On the economic and social benefits of direct selling

The labor market has long included individuals seeking nonemployee, alternative work arrangements. Now, alternative work arrangements such as freelancing, independent contracting, and temporary contracts have entered the lexicon through the following terminology: the gig economy, the sharing economy, the YouEconomy, agile workforce, and contingent workers. There are currently an estimated 18.6 million independent contractors engaged in direct selling. This article reports the first attempt to empirically investigate and document both the economic and social impacts of direct selling in the U.S. Our findings suggest that direct selling has a consequential impact on the U.S. economy and that the direct selling experience fosters a variety of skills that benefit professional activities as well as the personal lives of millions of independent workers.     

Do Boards of Directors Influence Corporate Sustainable Development? An Attention‐Based Analysis

Following the attention‐based view of the firm (ABV), boards of directors’ link to corporate sustainable development (CSD) could be dependent upon certain attention structures: valuation of environmental stimuli, rules of the game and the players. Studying a sample of large Australian firms, the findings indicate that the proposed attention‐directing structures do appear to be linked to CSD in a manner consistent with the ABV. Specifically, creating awareness through scanning efforts links boards to CSD. Stakeholder debate, as a boardroom rule, is also significantly associated with CSD. Furthermore, as a so‐called ‘player’ on the board, women directors have a moderating effect on the relationships between environmental scanning, stakeholder debate and CSD. The findings are discussed along with limitations and directions for future research. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

基于经济新常态的长春市水资源开发利用潜力评价

以长春市为研究对象,基于未来经济处于新常态的发展态势,构建包含水资源、社会、经济、生态环境4个子系统的评价指标体系,并确定各指标的评价等级标准;基于模糊数学理论以及层次分析法构建包括目标层、准则层、指标层的3层模糊综合评价模型,以2015年为现状水平年,应用模型对长春市水资源开发利用潜力进行综合评价。结果表明:长春市水资源开发利用程度处于中等偏上水平,各辖区水资源开发利用规模不平衡,可通过产业结构调整提高全市用水效率,为经济持续增长提供保障。     

Investment decision-making under economic policy uncertainty

It is widely established that economic policy uncertainty (EPU) affects investment decisions and performance, yet research in this area has overlooked the direct property investment market. This article seeks to rectify this and proposes a multistage multilevel analytical framework to offer new insights and a richness of findings. Using a news-based measure of EPU in the United Kingdom, and controlling for economic conditions, a national-level analysis reveals some evidence of Granger-Causality between EPU and total returns, indicating that pricing is responsive to uncertainty. These findings suggest that EPU is an important risk factor for direct property investments, with pricing implications. Differences in data and performance measure are important, however, with income returns unresponsive. A micro-level investigation begins to reveal some of the asset-pricing decisions underpinning the national results, indicating investors’ concerns for income streams are consistently high, regardless of varying EPU. Pricing can also cause changes in EPU, such as in the retail and industrial markets (increasingly linked through logistics) reflecting sector-specific stakeholder groups and newsworthy issues. This evidence highlights how important it is for policy-makers to understand the complex and bi-directional relationship, that indecision can undermine investment confidence and cause investment market volatility, in turn raising EPU.     

Disruption,dissolution and reconstruction: A dialectical view on inter-organizational relationship development

This paper contributes to research on inter-organizational relationship dynamics by applying a dialectical approach. We analyze a situation where the relationship parties have divergent understandings of business exchange, and use a longitudinal, in-depth single case study method to investigate their interaction process. The case study focuses on the relationship between a customer and a supplier in the ferrochrome industry, using the acquisition of the supplier as the trigger of the relationship change process. The paper contributes to studies on relationship dynamics by showing how dynamics of inter-organizational relationships may result from struggles when parties’ interests and goals do not align with existing relationship arrangements. In particular, we focus on the process of (re)construction of the relationship and its linkage to the structural properties of the relationship.     

Understanding consumers' purchase intentions toward natural‐claimed products: A qualitative research in personal care products

In recent years there is a trend of consuming natural products for a sustainable and healthier life. Therefore, firms began aligning their strategy with sustainability by communication strategies that they produce natural products, which are better for health as well as the environmental sustainability. However, sometimes these claims may be deceptive. The purpose of this paper is to understand the consumers' purchasing intentions toward products claiming naturalness in their advertising and packaging strategies. This research also examined greenwashing perceptions and their potential roles in purchasing intentions. In‐depth face‐to‐face interviews carried out with 20 Turkish women regarding personal care products (local brand and international brand). The findings of the interviews revealed eight themes (perceived greenwashing, perceived green image, price perception, environmental concern, green trust, skepticism, perceived risk, and purchase intention). This study contributes to predict a framework from consumer viewpoint for identifying the themes related to greenwashing.     

山高皇帝远:地理距离与上市公司股价崩盘风险的经验证据

鉴于信息不对称程度、制度实施成本和心理文化差异，文章提出"监管距离"假说，认为监管者和被监管者之间距离远近可以影响监管效果。实证分析中国沪深上市公司数据，文章从非对称风险视角出发，研讨了上市公司注册地距所在地中国证监会派出机构的地理距离对公司层面的股价崩盘风险的影响。我们发现，监管机构与上市公司总部的地理距离越远，该上市公司股价的崩盘风险越大。进一步分析发现，如果开通高铁或者上市公司所在地社会信任水平足够高，那么监管距离和崩盘风险的正相关关系是不显著的；如果监管负担严重或政府效率低下，那么监管距离和崩盘风险之间正相关关系更为显著。文章认为，地理距离具有监管信息效应、监管威慑效应和监管执行效应，能够影响股价崩盘风险。也就是说，"山高皇帝远"可以改变上市公司行为，提高金融监管效率不应忽视非正式制度的影响。     

Narco‐frontiers: A spatial framework for drug‐fuelled accumulation

Based on historical and ethnographic research conducted in a region of northwest Colombia and drawing on the stories of novelist Gabriel García Márquez, this article develops the analytical concept of “narco‐frontiers” to help disentangle the confusing political economy of agrarian spaces affected by the violence of the drug war. As socially produced spaces, narco‐frontiers emerge through the convergence of four interlocking processes: uneven development, internal colonialism, political violence, and narco‐fuelled dispossession. Although often depicted as “ungovernable” or “stateless” spaces, narco‐frontiers are wracked by extra‐legal regimes of rule in which the state is simply one actor among others. With the drug trade inducing violent agrarian change all over the world—from Colombia to Afghanistan, Burma to Central America—this article offers a spatial‐historical framework for understanding these dramatic transformations.     

Is it U.S. GAAP or IFRS? Understanding how R&D costs affect ratio analysis

While financial reporting standards under U.S. GAAP and IFRS are fundamentally similar, differences do exist that may affect our analysis of company financial statements. This is particularly true when comparing a U.S. company following U.S. GAAP to a firm that uses IFRS. To illustrate, we compare research and development (R&D) accounting methods under both sets of standards and illustrate how they affect the analysis of financial results of firms in a specific industry—automotive manufacturers. Our results provide insight into settings in which differences in R&D accounting may have the greatest impact on financial analysis.