Some antecedent factors that shape actors’ adoption of enterprise systems

This paper proposes a conceptual model based on technology-organization-environment (T-O-E) and institutional frameworks and examines how the traditional and isomorphic factors explain adoption of enterprise systems (ES) by service small and medium enterprise (SMEs) in Nigeria. The model extends the T-O-E framework by integrating environmental typology with institutional changes in order to recognize homologous behavior in the social systems. Logistic regression and Wald’s statistics were used to analyze the data from field survey questionnaire administered to a purposive and snow-ball sample of 262 executives. The results show that adoption of ES is significantly influenced by organizational, technological and isomorphic factors though normative and mimetic isomorphism had negative coefficients; a unit increase in the complexity of the two attracts less analogous modeling and mimicry or vice versa. The technical, economic and legitimated elements are critical adoption determinants; thus, managers make informed decisions that improve competitive advantage when they understand the institutional homogeneity that drives less efficiency in the social structure.     

Marketing and development out of poverty: introduction to the special issue

• Reducing poverty by meeting the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is an interdisciplinary undertaking, in which Marketing Science logically plays a role. The papers in this special issue cover a range of methods, from traditional consumer research experiments (on images of poverty, donation behaviour) and sample surveys on the credibility of celebrity marketing, to observational studies of community values and customs (on micro-finance or agricultural enterprise). Consumers of aid appeals, celebrity lobbying and financial services—these methods reveal—are behaviourally complex. They are infused with contradictory, competing and complementary tendencies. Underlying those different tendencies however is a common but often overlooked thread. For poverty to be significantly reduced by 2015, attention needs to be paid not only to goals, that is to task but also towards understanding the human relationships in the poverty reduction market. Marketing practise and research can contribute to poverty reduction by helping build (1) perspective-sharing, (2) accommodation to local needs and (3) appreciation of socio-economic and socio-cultural behavioural systems.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE EFFECTS OF ECONOMIC REGULATION IN THE ISTANBUL TAXICAB MARKET

This paper discusses the regulation of the Istanbul taxicab market and its consequences. While price and entry regulations are common to many taxi markets, there are significant differences in their institutional frameworks. We examine the problems of the Istanbul market and offer recommendations to improve its efficiency.     

Subjective beliefs and economic preferences during the COVID-19 pandemic

Experimental Economics - The COVID-19 pandemic presents a remarkable opportunity to put to work all of the research that has been undertaken in past decades on the elicitation and structural...     

The Stewardship Role of Analyst Forecasts,and Discretionary Versus Non-discretionary Accruals

We examine the interaction between discretionary and non-discretionary accruals in a stewardship setting. Contracting includes multiple rounds of renegotiation based on contractible accounting information and non-contractible but more timely non-accounting information. We show that accounting regulation aimed at increasing earnings quality from a valuation perspective (earnings persistence) may have a significant impact on how firms rationally respond in terms of allowing accrual discretion in order to alleviate the impact on the stewardship role of earnings. Increasing the precision of more timely non-accounting information (analyst earnings forecasts) increases the ex ante value of the firm and reduces costly earnings management. There is an optimal level of reversible non-discretionary accrual noise introduced through revenue recognition policies. Tight rules-based accounting regulation, as opposed to leaving firms more choice over non-discretionary accrual policies, may lead firms to rationally respond by inducing costly earnings management. More generally, regulating both earnings persistence and the tightness of admissible auditing policies may not result in less equilibrium earnings management.     

Procurement of logistics services and sustainable development in Europe: Fields of activity and empirical results

This paper strives to answer the general question; how far purchasers of logistics services take into account aspects of sustainable development. Modeled on the German Sustainable Development Strategy, which is based on the EU Sustainable Development plan, five fields of activity are defined: the reduction of transport intensity and emission, the reduction of land use, the choice of carrier under consideration of sustainable aspects, the permanent improvement of working conditions, and the enhancement of qualified employment. Then, propositions for purchasing companies of logistics services are developed, which contribute to safeguard ecological as well as social sustainability. In order to conduct an explorative study, a questionnaire was sent to 750 purchase and logistics managers. It was found that purchasing companies place high value on ecological and social aspects. But the perceived importance is not associated with purchasing companies' own contributions to logistics service providers' sustainable activities. Additionally, it was seen that purchasing companies exert only a minor influence on logistics service providers regarding ecologically and socially sustainable actions. A fundamental precondition for a sustainably oriented procurement of logistics services can be seen in the purchasing companies' awareness of the need for integrating sustainable aspects in economic decisions.     

A New Approach to Gravity Anomaly Separation: Differential Markov Random Field (DMRF)

In this paper the authors introduce a novel approach to stochastic image processing, denoted as Differential Markov Random Field (DMRF), which has been applied to gravity anomaly separation problems. The advantages of the method are that it introduces only little distortion into the shape of the original image and that it is not affected significantly by factors such as the overlap power spectra of regional and residual fields. Testing of the proposed meth using synthetic examples gave excellent results.