Leveraging Social Network Sites in New Product Development: Opportunity or Hype?

Leveraging social network sites is high on the list of priorities for a lot of businesses that are eager to find more effective ways to reach, learn about, and engage customers in new product development (NPD). However, the rapidly changing landscape of social network sites can be difficult to navigate successfully and doubts remain about whether and how they can be used to good effect. In fact, empirical research confirming a positive relationship between the use of social network sites in NPD and business performance is scarce. This paper reports on research examining the use of social network sites for three purposes, namely for market research guiding the development of new products, for getting customers to collaborate in the NPD process, and for new product launch. The results of this research suggest that the benefits expected from using social network sites in NPD are largely not being realized by businesses. Using social network sites to conduct market research leading into the NPD process was not found to contribute to business performance, and in fact was found to have negative relationships with both profitability and market growth. Using social network sites to get customers to collaborate in the NPD process was found to be positively related with innovativeness but not with market growth or profitability. Finally, using social network sites for new product launch was where the most positive indications were seen, since this was found to be positively related with innovativeness, market growth, and profitability. Thus, it appears that while businesses may get good results from using social network sites for product launch, they still have a learning curve to traverse before they can successfully use them for market research or customer collaboration in NPD. While there is currently a great deal of enthusiasm—even hype—about the potential opportunities of using social network sites for NPD, this research suggests that businesses should move carefully and recognize that just jumping on the social network bandwagon will not insure success.     

The Value of Employer-Sponsored Child Care to Employees

This article uses the contingent valuation method for calculating the value of employer-sponsored child care to employees. Like many environmental amenities, there may be a nonuse or existence value of working for a company that offers employer-sponsored child care (ESCC), as well as a use value to parents who have children in the center. We test this hypothesis using data from three firms, two of which have on-site child care. Our findings indicate that price is a determinant of willingness to pay for the continued existence or establishment of an on-site center. We find evidence of the existence value, even for employees without young children, and a greater valuation among recent hires than among longer-term employees.     

Industrial Relations Systems and US Foreign Direct Investment Abroad

Five readily distinguishable industrial relations systems are identified based on differences in education levels, hourly compensation costs and various government and collective bargaining constraints placed on management's freedom to set the terms and conditions of employment. A model of foreign direct investment (FDI) that incorporates these key industrial relations variables is then specified and tested against US FDI across a sample of nine industries and 33 industrialized and developing countries. The industrial relations system variables significantly influence US FDI abroad. In particular, education is negatively related to FDI across low skill–low wage countries but is positively related to FDI across high skill–high wage countries. Higher hourly compensation costs (apparently capturing higher productivity) are associated with greater FDI. Whereas government restrictions on layoffs, union penetration and centralized negotiation structures are negatively related to US FDI, the ratification of ILO standards and works council policies are positively related to US FDI. Based on these findings, the FDI attractiveness of industrial relations systems are compared and policy implications discussed.     

The status of internships/cooperative education experiences in accounting education

Academic and practitioner members of the accounting profession have recognized the contribution internship/cooperative education experiences can make to the student, the institution, and the employing entity. This study was undertaken to determine the status of these experimental learning experiences in undergraduate programs in accounting. The study identified the characteristics of internship/cooperative education programs and the program administrators perceptions of the value of these experiences to students, employers, and accounting programs. The results revealed an increase in internship/cooperative education programs in accounting education. Most programs are fairly young, are for credit only (no letter grade), occur during the junior year, are paid rather than unpaid, and require a written project to be completed by the student. Most programs in accounting do not have full or part time coordinators, most do not require on-site visits, and most share the responsibility for identifying internship sites with students and others.     

The Impact of Regulatory Reform on the Portfolio Performance of Australian Credit Unions

This paper applies a portfolio approach to examine the effectiveness of the Financial Institutions (FI) Code (1992) in achieving the twin regulatory objectives of stability and efficiency in Australian credit unions. A model is developed to examine the allocation of credit union portfolios in unregulated and regulation-constrained environments. The impact of regulatory constraints on portfolio performance prior to and following the introduction of the FI Code is thus assessed. The paper concludes that, overall, the FI Code increased both the stability and the allocative efficiency of credit unions over that of previous regulatory regimes.     

Child hunger in the developing world: An analysis of environmental and social correlates

Using two complementary methods in a framework that allows incorporating both environmental and household-level factors, we explore the correlates of underweight status among children. We use individual children as the units of analysis in 19 African countries, and subnational survey strata in 43 African, Asian and Latin American countries. We consider the relationship between household-level demographic and health survey data, environmental factors from external geospatial data sets and two indicators of malnutrition among children aged 1–3, deviations from the international standards of weight-for-age and height-for-age. We discuss methods for data integration. In general, household determinants explain more variation than environmental factors, perhaps partly due to more error-prone measurement at the community level. Among individual children, some measures of agricultural capacity are related to lower incidence of child hunger, while among regions, measures relating to urbanness and population density show a stronger relationship. We give recommendations for further study, data collection and policy making.     

The associations among accounting program attributes, 150-hour status, and CPA exam pass rates

This study contributes to the extant literature by providing a better understanding of the associations among attributes of schools providing accounting education, 150-hour status, and CPA exam pass rates. We model program-level pass rates as a function of the state’s 150-hour status and several program-specific attributes, including: the level of AACSB accreditation, student selectivity, the percentage of candidates with advanced degrees, and faculty research productivity. We examine the average pass rates of 520 accounting programs that provided 43,711 first-time candidates for CPA exams given in 1998 and 1999. Similar to most prior studies we find that candidates from more selective schools, candidates with advanced degrees, and candidates who attended schools located in jurisdictions with the 150-hour requirement fully in place have higher average pass rates. However, we also find a significant decline in average pass rates during the 150-hour transition period, and in contrast to the strong positive effects of accreditation reported by [Grant, C. T., Ciccotello, C. S., &; Dickie, M. (2001). Barriers to professional entry: how effective is the 150-hour rule? Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 21, 71–93], we find only weak evidence of an association between program-level pass rates and college-level or separate AACSB accounting program accreditation.     

CONTRACTING CONVICTS: THE CONVICT LABOUR MARKET IN VAN DIEMEN's LAND 1840–1857

The place of penal transportation in Australia's economic history has always been controversial. Convict workers were frequently denigrated as worse than useless, yet without convicts the settlements would have lacked sufficient labour for development. In Van Diemen's Land in the 1840s, convicts constituted more than half the labour supply, and if emancipists are included it was more like three-quarters. After transportation to New South Wales was halted in 1840, amidst claims that the assignment of convict labour was akin to slavery, Van Diemen's Land continued to receive transportees but adopted a new form of labour management: the so-called 'probation system'. To distinguish the new probation system from the 'slavery' of assignment, wages were paid to convict workers. This study uses 17,997 convict employment contracts to explore the labour market for convict passholders at the probation period. Actions speak louder than words, and irrespective of what might have been said about convict quality, by the end of transportation in 1853 convict workers were eagerly engaged at rising wages by employers desperate for labour.