Children's relationships with brands: “True love” or “one‐night” stand?

Group and individual interviews were conducted to examine relationships developed between children and brands in the family setting. Children's stories about brands suggest that they develop relationships with a wide range of brands and these relationships are imbedded in the social environment where children live and grow. Interpersonal relationship metaphors were utilized to describe different forms of child–brand relationships. The article concludes that children's relationships with brands serve important functions in their lives and have significant implications for marketers. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Transformational Leadership: Managing the Twenty‐First Century Sales Force

In today's more diverse sales organizations, sales managers face important interpersonal challenges to achieving high‐quality relationships, which result in better performance within their sales force. In this article, it is argued that cultural distance can negatively influence sales manager and sales subordinate relationships. The quality of these relationships ultimately influences the level of effort that sales subordinates exert toward achieving organizational sales goals. However, despite the potential obstacle of cultural distance, sales managers can utilize transformational leadership as a means to mitigate its adverse effects on one‐to‐one relationships with members of the sales force.     

An alternative approach to expatriate allowances: An “international citizen”

Competitive advantages for an organization that may be realized through the use of expatriates often are diminished due to excessive compensation and the costs associated with expatriate failure. This article addresses an approach for determining expatriate allowances that uses a worldwide standard as the basis for establishing such allowances. It also provides the philosophy and rationale behind such an approach and differentiates it from traditional “balance sheet” or parent-country equivalency approaches. The relative merits of this approach are systematically assessed using a set of objectives for international compensation. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A new look at the forward premium “puzzle”

We decompose the spot and forward rates into (permanent) nonlinear trend components and (transitory) stationary components. We examine the unbiasedness of the permanent (transitory) component of the forward rate in predicting the permanent (transitory) component of its corresponding future spot rate. The transitory component of the future spot rate under reacts to the transitory component of the forward rate. However, the permanent component of the forward rate is an unbiased predictor of the permanent component of the future spot rate. A robust nonlinear cotrending relation is also found between the forward and future spot rates and the hypothesis of the forward‐rate unbiasedness is sustained in the long run. These results suggest that the forward rate better explains the long‐term behavior of the future spot rate. Simulation analysis shows that if the transitory component of the forward rate fully predicts the transitory component of the future spot rate, the forward premium puzzle disappears. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 31:599–628, 2011     

COMMENT ON “SKEWNESS‐AWARE ASSET ALLOCATION”

This paper discusses risk measures proposed by Low et al. One of their new risk measures is skewness‐aware deviation, which is closely related to constant absolute risk aversion utility functions. This measure captures downside risk more effectively than traditional variance does. The authors also propose a second measure, skewness‐aware variance, which is derived from skewness‐aware deviation. This measure simplifies asset allocation problems and empirical results indicate that it captures risk better than traditional variance. However, this measure is also found to be inconsistent due to factor selection. Additionally, in the aspect of skewness‐aware deviation, optimal portfolios based upon skewness‐aware variance are sometimes less efficient than optimal portfolios that base themselves on traditional variance.     

“Going global” and FDI inflows in China: “One Belt & One Road” initiative as a quasi‐natural experiment

This paper investigates the impact of “One Belt & One Road” as an exogenous policy shock on the utilisation of foreign capital in China in the short term. Based on provincial panel data for the years 2003–15, the empirical study is conducted with difference‐in‐differences design. The first difference is whether a province is an OBOR province, and the second is whether “One Belt & One Road” initiative has been proposed. The empirical results suggest the utilisation of foreign capital in OBOR provinces has decreased significantly compared to non‐OBOR provinces after the initiative has been proposed. The study has further shown that the OBOR construction not only means factor movements and projects but also stands for policy shock. Its impact on utilisation of foreign capital cannot be simply captured by the commonly quantifiable “going global” indicators, namely outward direct investment, overseas contracted projects or overseas labour services. The negative impact of the initiative on foreign capital utilisation is strongly reflected in the OBOR provinces with low levels of economic development, heavy fiscal burdens and high proportions of state‐owned economy. In the short term, the negative impact of the initiative on foreign capital utilisation may be due to its role in resource competition and signal delivering. The former means that the OBOR initiative may induce resource competition between “going global” and “bringing in,” and the latter suggests that this initiative is likely to be regarded as a “signal” by foreign investors that “going global,” not “bringing in,” has become the priority of the government.     

“Made in Country” Versus “Made in County”: Effects of Local Manufacturing Origins on Price Perceptions

Consumers often use an array of extrinsic and intrinsic attributes to infer product quality and to assess monetary sacrifice. However, literature reveals little about how and if consumers would use information on product's manufacturing origins differently if it was national rather than local. In two studies, the role played by uncertainty in judgments of the quality of locally made products is examined. It is shown that when consumers are motivated to process information and quality ratings are high, local identity effects are elicited and monetary sacrifice perceptions are diminished. These results suggest that favorable quality ratings need to be prominently featured when promoting locally made products, and that locally made products are preferred to national ones only when quality is not a concern.     

Advertising “like a girl”: Toward a better understanding of “femvertising” and its effects

This paper investigates the impact of femvertising (female empowerment advertising). More specifically, it hypothesizes that femvertising (vs. traditional portrayals of females in advertising) will reduce ad reactance among a female target audience, and that this in turn will enhance ad and brand attitudes. The results of three experimental studies indicate that this is indeed the case, and that the results hold across print and digital media, for five different product categories, and for femvertising focusing on challenging female stereotypes in terms of physical characteristics as well as the roles and occupations used to portray women in advertising. Although previous studies of the effects of female portrayals tend to focus on social comparison and self‐identity, the current paper considers the role of psychological reactance to (more or less) stereotypical portrayals in explaining these effects. The results suggest that marketers have much to gain from adapting a more proactive and mindful approach to the female portrayals they use in their ads.     

Attribution Effects of Time Pressure in Retail Supply Chain Relationships: Moving From “What” to “Why”

Retail supply chains must be responsive to consumer demand and flexible in adapting to changing consumer preferences. As a result, suppliers are often expected to deal with time pressure demands from retailers. While previous research demonstrates that time pressure can have longer term relational costs that reduce collaborative behaviors and overall relationship quality, this mixed‐methods study goes further by accounting for attribution effects to explain why the time pressure occurs. Specifically, supplier perceptions for the reason of time pressure being within or beyond a retailer's control, rather than time pressure itself, appear to have a stronger effect on relational outcomes. By investigating time pressure through the lens of attribution theory, this research opens a new inquiry of research that moves away from examination of outcomes themselves (the “what”), to examining “why” the outcome occurred.     

“Me” versus “We” in moral dilemmas: Group composition and social influence effects on group utilitarianism

The paper is one of the first empirical attempts that builds on the moral dilemmas and group rationality literature to explore the way in which group composition with respect to group members’ individual choices in moral dilemmas and social influence processes impact on group moral choices. First individually and then, in small groups, 221 participants were asked to decide on 10 moral dilemmas. Our results show that emergent group level utilitarianism is higher than the average individual utilitarianism, yet, lower than the highest individual utilitarianism within groups. We also show that average individual utilitarianism positively predicts group utilitarianism while group fragmentation in individual utilitarianism has a negative effect on group utilitarianism. Next to group composition, minority influence processes explain additional variance in group utilitarianism, cognitive dissent having a positive influence, while normative deviance a negative influence on group utilitarianism. Majority influence has no significant influence on group utilitarianism. Finally, our results show that the relationship between group fragmentation in individual utilitarianism and emergent group utilitarianism is mediated by the two forms of minority influence.     

Reconsidering the venture capitalists' “value added” proposition: An interorganizational learning perspective

This study examines the interorganizational relationships among venture capitalists (VCs) and new venture teams (NVTs) for their contribution to long-term improvement in the performance of a venture. Research in (1) learning assistance, (2) NVT dismissal and (3) procedural justice provide important insights into the unique interorganizational relationship that exists among VCs and the NVTs they fund. We found the following: (1) no statistically significant support for strategic information, (2) a negative association for dismissals and (3) positive support for procedurally just interventions. These longitudinal findings suggest important future research on interorganizational relationships.     

Religion and the Clash of “Ideals” and “Realities” in Business: The Case of Islamic Bonds (Sukuk)

Fueled by an increasing demand for investments that comply with Shariah (Islamic law), sukuk (Islamic investment certificates or participation certificates) have developed as one of the main components of the Islamic finance industry. In general, sukuk can be structured as asset based or asset backed, yielding wholly different risk profiles in the event of default and liquidation. However, given that the sukuk market is dominated by asset‐based sukuk, this article examines the motivation for greater interest in this specific sukuk structure. It also analyzes the challenges facing the regulatory framework and tax implemented for Islamic securitization in various jurisdictions. Then, it further evaluates, from the perspective of credit rating agencies, the importance of purchase undertakings in the structure and some controversies on this very point. The main issue that emerges is the difficulty of resolving the clash between the ideals of Islam and the realities of the marketplace. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.