Getting the attention you need

Employees have an enormous amount of business information at their fingertips--more specifically, at their desktops. The floodgates are open; profitable possibilities abound. But having to handle all that information has pushed downsized staffs to the brink of an acute attention deficit disorder. To achieve corporate goals, business leaders need their employees' full attention--and that attention is in short supply. Authors Thomas Davenport and John Beck have studied how companies manage the attention of their employees and their site visitors. In this article, they analyze the components of attention management through three lenses--economic, psychobiological, and technological--and offer guidelines for keeping employees focused on crucial corporate tasks. Their lessons are drawn from the best practices employed by today's stickiest Web sites and by traditional attention industries such as advertising, film, and television. The authors say executives must manage attention knowing that it's a zero-sum game (there's only so much to go around). Managers should also consider capitalizing on the basic survival and competitive instincts we all have that help determine how much attention we pay to certain things. For instance, the threat of corporate demise--and the consequent loss of jobs and livelihoods--undoubtedly focuses workers' attention on the need to change. Likewise, internal competition among business units may give employees added incentive to pay attention to a profit or sales goal. Leaders today need to pay more attention to attention because it's widely misunderstood and widely mismanaged, the authors conclude.     

Favor in exchange for trust? The role of subordinates’ attribution of supervisory favors

Favor exchange is known to be essential for building personal relationships (guanxi) in China. In two studies, we explore the effect of supervisory favors on subordinates’ trust in supervisor; we further explore how subordinates’ attributions of supervisory favors affect trust in supervisor independently and in interaction with supervisory favors. We find evidence that supervisory favors has a positive effect on trust in the supervisor; merit attribution of supervisory favors has a positive effect on trust in the supervisor but personal favor attribution has a negative effect; merit attribution also moderates the effect of supervisory favors such that supervisory favors has a stronger positive effect on trust in the supervisor for subordinates who make higher merit attribution than for those who make lower merit attribution. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

The Structure and Incentive Effects of Corporate Tax Liabilities

This paper describes situations in which tax liabilities assume the form of a negative position in a call option. This structure motivates an examination of the investment decisions of taxed corporations in the presence of risk. It is shown that the structure of the tax liability creates an incentive to underinvest in more risky projects and an incentive for conglomerate merger. These effects are then evaluated in the presence of conflicts of interest between stockholders and bondholders, and under alternative assumptions about the tax code, and about the timing of investment and financing decisions.     

Volume,Volatility, and New York Stock Exchange Trading Halts

Trading halts increase, rather than reduce, both volume and volatility. Volume (volatility) in the first full trading day after a trading halt is 230 percent (50 to 115 percent) higher than following “pseudohalts”: nonhalt control periods matched on time of day, duration, and absolute net-of-market returns. These results are robust over different halt types and news categories. Higher posthalt volume is observed into the third day while higher posthalt volatility decays within hours. The extent of media coverage is a partial determinant of volume and volatility following both halts and pseudohalts, but a separate halt effect remains after controlling for the media effect.     

Money,working capital and production in a developing economy: A disequilibrium econometric model of production for India, 1950–1980

The paper formulates and estimates for India for the period 1950–1980 an aggregate production function wherein the supply of real money balances in the economy appears as a limitational factor of production. The rationale for the formulation is argued from the importance of working capital funds in organising production, and how the supply of money, or the lack thereof, may constrain its availability in a financially underdeveloped economy characterized by imperfect capital markets.Comments and suggestions by annonymous referees for the journal as well as by the participants in the seminar at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, India and the session on money and production at the Windsor meetings of the Canadian Economic Association are gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are also due Mr. Salah Foda for programming assistance.     

Cheating to win: Dishonesty and the intensity of competition

We argue that the intensity of competition within a group or organization can have an important influence on whether or not people cheat. To make this point we first work through a simple model of strategic misreporting in the workplace. For low and high levels of competition we show that, in equilibrium, few are predicted to misreport. It is for medium levels of competition that misreporting is predicted to be highest. We test this prediction experimentally and find good support for it. This finding has implications for the design of incentive structures within groups and organizations.     

Corporate social responsibility and marketing: An integrative framework

This article introduces a conceptualization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) that emphasizes the role and potential contribution of the marketing discipline. The proposed framework first depicts CSR initiatives as the actions undertaken to display conformity to both organizational and stakeholder norms. Then, the article discusses the managerial processes needed to monitor, meet, and even exceed, stakeholder norms. Finally, the analysis explains how CSR initiatives can generate increased stakeholder support. Isabelle Maignan (imaignan@feweb.vu.nl) is an assistant professor of marketing at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on corporate social responsibility and its marketing dimensions in an international setting. Her work has appeared in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, theJournal of International Business Studies, theJournal of Business Research, theJournal of Advertising, among other journals and conference proceedings. O. C. Ferrell (oc.ferrell@colostate.edu) is chair and a professor of marketing at Colorado State University. His research focuses on marketing ethics and corporate social responsibility. His work has appeared in theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, theJournal of Public Policy and Marketing, as well as other leading journals. In addition, he is the coauthor ofMarketing: Concepts and Strategies, Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases, Business and Society: A Strategic Approach to Corporate Citizenship, Marketing Strategy, and other textbooks.