Customers,marketing and the network organization

Customers are becoming more demanding. Network organizations are emerging which embrace customers, and are more flexible and responsive to their needs. CEO's increasingly regard customers as part of the organization. Customers are too important to be “left” to one or two directors and their divisions. CEO's are requiring everyone to focus upon the requirements of customers. To help achieve this, organizations are seeking ways of linking remuneration and performance assessment to customer satisfaction. Increasingly customers assume reliability and performance. Quality of itself may no longer differentiate alternative suppliers. In markets in which all suppliers have their quality programmes, managers need to consider what lies beyond quality. Reason is no longer enough. Less tangible factors such as feelings, emotions and values need to be understood. CEO's question whether marketing departments can respond to these and other challenges and help facilitate the changes they are seeking.     

万邦集团:为雇员、消费者、顾客与股东创造附加价值

在跨国公司利用其影响力在供应链上大肆推行其行为守则、生产守则、验厂和认证,中国的部分企业由于不能达到要求而丧失供货资格的情况下,万邦集团自觉自愿地关注企业社会责任、关注鞋业的环保问题,创新应用环保水性胶,无论是从应对国际贸易绿色壁垒,满足客户要求,还是从创建和谐社会,爱护员工,环境保护的角度,都具有重大意义。     

客户价值与客户关系价值

本文严格定义了客户价值和客户关系价值,认为客户价值即客户给企业所带来的收益,取决于时间和价格两个因素;客户关系价值是指企业为获得某一客户的实际价值所付出的成本.文章指出,客户价值核定、客户分类模型及客户管理策略都是客户管理的重要手段.     

Deviant managerial behavior: Costs,outcomes and prevention

This paper examines deviant managerial behavior, and compares such behavior to the clinical psychological sociopathic model. The scope of a multinational corporate operation can enhance or degrade the quality of life for individuals with more impact than at any previous time in history. Social costs are compared to the results of sociopathic behavior and examined as the result of amoral or immoral behavior. The idea of the sociopathic manager is discussed, and theoretical causes of sociopathic development are examined with bases in behavioral, economic and criminological literature. Future research and recommendations for prevention of sociopathic behavior are advanced.N. S. Miceli is a doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma majoring in Management (Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management). His research interests include the effects of ASPD on decision making, attitudes toward disabled persons, occupational health and stress, international business, cross-cultural issues and labor relations.An earlier version of this paper was presented at a Southwest Academy of Management Meeting.     

上海滩集聚"人气"的歪招和绝症

人气是市场的必备因素，而那些老板们在开业时大把投钱烧香、放鞭炮，也是为了集聚人气。     

Managerial Firms,Entry, and Switching Costs

Empirical evidence shows that switching costs are important in many industries. We analyze the welfare effects of entry into markets with switching costs when firms can be run by managers and the entrant may be partially foreign-owned. We find that with profit-maximizing firms, the welfare effect of entry depends crucially on the ownership of the entrant firm. We also show that entry is less likely with managerial firms than it is with profit-maximizing firms. In the latter case, entry always reduces welfare if the share of the entrant firm owned by foreign investors is high. However, with managerial firms, entry always increases welfare.     

Managing Relationships With Customers And Suppliers: Law, Economics And Strategy

Vertical relationships – contracts or ownership and control, enable firms to exercise extensive control and influence over a supplier or retailer. Such vertical links can increase firms'competitiveness in a whole range of ways. Some of these – reducing costs through integrating processes or ensuring effective product retailing also serve the consumer interest. Others, preventing retailers from offering competing products, for example, don't; and this explains the suspicion with which such links are often viewed by the competition authorities. The consequence is that strategy for vertical relationships must encompass commercial, economic and legal dimensions. It is a key element in corporate strategy in many industries.     

Delegation,Skill Acquisition and Turnover Costs

The delegation of tasks to a subordinate and his access to key firm resources allow an organization to make optimal use of his knowledge and ability, but at the same time, thanks to on‐the‐job learning and the possibility of expropriation of these resources, this might increase the agent’s outside options. We model these risks as an increase in the quit propensity of the agent which determines higher turnover costs for the firm. The choice of the degree of delegation a principal offers to her subordinate is analyzed taking into account its benefits and costs. We show that the level of delegation is influenced by the principal’s and the agent’s abilities, but it is lower the higher turnover costs are and the lower the degree of specificity of human capital is or the higher the degree of expropriability of resources is. Finally, bureaucratic rules establishing the documentation of the agent’s activity are seen as a device to reduce turnover costs and to allow more delegation.     

Technology,Trade Costs and Export Sophistication

This paper uses a disaggregated version of the Eaton and Kortum (Econometrica, 70, 2002, 1741) model to analyse the relative importance of technology and trade costs for export sophistication and welfare in a general equilibrium framework. It uses a structural estimation method to identify key parameters of the model that fit the observed trade pattern. The calibrated parameters vary across commodities consistent with their expected level of sophistication. The results are robust to alternative specifications of the calibration. Using fitted data, it also show that export sophistication is highly correlated with GDPper capita. Overall, the parameters are comparable with estimates from other studies. Finally, counterfactual experiments are conducted to quantify the effects of changes in technology and trade costs for the countries in the bottom quintile. The findings imply that these countries have a huge technological disadvantage, particularly in more sophisticated commodities.     

Emerging Customers,Market Knowledge Competence,and Investor Transition: The Experience of MNCs in China

ABSTRACT

This research examines the impact of market knowledge competence (MKC) on investor transition with a focus on Chinese emerging customers. Investor transition refers to the role change of multinational corporations that initially select China as a sourcing location and later decide to market products in the host country. Based on the theory of referential information, we hypothesize that each of the three dimensions of MKC influences the level of investor transition. An empirical study among a sample of multinational corporations in China confirms the anticipated relationships. The findings also reveal that two contextual factors, perceived value inclination and cognitive reframing mindset, facilitate the processes of MKC.     

Financing, Regulatory Costs and Entrepreneurial Propensity

In this paper, we compared the availability of different types of financing sources to address the issue of capital availability to entrepreneurial propensity and we scrutinise the influence of business costs by utilising a new composite index using data from the World Bank’s Doing Business Database. The availability of three types of financing sources was analysed: traditional debt financing, venture capital financing, and informal investments. The study’s findings show that only informal investments have statistically significant influence on entrepreneurial propensity. Regulatory business costs were found to deter opportunity driven entrepreneurship, but had no impact on necessity entrepreneurship. Final version accepted on October 2006.     

留住回头客

也许是职业的习惯，笔者有连商场、菜场，用第三只眼睛观察社会的嗜好，从中悟出一条真谛：商家想要留住回头客，除增强服务功能外，在产品价格上得有过人的竞争力。     

Contingent Capital,Real Options,and Agency Costs

This paper aims to clarify how contingent convertible bond (CoCo) as a debt financing instrument affects a firm's investment policy, agency cost of debt, and capital structure. We consider endogenous and exogenous conversion thresholds, respectively. Under the exogenous case, there is an explicit optimal fraction of equity allocated to CoCo holders upon conversion, such that the agency cost reaches zero. Numerical analysis demonstrates that under an endogenous conversion threshold, CoCo induces overinvestment, a higher leverage, a possible bigger agency cost, and a stronger incentive to increase risk. But if the conversion threshold is exogenously determined, almost the opposite holds true.     

Third Party Customers Infecting Other Customers for Better or for Worse

In this article the effect of the displayed emotions of third party customers and purchase occasion on customers are examined, even when there is no direct interaction between customers. Three independent studies, including two experiments are employed. The first experiment examines the effects of both positive and negative displayed emotions of third party customers and purchase occasion on customer emotions and repurchase intentions, when there is no direct interaction between customers. The second experiment captures changes in the customers’ affective state on a moment‐by‐moment basis enabling differentiation between the effects of the service environment and the intervention of exposure to the displayed emotions of third party customers. Results show that customers are “infected” by the displayed emotions of third party customers even when there is no direct interaction between the customers. It is also demonstrated that the purchase occasion affects the type and intensity of emotions customers experience and the likelihood of repurchase. Implications for scholarly research and retailers are discussed.     

Monitoring Costs,Managerial Ethics and Corporate Governance: A Modeling Approach

This article evaluates effectiveness and costs of external regulation, in particular the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) in restricting managerial malfeasance and safeguarding shareholder interests. It discusses the role of managerial ethics as an alternative corporate governance mechanism to protect shareholder value. This article builds a mathematical model to illustrate shareholders’ choices of best corporate governance mechanisms, taking into account the influence of managerial ethics, effectiveness and costs of monitoring. We suggest that the best corporate governance design and the optimal monitoring expenses are influenced by managerial types, monitoring efficiency, and effectiveness of ethics education. We conclude that stringent regulation and monitoring may not always enhance shareholder value. When managerial ethics could be improved by ethics education or social norms, ethics education may be a better alternative than stringent regulation.     

International entrepreneurship in universities: Context,emergence and actors

This special issue presents an opportunity to explore the international aspects of academic and university based international entrepreneurship. Over the last decades much research attention has been focused on university spin-off firms (USOs) on issues such as, creation, risk, strategies and performance (see Druilhe and Garnsey, 2004; Link and Scott, 2005; Lockett and Wright, 2005; Walter et al, 2006; Wright et al., 2006). There has been a dearth of studies that have examined the international dimensions and aspects of university-based spin-off firms. The six articles presented in this special issue point towards interesting future research agendas at the interface between academic and international entrepreneurship. Three core themes emerge from this special issue: Context, Emergence and Actors. In sum, this special issue pinpoints: firstly, specific features of universities and research organizations as contexts for international technology entrepreneurship; secondly, the process of organizational emergence and entrepreneurial cognition; and thirdly, insight into learning processes of USOs and the role of non-academic actors. Our article concludes by identifying future avenues of research.     

股权激励、代理成本与企业投资效率

将股权激励、所有权结构、代理成本与投资效率纳入一个统一的分析框架,使用产权属性作为调节变量,代理成本作为中介变量,实证检验股权激励是否影响投资效率,以及股权激励、所有权结构、代理成本与投资效率之间的关系。结果表明:股权激励能够抑制上市公司的非效率投资,代理成本的中介效应显著,但所占比重很小,非国有企业的抑制作用大于国有企业,非国有企业的中介传导机制畅通;国有企业"期权激励"方式能够显著抑制非效率投资,非国有企业的非效率投资通过实施"股票激励"方式能够得到显著抑制;实施股权激励计划能够显著抑制上市公司的投资不足,非国有企业的抑制作用大于国有企业,非国有企业的代理成本中介效应机制畅通,国有上市公司的代理成本中介效应不显著。     

Distance,Transaction Costs,and Preferences in European Trade

Beckerman (1956) and Linder (1961) have suggested that international trade is not determined by supply-side factors alone—perceptions about foreign countries and country preferences matter. We explore the relation between exports, cultural distance, and country preferences in Europe. The results show that several distance and preference-related variables, based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, income gaps, and voting patterns in the Eurovision Song Contest, are significantly related to bilateral trade. We conclude that cultural distance and preferences influence trade through several channels, both indirectly through transaction costs and more directly, as countries seem to prefer some trade partners before others.