Assessing Google Cardboard virtual reality as a content delivery system in business classrooms

In the past, researchers have explored virtual reality (VR) as an educational tool primarily for training or therapeutic purposes. In this research, the authors examine the potential for using Google Cardboard VR in business classrooms as a content delivery platform. They specifically investigate how VR (viewing a 3-dimensional, 360° video) differs from the traditional flat-screen (FS) format (viewing a 2-dimensional video [e.g., iPod (Apple, Cupertino, CA)]) as a teaching tool to deliver video-based content. The results demonstrate that participants in the VR condition (vs. the FS condition) rated their enjoyment and interest to be higher. However, the Google Cardboard VR platform was not superior to the iPod FS format in its content delivery with respect to novelty, reliability, and understandability.     

Environmental Regulation: An Incentive for Foreign Direct Investment

Empirical evidence has so far failed to confirm that lenient environmental regulation attracts investment from polluting firms. In a Cournot duopoly with a foreign firm and a domestic firm, we show that the foreign firm may want to relocate to the domestic country with stricter environmental regulation, when the move raises its rival domestic firm's cost by sufficiently more than its own. The domestic (foreign) country's welfare is (usually) lower with foreign direct investment.     

All That Glitters is Not Gold: Digging Beneath the Surface of Data Mining

This article develops a more comprehensive understanding of data mining by examining the application of this technology in the marketplace. In addition to exploring the technological issues that arise from the use of these applications, we address some of the social concerns that are too often ignored.As more firms shift more of their business activities to the Web, increasingly more information about consumers and potential customers is being captured in Web server logs. Sophisticated analytic and data mining software tools enable firms to use the data contained in these logs to develop and implement a complex relationship management strategy. Although this new trend in marketing strategy is based on the old idea of relating to customers as individuals, customer relationship management actually rests on segmenting consumers into groups based on profiles developed through a firm's data mining activities. Individuals whose profiles suggest that they are likely to provide a high lifetime value to the firm are served content that will vary from that which is served to consumers with less attractive profiles.Social costs may be imposed on society when objectively rational business decisions involving data mining and consumer profiles are made. The ensuing discussion examines the ways in which data mining and the use of consumer profiles may exclude classes of consumers from full participation in the marketplace, and may limit their access to information essential to their full participation as citizens in the public sphere. We suggest more ethically sensitive alternatives to the unfettered use of data mining.     

Generalized confidence intervals for process capability indices in the one-way random model

The method of generalized confidence intervals is proposed as an alternative method for constructing confidence intervals for process capability indices under the one-way random model for balanced as well as unbalanced data. The generalized lower confidence limits and the coverage probabilities for three commonly used capability indices were studied via simulation, separately for balanced and unbalanced cases. Simulation results showed that the generalized confidence interval procedure is quite satisfactory both in the balanced and unbalanced cases. Examples are provided to illustrate the results.     

Leadership in the 21st Century: Understanding Global Terrorism

What should organization leaders (in both business and government, in all countries of the world) know about terrorism? They should know that terrorism has a deep history with instances of terrorist-type activities being recorded in the Bible, presently involving many of the world's countries with all continents but Antarctica recording one or more terrorist attacks in the last year, and has many facets to examine. Those parts include knowing about the perpetrators and their goals, the targets, the weapons, the events, and the effects of those events. Leaders should understandthe background of global terrorism and also how to respond to the negative effects of terrorist events. Presently, the United States is considered the top target in the World and is likely to be for the foreseeable future. Al Qaeda is probably the top Foreign Terrorist Organization aiming at the U.S. with intentions of using more lethal weapons and producing severe damage. The future will probably see a significant reduction in ideological terrorism and increases in single-issue terrorist groups attacking major cities with weapons of mass destruction. Further progress in understanding terrorism and its effects on business should come more from quality academic research in business (rather than from conjecture and opinions as at present) and from further quality academic research in other fields such as history, political science, and psychology.     

Strategic dalliances as an enabler for discontinuous innovation in slow clockspeed industries: evidence from the oil and gas industry

The concept of ‘strategic dalliances’– defined as non‐committal relationships that companies can ‘dip in and out of,’ or dally with, while simultaneously maintaining longer‐term strategic partnerships with other firms and suppliers – has emerged as a promising strategy by which organizations can create discontinuous innovations. But does this approach work equally well for every sector? Moreover, how can these links be effectively used to foster the process of discontinuous innovation? Toward assessing the role that industry clockspeed plays in the success or failure of strategic dalliances, we provide case study evidence from Twister BV, an upstream oil and gas technology provider, and show that strategic dalliances can be an enabler for the discontinuous innovation process in slow clockspeed industries. Implications for research and practice are discussed, and conclusions from our findings are drawn.     

Corporate Social Responsibility and the Social Enterprise

In this article, we contend that due to their size and emphasis upon addressing external social concerns, the corporate relationship between social enterprises, social awareness and action is more complex than whether or not these organisations engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR). This includes organisations that place less emphasis on CSR as well as other organisations that may be very proficient in CSR initiatives, but are less successful in recording practices. In this context, we identify a number of internal CSR markers that may be applied to measuring the extent to which internal CSR practices are being observed. These considerations may be contrasted with the evidence that community based CSR activities is often well developed in private sector small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) (Observatory of European SMEs, 2002), a situation which may be replicated in social enterprises especially those that have grown from micro-enterprises embedded in local communities. We place particular emphasis upon the implications for employee management. Underpinning our position is the Aristotelian-informed capabilities approach, a theory of human development and quality of life, developed by Sen (1992; 1999) and Nussbaum (1999) which has been developed further, in an organisational context, (e.g., Cornelius, 2002); Cornelius and Gagnon, 2004; Gagnon and Cornelius, 1999; Vogt, 2005. We contend that the capabilities approach offers additional insights into CSR in social enterprises in general and internal CSR activity in particular. Our article concludes with proposals for future research initiatives and reflections upon social enterprise development from a capabilities perspective.     

Dynamics between patent latent variables and patent price

This paper focuses on studying the relationship between patent latent variables and patent price. From the existing literature, seven patent latent variables, namely age, generality, originality, foreign filings, technology field, forward citations, and backward citations were identified as having an influence on patent value. We used Ocean Tomo's patent auction price data in this study. We transformed the price and the predictor variables (excluding the dummy variables) to its logarithmic value. The OLS estimates revealed that forward citations and foreign filings were positively correlated to price. Both the variables jointly explained 14.79% of the variance in patent pricing. We did not find sufficient evidence to come up with any definite conclusions on the relationship between price and the variables such as age, technology field, generality, backward citations and originality. The Heckman two-stage sample selection model was used to test for selection bias.     

The relationship between business strategy, management control systems and performance: Evidence from China

Over the past two decades, China has emerged as a global economic power, ranking behind only the USA, Japan and Germany. China's continuous global economic power has therefore prompted a surge in interest in understanding Chinese business practices. This paper reports on the results of a survey on the contingent relationship between business strategy, management control systems (MCS) and performance in Chinese Enterprises. The analysis is based on data gathered from 215 enterprises operating within the Xinjiang autonomous region of China. For those firms that were classified as pursuing differentiation strategy, the use of more non-financial based MCS has a positive effect on performance and this finding is consistent with the literature. We also found that for those firms classified as pursuing a low cost strategy, the use of more financial based MCS had a positive effective on performance as suggested in the literature. Our research has implications for understanding management accounting practices in Chinese enterprises.