When territory matters: Employer associations and changing collective goods strategies

Recent research shows employer associations strategically responding to external challenges, from collective bargaining decentralisation, by altering their offerings of “selective” goods (to directly address threats to membership levels) and of “elective” goods (to revenues). Implicit is that traditional “collective goods” are irrelevant for achieving sustainability. That literature also suggests that territorial associations are more vulnerable than sectoral ones. In this qualitative, longitudinal comparative case study, we explore why and how two territorial associations, the largest each in Italy and Australia, have pursued sustainability by also innovatively enlarging their collective goods activities. This has involved shifting from bargaining leadership to promoting economic dynamism within their territories. Using metaorganisation theory and the resource‐based view, we explain how these associations realised their strategic advantages. Our evidence suggests that innovatively developing new collective goods may be another important way associations can improve their competitive positions.     

Fundraising in the usa and the united kingdom: Comparing today with directions for tomorrow

In 1995, residents of the United Kingdom — a population of 58 million — contributed £9.1bn ($14.56bn) to charities. During the same time period, $143.85bn was donated by the 265 million inhabitants in the United States. Going just by the numbers, the not-for-profit world often assumes Americans are the most philanthropic people on earth. But, a careful look at some actual indicators of charitability suggest this belief may, in fact, be more wishful thinking than reality. Here are the facts.     

Fundraising for regional environmental issues: Public perceptions of who is financially responsible for the local environment

Environmental nonprofit organizations attract less than 5 % of total philanthropic giving. Given the seriousness of the environmental challenges facing the globe, it is imperative to identify barriers to and best practices in soliciting environmental giving. Past studies have identified the difficulty in soliciting funding for macro-level environmental concerns or for concerns considered to be public goods; however, little research has been conducted about giving to regional environmental concerns. Our research questions were as follows: (a) from what type of sources do residents believe environmental protection for regional environmental concerns should be funded?; (b) how willing are residents to contribute financially to regional environmental concerns?; and (c) to what extent do residents trust nonprofit organizations to address regional environmental concerns? We surveyed Florida residents (n = 548) about the conservation of the Ocklawaha River and the breaching of the Rodman Reservoir, an area with pressing environmental concerns and heavily frequented for economic and recreational use. Findings suggest that (a) participants believe government agencies, not nonprofits, should fund restoration projects, (b) participants trust nonprofits more than government to accomplish restoration goals, and (c) participants are more interested in contributing via taxes than via donations. Considerations for fundraising are discussed.     

目标：为社会提供“专家级”服务

北京移动通信有限责任公司(以下简称北京移动)隶属于中国移动通信集团。1999年8月从原北京电信分营出来独立运作,2000年11月完成境外上市,成为国有控股的境外上市公司。几年来,北京移动紧密围绕“建首强之网,创优质服务,向世界一流通信企业迈进”的奋斗目标和“服务与业务领先”的战略重点,实现了企业的持续、快速、健康发展。1999年北京移动刚成立时,资产仅50多亿元,客户不到百万。现在,公司资产总额超过160亿元,客户总数已超过1000万户,年运营收入超过100亿元(占北京市GDP比重超过3%),年累计上缴各项税收超过20亿元。“服务与业务领先”…     

Differentiating literacy volunteers: a segmentation analysis for target marketing

Learning how an organisation's volunteers differ from volunteers serving in other organisations can provide managers with important information. This information can assist managers in identifying potential volunteers, and this information can help managers better understand what to communicate to potential volunteers. This paper presents a segmentation study of literacy volunteers as an example of a proposed methodology for differentiating sub‐groups of volunteers. Managerial implications of research findings and ideas for future research are also presented. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Matching managers to strategies: Point and counterpoint

In recent years, an emerging and increasingly popular theme in the strategic management literature has been that the selection of general managers should be tied directly to the strategies of business units they will oversee. Because different strategies imply different priorities and the need for different skills, such a proposition has obvious intuitive appeal. Beyond intuitive appeal and supporting conceptual arguments, recent empirical research on whether matching general managers to strategies “pays off” in terms of more effective strategy implementation has also yielded positive results. Despite this evidence, several arguments exist for why it may not always be feasible, necessary, or desirable to match general managers to strategies. Thus, there is need for a point-counterpoint “debate” on the subject of matching general managers to strategies. Based on a review of the relvant literature, logical reasoning, as well as some case evidence, this paper is intended to be such a debate undertaken by the author with himself. It is hoped that such a dialectical analysis will open up new avenues for productive research and also enable corporate executives to make better “managerial selection” decisions.     

The home field advantage: Implications for the pricing of tickets to professional team sporting events

Existing empirical estimates of the elasticity of demand for tickets to professional team sporting events are consistently inelastic, throwing into question the assumption of profit-maximizing behavior on the part of team management. We provide a new theory of team sport ticket pricing, based on the home field advantage, which implies that the elasticity of demand relevant for profit maximization is more elastic than the traditional ceteris paribus elasticity measure. Thus, the inelastic traditional point estimates are not necessarily inconsistent with team profit maximization.     

Employers’ strategies in relation to their demand for labour: a sociological contribution

This article, in exploring the processes by which employers’ generalised demand for labour is translated into actual recruitment, highlights the role of management decision-making in this important, but relatively neglected area.     

Mixed strategies for improving data quality: the contribution of qualitative procedures to survey research

This article aims to illustrate how qualitative research strategies contribute to the implementation of the standard survey model by monitoring and improving the quality of collected data and thus the quality of survey findings as well. The methodological cycle for survey data-quality construction using qualitative strategies comprises three sequential stages that alternate with standard procedures: the pilot study, pretesting, and deviant case analysis. If the first two of these stages have enjoyed a certain recognition in the literature, the same cannot be said for deviant case analysis. Deviant case analysis is a research strategy originally proposed by Lazarsfeld and promoted within the Colombia School from the 1940s to the 1960s, unfortunately without subsequently receiving the attention it deserved within the area of survey research in general. It refers to searching outside the collected empirical base for clues concerning anomalous responses revealed by statistical analysis that either deviate from research hypotheses or produce contradictory classificatory results.     

US professional football: The demand for game-day attendance in 1991

This paper examines the factors which affect game-day attendance at National Football League games during the 1991 season. Using a Tobit analysis, the model includes economic as well as quality of game variables as explanatory variables. This analysis reveals that: higher ticket prices reduce attendance with the demand appearing to be inelastic; and a winning home team spurs game-day attendance.     

Launching professional services automation: Institutional entrepreneurship for information technology innovations

Why do some information technology innovations come to be adopted widely while others do not? One promising research stream has begun to investigate how institutional factors shape the diffusion of IT innovations. Here we examine how these institutional factors themselves are shaped. Specifically, we explore how interested actors termed institutional entrepreneurs develop institutional arrangements to launch an IT innovation toward widespread adoption. Undertaking a contemporary case study of a new class of enterprise software, professional services automation (PSA), we found that to launch PSA, institutional entrepreneurs sought to mobilize an organizational community by developing and recognizing leaders and facilitating members’ focus on PSA. They further struggled to legitimate PSA by developing a coherent organizing vision that incorporated compelling success stories. We tie these findings together in a model that usefully shifts the focus of IT innovation research from assessing institutional effects to understanding institution-building. This new focus suggests an alternative IT diffusion theory with several practical implications.     

Fund raising on the Internet: instant access to a new world of donors

One advantage of having an online shopping village attached to your not-for-profit organization's Web site is it gets supporters used to contributing online. If a consumer is willing to purchase over the Web, it's only a short leap to putting donations more directly to work for a favorite cause.     

Value investing versus other investment strategies: A volatility spillover approach and portfolio hedging strategies for investors

Motivated by the incessant demand for portfolio diversification, this study examines the connectedness between value and diverse types of stocks (growth, momentum, ESG, high beta, classic S&P 500, volatility). The applied methodology encompasses the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) extension of the Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) framework for the period from 03/31/2011 to 03/31/2021. Results show moderate volatility transmissions among the sampled assets, which tend to escalate during periods of turmoil, such as the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, the plunge in oil prices and the COVID-19 outbreak. Growth and ESG stocks play an indispensable part in the transmission mechanism. Moreover, we investigate the hedging ability of value stocks within a portfolio containing other stocks, by estimating hedge ratios and optimal weights with the usage of conditional variance estimates (DCC-GARCH). The empirical findings reveal that value stocks can adequately hedge against the risk deriving from the volatility of the remaining investment instruments, especially in the case of high beta and volatility stocks. Thus, this analysis provides portfolio managers and investors with valuable insights in order for them to hedge their stock portfolios effectively.     

Intercultural and sustainable leadership: A professional program for emerging educational leaders

This research reports on an investigation into the changing perspectives of educational leaders from the Asia‐Pacific region attending an AusAID‐funded Australian Leadership Award Fellowships (ALAF) program hosted by Australian Catholic University's (ACU National) Flagship for Creative and Authentic Leadership (the Flagship). The ALAF program aimed to strengthen the capacity of educational leaders from the Asia‐Pacific region to work more effectively in education systems and to better manage the competing demands of governments, education bureaucracies, educational organizations, and funding agencies. The research focused on how the Fellows viewed leadership, and how they viewed themselves as leaders before and at the conclusion of the program. What emerged was a growing interest in intercultural leadership and the concern for sustainable leadership.     

Developing a decision rule to predict failure: The case of savings and loan associations

The relative costs of misclassifying institutions by their financial health is an issue that concerns researchers. In this paper, a model and decision rule are developed that improve the probability of identifying those Savings and Loans that are predicted not to fail, but are actually failing. For obvious reasons, stakeholders in those institutions are very much interested in avoiding this type I error. The study also makes available evidence that the examination of Z-scores can be useful in identifying other financial institutions that may experience financial failure.