Marrying personality and job resources and their effect on engagement via critical psychological states

This study examined the process by which individuals become engaged with their jobs by integrating seminal engagement theory. More specifically, we suggest that an individual factor (i.e. autotelic personality) and two contextual factors (i.e. feedback environment, job autonomy) interact to predict work engagement through three critical psychological states – namely availability, meaningfulness, and safety. This moderated mediation framework was tested using a cross section of the US population (n = 284); data were collected at two points in time with 3 months in between. Availability and meaningfulness mediated the relationship between autotelic personality and work engagement. Autotelic personality’s indirect effect on work engagement through meaningfulness and safety was conditional such that the nature of feedback environment’s effect depended on job autonomy level. Theory and practice implications are discussed.     

Fluctuating levels of personal role engagement within the working day: A multilevel study

In this diary study, we examined a theoretical model in which the psychological conditions of meaningfulness, availability, and safety serve as mechanisms through which the work context during discrete situations within the workday influences “state” engagement. We further theorised that a person's “trait” level of engagement would exert cross‐level effects on the state level relationships. Multilevel analyses based on a sample of 124 individuals in six organisations and 1,446 situational observations revealed that meaningfulness and availability (but not safety) mediated the relationships between perceptions of the work context and state engagement. High levels of trait engagement strengthened the within‐person relation between availability and state engagement, yet weakened the within‐person relation between meaningfulness and state engagement, suggesting two different processes may be at play. Overall, the findings advance our understanding of engagement as a multilevel and temporally dynamic psychological phenomenon and promote a contextually based HRM approach to facilitating engagement.     

Financial resource availability and corporate social responsibility expenditures in a sub‐Saharan economy: The institutional difference hypothesis

Studies done in developed economies have demonstrated a positive relationship between financial resource availability and CSR. Arguments that we term the Institutional Difference Hypothesis (IDH) drawn from the institutional literature, however, suggest that institutional differences between developed and developing economies are likely to result in different CSR implications. Integrating the logic of IDH with insights from slack resources theory, we argue that there exists a negative relationship between financial resource availability and CSR expenditures for firms in Ghana, a sub‐Saharan African emerging economy. We use lagged data from the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre and find that Return on Sales, Return on Equity, and Net Profitability were consistently associated with lower CSR expenditures. We highlight the implications of our findings for research and managers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

INDIVIDUAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS ON SUPPLY CHAIN INVENTORY MANAGEMENT: AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF INFORMATION AVAILABILITY AND PROCEDURAL RATIONALITY

Some strategies for mitigating ordering inefficiencies in supply chains advise sharing information among decision‐makers. However, there has been little consideration of how individual perceptions intervene in the use of available information in decision‐making processes. This article reports the results of an experiment in which participants were instructed to minimize inventory holding and backlog costs for their supply chains as a whole. The analysis suggests that additional information affects supply chain inventory management costs only when rational decision‐making processes are followed. Decreased costs are observed when rational decision‐making is applied with backlog information. In contrast, increased costs are observed when consumer demand information is available.     

甘肃省信贷投放与经济增长关系的实证分析

信贷作为一种重要的金融资源,对一国或一地区的经济发展起着举足轻重的作用.本文通过搜集1978-2007年甘肃省各年GDP及信贷投放额度数据,对甘肃省信贷投放与经济增长的关系进行实证分析,并得出以下结论:在样本区间内,甘肃省的信贷投放是经济增长的格兰杰Granger原因,即甘肃省信贷投放对经济增长具有一定的正效应作用,而甘肃省的经济增长对信贷市场的促进作用却不明显.     

对小微企业融资新范式的检验--以江苏省县域地区608家金融机构为例

本文采用江苏省13个市52个县608家金融机构2012年末截面数据,从贷款发放量、贷款方式、贷款技术、不良贷款率等方面对不同规模金融机构小微企业放贷现状进行描述分析,以检验小微企业融资新范式在我国县域地区的适用性。研究结果表明：（1）贷款方式以抵押／担保为主,资产保证、保理和融资租赁等交易型贷款技术几乎没有被应用于实践;（2）大银行小微企业贷款发放规模远不及小银行,金融机构规模仍然是影响小微企业信贷可获性的关键因素。因此,适用于某些发达国家的小微企业融资新范式并不适用于我国县域地区。最后本文为提高小微企业信贷可获性、完善农村金融市场结构,提出了有针对性的政策建议。     

It's a secret: Marketing value and the denial of availability

Marketing thrives on secrets, yet surprisingly little formal attention has been paid to how the marketing of secrecy and the secrecy of marketing can play a significant role in contemporary organizations. We draw upon the fields of organizational studies, psychology, and marketing to develop a typology of secrets that reflects their marketing value and their knowledge value. Marketing secrets can have value to the firm (strategic value), to the customer (marketing value), or to both parties. Based on these two dimensions, we identify four different types of marketing secrets: (1) appealing secrets have high strategic value, as well as high marketing value; (2) mythical secrets mean little to the firm but a lot to the customer; (3) plain secrets are critical to the firm but are irrelevant to customers; and (4) weak secrets have neither strategic value nor marketing value. Our typology enables academics to formulate research questions regarding secrecy in marketing, and serves as a guide for practitioners in the construction of strategies that can exploit the strategic value of secrets by ‘romancing’ them, and increase their knowledge value by ‘educating’ the secrets.     

The Effectiveness of Two Online Persuasion Claims: Limited Product Availability and Product Popularity

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of two online persuasion claims: limited product availability (e.g., only 3 items left) and product popularity (e.g., 94% of consumers bought this product after viewing this site). The popularity claim appeared to enhance quality perception, particularly among highly risk-averse consumers, and purchase intention. We attribute these findings to the quality signaling effect and the bandwagon effect of the claim. On the other hand, the limited availability claim exerted no influence: low message credibility and the lack of psychological reactance are deemed to be possible reasons for the insignificant effect of the claim.     

How important is improving food availability for reducing child malnutrition in developing countries?

Do increases in the food supply per person in a country, i.e., national food availability, contribute substantially to reductions in malnutrition among its children? This paper sets out to answer this controversial question using panel data from 63 developing countries over 1970–1996. This paper gives evidence in support of a statistically significant and strong positive impact of national food availability on child nutrition, finding that increased food supplies have resulted in significant reductions in malnutrition since the 1970s despite population increases over the period. However, per‐capita food supplies have a declining marginal impact: their effect is quite strong for countries with very low food availability (e.g., most countries in sub‐Saharan Africa and South Asia), but weak or non‐existent for those with high levels (e.g., most countries in the Near East and North Africa). Further, non‐food factors, such as women's education and status and the quality of health environments, are also important determinants of children's nutritional status. Depending on the state of food availability in any particular geographic area and relative costs, these factors may merit greater priority in policies to reduce malnutrition.     

Structures of commitment in mode use: a comparison of Switzerland, Germany and Great Britain

Travellers commit themselves to particular behaviours through the ownership of cars and season tickets. They trade a large one-off payment for low or zero marginal cost at the point of use. It can be assumed that these commitments influence travel behaviour. To the knowledge of the authors there is no literature which addresses the choice between the commitment to the one or the other mode and its impacts on travel behaviour.The paper presents models using structural equation modelling to test a-priori hypotheses on the paths linking car-availability, season-ticket-ownership and modal usage. Modal usage is operationalised as the number of trips by car, public transport, or as the distances travelled by car or public transport. The models are based on three different surveys: Switzerland, Germany and Great Britain. The results confirm the dominance of car-availability, which drives the other variables, but the relationships are more complicated than generally assumed.