Innovating for Good in Opportunistic Contexts: The Case for Firms’ Environmental Divergence

Journal of Business Ethics - Opportunistic behaviors are considered ethically and strategically troublesome since they disrupt otherwise mutually beneficial relationships. Previous literature has...     

Ensuring survey research data integrity in the era of internet bots

Quality & Quantity - We used an internet-based survey platform to conduct a cross-sectional survey regarding the impact of COVID-19 on the LGBTQ?+?population in the United States....     

Modern Slavery Disclosure Regulation and Global Supply Chains: Insights from Stakeholder Narratives on the UK Modern Slavery Act

Journal of Business Ethics - The purpose of this article is to problematise a particular social transparency and disclosure regulation in the UK, that transcend national boundaries in order to...     

Forecast-error-based estimation of forecast uncertainty when the horizon is increased

Past forecast errors are employed frequently in the estimation of the unconditional forecast uncertainty, and several institutions have increased their forecast horizons in recent times. This work addresses the question of how forecast-error-based estimation can be performed if there are very few errors available for the new forecast horizons. It extends the results of Knüppel (2014) in order to relax the condition on the data structure that is required for the SUR estimator to be independent of unknown quantities. It turns out that the SUR estimator of the forecast uncertainty, which estimates the forecast uncertainty for all horizons jointly, tends to deliver large efficiency gains relative to the OLS estimator (i.e., the sample mean of the squared forecast errors for each individual horizon) in the case of increased forecast horizons. The SUR estimator is applied to the forecast errors of the Bank of England, the US Survey of Professional Forecasters, and the FOMC.     

First mover or higher quality? Optimal product strategy in markets with positive feedbacks

Conventional wisdom holds that in markets with positive feedbacks being first to market can matter more than product quality. In this paper, we test that intuition within a generalized Pólya urn model. We find that if we assume constant feedbacks, in the long run, higher quality products dominate the market regardless of initial market shares, contradicting the common wisdom. However, when we allow for variable feedbacks, initial advantages persist almost indefinitely. Thus, the choice of whether to rush to market or focus on quality depends on market characteristics such as whether the positive feedbacks result from more consistent returns to scale or from more variable social influences.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on “The Intersection Between Industrial Organization and Healthcare Economics”

This article introduces the special issue on the intersection between industrial organization and healthcare economics. This intersection has received increasing research interest, growing from 2% of the industrial-organization literature in 1991 to 6% in 2016. We describe the nine included articles, which cover a range of healthcare markets that include hospital services, insurance, and pharmaceuticals.     

“Just a Little Respect”: Effects of a Layoff Agent’s Actions on Employees’ Reactions to a Dismissal Notification Meeting

For several decades, most discussion on financial fraud has centered on the fraud triangle, which has evolved over time through various extensions and re-interpretations. While this has served the profession well, the articulation of the human side of the act is indirect and diffused. To address this limitation, this research develops a model to explain the role of human desires, intentions, and actions in indulgence of, or resistance to, the act of financial fraud. Evidence from religion, philosophy, sociology, neurology, behavioral economics, and social psychology is integrated to develop and support an alternative fraud model, called the disposition-based fraud model (DFM). To articulate the model, its two primary components, disposition and temptation, are further developed and extended. Although the DFM is generally applicable to any act of fraud, this paper focuses on executive fraud. The similarities and differences between the DFM and extant fraud models are discussed. Importantly, in light of the DFM, a re-interpretation of the fraud triangle is made to improve our understanding of the human element in it. Additionally, potential implications of the model for corporate governance are discussed, suggestions for further research are offered, and the DFM’s strengths and limitations are noted.     

Nonfinancial Considerations in Eco-Innovation Decisions: The Role of Family Ownership and Reputation Concerns

Societal pressures for greater sustainability can encourage firms to target part of their innovation activities at ecological initiatives (i.e., eco-innovation). Yet, depending on their value function, firms can respond differently to such pressures and exhibit variance in their eco-innovation activities. In this paper, we investigate the idea that a firm’s ownership structure may play a significant role in determining its engagement in eco-innovation. Specifically, we propose that ownership by family blockholders increases the value attached to the company’s reputation and that this, in turn, stimulates higher levels of eco-innovation. In other words, we model the company reputation motive as a key mediator in the relationship between family ownership and firm-level eco-innovation. To account for family firm heterogeneity, we also model the moderating role of owners’ intention to pass the business on to the next family generation (transgenerational intentions) and of the extent to which these owners reside in the firm’s local community (local embeddedness). As theoretical backdrop, our study builds on institutional theory and the mixed gamble logic. To test our hypotheses, we use a large sample of German firms and nonlinear moderated mediation regression analysis. Results reveal that family ownership is positively related to the introduction of eco-innovations by firms, in part because of the stronger emphasis being placed on the company’s reputation. We find that this effect is strongest when the owning-family has transgenerational intentions. As such, this study advances our understanding of firm-level drivers of eco-innovation. In view of the prevalence of family-owned firms and the mounting importance of ecological sustainability, it is valuable to extend knowledge on the contingent and indirect effect of family ownership on eco-innovation.