When you are what you own

This study examines the effects humour complexity and humour relatedness in humorous television commercials have on brand linkage. The research design combined a content analysis of humour characteristics in commercials and a field study among consumers. In the field study, participants were exposed to existing commercials with obscured brand names and asked to reproduce the brand names. Results showed an interaction effect between the two humour characteristics: brand-related humour led to stronger brand linkage than unrelated humour, but this effect was found only for complex humour. The implications of these findings for the practice of advertising are discussed.     

Corporate recidivism in emerging economies

Prior research on corporate misconduct pays extensive attention to single misconduct behaviors. However, little research has addressed recidivism – the repeated behaviors of corporate misconduct. Based on institutional theory and using the context of emerging economies where recidivism plays a considerable role, we propose the path dependency of corporate recidivism and suggest that three influential factors exist: internal preconditioning, inter‐organizational imitation, and the prevailing external evaluation. Our event history analysis of 1,036 listed companies in China over the period 2001–2008 statistically confirms our hypotheses. We conclude the paper by outlining the implications for both theory and practice.     

Cooperative ventures in emerging economies

Foreign market entry strategy involves choices about which markets to enter and how to do it. Most of the literature on foreign direct investment reflects an interest in ownership structure decisions and the risks foreign investing firm may face. As recognized in many studies, one set of risks arises from public expropriation hazards, a function of the ability of the host country's institutional environment to credibly commit to a given policy or regulatory regime. Empirical research has shown this hazard to have an impact on ownership levels. This study is a theoretical model that describes how multinational firms face moral hazard risk from their local partners and political risk from the host country when they decide to go abroad in a joint-venture alliance. I found that the greater the level of hazard expropriation, the lower the participation of the multinational firm in the final cash flow, except for when the multinational firm has the negotiation power and there is a high level of local investment protectionism. In that case, the multinational firm increases its participation in the final cash flow.     

You are what you can access: Sharing and collaborative consumption online

Sharing is a phenomenon as old as humankind, while collaborative consumption and the “sharing economy” are phenomena born of the Internet age. This paper compares sharing and collaborative consumption and finds that both are growing in popularity today. Examples are given and an assessment is made of the reasons for the current growth in these practices and their implications for businesses still using traditional models of sales and ownership. The old wisdom that we are what we own, may need modifying to consider forms of possession and uses that do not involve ownership.     

Housing wealth effect in emerging economies

In this paper I estimate the impact of changes in real and financial wealth on private consumption for a panel of 17 emerging economies from Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. Households' consumption, income and the two measures of real and financial wealth – proxied by house and stock market prices – are found to be difference-stationary and co-integrated; by means of recent econometric techniques for heterogeneous panels, i.e. the pooled mean group estimator, inference is drawn about the long- and short-run relationships between the variables of interest. The main result of the analysis shows that both real and financial wealth positively affect households' consumption in the long-run, with the elasticity of housing wealth being larger than that of stock market wealth. Moreover, there is also a significant short-run adjustment from income, stock prices and house prices on consumption, i.e. consumption adjusts to its long-run relationship with lags. When the model is run for the two groups of countries separately, the long-run impact of an increase (decrease) in house prices is generally higher in Central and Eastern European economies with respect to Asian ones, which make them more vulnerable to further adverse housing market developments.     

Corporate governance in emerging economies: Understanding the game

Corporations now face the oftentimes daunting task of integrating the interests of multiple stakeholders. The general intent behind this multiple stakeholder focus has been to ensure that corporations operate for the benefit of society as a whole, with corporate governance in the oversight role for all activities. Our research suggests doing business in an emerging economy is confounded by the fact that rules, regulations, and marketplace expectations of the home market do not apply. Due to their evolving nature, the environments in emerging economies are uncertain and complex. Governance is not just an oversight issue related to making the most appropriate decisions. Instead, responsible governance in emerging markets entails governing bodies understanding the characteristics of the unsettled environment in which the company is, or will be, operating. Four major characteristics (demographic trends, technological development, natural resources, and political/legal unease) of emerging economies have led to significant challenges and stormy passage with respect to governance. The continual evolution and understanding of these factors must, of necessity, shape a company's governance process in the developing marketplace.     

What you are is what you like—similarity biases in venture capitalists' evaluations of start-up teams

This paper extends recent research studying biases in venture capitalist's decision making. We contribute to this literature by analyzing biases arising from similarities between a venture capitalist and members of a venture team. We summarize the psychological foundations of such similarity effects and derive a set of hypotheses regarding the impact of similarity on the assessment of team quality. Using data from a conjoint experiment with 51 respondents, we find that venture capitalists tend to favor teams that are similar to themselves in type of training and professional experience. Our results have important implications for academics and practitioners alike.     

Graft and business in emerging economies: An ecological perspective

In this study we examine how a firm's engagement in graft in emerging economies is shaped by its organizational attributes. Building on the logic of organizational ecology, we envisage that a firm's engagement in graft is influenced by its (1) institutional structure (e.g., public ownership, foreign ownership, and government ownership), (2) market orientation (foreign vs. local market), and (3) firm capabilities (e.g., capacity utilization, product quality, and leadership quality). Using the World Bank's data, we analyzed 1782 firms in China, Brazil, Russia, Poland and South Africa, and found general support for our argument. The results suggest that a firm's engagement in graft is, at least in part, an organizational phenomenon influenced by the firm's founding conditions, required legitimization in the market, and capability conditions.     

The transfer of training: what really matters

Although organizations invest billions of dollars in training every year, many trained competencies reportedly fail to transfer to the workplace. Researchers have long examined the ‘transfer problem’, uncovering a wealth of information regarding the transfer of training. Inconsistencies remain, however, and organizations may find it difficult to pinpoint exactly which factors are most critical. Using Baldwin and Ford's model of transfer, we identify the factors relating to trainee characteristics (cognitive ability, self‐efficacy, motivation, perceived utility of training), training design (behavioral modeling, error management, realistic training environments) and the work environment (transfer climate, support, opportunity to perform, follow‐up) that have exhibited the strongest, most consistent relationships with the transfer of training. We describe our reasoning for extracting such variables from the literature and conclude by discussing potential implications for practice and future research.     

Corruption and bank risk-taking: Evidence from emerging economies

This paper addresses the impact of corruption on banks' risk-taking behavior, using bank-level data from more than 1200 banks in 35 emerging economies during the period 2000–2012. We find consistent evidence that higher levels of corruption increase the risk-taking behavior of banks, in favor of the “sand the wheel” view in the corruption-development nexus. In addition, we examine the indirect effects of corruption on bank risks, and find evidence that the impact of monetary policy on banks' risk-taking behavior is more pronounced with the increasing severity of corruption.     

Globalization and technology adoption: evidence from emerging economies

This paper examines the role of globalization in the creation and dissemination of technology across firms operating in 30 emerging and developing economies. Firm-level data from four rounds of Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys from 2002 to 2014 is pooled to assess whether international exposure translates into greater propensity for firms to innovate. The viability of different channels of international technology transmission, i.e. exporting and importing activities, foreign licensing agreements and foreign direct investment are studied to analyze whether they indeed succeed in delivering the push to the firms operating in developing countries to innovate and as a result push them closer to the world's technology frontier. The empirical results endorse the view that exporting and importing activities and foreign licensing agreements are important channels for technology transfer. This study also acknowledges country, sector and firm specific characteristics and their differential capacity to benefit from foreign exposure.     

Antecedents of firm performance in emerging economies: Business groups,strategy, industry structure,and state support

A rich literature has investigated the antecedents of firm performance in developed economies, resulting in a consensus view that firm resources and strategy are the key determinants. Several arguments, however, suggest that in emerging economies other factors are more important for firm performance. This study analyzes the impact of firm strategy and industry structure as well as business group membership and state support on firm performance in an advanced emerging economy, Turkey. Using a data set compiled from a selection of the 1000 largest manufacturing firms in this country, the study employs several regression models to identify the main determinants of firm performance as measured by productivity and net profit margin. In contrast to studies of developed economies, the investigation finds that firm-related factors (competitive strategies) do not significantly influence performance; instead factors related to industry structure and business group membership are the strongest determinants of firm performance; further, state support interacts with business group membership and is positively related to productivity.     

Real option theories and investment in emerging economies

Emerging economies continue to face the challenge of increasing investment. Persistent high levels of uncertainty, characterized by both variance around a mean and the history and continuing probability of structural shocks, likely keeps further investment at bay. This study uses a theoretical real option model and a series of supporting case studies carried out in Bulgaria, first to show whether option theories or the ENPV rule better describes investor decision rules, and second to look at policy implications of the real option theories.     

Stabilization and real adjustment in emerging market economies

Based on theory and on evidence from the Southern Cone the following paper concludes for emerging market economies (1) that fiscal reform is of utmost importance for macroeconomic reforms, (2) that credibility cannot be imported via a fixed exchange rate but has to be established by internal reforms and (3) that an exchange rate based stabilization remains a high-risk strategy even in the case of strong adjustment efforts.     

Corporate governance and MNE strategies in emerging economies

We explore factors of convergence and divergence in corporate governance of emerging and developed market economies, focussing on the role of firm internationalisation. In particular, foreign investments by emerging economy firms led to upgrade of their governance capabilities. These firms also became advocates for home-country policy reforms that mandated the development of similar capabilities for local firms. We present a broad overview of the literature and propose an approach that considers the evolution of corporate governance, both at the national level and the firm level, with MNEs from both emerging market economies and developed economies as active actors in this process.     

Financial liberalization and banking crises in emerging economies

Financial liberalization often leads to financial crises. This link has usually been attributed to poorly designed banking systems, an explanation that is largely static. In this paper we develop a dynamic explanation, by modelling the evolution of a newly-liberalized bank's opportunities and incentives to take on risk over time. The model reveals that even if a banking system is well-designed, in the sense of having good long-run properties, many countries will enjoy an initial period of rapid, low-risk growth and then enter a period with an elevated risk of banking crisis. This transition emerges because of the way in which the degree of foreign competition, the marginal product of capital, and the bank's own net worth simultaneously evolve.