Buyer and seller perceptions of transportation purchasing variables

The study in this article involved the investigation of 15 carrier selection variables over three dimensions by three groups with high involvement in the purchasing decision—traffic managers, sales representatives, and sales managers. The primary focus of the study was the identification of significant differences in the assessment of importance of the technical abilities of a carrier, the service orientation of a carrier and the image of a carrier as perceived by sales managers and sales representatives representing the selling systems, and traffic managers representing the buying systems.     

Some specifics on the loss of professional personnel from the Commonwealth Caribbean

The present study is concerned with migration from the Commonwealth Caribbean to the United States. The focus is on the migration of professionals, or the brain drain.     

Exclusive Contracts And Market Power: Evidence From Ocean Shipping

There is a substantial theoretical literature on the potential effects of loyalty contracts, but relatively little empirical work. We employ the event study methodology to examine the competitive effects of exclusionary contracts in the ocean shipping industry, where they were the subject of an extended legal and political struggle. We find that some of the most important events in this conflict caused significant changes in shipping firms' stock returns, indicating exclusive contracts increased their profits. We then examine the effect of these events on net exporting industries' stock returns, and provide evidence that these contracts contributed to carriers' market power.     

PDMA Success Measurement Project: Recommended Measures for Product Development Success and Failure

Success is not just elusive; it is also multifaceted and difficult to measure. A firm can assess the success or failure of a development project in any (or all) of many terms, including customer satisfaction, financial return, and technical advantage. To complicate matters, success may be measured not only at the level of the individual project, but also at the program level. With so many variables to consider and so many stakeholders involved, managers face a difficult challenge just deciding which measures are useful for measuring product development success. Recognizing that no single measure suffices for gauging the success of every product development project, Abbie Griffin and Albert L. Page hypothesize that the most appropriate set of measures for assessing project-level success depends on the project strategy. For example, the objectives (and thus, the success criteria) for a new product that creates an entirely new market will differ from those of a project that extends an existing product line. Similarly, they hypothesize that the appropriate measures of a product development program's overall success depend on the firm's innovation strategy. For example, a firm that values being first to market will measure success in different terms from those used by a firm that focuses on maintaining a secure market niche. To test these hypotheses, product development professionals were presented with six project strategy scenarios and four business strategy scenarios. For each project strategy scenario, participants were asked to select the four most useful measures of project success. For each business strategy scenario, participants were asked to choose the set of four measures that would provide the most useful overall assessment of product development success. The responses strongly support the idea that the most appropriate measures of project-level and program-level success depend on the firm's project strategy and business strategy, respectively. For example, customer satisfaction and customer acceptance were among the most useful customer-based measures of success for several project strategies, but market share was cited as the most useful customer-based measure for projects involving new-to-the-company products or line extensions. At the program level, firms with a business strategy that places little emphasis on innovation need to focus on measuring the efficiency of their product development program, while innovative firms need to assess the program's contribution to company growth.     

Why Do Firms Adopt Profit-Sharing and Employee Ownership Plans?

Profit-sharing and employee ownership in companies have attracted considerable interest, yet there has been little research on factors predicting the adoption and maintenance of these plans. This study uses new data from a survey of 500 US public companies, and panel data on corporate financial variables, to examine factors predicting the presence and adoption of profit- sharing and employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) in the 1975–91 period. Several findings support productivity-related motivations for such plans (including higher R&D levels among old profit-sharing firms, and recent adoption of job enrichment programmes among new profit-sharing firms), while others support flexibility-related motivations (including higher variance in profits prior to the adoption of profit-sharing plans and ESOPs). Unionized firms were less likely to have either type of plan in 1975, but equally likely to adopt them subsequently (often in concessionary contracts). Comparisons of cross-sectional and panel results illustrate advantages of panel data in disentangling the causes and effects of profit-sharing and ESOPs.