Cooperation between China and Tanzania on ICT: fish,fishing tackle or fishing skills?

Tanzania has ambitions of moving from a mere consumer of information and communication technologies to a designing and manufacturing base. This paper aims to assess the role of public–private partnerships with Chinese institutions in the achievement of this goal. Through an in-depth case study, this paper examines the contributions of three Chinese multinationals in terms of technology transfer and technological capacity building in local firms in Tanzania. The analysis contrasts the organisation of improvements on the manner of technology transfer and capacity building in these partnerships with prior Sino-Tanzanian partnership efforts in technology and industry. The Chinese multinationals had a labour localisation rate of 60% on average, with some training services provided to Tanzanian nationals and supply of services and equipment to Tanzanian firms. However, the overall level of technology transfer continues to be weak. Observed barriers to technology transfer include weak incentives for collaboration between Chinese and Tanzanian firms and low-level technology embedded in activities offshored by the Chinese multinationals to Tanzania.     

Bonus incentives and team effort levels: Evidence from the “Field”*

This study explores the effect of bonus incentive mechanisms with a focus on how such a scheme influences aggregate production levels of teams of workers, specifically. We identify this using data from a highly competitive setting in professional sport, which involves a unique tournament design rule in an elite European rugby competition. The modelling results demonstrate qualified evidence that introducing bonuses to encourage teams to score via the most-difficult, highest-reward mode, incentivizes teams to increase effort to earn the bonus, and without reducing production after the bonus is achieved.     

Preventing competition using side payments: when non-neutrality creates barriers to entry

Network neutrality is often advocated by content providers, stressing that side payments to Internet Service Providers would hinder innovation. However, we also observe some content providers actually paying those fees. This paper intends to explain such behaviors through economic modeling, illustrating how side payments can be a way for an incumbent content provider to prevent new competitors from entering the market. We investigate the conditions under which the incumbent can benefit from such a barrier-to-entry, and the consequences of that strategic behavior on the other actors: content providers, users, and the Internet Service Provider. We also describe how the Nash bargaining solution concept can be used to determine the side payment.     

Strategic actions in European soccer: Do they matter?

The objective of this paper is to discover (if and) what kind of strategic actions European football clubs conduct and whether these actions affect their financial performance and therefore their competitive position. In this paper we measure the context, content and process dimensions of strategic renewal and relate these to financial performance. The individual strategic actions undertaken by eight football organisations during the period 1995–2002 were examined. In total, 963 strategic actions could be assigned to three dimensions of strategic action. Our study shows that even in an environment in which other factors are crucial for surviving, undertaking strategic actions does contribute to the financial performance of firms. In the European football industry that requires some kind of ‘competitive balance’, strategic actions positively contribute to financial performance.     

Divergence in Variety Seeking: An Exploratory Study Among International Travelers in Asia

ABSTRACT

Variety seeking is a tendency in consumer behavior in which the consumer alternates between different makes of the same item in the quest for diversity. Variety seeking and exploratory behaviors help explain tourists’ consumption behavior and choice-making methods. Some studies have focused on the choice of food, restaurants, theme parks, travel activities, or destinations, but only a few have taken place within an international context. In this study, the influence of variety seeking and exploratory buying on travelers’ consumption behavior within an international context is analyzed. In essence, Asian travelers are compared with Western travelers. Several factors, which help explain divergence in variety seeking, are included in the analysis. The results demonstrate that variety seeking and an exploratory tendency have a significant relationship with travelers’ consumption behavior (for both Asian and Western travelers). In general, customers who have a high tendency for variety seeking are less loyal; however, there is no discernible difference between Asian and Western tourists in this regard.     

Co-operatively re-engineering a financial services information supply chain: A case study

This paper presents a case study of the co-operative design, development, and implementation of an XBRL-enabled interorganizational system (IOS) by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Reserve Bank of Australia (central bank), and the Australian Bureau of Statistics to revolutionize reporting by financial institutions in Australia. The findings illustrate that the complexity of data consumption patterns drove increased interdependence within the financial information supply chain requiring the co-operative development of context sensitive data exchanges and commodity-like IT infrastructures. The paper concludes that the co-operative model to IOS development exhibited here is likely to be more suited to the development of systems for financial information supply chains than the hub and spoke model characteristic of IOS in other sectors. Copyright © 2009 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How consumers' values influence responses to male and female gender role stereotyping in advertising

ABSTRACT

The present study aims to explore the moderating effect of culture-related values on responses to male and female gender role stereotyping in advertising. Based on an experiment in Sweden (n = 507) and Germany (n = 506), we test the impact of respondents' masculinity, power distance, assertiveness values and feminine role orientation on ad attitudes and brand attitudes. The results show that, in general, perceived stereotyping contributes positively to ad and brand attitude, and this effect is enhanced for more masculine, more power distant, more assertive and less feminine-role oriented individuals. In addition, consumers respond more negatively to perceived female stereotyping compared to male stereotyping, and this is especially true for more power distant and more assertive individuals.     

Advertisers’ perceptions regarding the ethical appropriateness of new advertising formats aimed at minors

Although they are key stakeholders, advertisers’ views on the usage of novel (integrated and/or interactive) advertising toward minors has remained largely unexplored in academic research. This study aims to fill this gap by examining advertising professionals’ opinions about the ethical appropriateness of using novel advertising formats aimed at children and teenagers, how to advance advertising literacy in minors, and their views of practices that are potentially privacy-invading, by means of both a quantitative online survey and qualitative in-depth interviews with Belgian advertising professionals. Results show that advertisers perceive that from 12 years onward, minors are capable to understand novel advertising formats and it is ethically justified to use them. Remarkably, advertisers would inform minors already from the age of 10 years onward about the commercial intention behind new advertising formats. Advertisers have strict opinions about collecting information online from minors. They advocate a combination of laws and self-regulation and governmental and educational campaigns to raise awareness and develop advertising literacy.