Understanding how attitudes affect physician compliance with legal behavioral constraints

The following study investigates how physicians in one state (Illinois) attitudinally cope with a recent law mandating physician behaviors. Specifically, this study focuses on OB/GYN physician compliance with The Sexual Assault Survivors Emergency Treatment Act (Public Law 92-156, 2002), which requires hospitals in the state of Illinois to have an approved plan for treating sexual assault survivors. What makes this research setting interesting are the potential linkages between the legal mandate, physician attitudes, and the ongoing controversy concerning abortion. The results of a census of OB/GYN physicians within the state suggest (1) this physician group is largely supportive of the letter and spirit of this law, (2) the emerging attitude models such as Perugini and Bagozzi's (2001) MGB model explaining the formation of behavioral intentions must be treated with caution when generalizing to situations mandating legal behaviors, and (3) moderating influences such as attitude strength and religiosity have no apparent effect in how attitudes relate to physician motivation to comply with such laws. The managerial and research implications of the reported study are presented and discussed.     

How global brands compete

It's time to rethink global branding. More than two decades ago, Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt argued that corporations should grow by selling standardized products all over the world. But consumers in most countries had trouble relating to generic products, so executives instead strove for global scale on backstage activities such as production while customizing product features and selling techniques to local tastes. Such "glocal" strategies now rule marketing. Global branding has lost more luster recently because transnational companies have been under siege, with brands like Coca-Cola and Nike becoming lightning rods for antiglobalization protests. The instinctive reaction of most transnational companies has been to try to fly below the radar. But global brands can't escape notice. In fact, most transnational corporations don't realize that because of their power and pervasiveness, people view them differently than they do other firms. In a research project involving 3,300 consumers in 41 countries, the authors found that most people choose one global brand over another because of differences in the brands'global qualities. Ratherthan ignore the global characteristics of their brands, firms must learn to manage those characteristics. That's critical, because future growth for most companies will likely come from foreign markets. Consumers base preferences on three dimensions of global brands--quality (signaled by a company's global stature); the cultural myths that brands author; and firms' efforts to address social problems. The authors also found that it didn't matter to consumers whether the brands they bought were American--a remarkable finding considering that the study was conducted when anti-American sentiment in many nations was on the rise.     

'A doe in the city': Women shareholders in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain

This paper investigates the role of women as shareholders in joint stock companies, and how far they can be characterised as active investors. It is based on a large database of company constitutions, together with procedural records and the pamphlet literature of the period. The penetration by women of the private sphere of investment did not always extend to the more public sphere of participation at shareholder meetings. Literary representations of women as speculators reinforced such boundaries. While the separate spheres may have been blurred, considerable limitations were set on the extent to which female shareholders could participate fully in the governance of joint stock companies.     

有备无患

灾难恢复（disaster recovery，DR）和运营持续性（business continuity，BC）是IT刊物上经常提到的两个话题。一般而言，如果系统出现了严重故障，IT部门会使用DR程序对其进行修复。而如果一家公司发生了运营网络中断，人们通常就会想到是某些软件或者硬件出了问题。渐渐地，人们会将硬件做得更可靠耐用，以减少故障，这使得多数备份设备成为多余的。现在很少有企业会把钱投在那些可以防止系统中断的硬件上了。但软件故障依然经常发生，特别是在进行系统升级等调整过程中，这样对软件进行测试、备份并实施应急计划就显得十分重要了。同时，硬件成本费用的不断下降，使得建立一套独立的检测系统更为可行，甚至还可以将其作为备用系统使用。     

银行究竟需要多少资本？

对银行而言,资本管理是一项重要议题和关键技能。本文按照资产规模,将全球100大银行作为样本,研究市场对银行资本的反应情况。得出的结论是,亚洲银行应该建立适当的资本水平、确定清晰的资本战略和提升资本分配的能力。     

Politics In A Dynamic View Of Land-Use Regulations: Of Interest Groups And Homevoters

The nature of land-use regulation differs by type of jurisdiction. Regulatory politics at the local level is the major source of the dynamic consistency problem. Courts are reluctant to enforce the regulatory commitments of previous officials at all levels of government, but the alternative political and reputation constraints on official promise-keeping are most problematic at the local level. Local majoritarianism presents the greatest challenge to attempts to improve the dynamic efficiency of land-use regulation.     

From catalog to Web: B2B multi-channel marketing strategy

The literature on catalog buying is heavily skewed to the business to consumer (B2C) area and increasingly is orientated to the multi-channel world of shopping choice, including online, catalog and store options. Previous studies have primarily been single equation explanations of catalog decisions, whereas the current study takes a hierarchical or systems approach to decision making in B2B marketing. A two-equation structural equation model (SEM) has been designed and a large sample (n = 1809) of business customers used to test the model. Price and catalog layout were seen to play a particularly important role in explaining buyer behavior. Additional multiple regression analysis was carried out to understand why purchasing agents who currently use one channel (catalog), would make use of a second, new channel (Web) in the future. The study identifies five key motivating factors for consumers in adopting a new (Web) channel for purchasing purposes. The study also identifies the switching costs that act as a barrier to adopting a Web channel.     

A Monte Carlo test of Slutsky symmetry

This paper demonstrates how Barnard's (1963) Monte Carlo test procedure can be applied to Slutsky symmetry in demand systems.     

POST-REFORM PRODUCTIVITY PERFORMANCE AND SOURCES OF GROWTH IN CHINESE INDUSTRY: 1980–85

This paper examines the productivity growth and its sources in 39 Chinese industries in the post-reform period 1980–85. We use both the gross-output and value-added models to isolate the contributions of labor, capital, materials and technical efficiency to growth in industrial output. Using new data from the National Industrial Census of China (1988) for large and medium-size enterprises, we find that Chinese industries, in particular, those in the manufacturing experienced sharp increases in total factor productivity growth in the 1984–85 period as compared to the 1980–84 period. Moreover, collective and private enterprises show higher output and total factor productivity gains than do state enterprises. Our regression results show that total factor productivity gains are closely tied to increases in retained profits and the proportion of total employees that are technical workers. However, labor bonuses have a negative effect on total factor productivity growth.     

An empirical examination of the preference structure for the distribution of earnings

A perplexing diversity of theory has persisted concerning the topic of earnings distribution. Empirical studies to date have only added additional inconsistencies. The contradictory findings of earlier studies suggest that shareholders' distribution perferences may not be identical across firms and over time. This study empirically examines the aggregate preference structure for the distribution of earnings by extending existing methodologies to a dynamic model. In the final model tested, distribution perferences are measured in the context of other economic variables. A sample of 97 widely held firms observed over 20 semiannual periods from 1968 to 1977 provided the data base for this study. The results here suggest that the aggregate preferences for the distribution of earnings are dynamic and depend on the relative level of other variables. All of the adjunct variables selected for inclusion in the model—risk, growth, and market environment—were found to have a significant impact on the level of preferences. In each case, the direction of effect was consistent with intuitive positions of those supporting dividend relevance.