Passion for entrepreneurship or passion for the product? A conjoint analysis of angel and VC decision-making

Passion is important to venture investors, but what specifically do they want entrepreneurs to be passionate about? This study theorizes that angel investors and venture capitalists consider both entrepreneurs' passion for activities related to the product or service the venture provides (i.e., product passion) and passion for founding and developing new ventures (i.e., entrepreneurial passion). We demonstrate that both types of passion become more appealing when the investor perceives that the entrepreneur is highly open and receptive to feedback, suggesting that openness to feedback mitigates potential concerns associated with passion in its extremes. We further find that venture investors differ in their consideration of passion; angel investors and venture capitalists with more investing experience place greater emphasis on the combination of product passion and openness to feedback, whereas those with more entrepreneurial experience emphasize the combination of entrepreneurial passion and openness to feedback.     

Donors’ Mechanisms for Financing International and National Public Goods: Loans or Grants?

This paper investigates whether three classes of donors – multilateral organisations, regional institutions and bilateral donors – tailor their mix of grants and loans to reflect international benefit spillovers and recipient‐specific benefits, derived from aid‐funded activities in developing and transition countries. To account for recipient benefit shares, donors should use a greater share of grants when supported activities yield a larger portion of international public benefits. A greater reliance on loans is appropriate when a large portion of recipient‐specific benefits are associated with the assistance. By reflecting recipient benefit shares in the grant‐loan mix, donors’ assistance also promotes allocative efficiency. Using the Credit Reporting System (CRS) database from OECD for 1980–2000, our analysis establishes that various donor classes apply different grant‐loan mixtures when supporting the environment, health, knowledge and governance sectors of recipient countries. We employ analysis of variance and other statistical comparisons of the means to investigate differences among donor classes. We demonstrate that bilateral donors do the best job in tailoring their grant‐loan mix to accord with the extent of international public good benefits embodied in the aid‐supported activity. Multilateral organisations’ grant‐loan mix is intermediate of the three types of donors, with some evidence of them relying more on grants to finance activities that possess a larger share of international public good spillovers. Regional institutions, however, do not discriminate their grant‐loan mix by either sectors or the associated public good spillovers. This finding suggests that regional development banks need to adjust their grant‐loan mix to better account for international benefit spillovers if these institutions are to warrant the increased funds to underwrite regional public goods that they have been seeking. If, however, their mix is institutionally set, then the stakeholders must give these institutions greater flexibility to tailor their grants and loans to who benefits from the aid‐supported public goods. This is the first paper to empirically ascertain whether the grant‐loan mix is tied to the inherent publicness of the aid‐funded activities.     

Compete in Price or Service?—A Study of Personalized Pricing and Money Back Guarantees

Retailers use both pricing and service strategies to respond to intensified competition. Here we develop a duopoly model to investigate the impact of the increasingly popular personalized pricing strategy (PPS) and the widely used Money Back Guarantee (MBG) customer returns policy. We consider two retailers who differ in customer satisfaction rates. Each retailer chooses a pricing strategy, PPS or uniform pricing, and a product return strategy, MBG or ‘no returns.’ We show that both PPS and MBG are dominant strategies, but their impact on retailers’ prices and profits are different; while PPS intensifies price competition and may lead to a prisoner’s dilemma in which both retailers may lose profit, MBG mitigates price competition and may result in a Pareto improvement in both retailers’ profits. Both PPS and MBG increase the size of the overall market, but not the total duopoly profit. The total customer surplus and social welfare may increase under either strategy. In addition, we obtain some interesting observations as to how our results may change if the product quality/customer satisfaction rate is endogenously chosen in the duopoly. Some of our findings are in contrast to related results reported in the literature.     

Competition and political organization: Together or alone in lobbying for trade policy?

This paper employs a novel data set on lobbying expenditures to measure the degree of within-sector political organization and to explore the determinants of the mode of lobbying and political organization across U.S. industries. The data show that sectors characterized by a higher degree of competition tend to lobby more together (through a sector-wide trade association), while sectors with higher concentration and more differentiated products lobby more individually. The paper proposes a theoretical model to interpret the empirical evidence. In an oligopolistic market, firms can benefit from an increase in their product-specific protection measure, if they can raise prices and profits. They find it less profitable to do so in a competitive market where attempts to raise prices are more likely to reduce profits. In competitive markets firms are therefore more likely to lobby together, thereby simultaneously raising tariffs on all products in the sector.     

Corporate governance or governance by corporates? Testing governmentality in the context of China's national oil and petrochemical business groups

Like other industrial sectors with significant – ‘pillar’ – importance in China's overall economy and development, oil and petrochemicals are governed by state-owned business groups. In this context, ‘corporate governance’ of these groups is of fundamental interest. This study probes corporate governance of 31 national oil and petrochemical business groups by examining their structure, development and business activities in the period from 2007 to 2011. The post-1998 restructuring of China's qiyejituan business groups, their related party transactions and related party corporate finance all yield insight into how property rights are decisive in how corporate governance based on governmentality – or the interrelation of corporate, state and social relations – is structured. This study sheds light on how China's big business policy and governance of the state-business interface progresses in a socialist market economy. It has clear implications international trade and investment as well as multinational corporations doing business with China.     

Sexual-harassment liability in 1998—goods news or bad news for employers and employees?

In June 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court issued three separate rulings regarding workplace sexual harassment. In an apparent victory for employers, the court ruled in one case that a victim must actually suffer a tangible loss (i.e., a demotion or unwelcome transfer) to establish a case for quid pro quo harassment. The court affirmed, moreover, that employers can absolve themselves of liability in hostile-environment cases by establishing a meaningful and effective policy against sexual harassment. Absent a meaningful policy, however, employers will be liable for a hostile environment created by supervisors. Thus, in another case, the court found an employer liable for workplace harassment because the employer failed to disseminate its existing policy and to follow its terms. Finally, in a same-sex harassment case, the court rejected the notion that egregious sexual harassment is per se unlawful, leaving open the possibility that a harasser who treats men and women equally, no matter how badly, could be found not guilty of unlawful behavior. Still, the court made it clear that an employer's best defense against supervisors' sexual-harassment behavior is an effective prevention policy. Consequently, employers should draft a policy that (1) defines sexual harassment; (2) states the company prohibits such conduct; (3) provides a clear procedure for submitting claims, including the names of individuals involved in the resolution process; (4) states that those who complain or cooperate with an investigation will not be retaliated against; and (5) is disseminated to all new employees when they join the company, reissued to all employees each year, and posted in a conspicuous location in the workplace.     

Will I Fake It? The Interplay of Gender, Machiavellianism, and Self-monitoring on Strategies for Honesty in Job Interviews

The use of deception during social interactions is a serious ethical concern for business. Interpersonal Deception Theory (IDT) proposes that strategies for using deception are influenced by personal factors. We tested this proposal by assessing participants’ strategies for using deception during an employment interview. Specifically, we examined three personal factors [gender, Machiavellianism, and self-monitoring (SM)] and intentions toward four types of deceptive behaviors (Extensive Image Creation, Image Protection, Ingratiation, and Slight Image Creation). We used path analysis to examine the intentions of 125 undergraduate students. Our results partially confirm the proposal of IDT by showing that intentions toward using Extensive Image Creation (i.e., generating wholly untrue personal information) are higher for men than women. Intentions toward Image Protection (i.e., hiding unattractive personal truths) are higher for men and for women high in Machiavellianism relative to women low in Machiavellianism. Intentions toward using deceptive Ingratiation are highest for men and high Machiavellianism women, but only when sufficient SM skills are present. For intentions toward Slight Image Creation (i.e., mild exaggerations to personal truths) there are no gender, Machiavellianism, or SM effects. Our research has implications for understanding how deception in the workplace can begin before an individual is hired, and we offer suggestions for several lines of future research.     

Capacity utilization shifting or resource-seeking? Benefits for Chinese enterprises participating in the belt and road initiative

This study investigates the benefits gained by Chinese listed enterprises participating in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). We dispel the concern that the BRI provides a way for Chinese firms to shift excess capacity, instead finding that the capacity utilization of BRI participant firms is worsening. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are the primary contributors to this effect. Moreover, we present evidence that overinvestment and decreased innovation capabilities are the underlying channels of the overcapacity problem. Finally, further analyses reveal distinct benefits accruing to the different ownership structures of BRI-participating enterprises, implying diverse motivations. We demonstrate that domestic political and overseas market resources for non-SOEs in the post-BRI period are significantly improved, which is not the case for SOEs.     

The prospects for marketing strategy and the marketing discipline in Era V: is the prognosis promising or problematic?

ABSTRACT

I thank professors Bernard Jaworski, Brian Jones, Eric Shaw, and Rajan Varadarajan for commenting on my article on ‘Advancing Marketing Strategy in the Marketing Discipline and Beyond’ and for suggesting ways to advance marketing strategy and the overall discipline in marketing’s future ‘Era V’. This note responds to some of their queries, critiques, and recommendations related to the past, present, and future of marketing strategy and the marketing discipline.     

Cogs in the Wheel or Spanners in the Works? A Phenomenological Approach to the Difficulty and Meaning of Ethical Work for Financial Controllers

Journal of Business Ethics - The aim of this paper is to propose a new perspective on the difficulty and meaning of ethical work for financial controllers. This is achieved by drawing on concepts...     

Deliberating or Stalling for Justice? Dynamics of Corporate Remediation and Victim Resistance Through the Lens of Parentalism: The Fundão dam Collapse and the Renova Foundation in Brazil

Journal of Business Ethics - Using the political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) lens of parentalism, this paper investigates the more subtle and less-visible interactional dynamics and...     

Correction to: Deliberating or Stalling for Justice? Dynamics of Corporate Remediation and Victim Resistance Through the Lens of Parentalism: The Fundão dam Collapse and the Renova Foundation in Brazil

Journal of Business Ethics - While a corporate ethics program is expected to reduce employees’ unethical behavior, understanding the effects of the ethics program elements on reducing the...     

Privacy Notice for Dummies? Towards European Guidelines on How to Give “Clear and Comprehensive Information” on the Cookies’ Use in Order to Protect the Internet Users’ Right to Online Privacy

The reviewed ePrivacy Directive aims at ensuring internet users’ online privacy by requiring users to give informed consent to the gathering, storing, and processing of their data by internet service providers, e.g., through the cookies’ use. However, it is hardly possible to talk about an “informed” consent if internet users are not aware of cookies or do not understand when and how they work. Currently, European rules require internet service providers to provide internet users with a “clear and comprehensive” information on the cookies’ use without further specifying what kind of disclosure would be seen as compliant therewith. This paper assesses the need for harmonized European guidelines on transparent and readable disclosure on the cookies’ use and suggests the way forward based on comparative legal research and findings from consumer behaviour research.