Product-harm crisis management: Time heals all wounds?

This paper focuses on product-harm crises and examines consumer responses associated with product defect in three time periods (i.e., 3 days, 3 months and 1 year after a crisis). An experiment was conducted based on three widely accepted- influences on product-harm crisis management (i.e., crisis extent, social responsibility and organizational responses). The fourth influencing factor, time, was introduced in the present study. The four-factor model for measuring the effectiveness of product-harm crisis management was tested with particular attention to the impact of time. Crises were described in scenarios for a fictitious mobile phone. The results demonstrate that the effects of a crisis are minimal a few months after the crisis has occurred. Consumers tend to “forget” about the crisis and its effects, especially in cases when the company is socially responsible, and when the company issues a voluntary recall of its product.     

Housing tenure choice and the dual income household

Housing tenure choice has been the subject of a very large literature. Many treatments have sought to estimate the effect of household income on the likelihood of home ownership. To date, no study has ever disaggregated the household income of married couples into the separate labor income components to see if one partner’s income has a different effect than the other. Using a derived likelihood function to control for censoring in the wife’s income, this paper estimates the effect of separate incomes on housing tenure choice, accounting for possible endogeneity of the wife’s income. To compare the results of this estimation method, the paper also estimates the standard IV models, 2SLS and IV probit. While the results show that there is no endogeneity of the wife’s income, ignoring the censoring of the endogenous variable (when a large fraction of observations are censored) can possibly lead to biased coefficient estimates. Also, this paper confirms the importance of total household income, which has a larger effect than the total disaggregated components.     

Networks and linkages among firms and organizations in the Ottawa-region technology cluster

This paper reports on a study of the networking and linkage practices of technology and non-technology firms within the Ottawa cluster. The work seeks to understand how and why particular patterns of networks and linkages evolve and it examines empirically the usage and value of networks and linkages. Previous work argues that technology firms need to be relatively more adept at developing external relationships in order to be successful than do non-technology based companies. This work, however, finds that technology firms exhibit fewer linkages than non-technology based companies do within the Ottawa cluster. The research suggests that the vitality of the Ottawa cluster could be further enhanced through the promotion of additional networking and linkages among regional firms. A key implication for management practice is that CEOs of technology-based firms should work towards establishing and maintaining additional valued relationships.     

Redefining Local Government Roles In Public Services

County officials in the seven-county metropolitan area of the State of Minnesota's Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul were seeking to redefine county roles in service delivery. This article reports on a process model that was piloted on two services. The model was commissioned by officials; was based upon and informed by literature and comparative experience; began with an examination of functions performed; involved participants in focusing the study; was context-focused; and involved local stakeholders in projecting the implications of alternative county roles. These characteristics complicated the research management process because the process took more time, involved more actors, and required more coordination than traditional research. However, having stakeholders identify alternatives and bring factual material to the process was critical to the success of the model and including the comparative and contextual research both strengthened the policy conclusions and improved the probability of their adoption and implementation. A case of a Minnesota county that followed the model in an effort to reform water governance within the county illustrated adoption of the approach. The stakeholder analysis process was previously applied in Africa, China and Southeast Asia and the model should be applicable to a wide range of settings and problems.     

Recreation and the Environment as Cultural Dimensions in Contemporary American Society

This paper broadly explores changing outdoor recreation demands, environmental opinions and demographics in the United States. With this country's population predicted to more than double by the end of this century, it is imperative that we understand these trends and their implications for better managing our natural environment and providing opportunities for outdoor recreation in that environment. Using national survey data, we have described differences in recreation behavior (participation) and environmental attitudes nationwide across six socio-demographic factors-race, country of birth, rural-urban residence, region of the country, age and income. Results indicate that demographic differences, recreation activity choices and people's environmental positions are linked.     

MNE home country cultural norms and conflict strategy fit in transnational business contract disputes

The increasing frequency and complexity of transnational business relationships has been commensurate with an increase in contractual disputes. In such situations, home country cultural norms will often influence how MNEs resolve contractual disputes in foreign markets. This begs the question: does fit between an MNE's choice of conflict strategy and its home country cultural norms affect monetary payouts (costs) in transnational business contract disputes? We apply organizational imprinting theory and the fit paradigm to a model employing data from U.S. court cases involving 316 MNEs from 47 countries. We find that choosing a conflict strategy that fits home country cultural norms will result in higher monetary payouts for MNEs. Additionally, cultural distance, but not legal distance, enhances the positive relationship between MNE conflict strategy fit and monetary payouts. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Combining choice modelling and multi-criteria analysis for technology diffusion: An application to the uptake of electric vehicles

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the residential sector by adopting technologies such as solar photovoltaics and electric vehicles (EVs) have major implications for the capacity of electricity distribution networks, particularly at local areas with high uptake. Consumer decisions to purchase these technologies are also influenced by several complex criteria such as costs/benefits, performance, appeal/status, risk, psychographics, and demographics. This complexity motivated the development of an innovative diffusion model, incorporating features of multi-criteria analysis and choice modelling, to estimate the adoption of these technology options spatially across the landscape of heterogeneous consumers. We test the model to forecast market share of EVs through to 2030, using the vehicle stock across all 1.5 million households in Victoria, Australia. Seven financial and non-financial criteria were included and calibrated via focus groups and a large‐scale survey. Annual change of criteria values and their elasticity to adoption were incorporated. Geographical differences in uptake of EVs were primarily due to driving distance, employment status and household income, with urban areas having about three times the proportional uptake. By testing the model for a range of incentives, we demonstrate its capability to inform and evaluate policy options.