Determinants of process innovation introductions: Evidence from 115 developing countries

This paper examines determinants of process innovation introductions across 115 (mostly) developing countries. Empirical research on process innovations lags behind product innovations. Accounting for firm characteristics, R&D, regulations and taxes, and corruption, results show that sole proprietors and R&D‐performing firms were more likely to introduce innovations, whereas greater prosperity made them less likely to do so. Corruption had a greasing effect, whereas firms in island nations were less likely to introduce, ceteris paribus. Effects of regulations and taxes and other firm characteristics were largely insignificant. Finally, some differences existed across manufacturing and service industries and across prevalence of innovation introductions.     

Accounting student characteristics: Results of the 1993 and 1994 Federation of Schools of Accountancy (FSA) surveys

This article updates the results of an ongoing, longitudinal study on characteristics of accounting students, conducted by the Federation of Schools of Accountancy (FSA). The annual survey measures many attributes of accounting seniors and masters students, including student quality, provenance, future educational plans, career plans, plans for professional certification, extra-curricular involvement, attitude toward the accounting profession, attitude toward learning, attitude toward the 150-hour requirement, and various demographic dimensions. Subjects included 2,512 and 1,507 seniors, and 969 and 670 masters students, at 39 and 27 FSA schools, in the years 1993 and 1994, respectively. Results of these surveys, which appear in a comparative format below, have implications for many currently debated topics in accounting education. Results of the 1991 and 1992 surveys appearing in the spring 1992 and fall 1993 issues of the Journal of Accounting Education (Vol. 10, pp, 25–37 and Vol. 11, pp. 211–225), respectively.     

Dimensions of Chinese culture values in relation to service provision in hospitality and tourism industry

Factor and reliability analyses were employed in this exploratory attempt to investigate and refine the structure and dimensions of Chinese cultural values (CCVs) in relation to service provision. Based on the results of factor analysis, CCVs could best be conceptualized as a five-component construct that influences the attitude or behavior of employees in providing service. These five factors were identified as follows: Integration 1 (attitude towards work); Integration 2 (attitude towards people); moral discipline; status and relationships; and moderation. The identification of these dimensions has two major implications to human resource development and service management practice in the hospitality and tourism industry. First, Chinese cultural values play a critical role in determining specific interventions, challenges and barriers in service organizational management. Second, given the profound influence of Chinese cultural values on service provision, international tourism and hotel managers, particularly in human resource development, should realize the importance of ensuring that Western management practices are adopted critically in Chinese organizations. Given the limited amount of research on this topic, the findings generated from this study are very important in guiding future research and providing insights into an area that deserves more academic attention.     

Analysis of the Service Dominant Logic network,authors, and articles

The present study analyses research conducted in Service Dominant Logic (S-D logic), providing an overview of its intellectual structure. For that purpose, a structured approach was adopted through the implementation of bibliometric methods, using co-citation analysis combined with performance analysis and an integrative science mapping approach, which considered a timeline, a graph, and a distance-based perspective. This allowed the identification of the leading authors and of six clusters of articles based on bibliographic coupling, along with the most prominent research themes clustered in five subdomains of research based on co-occurrence of terms. The networks extracted show the associations between the main articles and concepts treated by the S-D logic community, unveiling the salient challenges and prospective expansion facing its future theoretical and practical context.     

Exploring the expectations of transport professionals concerning the future automobility system: Visions,challenges, and transitions

A mixture of potentially significant changes in technology, commercial structures, and social practices is currently entering the automobility system. These changes have the potential to combine together and lead to a substantial shift in the manner in which society fuels, owns, and makes use of its cars. This paper reports a research project that made use of focus groups to examine the narratives of British transport professionals concerning forthcoming developments in the automobility system. Specific attention was given to what the expectations for future change in automobility are, if these changes will likely lead to a transition toward a more sustainable system and the manner in which a transition of this nature could be facilitated. The oral testimony offered during the focus groups has been assessed qualitatively using thematic analysis. The results suggest that there is a commonly held view that the automobility system is entering a stage of flux, which may lead to considerable changes in system configuration. However, the attainment of a sustainable transition for the system will likely be inhibited by a series of institutional, societal, and physical barriers, which may restrict system developments.     

Factorial and discriminant analyses of environmental sensitivity and initiative of Nigerian firms

The issue of environmental protection has been of interest to Africa just as it is to the rest of the world. Such rising interest in environmental protection has resulted in a number of environmentally friendly initiatives, such as landscaping, by firms in Nigeria. This article adopts the organizational buying behavior theory to study a comprehensive list of potential facilitators of landscaping adoption and to discriminate between organizational adopters and nonadopters in Nigeria. The data were factor‐analyzed to determine the key dimensions of facilitators. On the basis of the resulting dimensions, discriminant analysis was conducted. The results show that environmental factors, organizational factors, and managerial factors are important discriminants. The findings are salient in environmental management in Africa, and in designing strategies for landscaping services marketing and landscaping diffusion. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The single family home in the investment portfolio

This article uses recent measures of the risk and return to investment in housing to estimate the effects of including a single family home in the investor portolio. We estimate the expected return and standard deviation of that return, as well as its correlation with other major investment classes.     

Hypothesis testing based on goodness-of-fit in the moving average time series model

Small sample properties of t-tests are compared with those of tests based on relative goodness- of-fit in the context of the first order moving average time series model. Monte Carlo experiments reported in the paper suggest that the actual size of these t-tests greatly exceeds theoretical large sample significance levels, while conformity of goodness-of-fit statistics to the appropriate chi-square or F-distributions is much closer. The evidence presented suggests that practitioners are well advised to employ goodness-of-fit tests as a check on results of t-tests particularly when the latter indicate ‘significance’.