工集团的3家海外子公司作为研究对象,通过多案例研究设计,探讨了中国跨国企业在新兴市场所面临的环境不确定性及其适应路径选择。研究发现:(1)中国跨国企业在新兴市场面临的环境不确定性来源于东道国宏观环境层面的制度因素以及组织竞争环境层面的任务因素,并且企业在不同新兴市场所面临的这两个维度的不确定性程度有差异,从而导致其面临的环境不确定性具有异质性特征;(2)在考虑嵌入环境不确定性的异质性特征的基础上,企业注意力焦点选择也有所不同,呈现出威胁倾向、机会倾向及两者并重这三种注意力配置倾向;(3)在环境不确定性的异质性与注意力配置倾向交互作用下,中国跨国企业采取嵌入型、能动型以及整合型适应策略来应对环境变化,并最终形成三种路径来实现企业在新兴市场的适应性。本文立足于新兴市场情境,解构了中国跨国企业在新兴市场所面临的环境不确定性的来源及具体表现,构建了中国企业在新兴市场实现适应性的路径选择模型,为中国企业更好地适应复杂多变的国际环境贡献新的见解和启示。     

Trade policy uncertainty,development strategy,and export behavior: Evidence from listed industrial companies in China

On the basis of new structural economics theory and heterogeneity of firm viability, this study analyzes the effect of trade policy uncertainty on firm export behavior using panel data of Chinese listed companies in the industrial sector. Empirical results show that the high uncertainty of trade policy significantly inhibits the extensive and intensive margins of firm export, while heterogeneity effect occurs across firms with different levels of viability. The development strategy that violates comparative advantage strengthens the negative impact of trade policy uncertainty on firm export. Despite their correlation with viability, the type of ownership, total factor productivity, and long-term loan are not suitable proxies for firm viability. Under high uncertainty of trade policy, export market diversification can alleviate the restraining effect of development strategy on firm export, whereas firms in regions with high industrial-oriented development tend to be vulnerable to cost shocks, thus reducing export market diversification. Findings present important implications for emerging market countries to enact better international trade and economic policies.     

组织文化、环境不确定性与管理会计信息认知

管理会计是一门应用性学科,它围绕组织的价值创造服务于企业实践。组织文化在其核心价值观的传递与解释过程中会对管理会计信息的认知程度产生影响,也会改变人们对环境不确定性的态度。管理会计信息支持系统通过对信息有用性的甄别与分析,提高人们对管理会计信息的认知能力,进一步使管理会计控制系统发挥更大的作用,提高管理会计的效率与效果。     

The Effects of Uncertainty and Disclosure on Auditors' Fair Value Materiality Decisions

Financial accounting standards increasingly require fair value measurements. I experimentally examine how uncertainty affects auditors’ adjustment decisions when evaluating fair values. I manipulate two types of uncertainty, input subjectivity and outcome imprecision, and one reporting choice, supplemental disclosure. I find that auditors are most likely to require adjustments when fair values contain both more input subjectivity and more outcome imprecision, but that this likelihood diminishes when clients supplement recognized fair values with additional disclosure. Thus, consistent with moral licensing, I find that auditors tolerate greater potential misstatement in the financial statements when clients provide disclosure, suggesting that the SEC's preference for supplemental disclosure may have the unintended consequence of affecting fair values recognized in the body of the financial statements. I also provide evidence that auditors determine adjustment size by comparing recorded fair value to the nearest bound, rather than the midpoint, of the auditors’ own range estimate, consistent with strict application of auditing standards.