BIG Writing: The Fundamental Discipline of Business Writing

BIG Writing presents a strategy for creating a culture of disciplined business writing within a large organization. In today's service‐oriented economy, virtually everyone is doing some form of writing on the job. Yet there is no organized effort to train people in this important skill. Universities don't do it, nor does it typically happen on the job except among a handful of branding specialists—and most books on business writing focus either on grammar and style or how to overcome writer's block. BIG Writing addresses the need for guidelines on business writing as it is actually practiced in the workplace. The article describes how organizations should connect their top‐level messages—their statements of mission, business strategy, and value proposition—with more routine writing activities such as annual reports and sales letters. At a time when CEOs and CFOs are held accountable for the accuracy of every line item in their financial reports, companies are responding by implementing complex systems of financial controls. BIG Writing can help senior management secure better control of its core messages by defining the way in which they are created and disclosed.     

Setting the stage for creative new products: Investigating the idea fruition process

This article attempts to understand the idea fruition process, or the fuzzy front-end set of activities that an organization may informally engage in before it adopts a formal process for developing a new product. The authors propose that the idea fruition process consists of three sub-processes: idea creation, idea concretization, and idea commitment. They also propose and test the individual and organizational factors that influence the idea’s degrees of creativity, concretization, and commitment to further the understanding of the phenomenon and, thus, boost the creation and harnessing of worthwhile ideas in organizations. Astra Zeneca Janice Griffiths-Hemans (jaiuce.griffith-hermans@astrazeneca.com) holds a Ph.D. in business administration (marketing strategy and new product development) and a master’s in market research from the University of Georgia, an MBA in marketing from the University of Miami, and a bachelor of science degree in pure and applied chemistry from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. Janice is currently a Senior Manager of Consumer Insights with Astra Zeneca, Wilmington, Delaware. Rajiv Grover (rgrover@terry.uga.edu) is the head of the department and holder of the Terry Chair of Marketing at the Terry College of Business, the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. He has received several honors for his research and teaching efforts—the O’Dell award for the Best Paper in theJournal of Marketing Research and the Hugh O. Nourse Outstanding MBA Teacher Award. He has authored the bookTheory and Simulation of Market-Focused Management, published by Dry den Press. He is currently editingThe Handbook of Marketing Research: Do’s and Don’ts, which will be published by Sage Publications. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1983.     

A Regional Future for the UK Civil Service? The Government Offices for the English Regions and the Civil Service in Scotland

The civil service role in the Westminster model is to inform and implement central government policy. The authors argue that extensive public sector reforms and changes in UK governance mean that the Westminster model no longer provides an adequate explanation of how government works. Thus the United Kingdom is now a 'Disunited Kingdom'.     

The role of current and non-current accruals in the relation between stock returns and earnings

This study examines the role of accruals in the relation between stock returns and earnings for intervals of one to four years. We argue that the roles of current and non-current accruals differ because the former turn over more frequently while the latter include long term timing differences and permanent differences. Accordingly, the roles of both categories of accruals are examined over intervals within and beyond the cycle of current accruals. The results suggest that accruals strengthen the association between stock returns and earnings and that they are more important for shorter intervals. Further, non-current accruals play a dominant role in the relation between stock returns and earnings while the effect of current accruals is negligible for all intervals examined.     

Role Models and Women Entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurial Superwoman Has Her Say

It is suggested that more “role model” women entrepreneurs are needed. However, the gender gap in entrepreneurship remains. This study analyses the narratives of 51 role model women entrepreneurs to explore how they represent women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. We found that in accordance with the contemporary pressure for women to succeed and perform personally and professionally, the voice of the (super)woman doing “individualized entrepreneurial femininity” dominates. The role models narratives obscure race, class, and age barriers; reproduce prevailing gender stereotypes; normalize discriminatory workplace treatment and depict entrepreneurship as an appropriate alternative for working mothers. Implications for policy makers are presented.     

Risk,rent seeking and the social cost of monopoly power

Some recent empirical studies that have estimated the social cost of monopoly power have included in these estimates observed monopoly rents as a proxy for the unobserved value of the resources expended by rent seekers. This has involved adding these estimates of resources wasted by rent seekers to estimates of deadweight welfare loss triangles so as to produce an overall estimate of the social cost of monopoly. The present paper points out that each firm seeking a monopoly rent flow not only may be uncertain about obtaining the flow but also about retaining it in future periods. It is shown that this is likely to cause the proportion of the rent flow converted into social cost to be well below 100% regardless of whether the rent sought is small relative to initial wealth and regardless of whether rent seekers are risk-neutral or risk-averse. These findings demonstrate that large errors are likely to be made in monopoly welfare loss studies if observed monopoly rents continue to be employed as a measure of the value of resources used in rent-seeking activities.