Logistics Service Providers and Their Customers: Gaining Commitment Through Organizational Implants

The current research examines the following question: how can on‐site representatives (i.e., organizational implants) be used to generate greater interorganizational relationship commitment? The relationship marketing literature explores many facets of interorganizational relationships and commitment, but until now, it has not considered the colocation of employees from separate firms. Dyadic survey data were collected from logistics service providers (LSPs) and their customers. The paired dyads were then analyzed using path analysis. Results indicate that organizational implantation can lead to greater levels of outcome interdependence between the organizations, which can then generate greater levels of commitment from the LSP toward the customer. Results also suggest that organizational implantation can lead to greater levels of relational capital and responsiveness, which is shown to generate greater levels of commitment from the customer toward the LSP.     

When do informed traders acquire and trade on informational advantage? Evidence from Federal Reserve stress tests

Using Federal Reserve bank stress test announcements, we examine when option traders acquire informational advantage and when they exploit it. We find consistent evidence of informed options trading around announcements. However, when test results are announced in successive weeks we find high abnormal option volume, considerably positive abnormal returns and significant return predictability in the first week, but not the following week. This suggests that informed option traders are able to anticipate upcoming news events and skillfully process public information but it also suggests that trading on acquired information is conditioned on the level of information asymmetry in the market.     

Friends in high places: Government-industry relations in public sector house-building during Britain’s tower block era

Abstract

Britain’s high-rise public housing era is widely seen as a serious social policy mistake. We show that the problems associated with this housing format were known to policy makers at an early stage, while tower blocks were also substantially more expensive, both from the perspective of central, and local, government. Conservatives governments championed high-rise mainly owing to the political advantages of urban containment. Major building contractors then used their close links with (central and local) policy-makers to aggressively lobby for high-rise ?system building,’ as their expertise in this field enabled them to dominate the sector and exclude local competitors.     

Unintended Consequences: How Suppliers Compensate for Price Concessions and the Role of Organizational Justice in Buyer‐Supplier Relations

“You get what you pay for” is one of life's lessons that predominates in purchasing decisions individuals make in their personal lives. The results of this study suggest this lesson should also prevail among management when price‐related purchasing decisions in businesses are being made. An evaluation of over 1,700 purchasing instances across seven years of a longitudinal panel data set collected from Tier 1 production suppliers to the six major North American automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Nissan, and Toyota, found that suppliers compensate for price concessions and price reduction pressure from the OEM in the year following the concession, by reducing product quality, service support, and R&D expenditures associated with goods provided to the OEM. This industry is particularly relevant because it is highly adversarial, yet at the same time reliant on interdependence. The results show that supplier price concessions granted to an OEM led to compensatory supplier behaviors of reduced quality and R&D expenditures toward that OEM. Further, the results suggest that the organizational justice dimensions of distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice can ameliorate negative supplier compensatory activities. A buyer–supplier relational environment that engenders organizational justice tactics such as open and honest communication with suppliers provides suppliers the expectation of an acceptable return on business over the long term, provides help to suppliers to reduce costs, and builds supplier trust of the OEM had generally positive effects on quality, service, and R&D expenditures. From a management perspective, these results indicate there is a very real risk versus reward issue associated with pressuring suppliers for price reductions.     

The next frontier in tourism emotion research

Emotion is emerging as a central concept in tourism research, critical for the delivery of memorable tourism experiences. However, existing approaches in tourism do not adequately explain the process by which emotions are elicited. Recent advances in cognitive and neuropsychology demonstrate that emotions are elicited through an appraisal process, which occurs in the cortex of the brain. These processes produce chemical monoamine neurotransmitters that lead to bodily feelings, which in turn enable our brain to recognise emotions. This research note draws on Lövheim’s Cube, a self-report scale that provides a proxy indicator of the likely presence of monoamine neurotransmitters of serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline. Six images of the Great Barrier Reef were used as a stimuli in an online panel survey (n?=?1249). Results demonstrate that images used by tourism stakeholders are likely to produce stronger neurological reactions than images from an environmental non-governmental organisation. Combining recent advances in self-report methods with a neurocognitive approach has the propensity to offers additional insight into emotional reactions to visual stimuli. Further research should focus on the efficacy of utilising self-report measures with cutting edge psychophysiological techniques, such as ambulatory electroencephalography (EEG) to open the door to the next frontier in tourism emotion research.     

Black and white female body mass index values in the developing late 19th and early 20th century United States

When traditional measures for economic welfare are scarce or unreliable, stature and the body mass index (BMI) are now widely-used measures that reflect economic conditions. However, little work exists for late 19th and early 20th century women’s BMIs in the US and how they varied over time. Women’s BMIs stagnated throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After controlling for characteristics, African-American women had higher BMIs than lighter complexioned mixed-race and white women. Women from the Southwest were taller and had lower BMIs than women born elsewhere within the US. Alternatively, women’s BMIs did not vary by socioeconomic status.     

The returns to education in rural China: Some new estimates

We estimate the rates of return to education in rural China using primary survey data collected in 2016. Estimated average returns to education are 3.1 per cent. However, careful statistical analysis is required when estimating the returns to education. The paper demonstrates that when employment interruptions are accounted for, the measured returns to education rise. Our results also confirm that mismeasurement of the wage rate by using an hourly wage rate (versus daily or monthly earnings) raises the estimation of rates of return to education. Finally, our results suggest that the return to education is nonlinear in education levels but only when it reaches the tertiary level.     

Winning at all costs: An exploration of bottom‐line mentality,Machiavellianism, and organisational citizenship behaviour

This study seeks to advance the bottom‐line mentality literature by exploring an antecedent and outcome of employee bottom‐line mentality. We build and test a moderated‐mediation model by arguing that the personality trait of Machiavellianism promotes an employee's adoption of a bottom‐line mentality. Moreover, drawing on trait activation theory, we argue that this relationship is fully activated when the employee perceives that the organisation endorses a bottom‐line mentality. To expand our theoretical model, we also suggest that employee bottom‐line mentality inhibits organisational citizenship behaviour directed towards co‐workers. Lastly, we investigate whether an employee's perception of an organisation's bottom‐line mentality conditionally moderates the indirect effect of Machiavellianism on organisational citizenship behaviour directed towards co‐workers through the mediated mechanism of employee bottom‐line mentality. Our theoretical model is tested across two distinct studies. Study 1, a field study conducted within a variety of organisations, provides evidence for our initial predictions (Hypotheses 1 and 2). Study 2, a multisource field study conducted in multiple industries, replicates and extends the findings from Study 1 by providing evidence for the entire moderated‐mediation model. We find support for our hypothesised model across both studies. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, and suggestions for future research are identified.     

Competitive forces affecting capacity decisions of South Dakota feedlot operations

A strategic management framework for the analysis of small and medium size firm behavior within a fragmented industry structure is developed. This literature predicts falling profits in the long run will drive out less efficient firms as the industry consolidates. This literature also predicts successful firms will engage in value-added production and/or adopt a cost reduction strategy to gain a competitive advantage through the development of niche markets. This framework is applied to the feedlot industry in South Dakota. A survey was conducted to collect feedlot operator responses on future capacity decisions. Empirical analysis identified linkages between future capacity decisions and competitive forces hypothesized in the agricultural management literature, which are responsible for driving consolidation in the U.S. feedlot industry. The survey also collected information on value-added production and management practices. These data were used to test the “niche market” hypotheses discussed in the strategic management literature. The analysis provides evidence that firms that engage in value-added practices have a lower probability of indicating they will decrease the capacity of their feedlot.     

The Green Solow model

We argue that a key empirical finding in environmental economics—the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC)—and the core model of modern macroeconomics—the Solow model—are intimately related. Once we amend the Solow model to incorporate technological progress in abatement, the EKC is a necessary by product of convergence to a sustainable growth path. We explain why current methods for estimating an EKC are likely to fail; provide an alternative empirical method directly tied to our theory; and estimate our model on carbon emissions from 173 countries over the 1960–1998 period.