Relationship Between Companies and the Public on Facebook: The Portuguese and the Brazilian Context

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes how companies use Facebook to facilitate discussions with the public in two countries, Portugal and Brazil, through an exploratory content analysis of corporate Facebook pages. Overall, companies in both countries tend to recognize the relevance of Facebook in relationship development and therefore they use online strategies. Nevertheless, Portuguese companies are ahead of the Brazilian in providing calendars of events and partnerships with blogs/giveaways. They also tend to include more links to media reports. Compared to the Portuguese, the Brazilian public enjoys posting publications that express their feelings and/or emotions more. The article also discusses the implications of corporate relationship management practice.     

Policies Supporting Organic Food and Farming in the EU: Assessment and Development by Stakeholders in 11 European Countries

There is no single ‘best way’ of policy development. Bottom-up approaches to policy design and a broad debate among stakeholders facilitate policy learning and innovation. A novel approach of a bottom-up policy design process involving stakeholders is introduced. The first results obtained by implementing this methodology are presented. The outcomes of a large international effort for a development of policies for organic food and farming, which took place in Maj 2004 in Europe, are analyzed: the synthesized results from 11 European countries (AT, CH, CZ, DE, DK, EE, GB, HU, IT, PL, SI) on the current situation of policies related to the organic food market in Europe are highlighted and policy recommendations for the development of the organic food and farming sector are formulated. Specifically, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of policies related to the organic food market are identified and policy instruments used to address these aspects are developed.     

A Macroeconometric Model for Serbia

This paper describes and evaluates a quarterly macroeconometric model for Serbia. Due to the economic restructuring and transformation in Serbia which followed the major geographical, economic, and institutional disruptions in the former Yugoslavia in the first half of the 1990s, reliable macroeconomic time series for Serbia are available only from about 1997 onwards. Hence, quarterly data have been used to estimate the behavioural equations of the model. However, for some aggregates, only annual data are available. In these cases, quarterly data have been derived by recurring to related series. Notwithstanding these data limitations, the macroeconometric model is able to replicate the endogenous variables reasonably well in an ex post simulation.     

Gender-Driven Food Choice: Explaining School Milk Consumption of Boys and Girls

The literature on the factors influencing children’s consumption behaviour is vast; however, gender-specific consumption behaviour and the determinants driving these discriminative decisions are largely unknown. This article contributes insights to the role of gender in food preferences using the example of school milk consumption by German primary school children. Study subjects included pupils, their parents, teachers, and other school personnel. The results of the multilevel model reveal that there are various factors influencing the probability that a child will decide to order school milk. In addition to individual factors such as socio-economics, eating habits, and preferences, consumption behaviour is also affected by social environmental factors. These factors include the preferences of parents, the consumption behaviour of teachers, teachers’ attitudes, and the attitude of the school principal. Additionally, policy-driven aspects (e.g., school milk price, product range) were included in the analysis and proved to have an impact on a child’s decision to order school milk. Although the results are limited to consumption behaviour for school milk, they can be used in the development of new or the revision of existing school food programmes. The example of school milk may shed light on how specific measures affect boys’ and girls’ consumption, e.g., how they react to price reductions or specific school settings.     

Workfare: Eine wirksame Alternative zum Kombilohn

Die hohe Arbeitslosigkeit von Geringqualifizierten ist Gegenstand zahlreicher Vorschl?gen zur L?sung dieses Problems. Worauf beziehen sich die Vorschl?ge im Einzelnen? Welche Besch?ftigungs- und Einkommenseffekte sind mit ihnen verbunden? Wie schneidet das Workfare-Modell im Vergleich dazu ab? Dr. Hilmar Schneider, 49, ist Direktor für Arbeitsmarktpolitik am Institut zur Zukunft der Arbeit in Bonn; Holger Bonin, 38, Dipl.-Volkswirt, ist dort wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter.     

Alignment and Misalignment in Business Relationships

‘Alignment’ and ‘misalignment’ are terms commonly used both in strategy and in marketing. In B-to-B marketing, in particular, researchers investigated alignment/misalignment between customers and suppliers and recently discussed the effects of misalignment. Research in this field remains however fragmented. There is ambiguity about the objects to be aligned, the processes that characterize their change, the effects on the relationship development and the methods used to assess them. In general, the empirical research that has examined the two concepts in business relationships is limited.In this study we will develop a theoretical framework to assess alignments/misalignments in parties' interpretations of a problem and its solution for the customer, in order to address the following questions: How and why do alignment and misalignment change over time? When can misalignment be positive for the relationship development?We use data from a longitudinal study involving 84 customers and suppliers in the ICT Security Industry. The first finding is that there are no patterns in how alignment changes, but there is a slight tendency toward misalignment over time. Second, change in the alignment is mostly linked to parties' perceptions of the available resources and how these resources are combined, along with parties' interpretations of critical events. Finally, the research suggests that when parties are aware of misalignment, when misalignment is perceptual and when there are no external constraints to action, the effort to align practices produces positive effects, even when misalignment persists.     

Adaptive aspirations: performance consequences of risk preferences at extremes and alternative reference groups

Goals or aspirations and their relationships to risk taking and performance are important issues in both psychology and strategic management. The concept of adaptive aspirations, as discussed in Cyert and March's Behavioral Theory of the Firm, has long been a topic of interest in both fields. Moreover, many studies in strategy have focused on risk and/or extreme performance. In the current paper, we build on earlier models of adaptive aspirations. We introduce into the models a new risk preference function that incorporates changes in risk preference at extremes of performance. Based on empirical studies and the managerial literature, we also introduce alternative strategies for setting reference groups. Simulations of the resulting models suggest important differences in outcomes from earlier studies and this invites further empirical investigation. These simulations also have significant implications for managerial goal setting. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parental Divorce and Students’ Performance: Evidence from Longitudinal Data*

In this article, we analysed data from the National Education Longitudinal Study to investigate whether experiencing parental divorce during adolescence had an adverse impact on students’ performance on standardized tests. To account for the potential endogeneity of parental divorce we employed double and triple difference models that rely on observing teenagers from intact and divorced backgrounds before and after the divorce occurs. We found that parental divorce does not negatively affect teenagers’ cognitive skills. Our results also suggest that cross‐sectional estimates overstate the detrimental effect of parental divorce.