The reciprocal and non‐linear relationship of sustainability and financial performance

The goal of this paper is to describe the link between financial performance and the level of sustainability. In a novel approach, the paper classifies firms based on past financial success to address a potentially reciprocal relationship. For the groups of better and worse performing firms and for the entire sample, the above link is then tested, also accounting for non‐linearity in the relationship. We show that environmental management system (EMS) implementation as a proxy for a firm's sustainability level is only positively associated with the financial performance of financially well‐performing firms. Conversely, it has a negative association with the performance of less good firms. We show that this implies that firms cannot change from good to bad performance, and vice versa, solely through the implementation of an EMS, and also that the result remains when introducing non‐linearity in the link. Based on this result, we discuss implications for the direction of causality.     

特别的商贸展 商贸站上的照明标志——以及它们的特殊要求

商贸展有它自己的规则。那些准备参展的公司经常自己设计、策划和建造他们的展台、但是,大多数情况下,他们还会借助广告公司和招牌公司来设计并打造它们。设计一个成功的商贸展台需要许多做很多不同的工作,而且,由于空间有限,我将集中介绍一些照明方面的知识,特别是商贸展上的照明标志设计和结构。     

霓虹101 给新手的霓虹标识基础知识

从历史上来看,当在经济萧条时期或战争末期市场上充斥着“新过时“的人力资本时,人们会开始寻求新的机会。在目前的经济环境下,有些人可能会尝试标识这一行业。制作标识,尤其是霓虹灯招牌,并不是件轻松的事。然而,我却认识不少霓虹灯匠和标识制作者在这个行业中找到了宁静     

Steering customers to the online channel: The influence of personal relationships,learning investments,and attitude toward the firm

Understanding the consequences of customer steering is a key challenge of multichannel customer management. Although many firms are faced with the question whether customers should be steered to the online channel to realize the potential benefits of this channel, little is known about the circumstances under which customers will be unreceptive to the online channel and displeased if they are steered. This research addresses this critical gap and examines the impact of customer steering with assortment modifications on customers' online migration decisions and overall satisfaction in three experimental studies. The results highlight the importance of three contingency factors: personal relationships in the current channel, learning investments into the online channel and attitude toward the steering firm.     

From Industrial Policy to Innovation Policy: Japan's Pursuit of Competitive Advantage*

Japan faces significant challenges in encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship. Attempts to formally model past industrial policy interventions uniformly uncover little, if any, positive impact on productivity, growth, or welfare. The evidence indicates that most resource flows went to large, politically influential “backwards” sectors, suggesting that political economy considerations may be central to the apparent ineffectiveness of Japanese industrial policy. Rather than traditional industrial or science and technology policy, financial and labor market reforms appear more promising. As a group, Japan's industrial firms are competitive relative to their foreign counterparts. Where Japan falls behind is in the heavily regulated service sector. The problems appear to be due less to a lack of industrial policy than to an excess of regulation. Japan may have more to gain through restructuring the lagging service sector than by expending resources in pursuit of marginal gains in the industrial sector.     

Narcissistic rhetoric and crowdfunding performance: A social role theory perspective

Drawing from clinical and organizational narcissism research, we develop a novel measure of narcissistic rhetoric, investigating its prevalence in a sample of 1863 crowdfunding campaigns. An experiment using 1800 observations further validates our measure and confirms our hypothesized inverted-U relationship between narcissistic rhetoric and crowdfunding performance. Leveraging social role theory, we explore sex, sexual orientation, and race as potential moderators of this relationship. Moderation tests reveal LGBTQ entrepreneurs generally yield greater performance when using narcissistic rhetoric than heterosexuals while racial minorities underperform Caucasians using narcissistic rhetoric. Our findings suggest successful crowdfunding campaigns must balance narcissistic rhetoric with entrepreneurs' perceived social roles.     

Food Values Applied to Livestock Products

Food values have been proposed in previous research as a method of identifying stable constructs of consumer preference. We conducted an online survey of 1950 US respondents using best–worst scaling applying the concept of food values to four specific meat and dairy products: ground beef, beef steak, chicken breast, and milk. We test the applicability of general food values to specific products, while further discovering the nature of heterogeneity of values by defining classes of respondents. Our findings suggest that the general food values previously proposed apply well to specific products of the livestock industry. We also found that the differences between consumer classes were driven primarily by price sensitivity, with many of the most important and least important values remaining the same.     

Strategic revenue recognition to achieve earnings benchmarks

I examine whether managers use discretion in revenue recognition to avoid three earnings benchmarks. I find that managers use discretion in both accrued revenue (i.e., accounts receivable) and deferred revenue (i.e., advances from customers) to avoid negative earnings surprises, but find little evidence that discretion is used to avoid losses or earnings decreases. For a common sample of firms with both deferred revenue and accounts receivable, I find evidence that managers do not prefer to exercise discretion in either account. However, further tests show that managers preferred to use discretion in deferred revenue before the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 went into effect, consistent with them choosing to manage an account with the lowest real costs to the firm (i.e., future cash consequences). My results suggest that the revenue recognition joint project undertaken by the FASB and IASB to reduce managerial estimation in revenue recognition may have the unintended consequence of leading to greater real costs imposed on shareholders as firms are likely to use even greater discretion in accounts receivable.     

Public involvement in policy-making: the case of a Citizens’ Jury on genetic testing for common disorders

Abstract: Improving public involvement in policy-making is generally accepted to be a good thing, and a whole range of methods now exist in the UK that try to achieve this aim. However, few steps have been taken to involve the public directly in decisions on policy issues that will be vital in the future but are not yet on the immediate agenda of policy-makers. One attempt to do just this was made in Wales in November 1997 when a Citizens’ Jury explored future policies for genetic testing for common disorders in the NHS. This paper describes the Citizens’ Jury experiment and also includes a summary of this Jury's recommendations.