Salespersons as Internal Knowledge Brokers and New Products Selling: Discovering the Link to Genetic Makeup

Managers increasingly realize the importance of involving the sales force in new product development. However, despite recent progress, research on the specific role of the sales force in product innovation‐related activities remains scarce. In particular, the importance of a salespersons' internal knowledge brokering has been neglected. This study develops and empirically validates the concept of internal knowledge brokering behavior and its effect on selling new products and developing new business, and explores whether a salesperson's internal brokering qualities are determined by biological traits. The findings reveal that salespeople with the DRD2 A1 gene variant engage at significant lower levels of internal knowledge‐brokering behavior than salespeople without this gene variant, and as a result are less likely to engage effectively in new product selling. The DRD4 gene variant had no effect on internal knowledge brokering. Management and future research implications are discussed.     

Personal income tax mimicry: evidence from international panel data

This paper investigates personal income tax (PIT) mimicry at the international level. It is the first to empirically investigate the extent to which PIT mimicry varies along the tax schedule and the first to include nations which are not part of the OECD. We use data on international personal income tax schedules from the world tax indicators to estimate marginal and average tax rates at various multiples of per capita gross domestic product (GDP). These tax rates are then used to estimate the extent to which countries respond to their neighbors’ PIT policy. We find evidence of PIT mimicry using a balanced panel of 53 countries over 24 years. This finding is strongest for tax rates at lower multiples of per capita GDP and survives several robustness checks.     

Processing and Retrieval of Inferences and Descriptive Advertising Information: The Effects of Message Elaboration

Abstract

Two issues make advertising effectiveness difficult to assess: (1) advertising effects occur both during ad processing and when ad information is retrieved, and (2) the information that consumers derive from advertisements is likely to be some combination of explicit information and inferences. The study reported in this paper addresses these issues, examining the effects of encoding and time delay on advertising processing. Results indicate that while some types of inferences (product features) are more likely to be made under strong than weak encoding conditions, other types of inferences (consumption situation) are not affected by encoding. In addition, at the time of a decision (after a time delay), memory information use depends both upon individual brand accessibility and the relative accessibility of alternative brands in the memory set. Implications for both advertising researchers and managers are offered.     

Humorous Illustration and Cartooning — A Guide for Editors,Advertisers, and Artists. Nelson,Roy Paul. Englewood Cliffs,NJ: Prentice-Hall,Inc., 1984. 243 Pp. $12.96

Abstract

Previous research on negative political advertising has found both intended and backlash effects, indicating that the impact of these ads is likely to be contingent on other factors. The current study examines some potentially important contingent variables — level of involvement and attention to both newspapers and television for political information. Regression analyses indicate that both enduring and situational involvement and attention to television news increase the impact of negative political ads on voting decisions. Although it initially appears that attention to newspaper is unrelated to the impact of negative ads, analysis of covariance shows that newspaper reading actually reduces the impact of negative ads after controlling for other variables.     

Nationality and differences in auditor risk assessment: A research note with experimental evidence

This study examines whether auditors from different countries come to different conclusions when they perform analytical procedures to assess the risk of misstatement in accounts. During a laboratory experiment, auditors who worked for the same firm in the United Kingdom, France, and the United States performed analytical procedures on identical case materials. Although auditors from all three countries came to similar conclusions about the overall risk of misstatement, they attributed risk differently across the individual financial statement accounts they evaluated.     

The Adoption of the Multi-divisional Form in Large Czech Enterprises: The Role of Economic, Institutional and Strategic Factors

In the Czech Republic and elsewhere in the region, researchers have noted the widespread adoption of the multi-divisional form (MDF) by the former state-owned enterprises. In contrast to the accepted explanations in western capitalist societies, the spread of the MDF in post-Communist economies has had little or nothing to do with growth strategies such as diversification. Developing ideas from the existing western literature, the paper examines the role of economic, institutional and strategic choice factors in three large, former state enterprises within the Czech post-Communist context. The findings suggest that all three factors are theoretically important, but neither equally nor independently so. In particular, economic factors acted as a major constraint on structural choice only under extreme conditions, while institutional factors and strategic choice are best understood as interdependent moments in a recursive process of structural enactment.     

The economic burden of common adverse events associated with metastatic colorectal cancer treatment in the United States

Aims: Adverse events (AEs) associated with treatments for metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) may compromise the course of treatment, impact quality-of-life, and increase healthcare resource utilization. This study assessed the direct healthcare costs of common AEs among mCRC patients in the US.

Methods: Adult mCRC patients treated with chemotherapy or targeted therapies were identified from administrative claims databases (2009–2014). Up to the first three mCRC treatment episodes per patient were considered and categorized as with or without the AE system/organ category during the episode. Total healthcare costs (2014 USD) were measured by treatment episode and reported on a monthly basis. Treatment episodes with the AE category were matched by treatment type and line of treatment to those without the AE category. Adjusted total cost differences were estimated by comparing costs during treatment episodes with vs without the AE category using multivariate regression models; p-values were estimated with bootstrap.

Results: A total of 4158 patients with ≥1 mCRC treatment episode were included (mean age?=?59 years; 58% male; 60% with liver and 14% with lung metastases; 2,261 [54%] with a second and 1,115 [27%] with a third episode). On average, two treatment episodes were observed per patient with an average length of 166 days per episode. Adjusted monthly total cost difference by AE category included hematologic ($1,480), respiratory ($1,253), endocrine/metabolic ($1,213), central nervous system (CNS; $1,136), and cardiovascular ($1,036; all p?Limitations: Claims do not include information on the cause of AEs, and potentially less severe AEs may not have been reported by the physician when billing the medical service. This study aimed to assess the association between costs and AEs and not the causation of AEs by treatment.

Conclusions: The most costly AEs among mCRC patients were hematologic, followed by respiratory, endocrine/metabolic, CNS, and cardiovascular.     

Public Professional Accountability: A Conditional Approach

In the past decades, profession(al)s have increasingly been called to account. Several authors have reported that this increased public professional accountability, in the form of showing that professional conduct meets predefined standards or rules, has had severe negative consequences for professionals, their clients and society, and call for ‘intelligent’ forms of accountability; forms of accountability that may inform a wider public about professional conduct but do not harm it. In this paper, we propose a form of ‘intelligent’ public professional accountability. Taking Freidson’s (Professionalism. The third logic, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2001) notion of institutional ethics as a point of departure, we develop a form of accountability that seeks to account for the conditions required for professional conduct. The paper first discusses the current ‘dilemma of professional accountability,’ describes ‘ideal-type professional conduct’ and goes into the conditions it requires. Next, it shows what accounting for these conditions entails and that this form of accountability fits the criteria for intelligent accountability, as set by O’Neill (in: Morris and Vines (eds.) Capital failure: rebuilding trust in financial services, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014).     

A Laddering Approach to the Use of Methods and Techniques to Reduce the Cycle Time of New-to-the-Firm Products

Millson, Raj, and Wilemon have developed the earliest extant knowledge on the implementation of methods and techniques to reduce new product development (NPD) cycle time by suggesting a hierarchy of generic NPD acceleration approaches. The purpose of this article is to extend Millson, Raj, and Wilemon's hierarchy by recasting and augmenting the conceptual basis of their hierarchy for new-to-the-firm products. Taking this hierarchy of generic NPD acceleration approaches as a starting point, the authors set out to form a number of generic NPD acceleration approaches by surveying the literature and conducting an experience survey with academics and managers. A logical and purposeful implementation sequence subsequently is established by using the laddering technique. The results indicate that managers make tradeoffs in NPD with regard to speed, development costs, and customer value, and that not all generic NPD acceleration approaches need to be implemented in order to obtain the greatest effectiveness. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.