What Makes Rupert Run

Michael Wolff’s new book, The Man Who Owns the News, chroniclesthe career of News Corp. Chairman Ru-pert Murdoch, using his successful $5.6billion bid last year for Wall Street Jour-nal parent Dow Jones as a key plot de-     

Advertising Bans, Monopoly, and Alcohol Demand: Testing for Substitution Effects using State Panel Data

Using a panel of 45 states for the period 1982–1997,this study analyzes the importance of severalrestrictive alcohol regulations, including advertising bans for billboards, bans of price advertising, state monopoly control of retail stores, and changes in the minimum legal drinking age. In contrast to previous research, the study allows for substitution among beverages as a response to a regulation that targets a specific beverage. A restrictive law that applies only to one beverage (or one form of advertising) can result in substitution toward other beverages (or non-banned media). Allowing for substitution means that the net effect on total alcohol consumption is uncertain, and must be determined empirically. The empirical results demonstrate that monopoly control of spirits reduces consumption of that beverage, and increases consumption of wine. The effect on beer is positive, but is not statistically significant. The net effect on total alcohol is significantly negative. Higher minimum legal drinking age laws have negative effects on beverage and total alcohol consumption. Bans of advertising do not reduce total alcohol consumption, which partly reflects substitution effects. The study thus demonstrates the possible unintended consequences of restrictive alcohol regulations.     

Consumer Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants

As the primary purveyors of food within most neighborhoods, food retailers—particularly grocery stores—are key determinants of health. Grocery stores are also an important venue for food producers to access their customers. Over the previous 100 years—and more rapidly over the previous 40 years—ownership among grocery retailers has become concentrated in fewer firms. As a consequence, grocery stores have emerged as food system “gatekeepers.” On one side of the gate are consumers, who depend on these firms to access the food supply. On the other side are the food producers: farmers, ranchers, fishers, processors, and manufacturers. As concentration in the grocery retail sector increases, so too have the grocery giants’ practices enabled them to assume much stronger positions in the buyer-supplier relationship. With a focus on the United States and Canada, this article examines the history and rise to dominance of the largest grocery retailers and the impacts this dominance has had on the food system. Whereas most food retailers are structured under private or publicly traded models of ownership, the cooperative business model—specifically, the consumer-cooperative model—is presented as an important alternative. Cooperatives are a democratic form of ownership that enables the people who most depend on the grocery store (shoppers) to become equal owners in the business along with thousands of others in their community. The importance of consumer-food cooperatives (food co-ops) is examined, including specific case studies of small and large urban centers where food co-ops are providing substantial benefits to the communities they operate in.     

Contextual and Interactional Approaches to Advancing Leadership and Entrepreneurship Research

In this introductory article for the special issue of Journal of Management Studies, entitled ‘Leading Entrepreneurial Ventures: Individual and Team-Based Perspectives’, we leverage insights in the extant literature as well as those insights developed by the authors of the four articles published in response to our call for papers. Overall, we explore multiple nuanced questions with regards to research on entrepreneurship, research on leadership, and their intersection. Our goal is to begin to help guide research on entrepreneurship and leadership, and their intersection, for the next decade.     

Career success schemas and their contextual embeddedness: A comparative configurational perspective

We introduce career success schemas as critical for understanding how people in different contexts perceive and understand career success. Using a comparative configurational approach, we show, in a study of 13 countries, that two structural characteristics of career success schemas—complexity and convergence—differ across country contexts and are embedded in specific configurations of institutional factors. Adopting complexity and convergence as primary dimensions, we propose a taxonomy of career success schemas at the country level. Based on this taxonomy, we contribute to the understanding of subjective career success across countries, discuss the importance of schemas for organisational career systems in multinational enterprises, and propose specific guidelines for future comparative careers research.     

What prevents PROS from making KNOTS? Evidence for nano-researchers

The current study examines the barriers faced by research organisations in nanoscience when transferring knowledge to the industrial sector. Two are the questions that guide this research: Does the context play a role in the effectiveness of knowledge transfer activities? Does the transfer of scientific output in nanoscience depend on the type of organisation? Three geographic areas are compared: the Basque Country (Spain), Uusimaa (Finland) and Sydsverige (Sweden). A survey to the research groups in the three locations was conducted, together with interviews with each group’s leaders. Quantitative and qualitative methods are thus used to interpret the information collected. The results indicate that the main barriers to knowledge transfer come from the innovation system, rather than from the organisation to which the research group belongs. The study discusses a series of trade-offs facing policy makers in charge of implementing science, technology and innovation.     

Assessing the value of short-term study abroad programmes to students

For many universities, students participating in short-term faculty-led programmes make up a large portion of the total study abroad population. In this article, we report the results of a unique choice experiment in which 1255 students were asked about their personal characteristics and their preferences for study abroad programme attributes. Using a random parameters logistic regression model, we find that students attitudes towards risk, their experience with international travel and their beliefs about whether study abroad would help them professionally were major determinants of whether a student expressed interest in studying abroad. We also estimate students’ willingness to pay for various programme attributes, including destination, programme duration, course type and the number of experiential learning activities. We find that the highest value programmes give students credit towards their major rather than towards the university core or as an elective and that they are 3–4 weeks in length rather than 2 or 6 weeks. Also, while students value more experiential learning activities per week, each additional trip adds less value with no additional value beyond four activities. Results are useful for practitioners interested in maximizing student participation while effectively managing study abroad budgets.