Cross-Border Shopping: A Survey

The aim of this paper is to undertake a review of the most important literature on the phenomenon of fiscally induced cross-border shopping. Following the presentation of the principal theoretical models, the study concentrates on applied literature. Firstly, the elements common to the diverse applications are described, and then, a detailed analysis of the research undertaken into cross-border shopping for alcoholic drinks, tobacco, fuel, and lotteries is provided, concluding with a reference to the interaction between cross-border purchases and those effected over the internet. The results achieved by the empirical research coincide and support the principal result of the theoretical literature: the tax differentials between neighboring territories induce consumers to purchase in the territory where taxation is lower, on the condition that the tax saving compensates for the transport costs associated with the travel made by the purchaser in order to take advantage of the lower taxation.     

Measuring the Implementation of Codes of Conduct. An Assessment Method Based on a Process Approach of the Responsible Organisation

More and more organisations formulate a code of conduct in order to stimulate responsible behaviour among their members. Much time and energy is usually spent fixing the content of the code but many organisations get stuck in the challenge of implementing and maintaining the code. The code then turns into nothing else than the notorious "paper in the drawer", without achieving its aims. The challenge of implementation is to utilize the dynamics which have emerged from the formulation of the code. This will support a continuous process of reflection on the central values and standards contained in the code. This paper presents an assessment method, based on the EFQM model, which intends to support this implementation process.     

Optimal investment and production decisions and the value of the firm

We explore the effects of uncertainty on a firm that can respond by modifying its investment or production schedule (or both simultaneously) to variations in output price. Investment may increase capacity and/or reduce costs. We consider a firm with finite resources.Our model uses option theory instead of the more traditional net present value framework. One of the early papers using this approach is Brennan and Schwartz (1985) in which an investment project to extract a finite natural resource is valued. In that paper, the value of the firm is a function of two state variables, the finite resource to be extracted (output to be produced in the future) and the commodity spot price. In order to maximize firm value, the manager can respond by modifying one control variable, the production level. In our model we handle instead three state variables (spot price, resources, accumulated investment) and two control variables (production rate and investment rate), and solve numerically.We obtain both the value and the optimal policy of a firm that has investment projects that increase capacity and/or reduce costs and illustrate optimal policies as resources and available investments decrease over the life of the firm. Firms may start by only investing, then invest and produce, to end only producing.We thank Scott Wo, the referee and the editor for their comments and suggestions. Cortázar and Lowener acknowledge the financial support from FONDECYT and FONDER.     

Hook vs. hope: How to enhance customer engagement through gamification

Many digital service providers have adopted gamification to promote customer engagement. Critical questions, however, remain about the most effective way to enhance customer engagement and increase sales by applying gamification. With a research design that combines qualitative and quantitative methods, including the use of objective sales data from a large field study and replication of the findings across different contexts, this study explores how gamification fosters customer engagement. Both field study results and a simulation study reveal gamification principles (i.e., social interaction, sense of control, goals, progress tracking, rewards, and prompts) that promote hope and consequently increase customer engagement and digital sales. Furthermore, we find that hope is more strongly associated with customer engagement than the psychological condition of compulsion, which even exerts a negative impact. This research thus explores how gamification creates value for customers and provides actionable insights for managers to foster hope through gamification as opposed to get customers hooked.     

Empirical Findings on Business–Society Relations in Europe

Based on a theoretical exploration in a previous article, this paper empirically analyzes which issues of SD are taken into account by corporations and stakeholders in what way, and to what extent the concept of sustainable development (SD) can be achieved through stakeholder relations management (SRM) on the corporate level. An important basis for this empirical analysis is a referential framework, which specifies 14 issues of SD. In a first empirical step, the literature-based framework has been operationalized for the business world by analyzing sustainability reports. In a second empirical step, the operationalized framework served as the basis for a survey of selected MNCs. The analyses of the sustainability reports and the survey show how MNCs deal with particular issues of SD and what role they perceive particular stakeholders play. A key conclusion of the article is that SRM indeed promotes SD, but that it is no alternative to predictable government regulation.     

Reference points for measuring social performance: Case study of a social business venture

We present a longitudinal qualitative case study to elaborate on how a social venture forms reference points for social performance. Although organizations increasingly use various social performance targets to direct their operations, the scholarly knowledge on social performance reference points remains limited. We make use of the prior accounting literature and draw on the idea of compromising accounts to discuss how provisional and performative metrics can have a significant role in how organizations develop new ways to evaluate their social performance. Given that the social performance reference point criteria are ambiguous and the corresponding referents malleable, performative accounts are helpful as they can intervene in the organizational life by making particular things visible, providing space for interpretations, and facilitating discussion, thus creating temporary settlements and enabling opportunities for productive compromises between different organizational groups and evaluative principles. The recursive feedback loops between reference point referents, criteria and accounting artefacts help the organization to make sense of its own social performance and interpret the associated performance feedback, and thereby provide ground for organizational decisions on further action. Moreover, we discuss how imperfect accounts can be useful for social businesses in their pursuit of developing their activities and achieving social impact.     

Dynamic redistribution of mitigation resources during influenza pandemics

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has pointed out that the existing pandemic mitigation models lack the dynamic decision support capability. In this paper, we present a simulation optimization model to generate dynamic strategies for distribution of limited mitigation resources, such as vaccines and antivirals, over a network of regional outbreaks. The model has the capability to redistribute the resources remaining from previous allocations in response to changes in the pandemic progress. The model strives to minimize the impact of ongoing outbreaks and the expected impact of potential outbreaks, considering measures of morbidity, mortality, and social distancing, translated into the societal and economic costs of lost productivity and medical services. The model is implemented on a simulated H5N1 outbreak involving four counties in the state of Florida, U.S. with over four million inhabitants. The performance of our strategy is compared to that of a myopic distribution strategy. Sensitivity analysis is performed to assess the impact of variability of some critical factors on policy performance. The methodology is intended to support public health policy on effective distribution of limited mitigation resources.     

Revisiting the objectives of worker-managed firms: An empirical assessment

This paper provides new evidence on the objectives pursued by worker-managed firms (WMFs). The basic neoclassical model assumes that WMFs maximizes net income per member instead of total profits (Ward, 1958). Even though it has been largely criticized, the Ward model has dominated the self-management literature. Alternative models suggest that WMFs are not only concerned about income per worker but also about the level of employment. However, the empirical content of these competing theoretical models has been rarely analyzed. This paper contributes to fill this gap by estimating the parameters of a generic welfare function, following the methodology proposed by Craig and Pencavel (1993). These parameters determine the relative importance that a WMF places on income per worker vis-a-vis the level of employment. Estimates are based on a long micro-panel of Uruguayan firms covering the entire population of Uruguayan worker-managed firm and conventional firms in 31 3-digit sectors over the period April 1996-December 2005. Following a strictly neoclassical framework, but simply allowing a more general specification of the WMF goals, we show that the assumption of the basic neoclassical model of the WMF is misleading. Our results support the view that WMFs are concerned with both employment and income per worker.     

Interpretation problems of the partial correlation with nonnormally distributed variables

The partial correlation is a commonly used measure for assessing the bivariate correlation of two quantitative variables after eliminating the influence of one or more other variables. The partial correlation is generally interpreted as the correlation that would result if the variables to be eliminated were fixed (not allowed to vary and influence the other variables), which is referred to in the statistical literature as conditional correlation. The present paper demonstrates, by means of theoretical derivations and practical examples, that when the assumption of multivariate normality is violated (e.g., as a result of nonlinear relationships among the variables investigated) the usual interpretation of the partial correlation coefficient will be basically incorrect. In extreme cases the value of the partial correlation coefficient may be strongly positive, close to 1, whereas the conditional correlation may have a large negative value. To solve this problem the paper suggests to partial out a certain function (in most cases the square) of the variables whose effects are to be eliminated if nonlinear relationships are likely to occur.