Corporate Social Responsibility in Colombia: Making Sense of Social Strategies

As corporate social responsibility (CSR) grows increasingly well known and accepted worldwide, organizations attempt to make sense of their social strategies bridge the gap between their current situation and what their stakeholders expect of them. If social strategies represent a potential stepping stone to more sophisticated forms of CSR, then research must investigate the strategies that organizations have adopted. After defining a framework for classifying and analyzing organizations’ social strategies, this article considers empirical evidence from 10 case studies in Colombia to reveal how organizations might build on their social involvement to engage in more sophisticated CSR practices. The framework also suggests some different trajectories that organizations might follow.     

The Manchester Super Casino: Experience and Learning in a Cross-Sector Social Partnership

The management of cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) among government, business, and not-for-profit entities can be complex and difficult. This article considers the importance of organizational experience and learning for the successful development of CSSPs. By analyzing the Manchester Super Casino, this research emphasizes the significant benefits of prior experience with CSSPs that enable partners to learn and develop relationships, skills, and capabilities over time, which then have positive influences on future performance. The result is a refined learning model of the CSSP process that includes key variables for CSSP success. As such, these findings provide a template for managing complex CSSPs from the perspective of the different partner organizations.     

Avatars as information: Perception of consumers based on their avatars in virtual worlds

The presence of consumers and companies in the virtual worlds has increased in recent years. It is predicted that 80% of active Internet consumers and Fortune 500 companies will have an avatar or presence in a virtual community, including social networks, by the end of 2011 (eMarketer, 2007 ). The increase in the number of consumers with avatars emphasizes the need for a better understanding of who these consumers behind the avatars really are in order to convert these individuals to online and real‐world customers. The objective of this paper is to investigate how avatars reflect the personality of their creators (targets) in virtual worlds. Using the Brunswik Lens Model as the theoretical framework, an investigation of real consumers in the virtual world Second Life reveals that perceivers who view targets' avatar use particular thin‐slices of observations such as avatar cues (e.g., attractiveness, gender, hairstyle) to form accurate personality impressions about targets. The findings support the premise that real‐life companies that intend to expand to virtual worlds can use member avatars as a proxy for member personality and lifestyles. As a future research direction, avatars and other consumer‐generated media could be used as the basis for targeting and segmentation of online consumers. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The entrepreneur’s mode of entry: the effect of social and financial capital

This article uses a French database of firms set up in 1998 to investigate the determinants of takeovers versus startups as a mode of entry. It focuses on two determinants that previous research has not fully analyzed: social capital and financial capital. Our findings suggest social capital affects the mode of entry. They show that entrepreneurs with social capital are more likely to create new firms from scratch than to take over existing firms. We confirm the effect of financial capital on the mode of entry. Bank loans are more often associated with takeovers than with startups and low initial wealth is more often associated with startups than with takeovers. These results show that finance affects the mode of entry.     

From wheel of fortune to wheel of misfortune: Financial crises,cycles, and consumer predation

Predator–prey dynamics are widely used in ecology but seldom utilized in economics and marketing, despite their ability to express financial market agents' behaviors when considered in combination with economic cycles and financial crises. This multidisciplinary article presents a stylized framework of a market cycle that combines the notions of supply and demand and predator–prey interactions between buyers and sellers of housing mortgages. We illustrate our framework using data from the Global Financial Crisis and a Lotka-Volterra predator–prey model. We find that with our framework we can capture the dynamics of the market, particularly the peak and decline in the number of sellers and sold subprime mortgages. Our framework sheds a new light on consumer behaviors, pinpointing how they can put themselves into vulnerable prey positions. This article is one of the first of its kind to propose market phases and predator–prey dynamics nested in economic cycles and consumer buying trends.     

Audience Segmentation of Kentucky Mothers by Nonparticipation Status in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women,Infants, and Children

We identify women most and least likely to discontinue participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. Kentucky WIC program management information system data from 2012 to 2013 was explored through a retrospective cohort study. Audience segmentation identified unique groups with respect to nonparticipation. Presumptive eligibility for Medicaid was the strongest predictor of nonparticipation. Among those who were not presumptively eligible, women who were the only ones in their households enrolled in the program were at higher risk of nonparticipation. Outreach strategies at the point of enrollment or when presumptive eligibility for Medicaid is granted could mitigate further nonparticipation.     

Accelerated Multi-Organization Conflict Resolution

In this paper, we discuss two situations where two organizations with different aims recognized the dysfunctionality of their relationship. In each of these cases, which were long running (6–8 months), the organizations had worked hard to resolve this dysfunctionality, and conflict, by organizing off-site meetings designed to resolve the conflict. These 1-day meetings failed. Subsequently Group Support System workshops were used for 1 day workshops and in each case the conflict was essentially resolved within 55 min. The research reported in this paper seeks to answer the question: what happened in these cases that led to a resolution of the conflict in such a short time period, given other attempts had failed? Specifically the paper explores the impact of the GSS used to facilitate two organizations seeking to resolve a conflictual situation.     

When the decision ball keeps rolling: An investigation of the Sisyphus effect among maximizing consumers

Maximizing and satisficing consumers are distinguished by the quest for perfection (the former) versus the acceptance of good-enough options (the latter). The emerging literature in this field leans toward a view of maximizers as consumers who take into account as much information as possible in order to achieve the best purchase outcome. Our article explores the paradoxical phenomenon that maximizers minimize the value of information resulting from their past experiences; i.e., their previous purchase decisions. As a modern Sisyphus rolling his boulder back up the hill after every decision, a maximizer starts anew for each decision that is undertaken even if a similar process has been undertaken in the past; the very quest for perfection makes a maximizer minimize the value of past decisions. Furthermore, the generalizability of this finding is examined for different levels of purchase involvement. Results from two studies, including a probabilistic sample drawn from the general US population, show that past retail store performance becomes a weaker predictor of repurchase intention as maximization tendencies increase among consumers. In the same vein, regret has less negative impact on maximizers?? behavioral intention than on satisficers??. In addition, when involvement increases through price, satisficers start to behave like maximizers as past service experiences becomes less strongly related to their intention. The support found for the Sisyphus Effect is discussed in light of the current theorization of Schwartz and colleagues regarding maximizing consumers. Finally, suggestions for further research are developed.