Marketplace and personal space: Investigating the differential effects of attachment style across relationship contexts

An individual's tendencies in purely personal relationships seem to lead to related tendencies in consumer relationships. The following article presents a study that illustrates how individual differences in personal relationship attachment style can be used to predict the likely success of consumer relationships. In addition, it illustrates how the success of consumption versus nonconsumption relationships can be explained by the effect of attachment style on the individual's perception of qualities of the relationship. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Mehrwert für die Marke durch Kommunikation schaffen

Marken ohne Mehrwert haben keine Existenzberechtigung. Nicht immer liegt der Mehrwert jedoch im Produkt oder der Dienstleistung selbst. Vielmehr kann die Kommunikation selbst einen Mehrwert für Marken schaffen. Deshalb wird im folgenden Beitrag gezeigt, wie man den Markenmehrwert einerseits klar kommunizieren und andererseits durch die Kommunikation selbst Mehrwert zum Nutzen für den Kunden und für das Unternehmen schaffen kann.     

Self‐regulated learning in the workplace: strategies and factors in the attainment of learning goals

The research reported here is an exploratory qualitative study aimed at identifying professionals' self‐regulatory strategies underpinning the planning and attainment of learning goals in the workplace and showing how a number of organizational factors affect these strategies. The rationale for the study is that existing research tells us little about how professionals regulate their learning, largely because much of the literature on the self‐regulation of learning has been conducted with pupils and students in schools and universities rather than with professionals. Data were obtained through 29 semi‐structured interviews with professional employees in a company in the energy sector – including engineers, scientists and managers of various kinds – in 12 countries. Findings suggest that self‐regulatory learning practices in, from and for work are iterative and fluid rather than delineated into discrete stages as suggested by phase models of self‐regulation. There was little deliberate, systematic self‐reflection on learning in the workplaces studied. Learning goals were driven by short‐term work tasks and individuals' longer term development needs. Professionals draw extensively upon supervisors, mentors and colleagues when planning and attaining their learning goals. Formation of learning goals was constrained by individuals' perceptions of their career development potential and of how their progression potential is viewed by the organization in which they work.     

Merchanting and Current Account Balances

Merchanting is goods trade that does not cross the border of the firm's country of residence. Merchanting grew strongly in the last decade in several European economies and has become an important determinant of these countries’ current account. Because merchanting firms reinvest their earnings abroad to expand their international activities, this practice raises national savings in the home country without increasing domestic investment. This paper examines the empirical linkages between merchanting and the current account balance. Using a sample of 53 countries during 1980–2011, it shows that merchanting activity is a determinant of the medium‐term current account balance.     

Ethnic-immigrants in founding teams: Effects on prospector strategy and performance in new Internet ventures

We investigated differences in strategy and performance between new Internet ventures with ethnic-immigrant members in the founding team and a matched set of Internet ventures with non-ethnic-non-immigrant team members. Results showed that new ventures with an ethnic-immigrant presence in the founding teams tended to pursue a more aggressive prospector strategy than those with non-ethnic-non-immigrant founding team members. Still, performance of the two groups of ventures was comparable. However, the positive effects of ethnic-immigrant presence on founding teams depended on team size and average age of the founding team members.     

The Effect of Gasoline Taxes and Public Transit Investments on Driving Patterns

This paper analyzes how driving patterns are affected by gasoline taxes and the availability of a substitute for driving—public transportation. We develop a measure of transportation substitutability based on the difference between individuals’ predicted commute times by private and public transit, conditional upon their demographic characteristics and geographic location. Improved substitutability decreases annual vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by inducing modal shifts to public transit, though gasoline taxes are found to have a much larger impact on VMT. Our results imply that a policy that raises gasoline taxes and recycles the revenues into public transit improvements can have even larger impacts on driving patterns than either policy alone.     

Impact of the economic downturn on nursing schools

The challenges posed by the economic downturn on baccalaureate nursing schools in the southeast as it relates to their perceptions of changes in the number of applicants, acceptance rates, employer recruitment efforts, and student clinical and job placement were explored. Responses from deans and program directors indicated nursing schools are experiencing negative effects of the economic downturn in the form of graduates having difficulty finding employment, decreased recruitment efforts from prospective employers, difficulty locating clinical placements for students, and no change in faculty applicants despite an increase in undergraduate student applicants as well as graduate student applicants. These multiple factors combined could signal the death knell for programs that are ill-prepared to deal with such a crisis. Programs need to be aggressive in their efforts to draw health care recruiters as well as qualified faculty applicants to their campuses. Nursing schools must be able to clearly show why their graduates are superior to other programs' graduates when competing for both highly qualified faculty applicants and prospective student employers.     

GROWTH, POVERTY, AND INEQUALITY IN LATIN AMERICA: A CAUSAL ANALYSIS, 1970–94

Taking advantage of consistent poverty and income inequality data for 12 Latin American countries between 1970 and 1994, we analyze the determinants of changes in the incidence of urban and rural poverty and in Gini coefficients over spells of years, stressing in particular the role of aggregate income growth. We find that income growth reduces urban and rural poverty but not inequality. We also find that income growth is more effective in reducing urban poverty if the levels of inequality and poverty are lower, and the levels of secondary education higher. We show that there is an asymmetry in the impact of growth on poverty and inequality, with recession having strong negative effects on both poverty and inequality. Since growth does not reduce inequality, economic cycles create ratchet effects on the level of inequality. However, post-structural adjustment growth is quite effective at reducing poverty, particularly if inequality is low.