Managerial perspectives on trade and consumer promotions

Understanding the perceptions of managers and the behavioral rules they employ in allocating marketing resources is important in applied research. Using survey data obtained from brand managers, this paper explores the factors managers consider important in allocating trade and consumer promotions. Importance scores on several dimensions are factor analyzed to extract the underlying factors. Indices are computed using these raw scores. The extent of mediation by several brand and category variables on managerial perceptions are then examined by correlating managers' indices and the structural variables. The impact of the structural variables and the importance scores are related to promotion to sales ratios in a regression model. While the structural variables have strong and predictable impact, the importance scores are somewhat weak in their explanatory power. These results are used to shed some light on the budgeting process of allocating marketing dollars among advertising trade and consumer promotions.     

Financial Distress in the Great Depression

We use firm‐level data to study corporate performance during the Great Depression era for all industrial firms on the NYSE. Our goal is to identify the factors that contribute to business insolvency and valuation changes during the period 1928‐1938. We find that firms with more debt and lower bond ratings in 1928 became financially distressed more frequently during the Depression, consistent with the trade‐off theory of leverage and the information production role of credit rating agencies. We also document for the first time that firms responded to tax incentives to use debt during the Depression era but that the extra debt used in response to this tax‐driven “debt bias” did not contribute significantly to the occurrence of distress. Finally, we conduct an out‐of‐sample test during the recent 2008‐2009 Recession and find that higher leverage and lower bond ratings also increased the occurrence of financial distress during this period.     

So,how long have you been in the market? The effect of the timing of observation on purchase

Concentrating on the duration of the purchase deliberation process, we set out to address the following two questions: (1) Given that an individual is at a certain point in the deliberation process, what factors affect the likelihood of purchase? (2) Do the factors affecting purchase vary with the duration of the deliberation process? An empirical analysis of new car purchase survey data suggests that there are in fact significant differences at different stages of the deliberation process. Considerable differences are also found between those individuals who trade in a vehicle and those who do not.     

Toward a telework taxonomy and test for suitability: A synthesis of the literature

The current merging of computer and communications technologies is facilitating the trend towardtelework-remote work arrangements enabled by information technology. Organizations today have ever increasing options in the management and distribution of their work processes. In this study, we review the research on telework conducted in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. We then propose a taxonomy for classifying different types of telework. Using this taxonomy, we examine the spatial, coordination, and temporal structures of different types of telework.Previous research results indicate that the introduction of telework is a complex process and has profound implications for the organization. However, this research critically lacks any guidance for the decision maker in determining the feasibility of implementing telework. We propose a framework for a telework suitability test to determine the appropriateness of telework, in a particular situation. This telework suitability test integrates existing research findings with future research areas.     

Traditional vocations and modern professions among Tamil Brahmans in colonial and post-colonial south India

Since the nineteenth century, Tamil Brahmans have been very well represented in the educated professions, especially law and administration, medicine, engineering and nowadays, information technology. This is partly a continuation of the Brahmans' role as literate service people, owing to their traditions of education, learning and literacy, but the range of professions shows that any direct continuity is more apparent than real. Genealogical data are particularly used as evidence about changing patterns of employment, education and migration. Caste traditionalism was not a determining constraint, for Tamil Brahmans were predominant in medicine and engineering as well as law and administration in the colonial period, even though medicine is ritually polluting and engineering resembles low-status artisans' work. Crucially though, as modern, English-language, credential-based professions that are wellpaid and prestigious, law, medicine and engineering were and are all deemed eminently suitable for Tamil Brahmans, who typically regard their professional success as a sign of their caste superiority in the modern world. In reality, though, it is mainly a product of how their old social and cultural capital and their economic capital in land were transformed as they seized new educational and employment opportunities by flexibly deploying their traditional, inherited skills and advantages.     

Perceptions of the ethicality of favors at work in Asia: An 11-society assessment

We explore macro-level factors that shape perceptions of the ethicality of favors in Asian workplaces using the subordinate influence ethics (SIE) measure. We also expand and use the crossvergence model to examine the cross-level relationship between socio-cultural (i.e., traditional/secular; survival/self-expression; in-group favoritism) and business ideology influences (i.e., human development level, control of corruption) on perceptions of favor-seeking at work. This study examines the perceptions of a total of 4,325 managers and professionals in a diverse set of 11 Asian societies: China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Our investigation focuses on both the “softer” (image management) and “harder” (self-serving) sides of subordinate influence attempts to seek favors, as well as the degree of ethical differentiation across these societies. Key results based on hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) suggest that both the World Value Survey’s socio-cultural values as well as in-group favoritism contribute to our understanding of influence behaviors in Asia. Likewise, level of human development and control of corruption also appear to be promising predictors of influence ethics. In sum, our results suggest that widening the scope of the crossvergence conceptualization of socio-cultural and business ideology influences engender a better understanding of differences in attitudes toward subordinate use of favoritism across Asian societies.     

An Investigation of Justice in supply chain relationships and their performance impact

Justice is important in improving performance of supply chain relationships. However, the role of justice in improving performance in supply chain relationships is an under-investigated subject in the literature. In studying the joint impact of justice dimensions, the traditional assumption is that the three forms of justice interact with each other in a multiplicative manner. However, this assumption creates a managerial problem as discussed in this paper. We outline a different view of how the justice dimensions interact with one another utilizing the constraining factor model (CFM). We show that the CFM resolves some of the problems arising from the choice of multiplicative interaction of justice measures on performance. Specifically, we demonstrate that an increase in procedural, distributive or interactional justice results in a significant and positive improvement in performance only if the specific justice dimension is the constraining factor in the relationship. Overall, our analysis suggests that all three dimensions are important and a high level of one of the justice elements will not compensate for a low level of another, a view that is put forward by a number of past research studies in justice. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings.     

Word power: A new approach for content analysis

We present a new approach for content analysis to quantify document tone. We find a significant relation between our measure of the tone of 10-Ks and market reaction for both negative and positive words. We also find that the appropriate choice of term weighting in content analysis is at least as important as, and perhaps more important than, a complete and accurate compilation of the word list. Furthermore, we show that our approach circumvents the need to subjectively partition words into positive and negative word lists. Our approach reliably quantifies the tone of IPO prospectuses as well, and we find that the document score is negatively related to IPO underpricing.     

Postponement strategy for international transfer of products in a global supply chain: A system dynamics examination

This paper contributes to research on “postponement” strategy in the context of a global production–distribution system of an automobile manufacturer. It proposes a model that integrates multiple considerations germane to global supply chains. Postponement is important in this context because it is necessary to consider international transfers and tariffs, and it is important to appropriately account for the impact of postponement on total costs. Consideration of several key variables such as shipping point, customs tariff, and cost differences between countries is essential to derive full benefits from postponement strategy in global supply chains. International transfer of goods among countries in global automobile industry is complex and dynamic because of the multitude of factors that must be considered. The paper develops insights regarding postponement strategy in global supply chains via a system dynamics simulation model. The model draws on the experiences of a Korean automobile manufacturer with operations in developing and developed countries.