Data accuracy's impact on segmentation performance: Benchmarking RFM analysis,logistic regression,and decision trees

Companies greatly benefit from knowing how problems with data quality influence the performance of segmentation techniques and which techniques are more robust to these problems than others. This study investigates the influence of problems with data accuracy – an important dimension of data quality – on three prominent segmentation techniques for direct marketing: RFM (recency, frequency, and monetary value) analysis, logistic regression, and decision trees. For two real-life direct marketing data sets analyzed, the results demonstrate that (1) under optimal data accuracy, decision trees are preferred over RFM analysis and logistic regression; (2) the introduction of data accuracy problems deteriorates the performance of all three segmentation techniques; and (3) as data becomes less accurate, decision trees retain superior to logistic regression and RFM analysis. Overall, this study recommends the use of decision trees in the context of customer segmentation for direct marketing, even under the suspicion of data accuracy problems.     

Sexual Harassments: Criteria for difining hostile enviorment

Sexual harassment in the workplace continues to be one of the most controversial and complex legal and ethical issues facing empolyers. The U.S. Supreme Court's June 1986 decisiion inMeitor Savings Bank v. Vinson, which applied Title VII of the Civil Reights Act to situations involving sexual harassment, is discussed. The Court's definition of hostile environment is reviwed, and federal court cases interpreting the Supreme Court's pronousncements are examined. The cases provide guidance on the kinds of situations that result in employer liability for sexual harassment. A primanry conclusion is that employers may easily avoid liability by exercising learned judgment and sound management practices.     

Revenue Effects of Tax Facilities for Pension Savings

Many countries have tax facilities for pension savings. These facilities are often associated with the application of the cash-flow treatment of pensions: pension contributions are tax-exempt, capital income of pension funds is tax-exempt, and pension benefits are taxed, but usually at a relatively low rate. This paper investigates the revenue effects of a cash-flow tax regime for pension savings by full present-value calculations. A comprehensive income tax system is used as a benchmark. We present an empirical analysis for the Netherlands as a typical example of a country with funded pensions. Our calculations show that current taxation of pensions implies a major tax revenue loss. For the year 2003, we estimate a fiscal pension subsidy of 1.4% to 1.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Communities of Practice versus Organizational Climate: Which One Matters More to Dispersed Collaboration in the Front End of Innovation?*

Dispersed collaboration provides many benefits such as members' closeness to local cultures and markets and reachability of talent worldwide. Hence, it is no surprise that dispersed collaboration is frequently being used by product development teams. A necessary but not sufficient condition for innovation performance is the sharing of tacit, non‐codified and explicit, codified knowledge by the team. Situated learning theory, however, predicts that tacit knowledge sharing will be largely prevented by “decontextualization.” Therefore, increasing usage of dispersed collaboration will decrease levels of tacit knowledge—crucial to innovation and organizational performance—in the business unit. This research investigates the moderating role of mechanisms believed to enable tacit knowledge transfer in the front end of innovation. Using data from 116 business units, the moderating role of communities of practice and organizational climate on the relationship between the proficiency of dispersed collaboration and front end of innovation performance is investigated. Encouragement of communities of practice is found to moderate the relationship between proficiency of dispersed collaboration and front end of innovation performance on the business unit level. More specifically, proficiency of dispersed collaboration is not related at all to front end of innovation performance in business units with low support for communities of practice; but a positive relationship exists in business units with high support for communities of practice. This study does not provide support for the moderating effect of organizational climate on the relationship between proficiency in dispersed collaboration and front end of innovation performance. However, supportiveness of climate has a significant direct effect on front end of innovation performance. The findings of this study suggest that managers should simultaneously invest in increasing proficiency in dispersed collaboration and supporting communities of practice. Either one by itself is insufficient. Because of its significant direct effect, managers should also nurture an open climate favoring risk taking, trust, and open interaction.     

Ex Ante Impact Assessment under Imperfect Information: Biotechnology in New Member States of the EU

Some argue that the lack of modern agricultural development in the former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe has made cutting‐edge biotechnology attractive. However, enthusiasm for planting genetically modified (GM) crops varies greatly in the enlarged European Union (EU) and especially among the New Member States (NMS); the Czech GM maize area is progressively growing whereas Hungary imposed a de facto ban on GM crops. Remarkably, the Hungarian ban was not supported by any cost–benefit assessment. In the literature, ex ante impact assessments of monopolistically priced technologies are often based on cross‐sectional comparisons of average cropping budgets. Such assessments ignore heterogeneity of farmers and underestimate the true impact of these technologies because of homogeneity bias. Therefore, we propose an improved method by explicitly modelling farmer heterogeneity under imperfect information, and assess the potential value and benefit sharing of GM crops in the two NMS using a stochastic partial equilibrium model. The total potential value of GM crops is estimated at €82 million for both countries, of which €60 million (73%) accrues to farmers and €22 million (27%) to the gene developers and the seed industry. This is in line with the literature on global benefit sharing of first‐generation GM technologies.     

A Note on Building a Database on Russian Banks: Fieldwork Against the Odds

This note describes how I constructed a reliable database on Russian banks in early transition. I describe in detail data sourcing, data verification and the representativeness of the resulting database. The note makes available for research a database that captures the genesis of a commercial banking system and is therefore very interesting. Moreover, the note suggests that the availability of data in Russia might in practice be better than generally perceived. Often the data do exist, but it takes a lot of time and effort to find them and turn them into a user-friendly format. Mastering the Russian language and a fair portion of perseverance are a great help in this respect.     

Time-varying Integration and International diversification strategies

This paper investigates the impact of globalization and integration on the relative benefits of country and industry diversification. Unlike previous models, our factor model allows asset exposures and volatilities to vary with both structural changes and temporary fluctuations in the economic and financial environment. First, we find that globalization and integration have lead to a gradual convergence of country to industry betas, especially in Europe. Second, the structurally-driven increase in market betas is accompanied by a gradual decrease in country-specific risk. Third, even though the edge has structurally decreased, geographical diversification continues being superior to industry diversification.     

Dealing with dualities

This paper introduces the topic of dealing with dualities, which is the theme of this special issue. We first give a short review of the notion of paradox and duality in management research. After this, we discuss the relevance of dualities for the IMP approach of analyzing industrial networks. Then, we briefly introduce the papers of and their relationship with the theme of this special issue. We conclude with some suggestions for future research.