What do we know about buyer–seller negotiations in marketing research? A status quo analysis

The main objective of this study is to provide an overview of the current status quo of negotiation research in marketing. In this context, we first conduct a quantitative analysis of existing literature on buyer–seller negotiations. Specifically, we undertake a screening of 10 high-ranking marketing journals so as to identify the body of negotiation-related articles within marketing. In a next step, the identified articles are subjected to both content and co-citation analyses. To this end, we modify the interaction model of the IMP Group in order to comprehensibly structure the existing findings. In a last step, these findings are presented to various negotiation experts to verify their practical relevance. From this multi-step procedure, we derive sound implications for research and practice.     

Leveraging agriculture for nutrition in South Asia: What do we know,and what have we learned?

Despite significant improvements over recent decades, rates of undernutrition remain high in South Asia, with adverse impacts on morbidity and mortality. Overweight/obesity, among children and adults, is now an additional and major public health concern. While agriculture has the potential to improve nutrition through several pathways, this potential is currently not being realised in the region. The Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) research consortium (2012–2018) set out to improve understanding about how agriculture and related food policies and programs in South Asia (specifically in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan) can be better conceptualised and implemented in order to enhance impacts on nutrition outcomes, especially those of young children and adolescent girls. This paper provides a snapshot of the agriculture-nutrition nexus in the region, outlines the pathways through which agriculture can influence nutrition outcomes, elaborates on the objectives of the LANSA research consortium within this context, and highlights the core findings of the six papers that form the body of this Special Issue. The paper ends with five key lessons that have emerged from this research, during this decade.     

What about Passive Innovation Resistance? Investigating Adoption‐Related Behavior from a Resistance Perspective

Adoption literature has been dominated by a novelty‐seeking paradigm, whereas resistance to innovation has received considerably less attention as a means to explain and predict adoption‐related behavior. The lack of a good metric to assess consumers' predisposition to resist innovations has prevented the establishment of a common ground for empirical research and thus hampered progress to date. This paper develops and empirically validates a scale to measure individual differences in consumers' predisposition to resist innovations (hereafter, passive innovation resistance, or PIR). The proposed instrument entails a personality‐specific and situation‐specific measure that assesses individual differences in consumers' predisposition to resist innovations, emerging from their inclination to resist changes and exhibit status quo satisfaction. The scale represents a measure of the generic tendency to resist innovations and thus captures the notion of a general disposition to act in a consistent way in various situations. The results of multiple studies show that the PIR scale has good psychometric properties, and its relationships with other constructs conform to theoretical expectations. Furthermore, the PIR scale explains and predicts adoption‐related behaviors beyond the variance accounted for by traditionally investigated constructs such as innate innovativeness, big‐five personality dimensions, or demographic variables. These results clearly reveal the importance of PIR for determining adoption‐related behavior but contest a conceptualization of constructs that tap only novelty seeking at a high level as the direct antecedent of adoption. Research that attempts to explain and predict adoption‐related behavior can benefit from taking a resistance perspective as well.     

Reflections on the interplay between cognition,action and outcomes in industries and business markets: What have we learned so far and where might we go next?

This essay traces the genesis and evolution of research pertaining to the interplay between cognition, action, and outcomes in industries and business markets and offers suggestions for the advancement of theory, research, and practice. Through a process of autobiographical self-reflection, covering the period from the mid-1980s–present, the author offers his views on developments and progress, first at a philosophical level, and then in terms of theory development and empirical advances, the development and application of methods for mapping actors' representations of strategic knowledge, and what this body of work has contributed and might contribute, going forward, to the design and evaluation of intervention tools and practices to aid strategic adaptation.     

Labor market evaluation versus legacy conservation: What factors determine retiring CEOs' decisions about long‐term investment?

Do CEOs nearing retirement attempt to boost short‐term firm performance or do they care more about what type of legacy they will leave behind? The two opposing predictions about the behavior of CEOs upon retirement suggest that retiring CEOs' decisions about certain long‐term investment items may be more complex than suggested in the literature. In search of an answer to this question, we examine the relationship between CEO retirement and the level of firm commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR). The results show that CEO retirement has a negative effect on firm commitment to CSR. However, we found that the negative effect becomes weaker when CEOs retire at relatively older ages or are retained on the board of directors of their own firms. Our finding suggests that CEOs who face weaker pressure from the labor market for corporate directors may pay more attention to preserving their legacy. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alliance or Acquisition? A Mechanisms‐Based,Policy‐Capturing Analysis

Research summary : While alliance researchers view prior partner‐specific alliance experience as influencing firms' subsequent alliance or acquisition decisions, empirical evidence on the alliance versus acquisition decision is surprisingly mixed. We offer a reconciliation by proposing and testing an analytical framework that recognizes prior partner‐specific experiences as heterogeneous along three fundamental dimensions: partner‐specific trust, routines, and value certainty. This allows us to use a policy‐capturing methodology to rigorously operationalize and test our mechanism‐level predictions. We find that all three mechanisms can increase the likelihood of a subsequent alliance or acquisition, and in terms of the comparative choice between alliances versus acquisitions, partner‐specific trust pulls towards alliances, and value certainty pulls towards acquisitions. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and empirical implications of our approach and method . Managerial summary : This study focuses on an important corporate decision: When a firm has had an alliance with another firm, how would that experience affect the likelihood of a future alliance or acquisition with that same firm? We first suggest that it will depend on three factors: the level of trust that existed in that prior alliance, the extent to which specific work routines were developed, and the degree to which the firm was able to confidently assess the value of the partner firm's resources. We then find that trust is a particularly strong predictor of future alliances, while confidence regarding value more strongly predicts future acquisitions. In this way, we demonstrate more precisely how past corporate choices can affect (consciously or unconsciously) future ones . © 2017 The Authors. Strategic Management Journal Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Strategizing by the government: Can industrial policy create firm‐level competitive advantage?

Despite the prevalence of governmental action devised to foster firms and industries, the link between industrial policy (IP) and competitive advantage has received scant attention in strategic management. I propose a model where such a link is mediated by the accumulation and churning of local resources and capabilities. I also introduce the concept of support‐adjusted sustainable competitive advantage (SASCA), which occurs if a firm's observed performance is superior to the expected performance of competitors had they received the same array of policies. I argue that achieving SASCA through IP is a difficult endeavor and requires the interplay of three conditions: insertion in global production networks, geographical specificity, and governmental capability. Thus, the model expands the potential determinants of competitive advantage into the context of governmental intervention. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Publication Selection Bias in Minimum‐Wage Research? A Meta‐Regression Analysis

Card and Krueger's meta-analysis of the employment effects of minimum wages challenged existing theory. Unfortunately, their meta-analysis confused publication selection with the absence of a genuine empirical effect. We apply recently developed meta-analysis methods to 64 US minimum-wage studies and corroborate that Card and Krueger's findings were nevertheless correct. The minimum-wage effects literature is contaminated by publication selection bias, which we estimate to be slightly larger than the average reported minimum-wage effect. Once this publication selection is corrected, little or no evidence of a negative association between minimum wages and employment remains.     

How Costly is Hospital Quality? A Revealed‐Preference Approach

We analyze the cost of quality improvement in hospitals, dealing with two challenges. Hospital quality is multidimensional and hard to measure, while unobserved productivity may influence quality supply. We infer the quality of hospitals in Los Angeles from patient choices. We then incorporate ‘revealed quality’ into a cost function, instrumenting with hospital demand. We find that revealed quality differentiates hospitals, but is not strongly correlated with clinical quality. Revealed quality is quite costly, and tends to increase with hospital productivity. Thus, non-clinical aspects of the hospital experience (perhaps including patient amenities) play important roles in hospital demand, competition, and costs.     

What Is a Tree Worth? Green‐City Strategies,Signaling and Housing Prices

We investigate the correlation between curbside tree plantings and housing price movements in Philadelphia from 1998 to 2003, comparing two programs, one by the Philadelphia Horticultural Society (PHS) that requires block-group effort that focuses on low-income neighborhoods and the other by the Fairmount Park Commission that is individual-based without specific target areas. A 7 to 11% price differential is identified within 4,000 feet of the Fairmount tree plantings. We argue that this is largely driven by either social capital creation or a signaling mechanism, on top of an intrinsic tree value (around 2%). Findings using the PHS tree program suggest that development of social capital or environmentally conscious behavior might be a less important channel. Any positive changes brought by the PHS tree plantings were not detected with sufficient statistical power.     

Do Employee‐Owned Firms Produce More Positive Employee Behavioural Outcomes? If Not Why Not? A British‐Spanish Comparative Analysis

Whether ‘employee ownership’ takes the form of worker cooperatives, co‐ownership or simply employee share ownership plans, there are normally high expectations that a range of positive outcomes will result. Yet many empirically based studies tend to find a much more complex picture. An influential segment of that empirical literature has posited the need for a number of mutually reinforcing workforce management components to be in place alongside co‐ownership. Drawing on detailed case research in two large and successful co‐owned retailers in Spain and Britain this paper examines the role of these wider elements supporting employee ownership. We find that employee ownership can be linked to higher productivity and lower employee turnover, while at the same time being linked to higher absenteeism and mixed effects on attitudes. Expectations held by managers and employees are higher; these expectations are not always fully met. The role of managers was also found to be crucial.     

Pro‐Social or Pro‐Management? A Critique of the Conception of Employee Voice as a Pro‐Social Behaviour within Organizational Behaviour

For many years, the employment relations (ER) literature took the perspective that employee voice via trade unions could channel discontent and reduce exit, thereby improving productivity. In organizational behaviour (OB) research voice has also emerged as an important concept, and a focus of this research has been to understand the antecedents of the decision of employees to engage or not engage in voice. In OB research, however, voice is not viewed as it is in ER as a mechanism to provide collective representation of employee interests. Rather, it is seen as an expression of the desire and choice of individual workers to communicate information and ideas to management for the benefit of the organization. This article offers a critique of the OB conception of voice, and in particular highlights the limitations of its view of voice as a pro‐social behaviour. We argue that the OB conception of voice is at best partial because its definition of voice as an activity that benefits the organization leaves no room for considering voice as a means of challenging management, or indeed simply as being a vehicle for employee self‐determination.     

Does the UK Minimum Wage Reduce Employment? A Meta‐Regression Analysis

The employment effect from raising the minimum wage has long been studied but remains in dispute. Our meta‐analysis of 236 estimated minimum wage elasticities and 710 partial correlation coefficients from 16 UK studies finds no overall practically significant adverse employment effect. Unlike US studies, there seems to be little, if any, overall reporting bias. Multivariate meta‐regression analysis identifies several research dimensions that are associated with differential employment effects. In particular, the residential home care industry may exhibit a genuinely adverse employment effect.     

When do family firms have an advantage in transitioning economies? Toward a dynamic institution‐based view

We advance a dynamic institution‐based view of the firm that extends the theory's current focus on scope of pro‐market reforms (degree of market liberalization in a given year) to consider how speed of reforms (rate of market liberalization achieved over time) affects the performance of firms from transitioning economies. Utilizing a sample of public firms from Chinese provinces with varying reform speeds, we find that while scope of reforms positively impacts firm performance, speed of reforms detracts from firm performance. We further find that while family firms have an advantage in gradually reforming provinces, non‐family firms have an advantage in rapidly reforming provinces. Thus, we extend the institution‐based view across time (speed of reforms) and firms (family vs. non‐family firms). Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why do Chinese employees build supervisor-subordinate <Emphasis Type="Italic">guanxi</Emphasis>? A motivational analysis

Supervisor-subordinate guanxi is an informal leader-member relationship that is of utmost importance in Chinese organizations. This paper explores Chinese employees’ motives for building supervisor-subordinate guanxi through two studies. Study 1 develops an indigenous scale of motives for supervisor-subordinate guanxi. Four motive types (i.e., career advancement, team concern, personal life, and impression management) are identified, and the scale’s convergent and discriminant validity is established. Study 2 examines the predictive power of these motive types. The results indicate that they, as a whole, account for unique variances in supervisor-subordinate guanxi. Furthermore, as single motive types, they have unequal impacts on this relationship and its dimensions. This research enhances understanding of what underlies supervisor-subordinate guanxi from a motivational perspective and has implications for Chinese indigenous research of guanxi.     

Who's going to provide the funding for high tech start‐ups? A model for the analysis of determinants with a fuzzy approach

The aim of this paper is to understand which factors influence the financial structure of Italian young, high‐tech, innovative firms, and to attempt to formulate a predictive model to determine the ideal financial strategy for a given entrepreneurial project. Venture capital is the most relevant form of financing for high‐technology start‐ups in the United States and is frequently cited as crucial in the technological leadership of the US economy. However, banks are also moving toward establishing a role in capital provision, making innovative offers to meet the financial needs of start‐ups, especially in bank‐centric countries such as Italy. Is it possible to build a robust and ordered set of determinants of the financial strategy of new technology‐based firms? Is it possible to gather them in a model that allows a rigorous analysis? Is it possible to summarize the analysis in a synthetic value of orientation to one or other form of financing? Through a systematic review of the literature and comparison between investors, we have taken the first step toward answering these questions. This work develops a methodology to solve the problem and builds a provisional fuzzy‐set based tool to permit the rationalization of the relevant information and effectively support the reduction of qualitative evaluation of complex phenomena into simple and measurable dimensions. The structure of the model is hierarchical but simple. We consider, as the first level of main determinants (sub‐dimensions), the figure of the entrepreneur, the nature of the project, the financial scenario, and the market characteristics. For each of these, we provide deep insights about their relation with finance. We have verified the value of this approach in the context of ten business cases, by matching the financial strategies undertaken by entrepreneurs and the obtainable conclusions with the fuzzy tool. However, the definition of a robust, predictive model requires more consistent empirical validation, which we intend to develop from this work.