Stakeholders,reciprocity, and firm performance

The assumption that economic actors behave in a boundedly self‐interested manner promises fruitful new insights for strategic management. A growing literature spanning multiple disciplines indicates most actors' selfish utility maximizing behaviors are bounded by norms of fairness. Rather than being purely self‐interested, people behave reciprocally by rewarding others whose actions they deem fair and willingly incurring costs to punish those they deem unfair. Economists show that employers who are perceived as distributionally fair by their employees generate comparatively more value due to the positively reciprocal behavior of those employees. The organizational justice literature distinguishes two additional types of fairness assessed by employees. Drawing from both these bodies of work, we employ stakeholder theory to propose how perceptions of fairness result in reciprocity (1) extending to all stakeholders of the firm and (2) affecting firm performance. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Strategic Responses to Bank Regulation: Evidence From HMDA Data

The intent of fair lending regulation is to encourage loans in low-income areas and ensure that loan decisions are based on economic criteria instead of noneconomic borrower characteristics. We evaluate situations in which banks may find it in their self interest to respond to regulation in a strategic manner intended to improve public relations and appease regulators rather than to adhere to the true spirit of the regulation. We find some evidence consistent with such behavior.     

Yet Another View on Why a Home Is One's Castle

We compute equity-based real after-tax rates of return for homeowners and landlords in the United States for 1952–2005. The study confirms that a combined aggregate for residential housing provides a high average net return and low volatility, has low correlation with financial assets and can provide hedge against inflation. The efficient frontier analysis shows that the optimal portfolio for a household with a coefficient of relative risk aversion of four to five is one which contains a bit larger amount of housing than stocks, close to what one observes in the real world.     

A simple procedure for finding a composite of several multidimensional scaling solutions

One of the better known procedures for finding a representative composite of several different MDS solutions is based on Carroll’s generalized canonical correlation model (Carroll 1968). However, the program for implementing the fitting of this model has not received wide distribution. The present paper provides a simple computational method for implementing Carroll’s approach and shows its relationship to ordinary principal components analysis. In addition, we provide an algorithm for computing the parameters of Carroll’xs model in the presence of missing data. Each method is illustrated with data sets drawn from a marketing research study.     

The differential impact of product complexity,inventory level,and configuration capacity on unit and order fill rate performance

This paper examines the simultaneous impact of configuration capacity, inventory level, and complexity on service performance as measured by unit and order fill rates in a configure-to-order environment. Demand skew is treated as a control variable. A simulation model based on data from a leading electronics manufacturer is used to test the hypotheses and identify the impact. Results suggest that there are differential direct and interactive effects of examined variables on unit and order fill rates.     

Alienation from the marketplace

The research compares consumers with professional marketers on alienation from the marketplace, direct-action to overcome dissatisfaction with products, and support of government intervention in the marketplace. Consumers were clearly more alienated than marketing professionals and tended to be more supportive of radical government intervention. Professional marketers were more prone to direct-action than were consumers. A discussion follows with implications for marketing as a key integrating institution in society, and the direction of change in the marketplace. Pepsico, Inc.     

Journal of Economic Growth

Volume of Contents

Journal of Economic Growth     

An application of the airport service quality model in South Africa

Passengers’ expectations of service quality at airports are becoming increasingly important as air traffic grows. This research investigated passengers’ perceptions of airport service quality at O.R. Tambo International Airport, South Africa. An existing model placing the concept of passenger expectations central to measuring an airport’s specific level of performance was applied. The results proved significant in terms of the investment made by the airport in staff training and highlighted areas for improvement. The results show that business travellers and leisure travellers have different opinions regarding the importance of services offered by airports and of the level of performance at ORTIA in particular. Significant differences also occur in the perceptions of frequent travellers and infrequent travellers.