How hedonic and perceived community benefits from employee CSR involvement drive CSR advocacy behavior to co-workers

This study seeks to determine how organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) can be influenced by employee perception of the benefits arising from their involvement with corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. The work is significant because of growing investment in CSR activities involving employees and increased firm expectations of employee dissemination of CSR information. A unique model examined how two types of perceived benefits, accruing to US-based employees from their CSR engagement, impacted OCB. The variable of co-worker-directed CSR advocacy was used as a unique measure of OCB. An integrative theoretical framework combined social exchange theory with organizational citizenship behavior to provide a more comprehensive understanding of relationships. The first employee benefit tested was hedonic value, while the second was perceived community value. CSR reputation was modeled as a mediating variable. Data were collected via two scenario-based experiments based at each respondents’ workplace. Analytical techniques included analysis of co-variance and structural equation modeling using partial least squares. While both types of benefit had a significant effect on co-worker-directed CSR advocacy, the pathways differed. Perceived community value had a stronger effect on the mediating variable of CSR reputation, and consequently a significant indirect effect on the dependent variable. In contrast, hedonic value directly affected co-worker-directed CSR advocacy with CSR reputation playing no mediating role. This study contributes to the CSR literature through better understanding of the processes leading to the organizational citizenship behavior variable of co-worker-directed CSR advocacy. This dependent variable extends previous conceptualizations of OCB.     

The Market for Economics and Finance PhDs

This paper presents new information about the post-graduation activities of those with a PhD in economics and finance from an Australian university. Approximately 40 per cent have an academic job, while the other 60 per cent work elsewhere or engage in other activities. The analysis includes origin‒destination networks for both the academic and non-academic markets, the determinants of earnings and measures of overqualification and underemployment. The findings of the paper can provide guidance for those completing or contemplating PhD studies.     

A robust textual analysis of the dynamics of Hong Kong property market

Market sentiments influence the dynamics of Hong Kong’s macro-critical property market, but the unobservable nature of market sentiments makes it difficult to systemically assess this sentiment channel. Using text mining techniques, this paper sets up a news-based property market sentiment index and a Google Trends-based buyer incentive index for Hong Kong and studies the sentiment channel of transmission in the Hong Kong property market. The news-based property market sentiment index can reflect the change in sentiments in past key events, with the sentiments in the primary market tending to lead that of the secondary market during the low housing supply period. For the Google Buyer Incentive Index, we find that it has value-added in forecasting (or nowcasting) the official property price index. In mapping out the sentiment channel using a structural vector-autoregressive model, we find that an improvement in market sentiments could stimulate buyers’ incentives, which then together would affect property prices and transaction volumes.     

Strategic crackdown on organized crime by local governments

Economics of Governance - This study examines strategic crackdown policies on organized crime between states or nations. In particular, we consider how organized crimes in different regions can...