The relationship between brokers’ influence, strength of ties and NPD project outcomes in innovation-driven horizontal networks

This paper examines the impact of a broker's perceived use of power – position (i.e., coercive, reward and legitimate) and personal (i.e., expert, information and referent) – on strength of ties between network members and new product development (NPD) project outcomes. Our sample consists of 100 individuals drawn from 42 organizations that were involved in different innovation-driven horizontal networks. The results of structural equation modeling suggest that the perceived use of both personal power bases and position power bases by the broker are positively related to the strength of ties between members. Strength of ties, on the other hand, is positively related to NPD project outcomes of design performance and development time. Finally, results show that the relationships between a broker's use of different power bases and NPD project outcomes are fully mediated by the strength of ties between networks members. Implications for research, theory, and practice are discussed.     

A Laddering Approach to the Use of Methods and Techniques to Reduce the Cycle Time of New-to-the-Firm Products

Millson, Raj, and Wilemon have developed the earliest extant knowledge on the implementation of methods and techniques to reduce new product development (NPD) cycle time by suggesting a hierarchy of generic NPD acceleration approaches. The purpose of this article is to extend Millson, Raj, and Wilemon's hierarchy by recasting and augmenting the conceptual basis of their hierarchy for new-to-the-firm products. Taking this hierarchy of generic NPD acceleration approaches as a starting point, the authors set out to form a number of generic NPD acceleration approaches by surveying the literature and conducting an experience survey with academics and managers. A logical and purposeful implementation sequence subsequently is established by using the laddering technique. The results indicate that managers make tradeoffs in NPD with regard to speed, development costs, and customer value, and that not all generic NPD acceleration approaches need to be implemented in order to obtain the greatest effectiveness. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.     

Case Studies of Farmers' Use of Information Systems

Exploratory case study research was initiated to study the evolution of management information systems and their use in operational and strategic decisions. The unit of analysis was the management team on farms with innovative or successful information systems. Human factors, such as an analytical nature and commitment to lifelong learning, were perceived to be the most important common elements. Production variables often were critical success factors. Managers annually developed financial statements; enterprise and "what if" analyses were conducted regularly. Learning about questions that innovative producers have difficulty addressing was time-consuming but instructive with respect to research and educational needs.     

Marketing planning in the larger family business

In recent decades a considerable literature on marketing planning has accumulated. The larger part relates to marketing planning in big firms with specialized, professional managers. There are books on the subject, like that of Malcolm McDonald which has gone through several editions, and there is also a steady stream of articles in the academic journals. In addition, the marketing planning activities of big firms are referred to by many more writers in the overlapping but broader contexts of “strategic marketing” and “strategic planning”. A lesser part of the literature relates to marketing planning in small firms. The small firms in question are usually very small. Typically they are owner‐managed and employ just a handful of people in a single location. The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in the literature by examining a medium‐sized firm; a category which seems to have been neglected by researchers.

Most modern economies are characterized by a significant group of middle‐sized firms, still owner‐managed, but with multi‐million dollar turnovers. Many of these remain family companies and constitute an important reservoir of business initiative. One such family business is the focus of this study. Given the relative lack of scrutiny of such firms to date, the author decided to conduct an in depth evaluation from within one large, family firm rather than seek by means of questionnaire to obtain information from a significant sample of the group. The results of the study suggest that neither the existing typologies of small firm approaches to marketing nor the formal models of marketing planning attributed to big companies necessarily characterize the marketing planning and management of larger, family businesses.     

A Taxonomic Evaluation of Advertising Budgeting Models

The advertising budget allocation decision has been recognized as a critical decision that should receive logical, scientific determination. However, actual decision-making practice indicates that marketers typically use qualitative, non-scientific methods when setting advertising budgets. This article discusses the reasons for this practice by focusing on the properties of qualitative models which make them attractive to practitioners and the properties of quantitative models which make them unattractive. To assist in this analysis, a taxonomy for the classification of various qualitative and quantitative budget models is constructed, the emphasis of which is on the perceived usefulness of a budget model to practitioners.     

A Multi-level Investigation of Authentic Leadership as an Antecedent of Helping Behavior

We develop and test a trickle-down model of how authentic leadership at the department level flows down the organizational hierarchy to encourage team leader authentic leadership and consequently, promotes team and individual-level supervisor-directed helping behavior. Analyses of multi-level and multi-source data collected from a total of 487 employees comprising 122 teams, 47 departments, and 4 different working areas of a major public sector organization in Taiwan show that team leaders’ authentic leadership mediates the relationship between departmental authentic leadership and individual-level leader–member exchange (LMX). We also found that intra-team trust completely mediates the influence of team authentic leadership on both team helping behavior and individual-level supervisor-directed helping behavior. Finally, the results reveal that self-concordance mediates the influence of team authentic leadership on individual-level supervisor helping behavior as well as the influence of individual-level LMX on individual-level supervisor-directed helping behavior. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

欧元对美元：存在统治地位之争吗

经过了虚拟欧元三年的经验,以及在实际欧元问世的前夕,欧元事实上完全有可能挑战美元国际货币的地位。欧元面值债券的发行量已经超过美元面值债券的发行量。世界已经享有一个两极的国际金融市场,尽管还不是一个两极的国际货币体系。持有美元作为大量的国际储备使得这种货币在货币危机时变成瓮中之鳖,完全依赖于美元作为主要储备货币、发票货币、和干预货币带来了根本没有必要的风险。因此,欧元成为美元主要竞争者的时期即将到来。     

American political values and agency theory: A perspective

This paper explores the historical American political values which have shaped modern financial theory and agency theory. Financial agency theory's intellectual roots are shown to be located in the liberal tradition which espouses the instrumental nature of property and property rights. The paper also argues that financial theorists should recognize that, historically, economic efficiency was not a value or end in itself but merely a means by which more fundamental social goals might be achieved. Fred R. Kaen is a Professor of Finance at the University of New Hampshire. He has written many articles about financial markets and international financial management. His work has appeared in The American Economic Review, The Journal of Finance and The Journal of Money Credit and Banking. He will be spending next year at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business as a Visiting Professor of Finance. Allen Kaufman is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the University of New Hampshire. He has written a number of books including Capitalism, Slavery and Republican Values and his work has been published in the California Management Review, the Journal of Political and Military Sociology, and Business Horizons.Larry Zacharias is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Massachusetts. He holds a law degree and has written many articles about corporate law and anti trust.     

Materiality Judgments and Disclosure of Retiree Health Care Costs Under SFAS No. 81

Generally, researchers have difficulty empirically examining materiality judgments because amounts designated as immaterial are not disclosed. However, reporting requirements under SFAS No. 106 provide a unique opportunity to evaluate expense amounts designated immaterial under SFAS No. 81. We use the cumulative effect associated with the adoption of SFAS No. 106 to evaluate prior management materiality judgments. Univariate and logistic regression results suggest that the decision to disclose SFAS No. 81 costs is positively related to our measures of plan materiality. However, our results also suggest that voluntary disclosure factors may have influenced the disclosure decision.