Cultural influences on the design of incentive systems: The case of East Asia

Arguing that culture moderates the potency of various incentives in motivating employees, we propose a culture-contingent model of incentive system design in this article. Four nation-level determinants of culture are identified: historical events, economic/political structure, geographical location, and language characteristics. Based on evidence found in East Asia, specific propositions that either relate a national characteristic to some cultural attributes or predict how a cultural characteristic favours a particular type of incentive system are generated. The implications of this culture-contingent model for incentive system design in multinational firms are discussed.We would like to thank Donna Randall for her helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

Effects of pricing and promotion on consumer perceptions: it depends on how you frame it

This research examined the extent to which different promotional frames increased perceptions of deal value. Price discounts dominate the sales promotions employed by marketers. The framing literature suggests discounts have robust positive effects on consumer perceptions of deal value. However, the current research showed that negative quality inferences moderated discount framing effects and undermined deal value, particularly when no assurance of product quality was provided. Every-day-low-price offers were also vulnerable to negative quality inferences, while free gift frames maintained quality perceptions and increased deal value. Product trial acted to further magnify promotional framing effects, according to a confirmation bias. These findings were consistent with an attribute framing mechanism.     

Attitudes towards corporate social responsibility and perceived importance of social responsibility information characteristics in a decision context

This study addressed the questions of perceived importance of social responsibility information (SRI) characteristics in a decision context, as well as the attitudes of institutional investors toward social responsibility involvement. The results showed that SRI presently disclosed in company annual reports did not have any significant impact on institutional investors' decisions. However, if SRI were presented in quantified, financial form, and were focused on product improvement and fair business practices, such information would be perceived as more important for investment decisions. Attitudes toward corporate social responsibility also suggested that institutional investors were not totally opposed to company involvement in social activities. Hai Yap Teoh is associate professor in the Department of Accountancy, The University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. He has published extensively in local and international journals including Accounting, Organizations and Society and The International Journal of Accounting Education and Research. His major areas of research interest include corporate social responsibility and reporting.Godwin Shiu is teaching fellow in the Department of Accountancy, The University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. He is also doing a master's degree in accountancy.     

Trading Volume-Induced Spatial Autocorrelation in Real Estate Prices

Spatial dependence is often seen as a problem in econometrics rather than in economics. This study seeks to find an economic explanation for spatially correlated real estate prices. We posit spatial dependence as a process to discover price information from neighboring property transactions. Weaker spatial dependence is expected when price information in the immediate vicinity of a subject property is abundant. In the context of apartment buildings, in addition to the more commonly known horizontal dependence, there is also spatial dependence in the vertical dimension within the same building. Based on more than 18,000 transactions of highly homogeneous apartment units in Hong Kong, we found that the trading volume of a building depresses horizontal spatial dependence, but raises vertical spatial dependence. This not only confirmed the role of trading volume in the real estate price discovery process, but also questioned the validity of constant spatial autocorrelation assumption adopted in many studies.     

Boardroom centrality and firm performance

Firms with central boards of directors earn superior risk-adjusted stock returns. A long (short) position in the most (least) central firms earns average annual returns of 4.68%. Firms with central boards also experience higher future return-on-assets growth and more positive analyst forecast errors. Return prediction, return-on-assets growth, and analyst errors are concentrated among high growth opportunity firms or firms confronting adverse circumstances, consistent with boardroom connections mattering most for firms standing to benefit most from information and resources exchanged through boardroom networks. Overall, our results suggest that director networks provide economic benefits that are not immediately reflected in stock prices.     

基于消费者运动的社会营销学研究综述

20世纪美国消费者运动风起云涌。推动了政府的立法活动和营销学研究。本文回顾美国消费者运动的进程，评述基于消费者运动的社会营销学研究，并对中国的消费者权益保护及其社会营销学研究提出建议。     

Spatial Variation in the Determinants of House Prices and Apartment Rents in China

This paper provides an examination of China??s residential real estate market at the county level using data from that country??s 2000 census. The market is a new one, having only been fully established in 1998. The analysis in the paper is in the form of an aggregate (county-level) hedonic model specified in two versions. Global parameters results are estimated using spatial error model specifications while more local effects are estimated by geographically weighted regression. Global results are typical in that structural characteristics such as floor space and contextual characteristics such as level of in-migration are important in residential prices. Local results, however, indicate significant spatial variation in the effect of both structural amenities and locational context on housing prices. In a simpler specification, rents are shown to respond positively to both median house prices levels and the supply of apartments available at market prices, but also with significant spatial variation across China.     

Corporate Governance,Social Responsibility,and Data Breaches

We study whether corporate governance and social responsibility are related to data breaches. We find that socially responsible companies with smaller boards and greater financial expertise are less likely to be breached. The financial impact of a breach is visible in the long term. Specifically, data‐breach firms have –3.5% one‐year buy‐and‐hold abnormal returns. Additionally, banks with breaches have significant declines in deposits and nonbanks have significant declines in sales in the long run. Finally, we find that following a data breach, companies are more likely to replace their chief executive officer and chief technology officer as well as improve their governance and social responsibility.     

Does Congruence with an Entrepreneur Social Identity Encourage Positive Emotion Under Environmental Dynamism?

Entrepreneurial identities and emotions can have profound effects on entrepreneurs. We examine how positive emotion (PE) among entrepreneurs may be influenced by the congruence they experience between their self‐concept and the entrepreneur social identity. Given that uncertainty in the business environment can exert powerful effects throughout the entrepreneurial process, we further test the moderating impact of environmental dynamism on the relationship between identity congruence and PE. Results from a study of 175 entrepreneurs indicate that entrepreneurs experiencing greater congruence have higher levels of PE, and that this relationship is stronger in more dynamic environments.     

Subnational home market bias in Vietnam: Evidence from enterprise‐level data

This paper contributes to the home (market) bias literature where administrative or political borders limit trade across borders. Home bias is well documented at the national and subnational level. To sort out macro (e.g., location characteristics) and micro (e.g., enterprise characteristics) factors behind home bias, we use small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) data from Vietnam. Using the fractional multinomial logit model, we find that the proportion of SME sales outside of their home markets is positively associated with enterprise size, age, number of business association memberships and the distance of SMEs' most important supplier. In contrast, the proportion of SME sales to neighbouring provinces is negatively associated with the share of SME production for final consumption. Besides enterprise‐level frictions, market characteristics matter too. The proportion of SME sales to customers in their home markets is negatively associated with home or neighbouring provinces' governance quality, while the proportion of sales to customers in neighbouring provinces is positively associated with these areas' governance quality. These suggest that good governance frees SME resources for use in selling to less familiar markets.