Shared organizational values: Measurement and impact upon strategic marketing implementation

The concept of shared organizational values and its impact upon successful marketing strategy implementation are discussed. The need to measure the degree to which values within the organization are shared is stressed. A method to quantitatively measure the degree of value congruency and the strength of value consistency is proposed. An exploratory, empirical study is presented in which organization values are measured and found to impact upon strategy implementation.     

Adjustment costs and dynamic factor demands for U.S. cigarette manufacturing

Following the approach of Berndt, Fuss, and Waverman, a dynamic model for U.S. cigarette manufacturing is developed and factor demands estimated. Tobacco and capital stocks are treated as quasi-tixed inputs. The results indicate that there are significant adjustment costs associated with adjusting tobacco stocks, but not with adjusting the capital stock. Short-run, intermediate-run, and long-run output constant elasticities are estimated for inputs in cigarette production. Demand for U.S. tobacco by U.S. cigarette manufacturers is found be more inelastic than shown by previous studies using static models. Cigarettes produced for export appear to differ in their marginal cost of production from cigarettes produced for the sale in the U.S. market.     

Henry George:

ABSTRACT While generally known today for his famous proposal for a Single Tax, Henry George has not been widely recognized as one of the first economists to write about the possibility of political market failure. Based on his appreciation for the allocational efficiency of markets and his suspicion of government intervention, George was an early advocate of public choice ideas who repeatedly warned of the dangers of rent seeking.     

Innovation and Future Direction of Supply Chain Management in the Canadian Agri-food Industry

The supply chains for agri-food products in Canada are being shaped by a number of forces including the globalization of markets, technological change and the increased focus by consumers — both domestically and internationally — on issues such as food safety, quality assurance and environmental sensitivity. This paper explores these changes, offering an explanation of why they are occurring, discussing the driving forces for change and providing examples from alternative supply chain structures in the Canadian agri-food sector.     

Analyzing Real Estate Data Problems Using the Gibbs Sampler

Real estate data are often characterized by data irregularities: missing data, censoring or truncation, measurement error, etc. Practitioners often discard missing- or censored-data cases and ignore measurement error. We argue here that an attractive remedy for these irregularity problems is simulation-based model fitting using the Gibbs sampler. The style of the paper is primarily pedagogic, employing a simple illustration to convey the essential ideas, unobscured by implementation complications. Focusing on the missing-data problem, we show dramatic improvement in inference by retaining rather than deleting cases of partially observed data. We also detail Gibbs-sampler usage for other data problems.     

What do we one the future? the construction of a better present

The debt-to-the-future issue is discussed taking into account that it is not simply a poetic or innocent statement but a present complex problem. An analytical approach through the issue of risk and uncertainty might allow us to delimit our reflection. At the same time, it might become the main axis in the reality we face today, since risk, reliability, and uncertainty appear as characteristic features of modern society. Participatory processes, as manifestations of post-normal science, are proposed as a way to cope with uncertainty.