Juxtaposition of architecture and mathematics for elementary school students

This paper discusses the Archimath programme, which was designed to develop awareness of the built environment in elementary school students, and to initiate an effort to improve it. Acknowledging the relationship between education and awareness of the environment, the programme was constructed for use with elementary school students selected from fourth to eighth grades, as an integrated mathematics and architecture programme. It includes topics from an introductory course for architecture majors and from the elementary mathematics curriculum. The programme was implemented in several pilot schools in Istanbul and was evaluated in accordance with activity sheets, pre- and post-perception tests, and the views and comments of the teachers who carried out the programme. It was revised and reorganized in accordance with this feedback and then implemented again on different groups of students in the selected schools. This paper discusses how the programme was conceived and developed.     

Executive compensation in Asia: A critical review and outlook

In this research we conduct a systematic and critical review of the literature on executive compensation in Asian countries. We discuss the particular characteristics of executive compensation in Asia in terms of pay criteria, contingency factors, and implications for performance and turnover. We thereby highlight the unique contributions of Asian studies to the mainstream Western research in executive compensation, and call for future research integrating agency theory and the institution-based view in examining pay variances across different institutions.     

Antecedents and consequences of environmental stewardship in boundary-spanning B2B teams

The authors examine antecedents and consequences of environmental stewardship in frontline business-to-business teams. On the basis of data from members of 34 teams organized into regional networks, they demonstrate the differential impact of team environmental stewardship on customer satisfaction ratings and sales. Furthermore, the results reveal lagged individual-level effects of autonomy and supervisory support on environmental stewardship, as well as lagged group-level effects of past performance. Finally, dispersion models of team stewardship differentially moderate antecedent–stewardship relationships. Whereas within-team consensus strengthens the impact of past satisfaction ratings on subsequent stewardship, between-team consensus weakens the negative impact of past sales.     

Gratitude works: its impact and the mediating role of affective commitment in driving positive outcomes

After studying the effects of Louisiana’s post-hurricane “thank you” campaigns, the researchers find expressions of gratitude significantly improve perceptions of Louisiana in the midst of its recovery. Through a national survey conducted November 2006, they find that those who saw or heard a thank you advertisement have more positive attitudes toward the state and its people, a greater willingness to pay a premium for its products, services and travel to the state, and spread positive word-of-mouth, thus justifying the use of public funds to support the campaign. The authors investigate the role of participation on the effectiveness of expressions of gratitude and identify the mediating role of affective commitment in driving the positive results attributed to expressions of gratitude.     

Insuring against the shortfall risk associated with real options

We would like to insure against the risk that a geometric Brownian motion, correlated with the price process of a certain traded asset, is in a set E at time T. In this paper it is shown that the best action one can take to insure against this risk is to buy a binary option on the traded asset. We give explicit formulas in the case that E is an infinite interval. The setting of all our investigations is the Black-Scholes model. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 91B28, 60J65, 62P05, 91B30, 62F03 Journal of Economic Literature Classification: G31     

Representing complete and incomplete subjective linear preferences on random numbers

We show that preferences on random numbers which satisfy certain natural properties can be represented, in the setting of topological vector spaces, by a suitable family of continuous previsions which is, in a sense, unique. Moreover, for most commonly used spaces of random numbers, we establish that one can derive these preferences, via an expectation operator, from a suitable family of probabilities (whether or not finitely additive). Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 06A06, 62C05, 91B06 Journal of Economic Literature Classification: D11, D81     

The desired level of market orientation and business unit performance

Existing studies of market orientation have hypothesized that the strength of the market orientation/performance relationship depends on environmental variables such as market turbulence, technological turbulence, and competitive intensity. To date most empirical studies have failed to confirm these hypotheses; however, these studies (1) assumed that performance is a linear function of the achieved level of market orientation and (2) tested whether environmental uncertainty moderates this relationship. A complementary explanation for the impact of environmental variables on a firm’s market orientation arises from studies of organizational behavior that link the need for coordination and control to environmental uncertainty and organizational strategy. Building on this perspective, the authors argue that (1) environmental uncertainty influences the desired level of market orientation and (2) the gap between the desired and achieved levels of market orientation influence business unit performance. The authors test these hypotheses with data collected from multiple respondents in 308 US firms. The data analysis confirms that the desired level of market orientation is a function of market turbulence, competitive intensity, technological turbulence, and innovation strategy. In addition, the desired level of market orientation positively influences the achieved level. Finally, when the achieved level of market orientation is less than the desired level, business unit performance is a negative function of the gap between the desired and achieved levels of market orientation.

Corporate social responsibility: attributions,loyalty, and the mediating role of trust

This study investigates whether consumers’ perceptions of motives influence their evaluation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. The study reveals the mediating role of consumer trust in CSR evaluation frameworks; managers should monitor consumer trust, which seems to be an important subprocess regulating the effect of consumer attributions on patronage and recommendation intentions. Further, managers may allay the negative effects of profit-motivated giving by doing well on service quality perceptions. On the other hand, appropriately motivated giving continues to positively affect trust regardless of the performance of the firm on service quality provision.     

An examination of Peter Drucker's work from an institutional perspective: How institutional innovation creates value leadership

This paper uses an institutional perspective to analyze Peter Drucker's contributions to management, marketing and marketing strategy. Drucker recognizes the importance of institutions in society. Further, his work reflects a variety of institutional views from sociology, economics and marketing. Drucker uses a form of comparative institutional analysis for evaluating both management and strategy issues. At the heart of each institutional comparison is the customer and the value created for the customer by the organization. Institutional comparisons help managers understand how the organization can create customers by adjusting its customer value proposition. Drucker influences marketers by focusing on how the organization's values are used to develop the organization's customer value proposition. Further, it is shown that the organization's values and its customer value propositions are manifested in its transaction rules, termed marketing institutions. Based on Drucker's work, a framework for comparing marketing institutions is introduced: the value leadership framework.