All work intensity is not created equal: Effort motives,job satisfaction and quit intentions at a grocery chain

Prior research has shown that the well-being of employees engaged in intensive work can vary with the discretion their jobs afford regarding how and when to carry out the work. This article explores a different avenue. It argues that well-being also varies with employees’ individual motives for working intensively. The article introduces self-determination theory to the domain of work intensity and focuses on two hypotheses. The first is whether intensive work driven by explicit or implicit incentives is more positively associated with an employee's job satisfaction than intensive work driven by job demands. The second is whether intensive work driven by intrinsic motives is more positively associated with job satisfaction than that driven by explicit or implicit incentives. In both these cases, the article also examines whether equivalent effects exist on (reduced) quit intentions. Original data from a major Greek grocery chain provide corroborative evidence that is robust to a rich set of covariates, including increasingly demanding adjustments for job discretion. The findings contribute to a more complete understanding of why differences in well-being exist among employees performing intensive work, with implications for workers and employers.     

The politics of experimentation: Political competition and randomized controlled trials

This paper provides an analysis of how political factors affect the incidence of the evaluation of public policies, with a focus on Randomized Control Trial (RCT) experiments in international development. We argue that political environments where incumbents face greater electoral competition and smaller ruling margins are more likely to host RCT experiments. Using various data sources for the incidence of RCTs both at the cross-country level and at the sub-national level in India, we find that RCTs are more likely to occur in politically competitive jurisdictions. We employ fixed effects regressions using various estimators and an instrumental variable strategy that exploits an electoral reform in India which limited the entry of independent candidates and exogenously affected the degree of electoral competition in state-level politics. The effect seems concentrated on RCTs that have the government as a partner, suggesting that political competition has an important demand-side effect on the incidence of RCTs.     

Am I intruding? Developing a conceptualisation of advertising intrusiveness

This study develops a conceptual framework of advertising intrusiveness that extends previous research on the topic by examining both drivers and consequences. To achieve this, the work draws on in-depth interviews with 29 adult consumers who report experiencing intrusive advertising in their daily lives. Three drivers of advertising intrusiveness are identified – temporal disruption, visual disruption and flow disruption – along with three consequences – emotional response, behavioural response and cognitive response. From these drivers and consequences, a conceptual framework of advertising intrusiveness is developed based on ideas about psychological reactance. Based on this framework it is proposed that, while all advertisements might ultimately be perceived as intrusive, an advertisement’s characteristics, which are the identified subcomponents of the drivers of intrusiveness, exacerbate the resultant consequences.     

Writing on the Wall: Street Art in Graffiti‐free Singapore

The legalization of graffiti in many cities has impacted urban landscapes and the way artists and the public view graffiti, street art and the city as well. This article considers the genesis, process and consequences of legal walls programmes firstly by introducing and differentiating the key terms ‘graffiti’, ‘street art’ and ‘legal walls’, then by examining an empirical case, that of Singapore. Renowned as a graffiti‐averse and litter‐free city, Singapore's recent about‐turn in legalizing illicit art forms illustrates changing government perspectives on creativity and legality in the country. Why the government has effected this change, how artists and members of the public have responded to it and the resultant art forms are critically explored. The conclusion reflects on four key lessons from Singapore for cities in general.     

The Complementarity between Tax Avoidance and Manager Diversion: Evidence from Tax Haven Firms

We investigate whether tax avoidance and manager diversion are complementary when the costs of diversion are low by comparing dividend payouts, performance, and overinvestments of tax haven firms versus other multinational firms based in countries with weak and strong investor protections. Desai and Dharmapala (2006, 2009a, b) and Desai et al. (2007) set forth a theory of tax avoidance within an agency framework (the D&D theory) based on the assumption that tax avoidance and manager diversion are complementary when the corporate governance system is “ineffective” (i.e., the manager's expected costs of diversion are low). Tax haven firms are corporate groups whose parent firms are incorporated in tax haven countries that are not the countries where the groups’ headquarters or primary operations are located (i.e., their “base” countries). We argue that tax haven incorporation potentially lowers the costs of diversion for managers of firms based in countries with weak investor protections. Using a sample from 28 base countries, we provide evidence that manager diversion and tax avoidance are complementary for tax haven firms based in countries with weak investor protections but not for tax haven firms based in countries with strong investor protections. Our results are consistent with the complementarity assumption underlying the D&D model and provide additional insights into the potential impact of the decentralization of the global firm.     

Advertising to the masses: the effects of crowding on the attention to place-based advertising

Advertising situated in environments where people congregate or pass through on their way to somewhere else benefit from being placed in such high traffic areas. However, these strategically placed ads also suffer from conditions of human crowding that prevents them from being noticed and processed. We undertake a study of place-based advertising in a shopping mall using facial recognition software to determine the effect of human density on the attention directed to advertising. We find that as human density increases, attention to advertising decreases, but only to a point where it begins to increase again. Our research also finds that human density plays a moderating role on the motivation to process advertising.     

An investigation of the corporate identity construct in China: Managerial evidence from the high technology industry

The study develops and extends existing frameworks of corporate identity and investigates what organisations in China perceive as essential components of the corporate identity concept including their dimensions and contents. The study adopted a qualitative approach and the method of research was a case study. Using the soft-laddering approach, and a multidisciplinary categorisation of analyses of corporate literature and websites, a systematic analysis of the corporate identity was carried out. Different from previous studies, the study reveals new dimensions on the basis of the industry practitioners’ views. The context of China has shown to influence a different focus, more significantly around the ‘impression’ that corporate identity can contribute with commercially. It is suggested that new high-tech firms in China may not have enough experience and capacity to engage in a more holistic corporate identity concept provided. The lack of such experience is particularly likely for new firms, which are still in their early stage of development. Implications for management of corporate identity in China are presented along with directions for further research in the marketing communications literature.     

Transmission of information within transnational social networks: a field experiment

Several studies have shown a relationship between the stocks of migrants and country-level investment in the home country; however the mechanism through which this relationship operates is still unexplored. We use a field experiment in which participants who are recent immigrants send information about risky decisions to others in their social network in their home country. The results demonstrate how this information influences decisions in the home country. We find that the advice given by family members and decisions made by friends significantly affects an individual’s risky decision-making.     

Young SMEs as a Motor of Europe’s Innovation Machine

Intereconomics - Using large scale EIB Investment Survey evidence for 2016 covering 8,900 non-financial firms from all size and age classes across all sectors and all EU member states, the authors...