“I live with terror inside me”: Exploring customers’ instinctive reactions to terror

Terrorist attacks occur mostly at public service-oriented sites. Consequently, their victims are likely to be customers. The present study explores how customers instinctively react toward the reality of terror in a matrix of 2 × 2 aspects concerning terror circumstances: temporal proximity (brief or long) and physical proximity (close or remote) from the terror event. In qualitative in-depth interviews, customers from France and Israel were requested to share their instinctive reactions and coping strategies when approaching hospitality (hedonistic) and transportation (utilitarian) services. Participants (N = 47) comprised customers having a protracted acquaintance with persistent terror threats. The analysis identified differences in reactions, subject to temporal and physical proximities. When terror attacks are physically close, customers’ emotions, cognitions, and behaviors undergo modification with time. However, when terror attacks occur at a location remote from the customer, customers’ emotions and cognitions, but not their behavior, change with time. These reactions were comparable for the two service contexts. Practical implications were elaborated to enable service establishments (i.e., hospitality and transportation) to design and manage their operations for the short and long term to assist customers in the difficult era of terror.     

The effect of control deprivation on consumers’ adoption of no-pain,no-gain principle

Consumers often base their judgments on a no-pain, no-gain principle—that is, one must pay a cost in order to achieve a beneficial outcome. For example, they infer the quality of a product from its price and judge a bad-tasting medicine to be more effective than a tasty one. Although the use of this principle to infer the value of a product or service has been observed in several domains, the processes that underlie its use have not been fully explored. We find that when people feel out of control, they tend to use the principle because it exemplifies a causal relationship between actions and outcomes and endorsing it reaffirms their belief that they have control over the outcomes of their behavior. Our findings have implications for how marketers might position products and services to attract consumers who perceive themselves as having different levels of control.     

Is the system reliability profitable for retailing and consumer service of a dynamical system under cross-price elasticity of demand?

Retailing strategy is one of the most crucial factors for industries. A proper retailing strategy can help to enhance consumer service and increase the industry's profit. An improved approach to retailing is suggested in this research to deliver superior customer service while maximizing profits in a dynamic system. The study analyzes a retailing strategy for a demand with cross-price elasticity upon the retail price. A product's cross-price elasticity and the system reliability are critical factors in retailing. Understanding the cross-price elasticity of demand between products helps retailers to make pricing decisions that maximize profits by maintaining demand. Imperfect products are produced due to an imperfect production system. The imperfect ones must be adjusted with some costs to make them perfect for better retailing. The system failure rate is crucial for retailing under cross-price elasticity of demand patterns. Production system reliability, cross-price elasticity of demand, and consumer service are all essential factors that can impact a company's success in the market. The production rate is considered time- and system failure rate-dependent. Contradictory to the literature, a dynamical system is proposed for improved retail management, which is solved using the Euler-Lagrange theory. Finally, one can achieve the expected maximum profit for this retail system with optimum selling prices for different products by reducing the system failure rate. Some numerical illustrations with graphical representations are provided to validate the current study. Numerical examples show that applying cross-price elasticity of demand for more than two identical products provides 35% more profit for the retail industry than a single type of product.     

家族控制与企业创新投入

家族企业对社会情感财富目标的追求是其区别于非家族企业的重要特性，社会情感财富目标与企业经济利益间冲突对企业R&D投入的影响不容忽视。以社会情感财富为理论基础，基于573家上市家族企业2011-2015年的面板数据，分析受市场化程度影响时，家族涉入情境下信息透明度对企业R&D投入的影响。结果显示：信息透明度可以有效缓解信息不对称和代理冲突，促进企业R&D投入；家族控制对R&D投入有消极影响；当企业信息透明度较高时，会抑制家族所有者为个人谋取私利的动机，进而增强其对企业R&D投资的积极作用。在市场化程度更高、产权保护力度较大的地区，信息透明度会缓解家族控制权对R&D投入的消极作用。     

环境政策工具对生态创新的影响: 研究回顾及实践意义

各种环境政策工具用来推进生态创新的开发、传播与应用，但不同政策工具对生态创新的作用效果还有待进一步挖掘。系统梳理了环境政策工具对生态创新影响的相关研究，探究不同政策工具的作用及其本质，以理解在推动生态创新开发、传播与应用情景下环境政策工具的作用及其实践意义。     

传统产业集群企业区域价值链市场势力塑造路径

本文对传统产业集群企业如何塑造区域价值链(RVC)市场势力的路径和方法进行研究,以中国南珠产业集群企业为案例,归纳、总结出传统产业集群企业在RVC市场势力塑造过程中的企业家才能和战略定位、文化认同的具体特征,析取概念并建立了“企业家才能”和“文化认同”双重作用的RVC市场势力塑造和突破攻略的理论框架。研究发现,企业家才能通过战略定位实现对传统产业集群企业的RVC市场势力塑造,通过文化认同实现对市场的控制,而在此过程中技术和市场双重控制是常规手段。在数字化条件下,利用数字手段和社会资本,与全球市场建立联结也是传统产业集群企业的一大特色。“企业家才能”和“文化认同”策略是传统产业集群企业获取RVC市场势力并成功充当国际主导企业的关键因素,发展中国家的企业可立足以文化认同为基础的RVC市场势力塑造与传递机制来驱动价值链延伸。     

Does board gender diversity influence firm profitability? A control function approach

We investigate the relation between board gender diversity and firm profitability using the control function (CF) approach recently suggested by Wooldridge (2015). The CF method takes account of the problem of endogenous explanatory variables that have potential to bias the results. Using a sample of firms that made up the S&P 500 over the period 2004–2015, we find that the presence of women on corporate boards (measured either by the percentage of female directors on corporate boards or the Blau index of heterogeneity) has a positive and significant (at the 1% level) effect on firm profitability (measured by the return on assets). We compare our results to more traditional approaches (such as pooled OLS or the fixed-effects model). Through this study, we shed light on the effect of women on corporate boards on firm performance, as it is still a controversial issue (Post and Byron, 2015).     

城市轨道交通相邻多车站动态协同限流研究

为应对城市轨道交通车站高峰期客流压力,限流已经成为常态应对措施,而经常采用的限流策略大多针对单个车站,缺少对相邻多个车站的协同考虑。基于客流在车站间的传播效应,以乘客总延误时间最小为目标,以站台及列车能力为约束条件,构建城市轨道交通相邻多车站协同限流决策模型,同时为实现实时动态控制,引入滚动时域控制方法,优化多车站动态协同限流流程。以北京地铁8号线为例,经过相邻若干车站运营数据进行限流策略计算。结果表明,该模型限流可以在不造成车站服务人数损失的同时,将乘客总延误时间降低21%。     

技术创业型企业孵化资本投入的风险管控——来自多案例对比

待孵化的技术创业型企业同时具有概念性技术向差异化产品转化的高风险与产品异质性被认同后溢价评估的高收益特点，导致其投资者多处于隔岸观火却欲罢不能的的孵化投资矛盾中。对孵化资本实施有效的风险管控，成为吸引外部资本投入的关键。基于此，选择在可创概念选育与技术创业孵化领域探索出高成功率路径的概念证明中心、YCombinator和创新工场为研究案例，分析其在创业项目筛选、孵化资金运营等关键环节的风险管控方式，以期完善我国孵化资本管控理论、助力我国商业孵化器提高资金风险管控能力、促进外部资本投入。     

我国省级区域金融发展对经常项目的影响研究——基于货物贸易视角的分析

本文选取我国大陆31个省(市、自治区)2007年-2018年的面板数据,综合运用系统GMM和差分GMM估计方法,实证检验了沿海与内陆、沿边与非沿边、享受优惠政策高与低、金融控制强与弱等4类不同省区金融发展对经常项目余额的影响。研究结果表明:使用全部样本估计时,金融发展显著负向影响经常项目余额,这一结论经稳健性检验后依然成立。使用不同区域的子样本估计时,金融发展对沿海省区、非沿边省区、享受优惠政策高以及金融控制弱省区的经常项目余额的抑制作用较大,而在其他省区作用较小。因此,各地区应充分利用金融手段来调整进出口余额,以保证经常项目的持续平衡。