Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee–Company Identification

This study proposes two identification cuing factors (i.e., CSR associations and CSR participation) to understand how corporate social responsibility (CSR) relates to employees’ identification with their firm. The results reveal that a firm’s CSR initiatives increase employee–company identification (E–C identification). E–C identification, in turn, influences employees’ commitment to their company. However, CSR associations do not directly influence employees’ identification with a firm, but rather influence their identification through perceived external prestige (PEP). Compared to CSR associations, CSR participation has a direct influence on E–C identification. On the basis of these findings, it is argued that CSR performance can be an effective way for companies to maintain a positive relationship with their employees.     

国际当代艺术市场的台前与幕后

当2006年纽约苏富比举行中国当代艺术专拍,全面点燃市场行情之后,国际当代艺术市场的交易情况也越来越多反应到新闻中来。这些消息,多为直接报道成交情况,往往看到的是一连串的数字,而作品本身的社会根基和艺术价值却乏人问津。事实上美国如何把艺术及市场的中心从巴黎拉到纽约,如何确立当代艺术的美国话语权以逐步取代现代艺术,还有艺术家和艺术品背后的掌权者们——画廊、拍卖行、美术馆和媒体等生态链是如何有机配合的,才是造成当代艺术市场价格变动的关键。而当以美国为牵引的这一套当代艺术史发展逻辑已经几乎穷尽其自身的可能性时,中国作为东方文化体系中的重要一员,又会对挑战与机遇如何反应呢?让我们先从战后当代艺术市场的源起开始看起。     

Exploring customers’ store loyalty using the means-end chain approach

The study is aimed at revealing the relationships in terms of customer store loyalty by using means-end chains (MEC) analysis, in order to examine the linkages between department stores’ service attributes, involvement, satisfaction and loyalty each of which the customer regards as important. In the study, customer involvement, satisfaction and service quality are connotations that are strongly linked with the customer store loyalty, with service quality being the element to which the platinum tier customers attach the most importance. Data are gathered for a MEC analysis by interviewing 34 platinum tier customers of department stores individually. The results reveal that platinum tier customers are department store customers with a relatively high degree of involvement which is likely to have a positive impact on both core and peripheral service quality, satisfaction toward store loyalty. Although there are numerous studies in the literature that use the means-end chain model to examine customer value within the realm of consumer behavior, few studies discuss platinum tier customers’ store loyalty which is a phenomenon currently receiving a great deal of interest. In contrast to prior research, three connotations are integrated in the study to represent the content and structure of stores’ loyalty attributes for MEC analysis which can offer a different perspective and better understanding for developing highly targeted marketing strategies.     

Benchmarking and Transparency: Incentives for the Pharmaceutical Industry’s Corporate Social Responsibility

With over 2 billion people lacking medicines for treatable diseases and 14 million people dying annually from infectious disease, there is undeniable need for increased access to medicines. There has been an increasing trend to benchmark the pharmaceutical industry on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in access to medicines. Benchmarking creates a competitive inter-business environment and acts as incentive for improving CSR. This article investigates the corporate feedback discourses pharmaceutical companies make in response to criticisms from benchmarking reports. It determines whether these responses are part of a healthy process in increasing access to medicines or a barrier to improvement. A qualitative analysis on the feedback the industry provided was performed, and the responses seen in these statements were grouped by analysing the language used, the ideas portrayed and atti- tudes of the companies. Increasing transparency through benchmarking is a powerful tool which reveals the industry’s shortfalls to the public, affects the decisions of socially responsible investors, and is a risk to their financial bottom line. This article demonstrates the importance of benchmarking and transparency in creating inter-business competition and the translation of these responses to actual access to medicine practices.     

Relating International Trade to the Housing Market

Studies of tariffs have tended to ignore their impact on housing markets. This paper builds a simple dynamic general-equilibrium model to bridge the gap. The model is consistent with empirical findings that housing prices in several small open economies, and the price of nontradeables relative to tradeables, have increased over time. The model also allows closed-form solutions of the elasticity of the economic growth rate, the housing-stock growth rate, and the housing-price growth rate, with respect to the tariff rate. Other testable implications are generated.     

Efficiency, Performance and Changing Corporate Governance in China's Township–Village Enterprises since the 1990s

This article outlines some of the major challenges facing Chinese township–village enterprises (TVEs) since the 1990s. The authors argue that the internal mechanisms associated with the unique ownership structure of TVEs has allowed them to perform better than state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Since the mid-1990s, debt levels in the TVE sector have increased sharply. Most of the problems of TVEs have been magnified by the close relationship between local governments and enterprises, which was once one of their major strengths. Since the mid-1990s, local governments have come to regard TVEs with high levels of debt as a burden rather than an asset. In response local governments have moved to other, more indirect forms of governance over most TVEs under their control, while retaining direct control over the most successful. These alternative ownership structures include share-holding co-operatives and outright privatisation.     

Technology Choice and Saving in the Presence of a Fixed Adoption Cost

This paper explores the relationship between technology choice and saving in the presence of fixed costs of technology adoption. While richer agents adopt the more productive technology immediately it is available, poorer agents optimally choose to wait before switching to the better technology. In the interim, they save more than others and more than in the absence of the prospect of switching to the new technology. The paper thus provides an explanation for the phenomenon that the saving rate and the growth rate of output increase over time in the transition.     

Accuracy and Reliability Considerations of Option Pricing Algorithms

A wide variety of computational schemes have been proposed for the numerical valuation of various classes of options. Experiences in numerical computation have revealed that the details of the implementation of the auxiliary conditions in the numerical algorithms may have profound effects on numerical accuracy. Difficulties in designing algorithms that deal with the path‐dependent payoffs, monitoring features, etc., have been well reported in the literature. In this article, the theoretical issues on the assessment of numerical schemes with regard to accuracy of approximation of auxiliary conditions, rate of convergence, and oscillation phenomena are reviewed. In particular, the oscillation phenomena in bond‐price calculations and the intricacies in implementing the auxiliary conditions in barrier options, proportional step options, and lookback options are discussed. With different types of options and modes of monitoring (continuous or discrete), the optimal method of placing the lattice nodes with reference to the boundary (absorbing or reflecting) are examined in order to achieve linear temporal rate of convergence. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21:875–903, 2001     

Shopping value in online auctions: Their antecedents and outcomes

Online auctions present unique characteristics in the consumer decision-making process that raise new issues related to consumer shopping behaviors in auction-based purchases. The present research examined the relationship between consumer characteristics (i.e., compulsive buying behavior, variety-seeking tendency, and price sensitivity) and shopping value (i.e., utilitarian and hedonic) in online auctions and found that both compulsive buying behavior and variety-seeking tendency are critical factors of shopping value in the online auction environment. There were no positive relationships between price sensitivity and shopping value. The results of this study also revealed that consumers’ shopping value positively influenced their preference, which, in turn, formed behavioral intentions in online auctions. While utilitarian value was found to be a significant predictor of behavioral intentions, hedonic value was not. However, hedonic value influenced intentions indirectly through preference.