Inequality Regimes,Patriarchal Connectivity,and the Elusive Right to Own Land for Women in Pakistan

Journal of Business Ethics - The initial online publication contained a typesetting mistake in the author information. The original article has been corrected.     

Challenges and Insights from South Asia for Imagining Ethical Organizations: Introduction to the Special Issue

Journal of Business Ethics - South Asia is a region that two billion world citizens call home. It connotes not only a geographical place but a discursive space that, despite its heterogeneities of...     

Gifts as conduits in choice overload environments

This study investigates competing for theoretical stances (i.e., choice overload vs. choice cornucopia) and explores how increases in spending occur in high and low choice conditions following receiving promotional gift offers in a service consumption setting. This study includes a nonobtrusive field experiment (n = 200) that includes measured and manipulated variables: purchase versus nonpurchase conditions and size of expenditures. The study's context tests the use of two versus five promotional gift options and two levels of gift value (6 vs. €20). Findings using symmetrical (analysis of variance [ANOVA]) and asymmetrical (fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis [fsQCA]) methods of analysis support the choice overload hypothesis in this unobtrusive field experiment. Also, spending in the high versus low choice condition increased when hotel guests were offered a high‐value gift for using room service. Given the nature of the nonobtrusive field experiment, this study provides valuable information for marketers and consumers regarding the moderating effects of promotional gifts in many option environments. While prior studies explore the conditions of choice cornucopia versus choice overload, to date few or possibly no attempts to identify practical ways of reducing the negative effects of choice overload.     

Ambidextrous culture,contextual ambidexterity and new product innovations: The role of organizational slack and environmental factors

Contextual ambidexterity, defined as the simultaneous pursuit of alignment and adaptability at business unit, is linked to several organizational outcomes including improved performance and innovation outcomes. Extant research posits ambidextrous organizational culture as an important enabler to contextual ambidexterity but suffers from a lack of a well‐meaning scale for the same. In addition, there is very little understanding as to how tasking and facilitating environment can be on firms' endeavour for contextual ambidexterity and the outcomes thereof. Therefore, the current piece of research has twin objectives using two separate studies. First, to develop a scale for ambidextrous organizational culture construct and second, to analyse the role played by the external forces (munificence and dynamism) and internal slack resources on the relationships between ambidextrous organizational culture and contextual ambidexterity and between contextual ambidexterity and new product innovation outcomes through an empirical investigation in India. Using structural equation modelling on data from 414 respondents, we found environmental munificence to strengthen the relationships between ambidextrous organizational culture and contextual ambidexterity and between contextual ambidexterity and new product innovation outcomes. On the other hand, environmental dynamism had a dampening impact on these relationships. Our findings also suggest that for low slack organizations, dynamic and unmunificent environments magnified the negative impact on an organisation's ambidexterity efforts and new product innovation outcomes.     

Defying contextual embeddedness: evidence from displaced women entrepreneurs in Jordan

ABSTRACT

Although entrepreneurial practices and processes are evolving and changing globally, models of entrepreneurship remain masculinized, embedded in advanced economies and associated with notions of individual agency, heroism and control. Rarely is defiance considered. In this paper, we explore the defiance practices of displaced women operating in the Jordanian patriarchal economy and society and consider how this enabled their nurturing of entrepreneurship. Indeed, we argue that socially excluded women actually defy their contextual embeddedness through their entrepreneurial activities. In so doing, we respond to calls for research that explores the contextual embeddedness of women’s entrepreneurship, and contribute to shifting the focus towards the more silent feminine end of the entrepreneurial process. We consider the defiance of invisible displaced women entrepreneurs operating in the under-researched context of Jordan. Longitudinal, ethnographic investigation revealed the creation of a secret production network led by, and for, displaced women. This paper focuses on the five founders of this network, which they established to mobilize and manage the production of traditional crafts and, by so doing, to defy the stifling limitations imposed by their restrictive contractors, community and family members.     

Inflation and openness in India: an asymmetric approach

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between inflation and openness from 1970 to 2014 in the Indian context. In the first of its kind, this paper investigates the relationship within a nonlinear framework by employing NARDL cointegration test due to Shin, Yu, and Greenwood Nimmo (2014). The empirical results show that there is asymmetry in the relationship between openness and inflation both in short-run as well as in long-run. However, overall a positive relation (though weak) holds between inflation and openness and hence refutes well known Romer (1993) hypothesis that inflation falls with openness. The results further showed a positive relation between inflation and other variables in the study. The overall response of inflation towards the positive and negative changes in explanatory variables differed significantly.     

The value relevance of cash flows, current accruals, and non-current accruals in the UK

Cash flow statements have a longstanding history as mandated financial statement disclosures, having replaced funds flow statements. The usefulness of such disclosures with respect to one of the main purposes of financial statements—providing information relevant to the assessment of future cash flows and their uncertainty, and the market value of firms—is still subject to debate. This study investigates whether various partitions of earnings involving combinations of a cash flow measure of performance and measures of current accruals and non-current accruals improve the ability to explain market values in the UK relative to using earnings alone. Using a valuation model-based methodology, and employing a UK sample of non-financial firms for the years 1993 to 2007, our results suggest strong support for the assertion that cash flows can have incremental value relevance relative to either earnings or funds flows. By implication, cash flows can have separate value relevance from total and, in particular, current accruals. There is slightly less consistent evidence that current and non-current accruals can have separate value relevance but, nonetheless, the results are still strongly in favour in this respect. Generally, the main source of increase in explanatory power for market values is the separate inclusion of our cash flow measure in the estimated regressions. As a consequence, we conclude that the statement of cash flows in the UK provides information useful to UK investors in valuing firms. Further, requiring a cash flow statement, as opposed to a funds flow statement, improves the information content of financial statements in the UK.     

Knowledge Levels and their Transformation: Towards the Integration of Knowledge Creation and Individual Learning*

abstract This paper shows the link between knowledge creation and individual learning, and the coherence that exists between the knowledge creation view and single and double‐loop learning models. It does so by examining differences in levels of knowledge and their relationship with creativity and knowledge creating behaviours. The analysis shifts the focus from the abstract notion of tacit knowledge to a more specific discussion on creative human cognition. The paper is unique in adopting an endogenous perspective to the analysis of individual learning. The analysis is distinct from previous discussions on knowledge creation in three ways: (a) explicit and tacit knowledge are analysed in terms of the nature and degree of inter‐dependence that exists between the two; (b) knowledge levels are defined in terms of their applications rather than as abstract concepts; and (c) a distinction is made between shifts and movements in knowledge to separate, and subsequently integrate, the information processing and creative dimensions of learning. Further, the paper highlights specific challenges and limitations/costs that are associated with the transfer/acquisition of knowledge levels, and argues that in the absence of a conscious effort, knowledge levels are acquired through mistakes and failures. Following that, various theoretical and managerial implications to facilitate knowledge creation are discussed.     

The new EU merger regulation: Implications for EU‐U.S. merger strategies

This article examines the implications of the new EU merger regulation (EU 139/2004) on international merger strategies. Important changes in the new regulation on both a substantive and procedural level are analyzed in the comparative context of EU and U.S. merger‐control policies. In particular, the article evaluates whether the “substantial impediment to effective competition” (SIEC) test in the new regulation implies convergence with the U.S. “substantial lessening of competition” (SLC) benchmark. In this context, the article develops scenarios for convergence between EU and U.S. merger‐control policies. The EU merger process has emerged against a background of significant political and institutional development in the European Union, and this is an important explanatory element in the development of competition policy in general and for the new merger regulation in particular. It also has implications for merger strategies examined at the end of the article. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Impact of gentrification on environmental pressure in service micro‐enterprises

The study investigates whether local service micro‐enterprises (MEPs) in gentrifying neighborhoods face increasing complaints triggering inspections and regulatory pressure. Environmental records from 1992 to 2000 were reviewed for 383 filling stations, motor vehicle repair firms and dry cleaners in five Chicago neighborhoods. Significant differences in the number of complaints and inspections were found between gentrifying and gentrified neighborhoods, especially in the higher‐income gentrified neighborhood. No significant difference was found in enforcement. Regulatory pressure from environmental agencies adds to the financial, social and other regulatory pressures facing service MEPs that drove away or closed manufacturing firms in the past. Alternatively, new market opportunities with regulatory and social pressure could provide incentives to improve environmental behavior. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.