Global competitive conditions driving the manufacturing location decision

Given today's rapidly shifting global competitive conditions—including customer location, natural disasters, currency valuation, labor and transportation costs and availability—many U.S. companies are revisiting decisions about their preferred manufacturing location(s). The purpose of this research is to understand some of the trends that affect whether U.S.-based companies bring their production back to the United States or relocate it to different geographical locations (reshore). The focus is on the key factors that affect companies’ manufacturing location decisions, the importance of these factors, and how the importance has changed over time. Because of the complexity involved in the manufacturing location decision, key risk factors inherent in the manufacturing decision are also assessed. Survey responses from 319 companies that currently manage offshore manufacturing plants are analyzed. Among other insights, this study found that 40% of these companies perceived a trend toward reshoring to the U.S. in their industries. The companies involved in this study also place an increasing importance on where their customers want them to locate, as well as how the location could help expand into new customer markets. These and further results and implications for U.S. manufacturing companies are presented herein.     

Trends in statistically based quarterly cash-flow prediction models

This paper provides a succinct review and synthesis of the literature on statistically based quarterly cash-flow prediction models. It reviews extant work on quarterly cash-flow prediction models including: (1) complex, cross-sectionally estimated disaggregated-accrual models attributed to 0170 and 0175 and Bernard and Stober (1989), (2) parsimonious ARIMA models attributed to Hopwood and McKeown (1992), (3) disaggregated-accrual, time-series regression models attributed to Lorek and Willinger (1996), and (4) parsimonious ARIMA models with both adjacent and seasonal characteristics attributed to 0120 and 0130. Due to the unavailability of long-term cash-flow forecasts attributed to analysts, increased importance has been placed upon the development of statistically based cash-flow prediction models given their use in firm valuation. Specific recommendations are also provided to enhance future research efforts in refining extant statistically based quarterly cash-flow prediction models.     

The Value of Plains Cotton Cooperative Association

The Value of Plains Cotton Cooperative Association is a teaching case that allows students to consider the cooperative business model and the impact of this unique form of organization in agriculture. The Plains Cotton Cooperative Association (PCCA) , a highly successful, innovative, and dominant cotton cooperative, is considered in this case.
The general question is whether the cooperative form of organization is viable and relevant in the face of intensifying economic competition. Cotton producers and long-time co-op members must decide if they will remain loyal to the cooperative in light of recent negative publicity and disappointing returns from its marketing operations.     

The impact of aligned rewards and senior manager attitudes on conflict and collaboration between sales and marketing

This research was carried out using five case studies and a survey to discover how sales and marketing managers are rewarded and if alignment of rewards can improve collaboration between sales and marketing and/or reduce inter-functional conflict. In addition, it examined the role of senior managers' support for coordination on sales/marketing collaboration. The results reveal that organizations which use aligned rewards can increase sales/marketing collaboration through such reward structures, but not reduce inter-functional conflict. In addition, senior managers' support for coordination is vital, as it increases sales/marketing collaboration, and strongly reduces inter-functional conflict. This is important because inter-functional conflict has a strong negative impact on collaboration between sales and marketing in business to business firms.     

Here it comes: defined contribution health care

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes provisions to make the individual health insurance marketplace one where all Americans, including those with preexisting health conditions, can obtain affordable coverage. At the same time, the act has failed to address, in any significant way, many of the underlying flaws in the current U.S. health care system that have caused costs to spiral out of control. The combination of persistent U.S. health care cost increases and a viable individual health insurance marketplace will cause a sea change in employer-sponsored health care offerings that is similar to that seen among employer-sponsored retirement benefit plans: movement away from defined benefit approaches and toward defined contribution designs. Although the authors show parallels between the evolution of employers' health care and retirement offerings, they explain why certain key developments will need to occur before defined contribution approaches become as prevalent in employer-sponsored health care plans as they are in today's employer-sponsored retirement plans.     

Solving the multi-country real business cycle model using ergodic set methods

We use the stochastic simulation algorithm, described in Judd et al. (2009), and the cluster-grid algorithm, developed in Judd et al. (2010a), to solve a collection of multi-country real business cycle models. The following ingredients help us reduce the cost in high-dimensional problems: an endogenous grid enclosing the ergodic set, linear approximation methods, fixed-point iteration and efficient integration methods, such as non-product monomial rules and Monte Carlo integration combined with regression. We show that high accuracy in intratemporal choice is crucial for the overall accuracy of solutions and offer two approaches, precomputation and iteration-on-allocation, that can solve for intratemporal choice both accurately and quickly. We also implement a hybrid solution algorithm that combines the perturbation and accurate intratemporal-choice methods.     

The role of brands in recruitment: A mixed-brand strategy approach

DelVecchio et al. (Marketing Letters, 18, 149?C164, 2007) expanded the role of brand equity by revealing the important role it plays in human resource management. We extend their study by incorporating a mixed-brand structure in a potential job applicant's decision to pursue a job. We integrate both corporate level and product level brands to form an overall brand in this decision process. Four models based on inference processing and affect transfer are developed and tested. Our results suggest that corporate-level brand and product-level brand, which constitutes an overall brand name, play a major role in influencing a potential recruit to pursue a job.     

Moral Differentiation: Exploring Boundaries of the “Monkey See,Monkey Do” Perspective

Research in ethical decision making has consistently demonstrated a positive relationship between others’ unethical behavior and observers’ unethical behavior, providing support for the “Monkey See, Monkey Do” perspective (e.g., Robinson and O’Leary-Kelly, Acad Manage J 41:658–672, 1998). However, the boundaries of this relationship have received little research attention. Guided by theory and research in interpersonal distancing, we explore these boundaries by proposing and examining “moral differentiation,” the set of individual and situational characteristics that affect the degree to which one is willing to be influenced by others’ unethical behavior. Using data from 655 undergraduate business students in two U.S. universities, we test moderating hypotheses regarding the influence of moral differentiation characteristics on the relationship between others’ unethical behavior and observers’ unethical behavior. Results suggest that strong moral identity, low need for affiliation, and extraversion weaken the relationship between others’ unethical behavior and observers’ unethical behavior. Implications for managers and future research are discussed.