Ordered to Innovate: A Longitudinal Examination of the Early Periods of a New Product Development Process Implementation in a Manufacturing Firm

Firms can generate rather long‐lasting growth spurts through continuous innovation. Moreover, literature suggests that, when growing organically, firm performance is enhanced through a revenue expansion emphasis encompassing new‐to‐the‐world or new‐to‐the‐firm physical goods or service augmentations. This organic approach usually outperforms cost‐reduction programs, which often yield minor improvements to existing products; or an emphasis on simultaneous revenue expansion and cost reduction. While this finding has the major implication that firms should focus and generate more radical new products for long‐term success, there is need for research that investigates how firms should implement the strategy change to organic growth via innovation. The authors present a case study, which suggests that in the short run, it might be better to commence a revenue expansion strategy by focusing on incremental new product development (NPD) efforts, rather than focusing too much on new‐to‐the‐world or new‐to‐the‐firm products. Moreover, analyses of the rich, multimethod data, collected over a two‐and‐a‐half‐year interaction with the focal firm, illustrates that to increase success prospects of an organic innovation strategy, managers should not only engage incrementally innovative new product projects initially, but also ensure proficiency in commercializing the new product with cross‐functional NPD teams. Thus, in early stages of organization transformation, the merits of the organic growth strategy will be swiftly demonstrated, the cross‐functional teaming skills are learned and tested, and the new strategy becomes institutionalized. While somewhat contradictory to other studies on this topic, this more evolutionary exploration provides a new perspective for organizational change, especially when a firm is ordered to innovate. In conclusion, the insights gleaned in this study shed light on the journey from stagnating firm to a successful serial innovator via formalized NPD process implementation.     

AN ANATOMY OF U.S. PERSONAL BANKRUPTCY UNDER CHAPTER 13

We build a structural model that captures salient features of personal bankruptcy under Chapter 13. We estimate our model using a novel data set that we construct from bankruptcies filed in Delaware between 2001 and 2002. Our estimation results highlight the importance of a debtor's choice of repayment plan length on other Chapter 13 outcomes. We use the estimated model to conduct policy experiments to evaluate the impact of more stringent laws that impose restrictions on the length of repayment plans. We find that these provisions would not materially affect creditor recovery rates and would not necessarily make discharge more likely.     

Do Charitable Solicitations Matter? A Comparative Analysis of Fundraising Methods*

The existing literature either treats fundraising as an aggregate variable by ignoring the existence of several different fundraising methods through which charitable contributions are generated or focuses on the effectiveness of a particular fundraising method without making any comparison with alternative methods. Using biennial household surveys of charitable giving in the United States conducted from 1988 to 1999, which contain detailed questions on several fundraising methods, I first document that people are more responsive to certain fundraising methods. Next, I investigate the factors associated with donors' responsiveness to alternative fundraising techniques. The results show that several observable characteristics of charitable donors are associated with some people being more responsive to particular fundraising techniques than others are.     

Environmental governance for sustainable tourism development: Collaborative networks and organisation building in the Antalya tourism region

For more than two decades the attainment of sustainable environmental quality and the protection of environmental assets have been at the forefront of central policy issues in global tourism development. Recently, it has been argued that collaborative and associative forms of governance among tourism companies and other related agents are growing in importance in the drive for sustainable and environmentally sensitive tourism. Despite the increasing number of debates on the role of networking on tourism they are not well supported by empirical studies, and still far from explain how such networks can contribute to the sustainable development of territories. This paper aims to contribute to previous literature by analysing together governance networks and literature on sustainable development, and by providing empirical findings that highlight the importance of governance networks in sustainable tourism development, the importance of different scales of collaborative governance networks and the role of organisation building for environmentally sustainable tourism development in Antalya. The paper offers analytical findings on the networks of environmental governance among different types of tourism organisations based on a company-level survey, which reveals an increase in local collaboration and self-help networking based on local concerns and endogenous dynamics among the different actors in tourism. Unfortunately, the findings show that environmental motivations fall far behind economic considerations in networking practices.     

GMM estimation of spatial autoregressive models with moving average disturbances

In this paper, we introduce the one-step generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation methods considered in Lee (2007a) and Liu, Lee, and Bollinger (2010) to spatial models that impose a spatial moving average process for the disturbance term. First, we determine the set of best linear and quadratic moment functions for GMM estimation. Second, we show that the optimal GMM estimator (GMME) formulated from this set is the most efficient estimator within the class of GMMEs formulated from the set of linear and quadratic moment functions. Our analytical results show that the one-step GMME can be more efficient than the quasi maximum likelihood (QMLE), when the disturbance term is simply i.i.d. With an extensive Monte Carlo study, we compare its finite sample properties against the MLE, the QMLE and the estimators suggested in Fingleton (2008a).     

Dive Tourism and Local Communities: Active Participation or Subject to Impacts? Case Studies from Malaysia

Dive tourism impacts were examined in three Malaysian islands: Perhentian (backpackers), Redang (package tourism) and Mabul (upmarket dive tourism). Qualitative local participation approaches were applied to investigate whether host communities were merely reactive to dive tourism's impacts. Dive tourism affected many aspects of community life. Besides physical/ environmental impacts (new infrastructure), research found varied economic impacts including employment/business opportunities and differing economic linkages. Participation varied between locations, and obstacles to increased participation were revealed. Mainly negative socio‐cultural impacts were observed with minimal participation in cultural productions (handicrafts, performances). However, positive educational impacts emerged, especially environmental awareness and English language acquisition. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CUE with many weak instruments and nearly singular design

This paper analyzes many weak moment asymptotics under the possibility of similar moments. The possibility of highly related moments arises when there are many of them. Knight and Fu (2000) designate the issue of similar regressors as the “nearly singular” design in the least squares case. In the nearly singular design, the sample variance converges to a singular limit term. However, Knight and Fu (2000) assume that on the nullspace of the limit term, the difference between the sample variance and the singular matrix converges in probability to a positive definite matrix when multiplied by an appropriate rate. We consider specifically Continuous Updating Estimator (CUE) with many weak moments under nearly singular design. We show that the nearly singular design affects the form of the limit of the many weak moment asymptotics that is introduced by Newey and Windmeijer (2009a). However, the estimator is still consistent and the Wald test has the standard χ²${\chi }^2$ limit.     

The effects of government spending shocks on the real exchange rate and trade balance in Turkey

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of government spending shocks on the real exchange rate and foreign trade balance in Turkey for the period of 2002:01–2012:04 within a structural VAR framework. The analysis shows that a positive shock to the government spending tends to induce real exchange rate appreciation and deterioration in trade balance. We also find that the composition of the government spending matters. Although shocks to the government nonwage consumption generate an appreciation in the real exchange rate and worsening of the trade balance, the effects of government investment shocks remain insignificant. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates that shocks to government spending are associated with a rise in taxes, which is indicative of a spending-driven tax adjustment process in Turkey.     

Size and sign asymmetries in house price adjustments

Long-run mean-reversion in real house prices is determined by the relative strength of fundamental factors against the short-run influences. This article suggests that the adjustment towards the long-run trend in house prices could display non-linear behaviour due to some intrinsic characteristics of the housing market. Accordingly, sign and size asymmetries as well as possible structural breaks are taken into account in a unit root testing exercise for twenty-nine countries. Our results suggest that mean-reversion exists for seventy percent of the countries in our sample. Moreover, the out-of-sample forecasting performance of our non-linear models in predicting house prices is better than a simple auto-regressive benchmark for some countries.