Engaging Customers through Social Media to Improve Industrial Product Development: The Role of Customer Co-Creation Value

This study aims to investigate the effect of social media on customer loyalty with the mediation of customer co-creation value and to build a customer engagement model through co-creation value, which is supported by product improvement perceived in increasing customer loyalty. The data collection employed a survey method with structured questionnaires which were distributed to 150 respondents who were the members of social media product communities in Indonesia. The findings showed that interactions through social media are able to increase customer engagement, facilitaitng collaboration in co-creation value, allowing the company to improve and develop products based on customers' needs and desires, which will eventually increase customer loyalty.     

A Tale of Two Tails: Establishment Size and Labour Productivity in United States and German Manufacturing at the Start of the Twentieth Century

This paper studies the importance of establishment size for the German/US labour‐productivity gap in manufacturing at the start of the twentieth century. First, we show that the left tail of the employment distribution by establishment size was larger in Germany than in the USA. Second, using US state data for 1909, we find a positive correlation between establishment size and labour productivity. Third, imposing the coefficients of these estimates on establishment‐size differences between Germany and the USA, we calculate that a redistribution of German employment to larger establishments, as in the USA, reduces the labour‐productivity gap by about 25 per cent.     

'Economic rationalism' in Canberra and Canada: Public sector reorganisation, politics, and power

Australian public sector institutions and public sector labour relations experienced intense change during the 1980s and 1990s. Proponents of restructuring sought to insert market-like pressures into areas formerly governed by bureaucratic mechanisms. This reversed a trend towards continual growth in state provision of non-market based social protection and social welfare, and continual growth in the public sector's share of the economy. The politics and content of Australian public sector restructuring under Labor and then the Liberals substantially resembled restructuring efforts in two Canadian provinces. In all three examples, political pacts between unions in the exposed and non-exposed sectors, and between organised labour and capital, determined the direction of change. But the level of institutional robustness of these various actors determined both the pace and effectiveness of change. Weak employer organisations and unions incapable of sustaining pacts in Canada produced wider oscillations in policy content that attained less substantive success than in Australia.     

Model specification testing of time series regressions

Given the specification of the lag length and functional form of a (non)linear time series regression we shall propose a test of the null hypothesis that the expectation of the error conditional on the exogenous variables, all lagged exogenous variables and all lagged dependent variables equals zero with probability 1. In the case that the data-generating process is strictly stationary this test is consistent with respect to the alternative hypothesis that the null is false. The test is also applicable for a particular class of non-stationary time series regressions, although in that case consistency with respect to all possible alternatives is no longer guaranteed. The test involved is a generalization of a test proposed in Bierens (1982b). Moreover, we also present a similar but simpler test of the hypothesis that the errors are martingale differences.     

Using Stakeholder-Theory into Case-Method

In order to draw some attention to the subject of business ethics and to achieve the inclusion of business ethics into the official curricula of the sixth form courses in secondary schools in Flanders, the Flemish Network for Business Ethics set up a pilot project. It includes about twelve lessons. The main object is to teach students how to cope with an ethical problem. Therefore an educational map has been edited – titled Ethics ...none of my business? (Siebens, 1998) – in which a procedure to handle an ethical problem is proposed. The procedure rests on the stakeholders-approach (Freeman, 1984). Other theoretical items are: ethical intuition, traditional moral norms and communication, a procedure approach, the limitation of acting, and the metaphysical basis (especially the existentialistic philosophy of Lévinas).

The basic procedure contains four steps. But the map makes a distinction between a procedure for a ‘choice’ directed situation and a procedure for an ‘evaluation’ directed situation. The subject of the project is business ethics, but the organizing commission hopes the students will learn to look at their entire world from an ethical angle. Because real ethical intuition hasn't to do with external hierarchical power and regulation but with selfregulation, argumentative authority and internalized values and principles.

     

Efficient estimation of income distribution parameters

The parameters of several families of distributions are estimated by means of minimum χ²; use is made of random samples taken from Dutch income-earning groups in 1973. The numerical search routine used, is the Complex method due to Box. The χ² function is evaluated by standard numerical integration procedures. The lognormal and the Gamma families are rejected because of a poor fit. The log t and the log Pearson IV families are introduced. This results in a considerable improvement of χ² critical levels. The generalized Gamma and the Champernowne function describe the income distribution reasonably well in some cases.     

The 1986 Tax Reform Act and ex-dividend day price and volume patterns: Evidence from organized exchanges and the OTC market

By effectively removing the differential taxation of dividends and capital gains, the 1986 Tax Reform Act provides a unique opportunity to re-examine the “tax induced clientele” explanation of ex-dividend day price behavior. The analysis indicates an increased preference for dividends and provides evidence of significant abnormal volume during the ex-dividend period, consistent with dividend induced trading activity. In addition, the level of dividend preference is found to be far greater on the organized exchanges than in OTC trading.     

Cost effective contract food service

There is a dramatic increase in the number of health-care facilities using a management company to operate dietary services. With time this practice will be made for quantitative rather than attitudinal reasons and the quality of service offered by management companies will improve as they gain experience.