Quality clusters: Dimensions of email responses by luxury hotels

A growing body of research investigates hospitality Internet use, but usually focuses on websites rather than the most popular Internet application, email. This study uses cluster analysis and the SERVQUAL-P service quality (SQ) model to help address gaps in both academic and applied research of email use in the hospitality industry. The cluster analysis of email responses to a mystery guest survey by luxury hotels identified four hotel clusters. The clusters showed significant differences across all 24 email response variables and support four dimensions of email SQ corresponding to SERVQUAL-P's four dimensions.     

Reputation and its risks

Regulators, industry groups, consultants, and individual companies have developed elaborate guidelines over the years for assessing and managing risks in a wide range of areas, from commodity prices to natural disasters. Yet they have all but ignored reputational risk, mostly because they aren't sure how to define or measure it. That's a big problem, say the authors. Because so much market value comes from hard-to-assess intangible assets like brand equity and intellectual capital, organizations are especially vulnerable to anything that damages their reputations. Moreover, companies with strong positive reputations attract better talent and are perceived as providing more value in their products and services, which often allows them to charge a premium. Their customers are more loyal and buy broader ranges of products and services. Since the market believes that such companies will deliver sustained earnings and future growth, they have higher price-earnings multiples and market values and lower costs of capital. Most companies, however, do an inadequate job of managing their reputations in general and the risks to their reputations in particular. They tend to focus their energies on handling the threats to their reputations that have already surfaced. That is not risk management; it is crisis management--a reactive approach aimed at limiting the damage.The authors provide a framework for actively managing reputational risk. They introduce three factors (the reputation-reality gap, changing beliefs and expectations, and weak internal coordination) that affect the level of such risks and then explore several ways to sufficiently quantify and control those factors. The process outlined in this article will help managers do a better job of assessing existing and potential threats to their companies' reputations and deciding whether to accept a particular risk or take actions to avoid or mitigate it.     

When does leverage hurt productivity growth? A firm-level analysis

In the wake of the global financial crisis, several macroeconomic contributions have highlighted the risks of excessive credit expansion. In particular, too much finance can have a negative impact on growth. We examine the microeconomic foundations of this argument, positing a non-monotonic relationship between leverage and firm-level productivity growth in the spirit of the trade-off theory of capital structure. A threshold regression model estimated on a sample of Central and Eastern European countries confirms that TFP growth increases with leverage until the latter reaches a critical threshold beyond which leverage lowers TFP growth. This estimate can provide guidance to firms and policy makers on identifying “excessive” leverage. We find similar non-monotonic relationships between leverage and proxies for firm value. Our results are a first step in bridging the gap between the literature on optimal capital structure and the wider macro literature on the finance-growth nexus.     

Stakeholder value analysis: a methodology for intergrating stakeholder values into corporate enviromental investment decisions

Increasingly, decision‐makers in industry are being faced with complex investment decisions created and made emotive by diverse stakeholder expectations. Investments with the potential to have an impact on a company's environmental performance are a prime example of this since they are driven by multidimensional impacts, many of which are difficult to quantify in scientific and monetary terms. This paper presents a stakeholder value analysis (SVA) model, which can be used to address such problems, using a multiple‐attribute decision methodology. This decision tool has been developed and validated through a series of industrial applications, one of which is outlined here. This application describes the use of the tool in a company context whereby stakeholders from within the company are canvassed for their priorities and views. The SVA tool is used not only to guide and support this process but also to analyse the data and consequently produce output decision metrics, which express the preferences of all relevant stakeholders and which can therefore be more confidently used to support the final decision. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

DO WE REALLY NEED CENTRAL BANKS?

An analysis of economic theory and economic history suggests that central banks, with a monopoly of money-issuing services, are not necessary. The often-levelled arguments against private banks issuing money in competition with each other and with central banks do not stand up to close scrutiny.     

The link between board composition and board objectives: an empirical analysis on Flemish non‐profit schools

Flemish non‐profit schools have no legally imposed composition rules with respect to their board of directors. Hence, large variation exists in their size and composition. We argue that these differences in board composition can result in different policies followed by the board. To empirically test this hypothesis we question the board's chairpersons of Flemish non‐profit schools about the objectives set forward by the board. Ordered probit regressions on the importance attached to different educational objectives provide support for our hypothesis and thus alert policy makers to account for the linkages between objectives and board characteristics when formulating legislation with respect to school board composition. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.