Effects of considering uncontrollable factors in sales force performance evaluation

Sales managers often make adjustments for factors such as territory difficulty or representative experience when doing performance evaluations. These adjustments may be subjective, they may be simple ratio calculations (e.g., sales divided by territory size), or they may involve complicated regression analyses. This research attempts an explanation of how and why these adjustments influence perceptions of the performance evaluation process, particularly its fairness and usefulness. Data from two surveys are presented. The first is an exploratory survey of sales managers; the second is a fuller survey of salespeople. Results show that making adjustments for territory difficulty increases perceptions of fairness and usefulness of the evaluation system among both sales managers and salespeople. Feedback quality is a key mediator of these effects for both groups. A different pattern exists with regard to accounting for representative experience. For sales managers, there are no effects on feedback quality or fairness or usefulness. Salespeople, however, rate systems that account for representative differences as providing better feedback quality, as more fair, and as more useful. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Longitudinal effects of job insecurity on employee outcomes: The moderating role of emotional intelligence and the leader-member exchange

The longitudinal study reported herein examines the buffering effects of individual and social resources (emotional intelligence and the leader-member exchange relationship) on the relationships between job insecurity and employee reactions (somatic complaints and organizational commitment) and the relationships between employee reactions over time. The results of this study, which was based on data drawn from 157 nurses employed by three hospitals in China, indicate that emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between job insecurity and somatic complaints at both Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2) and that the leader-member exchange relationship (LMX) buffers the effects of somatic complaints at T1 on organizational commitment at T2. Overall, the findings reveal that the ability of employees to deal with their emotions and their relationships with their supervisors is an important resource that serves to protect employee outcomes when job security is uncertain.     

Controlling monopoly power in a double-auction market experiment

There is robust evidence in the experimental economics literature showing that monopoly power is affected by trading institutions. In this paper, we study whether trading institutions themselves can shape agents' market behavior through the formation of anchors. We recreate experimentally five different double-auction market structures (perfect competition, perfect competition with quotas, cartel on price, cartel on price with quotas, and monopoly) in a within-subject design, varying the order of markets implementation. We investigate whether monopoly power endures the formation of price anchors emerged in previously implemented market structures. Results from our classroom experiments suggest that double-auction trading institutions succeed in preventing monopolists from exploiting their market power. Furthermore, the formation of price anchors in previously implemented markets negatively impacts on monopolists' power in later market structures.     

REDUCING INEQUALITIES AMONG UNEQUALS

This article establishes an equivalence between four incomplete rankings of distributions of income among agents who are vertically differentiated with respect to some nonincome characteristic (health, household size, etc.). The first ranking is the possibility of going from one distribution to the other by a finite sequence of income transfers from richer and more highly ranked agents to poorer and less highly ranked ones. The second ranking is the unanimity among utilitarian planners who assume that agents' marginal utility of income is decreasing with respect to both income and the source of vertical differentiation. The third ranking is the Bourguignon (Journal of Econometrics, 42 (1989), 67–80) Ordered Poverty Gap dominance criterion. The fourth ranking is a new dominance criterion based on cumulative lowest incomes.     

Triple‐entry accounting with blockchain: How far have we come?

Although double‐entry accounting has been used for more than 600 years, today’s era of disruptive technological change utilising blockchain and FinTech has led to the emergence of another promising accounting method: triple‐entry accounting. This paper explores triple‐entry accounting, from its conception to the current state of play, using three case studies. We find that: (i) in a blockchain ecosystem, for some accounts, business entities will only need to perform a single entry internally and the opposite entry will be recorded in a public shared ledger; and (ii) triple‐entry accounting is a new and a more efficient way to address fundamental trust and transparency issues that plague current accounting systems. Triple‐entry accounting with blockchain, when properly implemented, can fundamentally improve accounting.     

Nudging the financial market? A review of the nudge theory

A systematic review of the nudge literature and an examination of its applications across different domains reveals that: (i) a nudge, in the sense of using choice architecture to push people to choose desired results, works well; and (ii) a nudge, in the sense of pushing people to choose desired results so that people will be better off, remains questionable. In financial markets, regulators and financial intermediaries currently use nudge theory to: (i) adjust how investment choices are presented to investors; and (ii) provide information in a selective way. Besides nudging investors, it is also possible for regulators to nudge financial intermediaries towards making more ethical decisions.     

Testing the local volatility assumption: a statistical approach

In practice, the choice of using a local volatility model or a stochastic volatility model is made according to their respective ability to fit implied volatility surfaces. In this paper, we adopt a different point of view. Indeed, using a purely statistical methodology, we design new procedures aiming at testing the assumption of a local volatility model for the price dynamics, against the alternative of a stochastic volatility model. These test procedures are based only on historical data and do not require any calibration procedures via option prices. We also provide a convincing simulation study and an empirical analysis on future contracts on interest rates.     

The importance of an internal marketing orientation in social services

• The current research takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine the role of emotions in the successful delivery of social services. Survey data collected from 533 frontline social service providers were subjected to regression analyses. Findings reveal that emotional intelligence mediates the relationship between emotional labor and job stress, which in‐turn impacts job performance. The findings suggest that an internal marketing orientation is needed to better match the organization's products (i.e., jobs) with its internal customers (employees), and in‐turn improve the quality (job performance) of its offerings to its external customers.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.