Selecting quality based programs in small firms

Over the last decades, the quality issues have received increased attention from top managers and academics. The international debate mainly focused on managerial and economical implications resulting from the implementation of TQM programs in large companies, thus not considering peculiarities that such investments present within small firms. As a matter of fact, many small firms have adopted quality based programs and, unfortunately, failed to achieve the planned results: a major reason of the failure of TQM initiatives is due to the lack of effective decisional tools aimed at identifying the most suitable quality related investments.Hence, the objective of the paper is to define a model that supports managers of small firms in the identification of most effective quality related priorities: to this end, a contingent approach that identifies different contexts according to the environment where the company operates and to the relationships between the firm and its stakeholders is suggested. Guide-lines for choosing a specific decisional technique aimed at selecting the most effective choice among the identified feasible priorities are suggested, too.     

Sustainability report in small enterprises: case studies in Italian furniture companies

The recent evolution of the economic and social context has led enterprises to consider and assess corporate environmental and social impacts integrated with the traditionally measured economic and operating performances. From this point of view, the international debate on the advantages given by the firms' adoption of socially responsible behaviour has been developed; the increasing consciousness of the social character in enterprises' activities has enlarged the interest in communication. For this reason, several different standards have been developed in order to transmit, to the stakeholders, data, information and approaches about environmental, social and sustainability topics related to the firm's activities. In this dynamic context, the features of SMEs require specific guidelines, which address the contents of an SME‐oriented sustainability report. In this perspective the aim is to design guidelines able to meet with these SMEs' requirements; seven case studies, on Italian furniture small enterprises, complete the study. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

A supply chain as a series of filters or amplifiers of the bullwhip effect

The bullwhip effect refers to the phenomenon of amplification and distortion of demand in a supply chain. By eliminating or controlling this effect, it is possible to increase product profitability reducing useless costs such as stock-out and obsolescence costs. The main focus of this work is to study a single-product serial supply chain in which a control parameter can switch the chain from a series of filters to a series of amplifiers of the bullwhip effect and to analyse how the optimal values of the parameters change when discontinuities in order policy are considered. Furthermore, it is also shown that the bullwhip itself it is not a good index of the chain's performance, because it does not consider the oscillations that occur in the inventories, which also may affect the supply-chain performance.     

The effect of price targets on the composition of CEO pay

This article analyzes the impact of price targets from the IBES Detail Price History Target database on CEO compensation retained from Execucomp. The two databases are merged at fiscal year frequency and an OLS regression with fixed effect is used to analyze the impact of price target on CEO compensation. The analysis reveals that analysts’ price targets affect top executives’ compensation: when analysts predict a growth in the share price for a company, the compensation package tilts towards stock options, when analysts forecast a drop in the share price, the compensation package tilts towards cash-based compensation and restricted stocks. I argue that the result is more aligned with the managerial power model of compensation (which assumes the board of directors maximizes managers’ compensation) than with the arm’s length bargaining model (that states that managers’ compensation is set to maximize shareholders’ profit).     

Choice and self: how synchronic and diachronic identity shape choices and decision making

Research on the role of identity in choice varies widely across fields like psychology, philosophy, consumer behavior, and economics, in both the key questions addressed and the methods of investigation. Although a large literature has established how salient aspects of identity affect attitudes and norms, less is known about how beliefs concerning identity are shaped and how these beliefs affect decision making. In this review, we cover recent insights into these issues and summarize some newer, developing approaches to understanding (i) how people judge the persistence of identity, (ii) how beliefs about future changes in identity are formed and how they affect choices, (iii) the formation of beliefs about future changes in identity and how these beliefs affect decisions, and (iv) the historical and economic antecedents of identity norms and their consequences for economic behavior. We introduce a distinction between synchronic and diachronic approaches, and highlight important unresolved questions that will help these fields to more fully understand the role that identity plays in shaping choices.     

TRUST,VALUES, AND FALSE CONSENSUS

Individuals’ beliefs about the trustworthiness of a generic member of the population are both heterogeneous across individuals and persistent across generations. We investigate one mechanism yielding these dual patterns: false consensus. In the context of a trust game experiment, we show that the relationship between behavior and beliefs is consistent with individuals extrapolating their trust beliefs from their own trustworthiness and that this tendency continues even after substantial learning opportunities. We go on to provide evidence suggesting that one's own trustworthiness can be traced back to the values parents transmit to their children during their upbringing.     

Factors affecting technology transfer offices' performance in the Italian food context

In recent years, growing attention has been devoted to the commercialisation of knowledge and technologies developed by universities and public research institutions. A central role in this particular process is played by the technology transfer offices (TTOs), which are on the one hand in charge of promoting the transfer of knowledge and technology to external companies, and on the other hand are also responsible for protecting and licensing the intellectual property of the research organisation. This paper is focused on a TTO operating in the food context, with the specific objectives of identifying the performance indicators and the main factors affecting its performance and, finally, analysing the relationships among these factors. Results highlighted the importance of both external and internal factors for the performance of a TTO operating in this context. In addition, we found both direct and indirect relations within these factors.     

Capital Income Taxes and Growth in a Stochastic Economy: A Numerical Analysis of the Role of Risk Aversion and Intertemporal Substitution

This paper undertakes a numerical analysis of the effects of changes in the tax rates on domestic and foreign capital income in a stochastically growing open economy under recursive preferences, in which the rate of time preference, ?, and the coefficient of risk aversion, R, can be set independently. The responses of the equilibrium growth rate, its volatility, and welfare to changes in the tax changes considered are highly sensitive to the independent variations in both ? and R. Consequently, the errors committed by using the conventional constant elasticity utility function, even for small violations of the compatibility condition (R= 1/?) can be significant, suggesting that this functional form should be employed with caution.