Media Catching: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Strategic Mediatization in Public Relations?

A form of strategic mediatization, media catching is the reversal of the traditional public relations process of pitching story ideas to journalists using press releases, feature pitch letters, and other techniques. In media catching, journalists working on specific stories reach out to large numbers of public relations practitioners using a variety of technologically aided services with queries for specific information. Using quantitative and qualitative content analyses, this study examines journalist queries submitted through a media request service, Pressfeed.ru, to understand the dynamics of the media-catching trend in Russia. Findings show a substantial gap between reporters’ expectations and public relations professionals’ goals and abilities, and a fragmentation of media outlets’ practices. The findings also revealed similarities in the growth and usage patterns of the Russian service to the first American media-catching service, Help-a-Reporter-Out. An empirical investigation is warranted to test an emergent model of the mutual influences of reporters, public relations specialists, internal (organizational values) and external (societal culture, political climate) factors during the process of media catching across different cultures and countries.     

International joint ventures research on Africa: A systematic literature review,propositions, and contextualization

This study reviewed the research on international joint ventures (IJVs) in Africa up to 2017. The authors performed a systematic search of peer‐reviewed good‐quality research using the 6W procedure and ensured the quality of the review by using the 5Cs quality criteria. The content analysis was focused on four research questions. A total of 22 relevant studies were found. Overall, only about one‐third of the lead authors were affiliated with African universities. A majority of the studies were quantitative, and 78% of the studies were done for three countries: Ghana, Morocco, and Nigeria. There was either just one or no study on trust and conflict, partner selection, and human resource management (HRM). At the contextual level, it seems the most important factor influencing IJV strategy and success is institutions. We therefore suggest a greater use of institutional theory. Finally, we present a summary of conceptual framework and four propositions to guide future research.     

Assembly FG: An Educational Case on MRP II Integrated within ERP

This case teaches students how discrete (job order) manufacturing companies use Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II) within Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to plan purchase orders for direct materials and shop orders for work‐in‐process and finished goods. Students simulate MRP II integrated within ERP, using Microsoft Excel to learn MRP II's bill‐of‐materials (BOM) Explosion that plans order quantities and MRP II's scheduling logic that uses lead‐times to determine start dates for planned orders. Students explain why MRP II is most practical and effective when executed within ERP and how MRP II can reduce excess inventories, prevent inventory shortages, and help companies deliver quality products to customers on schedule. Also, students explain why BOM, inventory, and lead‐time inaccuracies can adversely affect the accuracy of MRP II‐planned replenishments and identify controls that reduce the risks of these inaccuracies.     

Expert opinion and probabilistic volcanic risk assessment

We present data from an international survey of scientists working at volcanic observatories concerning eruption likelihoods. The scientists were asked a range of questions using different types of phrasing. The data suggest that the phrasing of questions affects the ways in which probabilities are estimated. In total, 71% of respondents (N = 70) exhibited some form of inconsistency in their answers between and/or within different question formats. The data also allow for an analysis of the use of scaling in probabilistic assessment, and the use of quantitative versus verbal risk measurements. However, some respondents were uncomfortable with providing any numerical probability estimate, perhaps suggesting that they considered the uncertainty too high for meaningful judgements to be made.     

Measuring the unmeasurable: an application of uncertainty quantification to Treasury bond portfolios

We extract from the yield curve a new measure of fundamental economic uncertainty, based on McDiarmid’s diameter and related methods for optimal uncertainty quantification (OUQ). OUQ seeks analytical bounds on a system’s behaviour, even where aspects of the underlying data-generating process and system response function are not completely known. We use OUQ to stress test a simple fixed-income portfolio, certifying its safety—i.e. that potential losses will be ‘small’ in an appropriate sense. The results give explicit tradeoffs between: scenario count, maximum loss, test horizon, and confidence level. Unfortunately, uncertainty peaks in late 2008, weakening certification assurances just when they are needed most.     

ON THE TIMING OF PRODUCTION DECISIONS IN MONETARY ECONOMIES

In most macroeconomic models inflation tends to be harmful. In this article, we show that by simply changing the timing of production decisions by firms from “on demand” to “in advance,” some inflation can boost welfare as long as goods are sufficiently perishable. The main conclusion from this research is that by effectively hiding the strategic interaction between supply and demand, assuming production on demand is not without loss of generality.     

2018 KLEIN LECTURE: INDIVIDUAL AND AGGREGATE LABOR SUPPLY IN HETEROGENEOUS AGENT ECONOMIES WITH INTENSIVE AND EXTENSIVE MARGINS

We study business cycle fluctuations in heterogeneous agent general equilibrium models featuring intensive and extensive margins of labor supply. A nonlinear mapping from time devoted to work to labor services generates operative extensive and intensive margins. Our model captures the salient features of the empirical distribution of hours worked, including how individuals transit within this distribution. We study how various specifications influence labor supply responses to aggregate technology shocks and find that abstracting from intensive margin adjustment can have large effects on the volatility of aggregate hours even if fluctuations along the intensive margin are small.     

Investor Overreaction to Earnings Surprises and Post‐Earnings‐Announcement Reversals

Prior literature suggests that the market underreacts to the positive correlation in a typical firm's seasonal earnings changes, which leads to a post‐earnings‐announcement drift (PEAD) in prices. We examine the market reaction for a distinct set of firms whose seasonal earnings changes are uncorrelated and show that the market incorrectly assumes that the earnings changes of these firms are positively correlated. We also document that positive (negative) seasonal earnings changes in the current quarter are associated with negative (positive) abnormal returns in the next quarter. Thus, we observe a reversal of abnormal returns, consistent with a systematic overreaction to earnings, rather than the previously documented PEAD. Additional analysis indicates that financial analysts similarly overestimate the autocorrelation of these firms, although to a lesser extent. We also find that the magnitude of overestimation and the subsequent price reversal are inversely related to the richness of the information environment. Our results challenge the notion that investors recognize but consistently underestimate earnings correlation and provide a new perspective on the inability of prices to fully reflect the implications of current earnings for future earnings. That is, we show that investors predictably overestimate correlation when it is lacking, but underestimate it when it is present.