Applying continuous improvement to teaching in another culture

As international business programs proliferate, the mixing of many cultures in the classroom creates new teaching challenges. This paper reports on how an American accounting professor coped with cultural differences at INSEAD in France. Student evaluations for the first course taught at INSEAD revealed a variety of problems that the professor tried to resolve by applying the principles of continuous improvement in the next course he taught. Confronting the students directly with the problem, enlisting their aid in improving the course, and eliciting specific feedback all combined to substantially raise the level of student satisfaction. The principles applied in this intervention are broadly applicable to college professors, not only those working with “international” students.     

When are Consumers Motivated to Connect with Ethical Brands? The Roles of Guilt and Moral Identity Importance

This research adds to the growing literature on what draws consumers to ethical brands. Findings from three studies demonstrate that guilt motivates consumers to connect with ethical brands, especially those consumers with high levels of moral identity importance (MII). Specifically, Study 1 finds that consumers report stronger self‐brand connections (SBCs) with an ethical brand when they feel guilty (vs. control). Study 2 finds that guilt particularly motivates consumers with high MII to report stronger SBCs with an ethical (vs. unethical) brand. In turn, these strong connections lead to increased intentions to purchase the ethical brand. Finally, Study 3 finds evidence for the proposed motivation‐based process explanation by showing that high MII consumers’ propensity to connect with ethical brands when feeling guilty (vs. control) is attenuated when these consumers are first given the opportunity to donate to a charitable cause to alleviate their guilt. Overall, the findings suggest that ethical brands can foster strong connections with and elicit higher purchase intentions from consumers seeking ways to alleviate their guilt.     

Formation of Procedural Justice Judgments in Legal Negotiation

Research has indicated that procedural justice—fairness of decisionmaking processes—plays an important role in bilateral legal negotiation, encouraging the acceptance of negotiated agreements. Additionally, research has suggested that procedural justice leads to opportunities for increased integrative bargaining. However, procedural justice judgments are typically measured as subjective assessments by disputants. If procedural justice plays an important role in legal dispute negotiation, it is critical to understand how individuals form judgments about fairness of process. The study presented explores antecedents of procedural justice judgments in legal negotiation. Results suggest that although all potential identified antecedent variables—voice, courtesy/respect, trust, and neutrality—play a role in judgments about procedural justice, the primary component is courtesy/respect behavior by the speaker and her partner. Parties share some agreement about the presence of courtesy/respect behavior and trust behavior, and third-party coders can identify behavior that reliably relates to the parties’ procedural justice antecedent assessments. Additionally, results indicate that appeals to potential “neutral” benchmarks such as legal authority lead to lower assessments of procedural justice. These findings suggest that courtesy and respect are the primary drivers of negotiators’ procedural justice assessments, and that such courtesy/respect behavior is not merely a subjective artifact of the participant but can be observed by a third-party coder.     

When do unethical brand perceptions spill over to competitors?

We examine whether the unethical actions of marketplace brands (e.g., the Volkswagen emissions scandal) hurt the ethical perceptions of competing brands (e.g., Ford, BMW). Across two studies, we find evidence for this unethical spillover effect and show that it can negatively affect consumers’ liking and purchase intentions for a competing brand. The results show that the spillover effect (1) only occurs for similar competitors and (2) is moderated by construal level (CL). Specifically, the spillover effect is more likely to occur when consumers focus on the finer details of the unethical brand’s transgression (i.e., low CL) but not when they focus on the bigger picture of the transgression (i.e., high CL). Thus, while it is intuitively appealing to assume that brands may benefit from a competitor’s foible, this research indicates that competitors may be hurt by a similar brand’s wrongdoing.     

Obeying the rules: Accounting for regulatory compliance costs in the United Kingdom

The U.K. Government has embarked on a deregulatory programme aimed at ‘liberating’ business from, inter alia, onerous regulatory compliance costs. In doing so it has developed and utilized an accounting-based technique known as Compliance Cost Assessment (CCA). This paper describes and analyses this technique, and demonstrates that CCA has been used as a perceived rational tool to counter regulatory growth and to privilege certain interests in society.     

Rethinking the role of NCBs in the EMU

Five years after the introduction of unified monetary policy in the EMU, some member countries are wondering whether they have ceded too much of their policy-making powers. The fact that National Central Banks no longer carry out sizable expansionary open market or foreign exchange market operations suggests that they face substantially reduced abilities to set economic policy.This paper demonstrates that, in fact, very little power has been yielded: on the fiscal front, the force of such policy initiatives is enhanced by the fixity of the exchange rate. On the monetary front, we show that there is an observational equivalence between all Central Bank actions under fixed exchange rates. This implies that the authorities retain the same amount of policy flexibility as before. So long as they use an alternative form of policy initiative, carrying out what previously would have been characterized as sterilized foreign exchange market operations, their ability to influence the macro performance of their economy is undiminished.     

HUMAN CAPITAL AND CONVERGENCE: A PRODUCTION‐FRONTIER APPROACH*

Using nonparametric, production‐frontier methods, we decompose labor productivity growth into components attributable to technological change (shifts in the world production frontier), technological catch‐up (movements toward or away from the frontier), and physical and human capital accumulation (movements along the frontier). We find that (1) technological change is decidedly nonneutral, (2) productivity growth is driven primarily by physical and human capital accumulation, (3) the increased international dispersion of productivity is explained primarily by physical capital accumulation, and (4) international polarization (the shift from a unimodal to a bimodal distribution) is brought about primarily by efficiency changes (technological catch‐up).     

Business,Aging, and Socioemotional Selectivity: A Qualitative Study of Gray Entrepreneurship

This three‐stage qualitative paper explores the motivations and experiences of gray entrepreneurship through age‐related lenses outlined in behavioral psychology literature. In contrast to economic approaches that presuppose financial drivers, findings reveal that intrinsic drivers such as achievement, fulfillment, and relationships had primacy among the participants in this research. Entrepreneurship enabled the older people in this study to construct their social environments in a way that maximizes the potential for positive affect, and minimizes the potential for negative affect, both in and out of work.