Green Noise or Green Value? Measuring the Effects of Environmental Certification on Office Values

This study investigates the price effects of environmental certification on commercial real estate assets. It is argued that there are likely to be three main drivers of price differences between certified and noncertified buildings. These are additional occupier benefits, lower holding costs for investors and a lower risk premium. Drawing upon the CoStar database of U.S. commercial real estate assets, hedonic regression analysis is used to measure the effect of certification on both rent and price. The results suggest that, compared to buildings in the same submarkets, eco‐certified buildings have both a rental and sale price premium.     

In the Eye of the Beholder? The Effect of Product Appearance on Shareholder Value

In times of convergence with regard to product functionality and performance, the appearance of a product constitutes an important source of competitive advantage. Astonishingly, only a few studies have empirically examined the relationship between design‐related aspects and firm value. Moreover, existing studies predominantly use accounting‐based and/or subjective performance measures. Against this background, the present work assesses the contribution of the three most important product design dimensions (i.e., aesthetic, ergonomic, and symbolic value) to the creation of firm value in the context of the automotive and consumer electronics industry. To do so, we examine stock market reactions to the unveiling of a new product's appearance to the public using event study methodology. In particular, we combine perceptual data at the consumer level with stock market data to examine how target consumers' perceptions of the aforementioned design dimensions are related to abnormal returns following the unveiling of a new product. Results reveal that ergonomic value is positively related to abnormal returns, while aesthetic value only exerts a significant positive effect on abnormal returns if the product also exhibits a certain degree of functional product advantage. Finally, symbolic value exerts a negative influence on stock market reactions. These findings have important implications for the allocation of design‐related investments to aesthetic, ergonomic, and symbolic design features.     

How Does Employee Involvement Stack Up? The Effects of Human Resource Management Policies on Performance in a Retail Firm

The impact of innovative human resource management (HRM) practices on performance is investigated using panel data for all units of a retail firm. Our rich data include measures of the operating environment, important dimensions of core inputs, and information on HRM environments, and output is measured as value added. We estimate augmented production functions, including both establishment and manager fixed effects. When employees have opportunities to participate, and receive appropriate information and feedback from their supervisors, productivity is enhanced. Thus, even in settings where employees do simple tasks and are relatively low-skilled, participatory work environments can enhance business performance.     

The Effects of Homeownership on Children's Outcomes: Real Effects or Self‐Selection?

This article examines whether there is a “homeownership effect” for lower‐income racial and ethnic groups who have been the target of public policies to expand homeownership. We use two different methods to account for selection, statistical matching and instrumental variable analysis; test direct and indirect (mediator) effects of homeownership on children's cognitive achievement, behavior problems and health using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement; and replicate the main effects tests using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We find little evidence of beneficial homeownership effects and suggest that previous analyses may have mistaken selection differences for the effect of homeownership itself.     

The Seminar on How China Can Grant a Firm foot on the US Market

A four hour seminar on how Chinese textile enterprises upgrade themselves and 'go abroad' will be held in Beijing on 27th June 2006. This meeting is organised and hosted by the China Textile Planning Institute of Construction (CPTIC) and the China Fangjian Engineering Consultation & Supervision Centre.     

A Switch or a Process? Disentangling the Effects of Union Membership on Political Attitudes in Switzerland and the UK

The paper examines the effects of union membership on individual political attitudes using panel data for Swiss and British workers. Considering union membership as an on/off switch (member vs. non-member), as it is often done, it is only possible to distinguish between a selection effect (unions attract like-minded individuals) and a molding effect (the experience of membership has a transformational impact on the individual). Exploiting the longitudinal structure of the data reveals that union membership is best characterized not as a switch, but as a dynamic process involving anticipation effects (which start well before becoming affiliated) and maturation effects (which become noticeable only after a certain duration of membership and may not dissipate after leaving the union). Empirically, the selection effect appears the most important in the two countries we focus on, while the molding effect is less pronounced. Anticipation and maturation effects are also non-negligible and hitherto unexplored.     

The effects of the keiretsu on the export performance of Japanese companies: help or hindrance?

This study investigates the effect that membership in a financial keiretsu has on the export performance of Japanese manufacturing companies. Companies that belong to one of the six major financial keiretsu are found to have lower export ratios than similar companies who are not members. The negative effects of keiretsu membership appear confined to producer goods companies where intergroup linkages such as preferential trading relationships are tightest. Additional evidence from the producer goods sector showing that keiretsu members do less well on other measures of company performance supports the argument that the cartel-like properties sometimes ascribed to the keiretsu actually reduce competitiveness, thus dampening export performance. In general, the data do not support recommendations that non-Japanese companies might look to keiretsu-type alliances as an organizational strategy that will lead to competitive advantage in global markets. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Impact of the Financial Crisis on the Global Seaborne Hard Coal Market: Are there Implications for the Future?

The global financial crisis in 2008 sent commodity markets spinning which caused demand to erode, price levels to quickly plummet and project financing costs to rise. In this paper, the authors examine the impacts the economic slowdown has had on the global seaborne hard coal market looking at the impacts for both coking (metallurgical) and thermal (steam) coals including pricing, supply availability, demand and aggregated mine level production costs. The hard coal market experienced a significant slow down; the commodity has bounced back strongly in 2010 driven by strong Asian demand at growth rates above historic levels and strong projections for the future.     

Exchange or Covenant? The Nature of the Member-Union Relationship

Drawing on a study of members of the U.K. National Union of Teachers, this article considers the extent to which economic exchange, social exchange, and covenantal considerations underpin union members' willingness to continue membership and to participate actively in their union through union citizenship behaviors (UCB). Findings suggest that the more activist forms of UCB were motivated primarily by a perceived covenantal relationship with the union. In contrast, exchange, particularly social exchange, motivations played more of a role in motivating less demanding "rank and file" UCB and intent to quit the union. Union instrumentality appeared to be a necessary but insufficient condition for union viability, having an indirect effect on UCB and intent to quit the union and also moderating the effects of pro-union attitudes. Implications for union strategy are considered.     

Short Notice,Big Difference? The Effect of Temporary Employment on Firm Competitiveness across Sectors

This article is one of the first to examine how the use of fixed‐term employment contracts (FTCs) affects firm competitiveness (i.e. productivity, wages and profits) while controlling for key econometric issues such as time‐invariant unobserved workplace characteristics, endogeneity and state dependence. We apply dynamic panel data estimation techniques to detailed Belgian linked employer–employee data covering all years from 1999 to 2010. Results show that the effects of FTCs on firm competitiveness vary across sectors: while temporary employment is found (at the 10 per cent significance level) to enhance productivity and profits in (labour‐intensive) services, this is not the case in manufacturing and construction.     

Is the future static or dynamic? The role of culture on escalation of commitment in new product development

Escalation of commitment in new product development has been studied extensively for the last four decades but the impact of culture on the escalation phenomenon remains largely unexplored. This study investigates how culture impacts the decision to escalate or deescalate commitment to new products. Americans are analytic thinkers whereas Chinese tend to be holistic thinkers. When it comes to decision making, analytic thinkers focus on field independent and abstract factors and believe that future is linear and static, whereas holistic thinkers focus more on contextual factors and believe that future is dynamic and nonlinear. Hence, Chinese are more likely to escalate their commitment relative to Americans on receiving a negative performance report in the new product development process. A lab experiment using weekend MBA students and managers was used to test this underlying hypothesis. The findings confirmed that analytical thinkers use fewer factors than holistic thinkers in making new product decisions, and that Chinese managers are more likely to escalate their commitment relative to American managers. The decision to escalate or de-escalate was moderated by perceived product innovativeness.     

Chicken,or the egg,or both? The interrelationship between a firm's inventor specialization and scope of technologies

Firms with different scope of technologies experience different firm growth. Understanding such heterogeneity requires knowing not only what drives technologies' scope but also why these drivers remain different across firms. I propose inventor specialization as a driver of technologies' scope: firms with more specialized inventors create narrower scope technologies. I also propose that these narrower scope technologies themselves in turn induce these firms' inventors to remain more specialized. I empirically demonstrate this two‐way interrelationship in the U.S. communication equipment industry using policy shocks as natural experiments and a new measure of scope. This interrelationship has important implications for why resources and organization appear isomorphic within a firm but heterogeneous across firms. t © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Just a Question of Selection? The Causal Effect of Profit Sharing on a Firm's Performance

Using German firm panel data, we analyze the productivity effects of profit sharing. Because selectivity should pose a severe problem in this context, we combine matching with a difference‐in‐differences approach. This method enables us to rule out potential bias. Our results suggest that selectivity does indeed matter. Firms with very special characteristics apply profit sharing. We find that these establishments are already more productive before they decide to implement profit sharing. Nevertheless, after accounting for selection, our results show that the introduction of profit sharing leads to a significantly higher productivity in these firms.     

What Types of Diversity Benefit Workers? Empirical Evidence on the Effects of Co‐worker Dissimilarity on the Performance of Employees

This study explores the consequences of grouping workers into diverse divisions on the performance of employees using a dataset containing the detailed personnel records of a large U.S. firm from 1989 to 1994. In particular, I examine the effects of demographic dissimilarity among co‐workers, namely differences in age, gender, and race among employees who work together within divisions, and non‐demographic dissimilarity, namely differences in education, work function, firm tenure, division tenure, performance, and wages among employees within divisions. I find evidence that age dissimilarity, dissimilarity in firm tenure, and performance dissimilarity are associated with lower worker performance, while wage differences are associated with higher worker performance. My analysis also reveals that the effects of certain types of dissimilarities get smaller in magnitude the longer a worker is a part of a division. Finally, the paper provides evidence that the relationships between performance and the various measures of dissimilarity vary by occupational area and division size.     

Manufacturers’ reliance on channel intermediaries: Value drivers in the presence of a direct web channel

Channel intermediaries constitute a key marketing asset, enabling manufacturers to reach out to and serve end-users or customers. The manufacturer-intermediary relationship has to create value for and deliver it to the end-user. In this process manufacturers and intermediaries add value to each other. Drawing upon the Governance Value Analysis (GVA) framework, this paper focuses on the manufacturer's perspective of value contributed by themselves and their intermediaries. The research setting is a multi-channel context where the manufacturer employs a direct web site for marketing in addition to the intermediary channel. We find that relational investments in intangible assets such as training and operating procedures by manufacturers in intermediaries, and intermediary investments in their end-customer relationships, increase manufacturers’ reliance on intermediaries even when the manufacturer has its own direct web site. Further, regardless of having their own website, manufacturers’ reliance on intermediaries increases with the web competence of their intermediaries. In addition, we find that, to the extent that the manufacturer's direct web site can perform the same functions as the intermediaries, manufacturer reliance on its intermediaries decreases. Surprisingly, manufacturers whose web sites have e-commerce transaction facility, rely on intermediaries more than those manufacturers whose web sites do not have this facility. Finally, the study finds that manufacturers’ reliance on intermediaries has increased over time despite their direct web channels, probably due to market growth opportunities. Overall, our study findings showcase the complementary role played by manufacturers’ web sites and intermediaries in serving their end customers in growth markets.     

A Man's Blessing or a Woman's Curse? The Family Earnings Gap of Doctors

We examine the size and determinants of the family earnings gap for Australian general practitioners (GPs). Female GPs with children earn more than $30,000 less than comparable female GPs without children, while male GPs with children earn more than $45,000 more than comparable male GPs without children. The main determinants of the family gap are differences in observable characteristics such as working hours, labor‐force attachment, and demographics, and additionally, for men, entrepreneurship and practice size. A fixed‐effects extension of the analysis confirms both the carer effect of children on female GPs and the breadwinner effect of children on male GPs.     

Benefit or damage? The productivity effects of FDI in the Chinese food industry

We investigate the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the total factor productivity of Chinese food firms using firm-level census data between 1998 and 2007 (174,940 sample food firms). We test for within-firm, within-industry, and vertical effects. We find that the effect of FDI on the productivity of Chinese food firms depends significantly on the type of FDI and its countries of origin. FDI from non-HMT (Hong Kong, Macaw and Taiwan) regions can improve the productivity of the invested firm, and also increases the productivity of domestic food firms through vertical industry linkages. However, domestic food firms may be crowded out by non-HMT investment in the same industry. HMT investment can generate positive within-industry productivity spillovers, but negative vertical spillovers. Our findings have immediate implications for policymakers in China, as well as for governments of less developed countries that are formulating foreign investment policies.     

What Determined Success During the Asian Economic Crisis?—The Importance of Experiential Knowledge and Group Affiliation

This study investigated the factors that determined the change in firm performance during the Asian economic crisis. Applying a process-oriented resource-based view and MNC network theory, we argued that host country experience, industry experience, subsidiary experience, and group affiliation would influence subsidiary performance during an economic crisis. By testing the hypotheses on a sample of 1128 Japanese subsidiaries in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Korea, we found that, among different knowledge resources that the MNC accumulated in its internationalization process, subsidiary experiential knowledge was most significant in picking the winners from the losers during the crisis. Keiretsu affiliation and the parent firms industry experience were also significant, positive factors for firms remaining profitable or even better after the crisis. However, firm size and industry effects were not related to performance.     

Last dance or second chance? Firm performance,CEO career horizon,and the separation of board leadership roles

In recent years, many firms have chosen to separate their CEO and board chair positions. Prior research has demonstrated that there are three forms that a CEO–board chair separation can take: apprentice, departure, and demotion. In this paper, we examine the antecedents of these three types. Our results show that the three types of separation each have different profiles in terms of the prior performance of the firm, the independence of the board, and the career horizon of the incumbent CEO. The findings in this paper provide unique insights into the factors that drive boards' structural choices. As questions about board leadership structure become more nuanced and more relevant in both scholarship and practice, a full understanding of these factors will only become more important. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.