Competition versus social responsibility in the European Union

Recently, in the European Union there has been extensive public debate on the nature of public services, the means of delivering them and the role of public companies. The Commission is pushing for greater liberalisation, more extensive common rules and increased transparency in the application of national regulations. Prof. Nicolaides argues that the state should function as the regulator of the providers of such services rather than as a provider itself. Moreover, in the Community's single market, national regulatory systems should be neutral and should rely more on price-based instruments rather than statutory and administrative measures. The author is indebted to the following colleagues for their comments and suggestions on previous drafts of this article: Robert Polet, Arild Saether, Aad van Mourik, Sylvia Raja Boean and Koen Nomden. Sole responsibility for the views expressed in the article lies with the author.     

基于生命周期理论的供应链成员合作风险分析

为了更好的了解供应链的风险和控制风险,首先要对风险因素进行更完善的分析和识别。本文在总结以前学者对供应链风险分类的基础上,对风险进行更加系统的分类。通过调查问卷总结出风险系数,并通过模糊综合评价法对不同生命周期的风险大小进行分析。找出生命周期不同阶段最急需解决的风险问题。这样使供应链风险分析识别方面的资料更加详细化,也能使供应链不同生命周期阶段的企业对供应链风险采取更加合理的控制措施。     

How to encourage social innovations: a resource-based approach

During the last decade, social innovation has emerged as an outstanding topic for scholars, businesses, and public institutions. This growing interest is due to its potential positive effects on well-being and sustainable development. This study analyzes social innovation under the umbrella of the transformative service research framework. Adopting a resource-based perspective, the research attempts to determine whether the deployment in service organizations of two types of factors that support dynamic capabilities, i.e. internal market orientation, and information and communication technology competence, impacts the extent to which these organizations develop different kinds of product, process, marketing, and organizational social innovations. The study also assesses the impact of these innovation activities on the organization's transformational performance in terms of increased access to new targets. Empirical research is based on a two-step survey to a sample of Spanish nonprofits (particularly, a representative sample of foundations), since the nonprofit sector provides services that possess inherent transformational characteristics. Results confirm the expected positive effects of these two factors on social innovation and performance, and provide several guidelines for implementing social innovations in service industries.     

Entrepreneurship and social norms about thrift versus sharing: the Chinese-Tahitian experience

This article establishes a link between entrepreneurship and a new ‘cultural dimension’: thrift vs. sharing. This cultural dimension measures what is the overriding social norm in a group: thrift or sharing. Our first hypothesis states that long winters with annual harvests fostered thrift while foraging and tropical horticulture and continuous harvesting fostered sharing. Our second hypothesis states that thrift promotes entrepreneurship, while sharing hampers it. We find empirical support for both hypotheses when comparing indigenous Polynesians and the Hakka Chinese minority in Tahiti, French Polynesia.     

入世:中国企业,如何提高国际竞争力

中国将加入世界贸易组织,如何提高中国企业的国际竞争力是未来中国经济的核心问题。     

New firm survival: the interdependence between regional externalities and innovativeness

Small Business Economics - Many studies have shown that regional externalities play a crucial role for the survival prospects of newly founded companies. However, recent research provides evidence...     

Competition and bank stability in the MENA region: The moderating effect of Islamic versus conventional banks

This paper investigates the impact of competition on bank stability using data from 276 banks across eighteen MENA countries between 2006–2015. We controlled for financial inclusion, productivity, and macroeconomic instability in addition to several different control variables, including bank size, efficiency, diversification and leverage. The two-step system GMM suggested that banks facing little competition tended to take less insolvency and credit risks and enjoy more profitability. Furthermore, we found that the competition-fragility effect is more prominent for Islamic banks than conventional ones in MENA countries. This study contains some significant policy implications for regulators looking to improve bank stability.     

如何在企业培训中消除学员的社交恐惧症

在培训过程中,有的企业学员之间也不是很热络,不能象朋友一样想说什么就说什么,开放而自由地表达思想,而更多地是在试探,在提防,在维护尊严,在排斥别人,在为自己辩护.为什么这样?答案很简单,同事既是伙伴,也是对手!在同事面前,不能暴露真正的自我,否则今后在和哪个"对手"竞争过程中,可能落败,因此有些学员的互相提防和排斥等行为,就可以理解了.     

How identification facilitates effective learning: the evaluation of generic versus localized professionalization training

Worldwide, organizations are keen to ensure that they achieve a performance return from the large investment they make in employee training. This study examines the way in which workgroup identification facilitates trainees’ motivation to transfer learning into workplace performance. A 2 × 2 longitudinal study evaluated the effects of a new generic professionalization training program (NGP) – which tapped into distal work identities, and a standard local professionalization program (SLP) – which spoke more to localized work identities, on participant's motivation to transfer their learning to the workplace. The study found that, compared to participants on the SLP (n = 31), participants on the NGP (n = 35) indicated a reduction in 4 measures (perceived utility of training; workplace participation; relatedness and workplace identification). The authors draw on the social identity approach to illustrate how a reduction in these variables is indicative of a reduction in motivation to transfer learning to the workplace. In short, training which does not speak to meaningful localized identities results in reduced motivation to transfer compared to training that does speak to those identities. More broadly, the study demonstrates the capacity of the social identity approach to meet the increasing demands of training researchers for a comprehensive, multi‐dimensional, theoretical framework through which to understand the interplay of trainee and contextual factors that contribute to effective learning and performance in the workplace.     

Corporate social responsibility disclosure and market value: Family versus nonfamily firms

We investigate the moderating role of family involvement in the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting and firm market value using a longitudinal archival data set in the French context. Our empirical results show that family firms report less information on their CSR duties than do nonfamily firms. However, market-based financial performance, as measured by Tobin's q, is positively related to CSR disclosure for family firms and negatively related to CSR disclosure for nonfamily firms. Family firms would benefit greatly from communicating commitment to CSR; specifically, they could obtain shareholders' endorsement more easily than nonfamily firms could.     

Risky business: How social psychology can help improve corporate risk management

Drawing on research in management theory, risk analysis, and the social sciences, this installment of Business Law & Ethics Corner promotes diversity of thought in corporate governance as not only beneficial to business growth and creativity, but also imperative to managing risk successfully. The article begins with a review of four major worldviews and the risk preferences of each. Next, it examines psychological processes that guide human decision making and greatly influence risk perception. The article then applies these worldviews and psychological phenomena to the case of risk management. It offers a critique of current risk management practices, drawing on evidence from the 2007–2008 financial crisis. The article concludes by promoting increased diversity of worldviews in corporate governance as a way to prevent the same risk blindness that led to the Great Recession.     

Inside your social media ring: How to optimize online corporate reputation

Although it is well accepted that corporate communication has a direct impact on corporate reputation, little is known about the link between firms’ social media communication strategies and the formation of firms’ reputations in an online environment. This article contributes to this body of knowledge by studying the impact of social media communication strategies on firms’ reputations. The setting for our study is the hotel industry. The results offer insights regarding the challenges of developing online communication strategies that affect corporate reputation.     

How online trust evolves over time: The role of social perception

Using customer service scenarios in an online retail context, the current study examines how cognitive and affective trust develop over time and how service failure negatively impacts trust, along with the trust restoration opportunities provided by recovery. Study 1 findings reveal that the relationship between Web site social perception and affective trust is stronger for repeat visitors than for first-time visitors. Study 2 findings indicate that failure timing and recovery duration play important roles in service failure situations. Overall, the results demonstrate that consumer cognitive and affective trust develop through the number of interactions with a retail Web site over time and that increased Web site social perceptions facilitate the trust-building process.     

Vulnerable consumer engagement: How corporate social media can facilitate the replenishment of depleted resources

Technology may facilitate health and wellbeing consumer engagement. When there is scant public health provision and socio-cultural norms marginalize consumers stigmatized from cancer, we reveal how a brand’s corporate social media campaign can support vulnerable consumers with resource constraints. Drawing from a transformative consumer research lens, we investigate five years of computer-mediated communications facilitated by the Indian brand Dabur Vatika. Through a grounded theory and an abductive reasoning approach, we unveil how vulnerable consumers directly or indirectly affected by cancer leverage brand's social media to replenish resources. First, we identify how vulnerable consumers engage to replenish depleted emotional and social support resources. We further expand consumer engagement scholarship by offering a preliminary definition of “vulnerable consumer engagement”. Second, we provide a nascent classification of vulnerable consumers in a consumer-producer role, Principal Vulnerable Consumers and Associate Vulnerable Consumers, distinguished by their proximity to the vulnerable context. Lastly, we reveal how brands may perform a transformative role, to replenish social, emotional and operant resources at the micro level through the engagement of vulnerable consumers with corporate social media. This insight is informative for policymakers, advertising practitioners and transformative consumer research academics.     

Merit versus maleness: How strategic positioning can mitigate external gender bias

Despite the proactive efforts of many firms to combat gender bias within their organizations, societal prejudices still disadvantage women leaders and the firms who employ them. This external gender bias shapes outside stakeholder evaluations of women leaders’ efforts in various ways, and firms need strategies to cope with this external gender bias. We examine the conditions that might alleviate this burden of external bias and what women leaders and top executives can do to leverage these conditions—from a strategic positioning perspective—that will effectively allow female leaders to differentiate their work. To do this, we synthesize and build upon evidence that the external gender bias against women leaders diminishes when they lead in areas that are unconventional rather than mainstream. We then propose a two-step process based on (1) identifying the likely threat of external gender bias, which is stronger in some industry contexts than others, and (2) leveraging unconventionality to circumvent male prototypical comparisons, thereby reducing the hazards of external gender bias.     

Disruptions versus more disruptions: How the Amazon dash button is altering consumer buying patterns

Technology, particularly Self-Service Technology (SST), has reshaped the way an individual interacts with a certain brand or retailer. In 2015, Amazon, known for its progressive usage of technology, launched the Dash Button, allowing customers to remotely reorder products by the mere press of a button. This study aims at understanding the implications of such a tech disruption on the consumer journey from the customer, the retailer and the brand perspectives. In order to investigate the usage of the button and its impact on the overall consumer journey, an Internet survey was devised and completed by 630 U.S. prime users of the Amazon Dash Button. Using structural equation modeling, the findings show that the perceived value of the button positively affects the feeling towards the retailer, hereby Amazon, as well as the level of the shopper's impulsiveness. The findings also show that consumer spending self-control affects negatively the impulsiveness in using the Dash button.     

How venture capitalists respond to unmet expectations: The role of social environment

In this paper, we seek to explain venture capitalists' reactions to disappointments caused by entrepreneurs. Our basic assumption is that venture capitalists' social environment, defined as exposure to venture capital and business communities, will influence their responses to problematic situations. The results of our study suggest that venture capitalists with strong ties to their colleagues and with managerial experience are more inclined to use active and constructive approaches than venture capitalists with a lesser exposure to the venture capital and business communities.