Incumbents in a dynamic Internet related services market: Does customer and competitive orientation hinder or help performance?

The Internet challenges many incumbent firms to adapt their marketing strategies by developing and offering new products involving Internet technology. Existing literature on market orientation and performance of services suggests that market orientation, and its components, are likely to facilitate effective adaptation. In contrast, the marketing innovation literature suggests market orientation may be too reactive and inhibit effective adaptation. Our results suggest some merit to both perspectives. Client orientation hindered performance of Internet advertising services, while competitive orientation facilitated performance. In addition, limited support was found that suggested superior performance occurs in an environment with a diverse client base and clients possessing in-house capabilities that “compete” with agencies for Internet advertising services. Implications for incumbents pursuing product growth strategies via new, technology related services in dynamic environments are discussed.     

Evolution in the rationales of foresight in Europe

The traditional mechanistic approach to Strategic Thinking influenced the rationales and consequently the early experiences of Technology Forecasting in Europe. On the other hand, the more recent dynamic non-linear approaches to Strategic Thinking and a gradual regionalization of the innovation policy have favoured the replacement of Forecasting with Foresight and, more recently, with Regional Foresight, where the complexity of phenomena is taken into greater account. In fact, during the last few decades, a transition has occurred from a mainly hierarchic capitalism to a flexible one. At micro-economic level, this has caused a gradual transition from hierarchical organisational models with tangible assets to network organisational models, which are knowledge-based and face complex and unsettled scenarios.

This paper tries to demonstrate that the concepts of Forecasting and Foresight cannot be considered outside of this context and of changes that have occurred in Strategic Thinking, where the needs for more global and interdisciplinary views of problems are striving to integrate Strategic management and Entrepreneurship into the new concept of Strategic Entrepreneurship.

In order to demonstrate this evolution in the rationales of foresight and in its applications, this work analyses and compares some among the more significant experiences of transition towards Regional Foresight in Europe.     

Economic valuation of environmental services sustained by water flows in the Yaqui River Delta

We attempted to estimate the economic value of environmental services provided by restored instream flows in the water-scarce Yaqui River Delta in Mexico. The Yaqui River begins near the U.S.-Mexico border and continues for 400 km before reaching the Oviachic dam, but has not reached the nearby Gulf of California for decades due to diversions for irrigation. These diversions have degraded the riparian ecosystem, coastal wetlands, and estuaries. Environmental services provided by restored flows in the Yaqui River would include healthy riverside vegetation, wetlands and estuaries, fish and wildlife habitats, non-use values, and recreation. A contingent valuation survey in 40 neighborhoods in the most populated Delta city, Ciudad Obregon, was administered to estimate non-market values of instream uses. Respondents were given a current and hypothetical Delta scenario (the latter assumed restored water flows in the River) and asked a willingness-to-pay (WTP) question regarding purchasing water for environmental flows through higher water bills. Results from 148 in-person interviews indicated that households would pay an average of 73 pesos monthly. WTP was found related to key variables suggested by economic theory and contingent valuation studies elsewhere: income, educational level, number of children in the household, and initial bid amount. These results will allow decision makers to compare the benefits generated by different water uses, including environmental services, and to manage scarce water resources under a long-term sustainable approach.     

Modelling the effect of climate change on prevalence of malaria in western Africa

Malaria is a leading cause of infectious disease and death worldwide. As a common example of a vector‐borne disease, malaria could be greatly affected by the influence of climate change. Climate impacts the transmission of malaria in several ways, affecting all stages of the disease's development. Using various weather‐related factors that influence climate change, this study utilizes statistical analysis to determine the effect of climate change on reported malaria rates in an African region with endemic malaria. It examines the relationship between malaria prevalence and climate in western Africa using spatial regression modeling and tests for correlation. Our analysis suggests that minimal correlation exists between reported malaria rates and climate in western Africa. This analysis further contradicts the prevailing theory that climate and malaria prevalence are closely linked and negates the idea that climate change will increase malaria transmission in this region.     

Discretionary and transactional human resource practices and employee outcomes: The role of perceived organizational support

Utilizing perceived organizational support (POS) as the mechanism linking HR practices to employee behaviors in the workplace, we examine a broad set of HR practices in order to understand the relative importance of each HR practice (i.e., those that explain incremental variance over other practices) in influencing employee behaviors. We differentiate between discretionary and transactional HR practices to test the discretionary investment requisite of POS theory. The results show that of the eight discretionary practices, only participation and decision making directly influenced the extra‐role behaviors that employees exhibit, and only training and development directly impacted the customer‐oriented behaviors. Furthermore, one of the transactional HR practices was found to have a direct effect on organizational citizenship behavior. Our findings indicate that the performance management process, promotional opportunities, participation, and involvement in decision making affect how employees behave toward the customer and the extra‐role behaviors they exhibit. Furthermore, this occurs through the view employees develop of the organization as a place to work. That is, these four HR practices demonstrate to employees that they are valued, and, in turn, this feeling of being appreciated impacts their commitment to delivering high‐quality service to the customer and going beyond their job responsibilities. Implications for research and practice are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Mitigating Natural Disasters through Collective Action: The Effectiveness of Tsunami Early Warnings

The megathrust earthquake centered near Sumatra on December 26, 2004, generated a tsunami that resulted in an estimated 150,000 deaths in Indonesia alone. In response, commitments have been made to extend the existing tsunami early warning systems in the Pacific to the remainder of the world subject to tsunamis. Surprisingly, while these systems have been in place in some cases for more than half a century, to date no analysis of their effectiveness has been presented. We fill this research gap by analyzing 146 out of the 202 tsunamis occurring worldwide since 1966. Relying on a negative binomial regression model that controls for the dynamics of the tsunami, we find early warnings to be quite effective in reducing deaths. The model also controls for additional factors important in determining a tsunami's death toll such as socioeconomic conditions, which have been shown to be important in other natural disasters.     

Specification Analysis of Diffusion Models for the Italian Short Rate

In recent years, diffusion models for interest rates became very popular. In this paper, we perform a selection of a suitable diffusion model for the Italian short rate. Our data set is given by the yields on 3‐month BOT (Buoni Ordinari del Tesoro), from 1981 to 2001, for a total of 470 observations. We investigate among stochastic volatility models, paying more attention to affine models. Estimating diffusion models via maximum likelihood, which would lead to efficiency, is usually unfeasible because the transition density is not available. Recently, Gallant and Tauchen (1996) proposed a method of moments which gains full efficiency, hence its name of Efficient Method of Moments (EMM); it selects the moments as the scores of an auxiliary model, to be computed via simulation; thus, EMM is suitable to diffusions whose transition density is unknown, but which are convenient to simulate. The auxiliary model is selected among a family of densities which spans the density space. As a by‐product, EMM provides diagnostics that are easy to compute and interpret. We find evidence that one‐factor models and multi‐factor affine models are rejected, while a logarithmic specification of the volatility provides the best fit to the data .     

让一线管理者成为真正的领导

在那些做得最好的企业里,一线管理人员将60％～70％的时间花在工作现场．其中,有许多时间用在高质量的个人辅导上。这些企业还放权给管理人员,让他们制定决策、相机行事     

Web aesthetics effects on perceived online service quality and satisfaction in an e-tail environment: The moderating role of purchase task

This study examines the effects of the two dimensions of web aesthetics, aesthetic formality and aesthetic appeal, on consumers' perceived online service quality and satisfaction during service encounter. The findings showed that, between task-oriented and task-free consumers, the patterns of the effects of the two dimensions of web aesthetics on perceived online service quality and satisfaction are dissimilar. However, regardless of the presence or absence of purchase tasks, aesthetic formality significantly influences perceived online service quality, and aesthetic appeal significantly influences satisfaction. In addition, the effect of aesthetic appeal on satisfaction is negative for task-oriented consumers. Managerial implications on how to manipulate web aesthetics to achieve superior online service quality and high consumer satisfaction are offered.     

Alternative approaches to evaluation in empirical microeconomics

Four alternative but related approaches to empirical evaluation of policy interventions are studied: social experiments, natural experiments, matching methods, and instrumental variables. In each case the necessary assumptions and the data requirements are considered for estimation of a number of key parameters of interest. These key parameters include the average treatment effect, the treatment on the treated and the local average treatment effect. Some issues of implementation and interpretation are discussed drawing on the labour market programme evaluation literature.JEL Classification: J21, J64, C33Correspondence to: Richard BlundellThis review was prepared for the special microeconometrics PEJ. Comments from the editors, the referee and participants at the CeMMAP conference at which the papers for this volume were presented are gratefully acknowledged. The research is part of the program of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Fiscal Policy at IFS. Financial support from the ESRC is gratefully acknowledged. The second author also acknowledges the financial support from Sub-Programa Ciência e Tecnologia do Segundo Quadro Comunitário de Apoio, grant number PRAXIS XXI/BD/11413/97. The usual disclaimer applies.