Consecrating video games as cultural artifacts: Intellectual legitimation as a source of industry renewal

The video games industry, one of the fastest growing creative industries and now engaging larger proportions of populations as smartphones and tablets achieve wider use, seeks to enhance its institutional legitimacy in order to further exploit the new economic possibilities provided by, for example, portable digital media and their market penetration. This strategy is based on a form of consecration, a portrayal of video games as cultural artifacts, i.e., objects carrying a wider cultural and aesthetic significance than merely being a form of entertainment. In order to consecrate the video game, the industry relies on video game reviewers and journalists. This strategy, rooted in market opportunity recognition, challenges some of the conventional wisdom of the industry, the gamer community, and the inherited mainstream media view. As a consequence, institutional legitimacy is not easily acquired or earned since historical conditions and path-dependencies also matter in high-pace industries such as the video game industry.     

National versus supranational bank regulation: Gains and losses of joining a banking union

We ask how the structure of international banking affects the decision of a national regulator to join a banking union and to transfer regulatory powers to the supranational level. The focus is on bank supervision and bank resolution. A national regulator ignores possible gains or losses, which accrue to other jurisdictions if banks are internationally active. A supranational regulator takes these regulatory external effects into account. While supranational regulation improves total welfare, this is not necessarily the case for welfare in single countries. By analyzing the size and determinants of spillover effects we show how they constrain a country’s willingness to participate in a banking union. Our results may explain why some member states of the European Union currently hesitate to join the European Banking Union.     

“It is better to be loved than feared: Machiavellianism and the dark side of internal networking”

Marketing Letters - There is a wealth of evidence—from both practice and academic research—demonstrating the efficacy of internal networking for sales performance. However, scant...     

Mindfulness,Money Attitudes,and Credit

Consumer credit is a central feature of modern living, having been an important topic of research for some time. In contrast, mindfulness has only recently gained research prominence. Our study develops a model that links individuals' mindfulness with their credit intentions/use, and that further proposes money attitudes as a mediator variable. Broad support for the model is provided by a sample of students from a Portuguese University and a second sample composed of adult US residents. The results suggest that mindfulness might play a significant role in shaping consumers' money attitudes and credit intentions/use. Additionally, the study suggests that the relationships of mindfulness and money attitudes with credit are only significant when credit is directed toward the purchase of nonbasic products. These results yield a number of considerations for future research and for institutions promoting financial education, which could lead to improved debt management and greater financial well‐being.     

Repatriates and reverse knowledge transfer in MNCs

There is widely held assumption that knowledge is one of the most important drivers of firm’s performance. Multinational companies (MNCs) have the potential advantage of acquiring and utilizing knowledge across borders. But for this potential advantage to become real, the knowledge generated in any of their units around the world should be transferred to their other units. This paper adopts an innovative approach for the study of intra-MNC knowledge transfer by focusing on the role of repatriates as transferors of knowledge from foreign subsidiaries to the headquearters, which is an under-researched topic. In particular, the paper studies the impact of repatriates’ abilities and motivation to share knowledge (disseminative capacity) on the transfer of knowledge from subsidiaries to headquarters (reverse knowledge transfer). In addition, the paper examines the determinants of repatriates’ disseminative capacity. After reviewing the relevant literature and proposing the hypotheses, this paper presents an empirical research with a sample of Spanish MNCs. The findings provide evidence that repatriates’ disseminative capacity is positively associated with reverse knowledge transfer. The paper also identifies some drivers of this: the knowledge the repatriates acquired during the expatriation and the firm’s international assignments policy.     

How common is new product failure and when does it vary?

Marketing Letters - This study aims to explore how common new product failure is in consumer packaged goods (CPG) categories and investigate the conditions in which the new product failure rate...     

Business model innovation in corporate entrepreneurship: exploratory insights from corporate accelerators

Corporate accelerators are a rapidly growing entrepreneurial phenomenon occurring in different business contexts and business models within corporate entrepreneurship. Corporate accelerators are considered as an innovation fostering approach within new ventures provided by start-ups. The aim of the paper is twofold: firstly, to explore the motives behind corporations’ engagement with start-ups in launching corporate accelerators, and secondly, to identify the corporate benefits and challenges of this business model innovation. The research design is based on a qualitative interpretative approach exploiting a triangulation of methods by using in-depth interviews (IDI) with corporate managers involved in development of corporate accelerators as well as a focus group interview (FGI) with industry experts. In addition, secondary data were applied to strengthen the exploratory research. The study demonstrates that a wide range of benefits stem from the accelerator activities which can ultimately can initiate changes in large companies. Our research expands on prior findings and suggests that corporate accelerators are driven by internal and external push and pull motives. The study contributes to expanding the scope of corporate entrepreneurship research in regard to the challenges and benefits of corporate accelerators. It provides evidence that corporate accelerators are a source of innovation that can be used to foster entrepreneurial-market logic and entrepreneurial learning.

     

In the eye of the beholder: Communicating CSR through color in packaging design

Consumers have become much more attentive and demanding about corporate social responsibility (CSR), and companies are now gradually becoming aware that receiving consumer favor could depend on conducting business in a sustainable manner. Moreover, in order to gain returns from their CSR investments, such as company reputation, customer loyalty and customer–company identification, firms must also provide effective communication of their CSR efforts to the consumers. This study explores the potential of packaging color for conveying CSR to consumers, focusing in particular on consumer packaged goods. For this purpose, a quantitative study was conducted on a representative sample of consumers (n = 2000) in the form of a structured questionnaire, administered using face-to-face interviews. Three different stimuli were created through fictitious images of a non-existent brand product. Only the color of the packaging varied, while all the other graphic elements were left unchanged. The results show that, despite the prevailing association of green with the concepts of sustainability and CSR, it is not the most suitable color to clearly and credibly convey a CSR message to consumers. Thus, it is important to examine whether different colors could serve better to improve the clarity and credibility of CSR claims.     

The performance of socially responsible equity mutual funds: Evidence from Sweden

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of socially responsible (SR) funds in Sweden by assessing fund managers' abilities and performances across different market states. These issues are analyzed at the aggregate and individual fund levels. The paper also presents several new statistical tests that allow more precise inferences about differences in performance and the variability in fund returns arising from different benchmarks. In general, SR and conventional funds perform similarly to the market. At the aggregate level, SR funds investing in Sweden and Europe perform similarly to conventional funds, while those investing globally tend to underperform. This underperformance seems to be linked with poor selectivity abilities of global SR fund managers. For individual funds, the performance of both types of funds is more similar. Most funds perform similarly in crisis periods compared to non‐crisis periods. Overall, our results are consistent with a mature market for SR investing and support the view that the similar performance of SR and conventional funds is associated with the mainstreaming of SR investment in Sweden. These findings encourage SR investing both by socially conscious investors, who wish to align their social values with their investment decisions, as well as by conventional investors, who will not be penalized by investing in these funds. We also call attention to the difficulties investors face when trying to identify funds with high social standards, considering that there is scarce information on the extent to which each fund (SR or conventional) holds stocks that comply with ethical and social criteria.     

Effective Paths for Consumer Empowerment and Protection in Retail Energy Markets

Consumer empowerment and protection are frequently discussed in contemporary energy policy debates. The process of consumer empowerment through information and consumer education has great potential, yet consumer switching as the concomitant outcome of this process remains low. Additional protection for vulnerable consumers is called for. This article is centred on the path to achieving consumer empowerment and protection. In particular, it stresses that empowerment should be viewed as a long-term process. Regulators should not focus on the mere outcome of switching and adopt remedies aimed at changing consumer behaviour in the short term. The discussion highlights how attempts to protect vulnerable consumers through an ancillary application of competition law distort the competitive process and should be avoided. Personal vulnerabilities, such as low income, can be better tackled with targeted social policy measures, whereas instances of vulnerabilities pertaining to the market context, such as difficulties in assessing different energy offers, are better phased out through the market mechanism.