Women’s Leadership and Firm Performance: Family Versus Nonfamily Firms

We evaluate the relationship between the appointment of women to CEO or Chair positions and firm performance, and shed light on the differences between family and nonfamily firms. By using a propensity score matching approach on a sample of 394 French firms over the period 2001–2010, we find major discordances between women’s leadership style and family business expectations relative to firm performance, as measured by return on assets and Tobin’s q. Notably, our results support the conjecture that family firms, which are more conducive to transformational leadership, offer women a more appropriate climate for exercising the function of Chair than that of CEO. In contrast, women CEOs perform better in nonfamily firms. Our findings move away from the predominant focus on barriers and stereotypes images about the female leadership and support the contingency theory of leadership, which states that the effectiveness of a leadership style depends on the organization and culture in which leaders operate, and on task-related positions     

CCT applied research and the limits of consumers’ heroicisation

Abstract

The sum total of the research produced by Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) researchers has enabled a spectacular improvement in our understanding of markets and consumption. Yet, this knowledge has struggled to penetrate the business world due to a dearth of practical proposals appealing to managers looking for action-guiding toolkits. Based on a relatively small corpus of CCT-related articles published in the main applied journals with academic values, the present article traces the contours of CCT managerial knowledge revolving around the concept of cultural branding and composed of four main approaches: relationship marketing, retromarketing, tribal marketing and collaborative marketing. The article also synthesises the contributions that CCT researchers propose for each of these approaches and discusses the limits of the heroicisation of the consumers. The conclusion looks at potential research paths for the dissemination of CCT applied kind of knowledge.     

Relaxing the limits to growth

Intereconomics - The following contribution is essentially based on the author’s presentation to the Club of Rome’s recently held world conference on “Alternatives to...     

A Social Marketing Template for Solving the Musicians’ Dilemma Through Nonprofit Healthcare Networks

The Musicians’ Dilemma—the lack of affordable healthcare for the uninsured or underinsured musical entrepreneur—is actually a common problem plaguing not only 33% of musicians, but approximately 19% of the American population as a whole. The current research uses social marketing principles to conceptualize a template for designing a marketing program that meets the healthcare needs of the target market. Health Alliance for Austin Musicians (HAAM) is a nonprofit organization that links healthcare providers, local businesses, and community donors in a network providing basic preventive health services to this essential segment of the community. HAAM's business model is analyzed and cast on the social marketing framework so that it can be adapted for use by other music cities. Although the template could also be applied to serve other uninsured populations, it is critical that research be undertaken to understand the specific characteristics and needs of each target market and used to adapt the model to those populations.     

Linking of U.S. monetary policy and exchange rates to world soybean markets

The linkage between macroeconomic policies and agricultural commodity trade has become an important research issue of agricultural economists. This paper investigates the macroeconomic linkage of soybean trade competition between the exporting countries of the United States, Brazil, and Argentina in the EC-12 and Japan import markets. It is argued that U.S. monetary growth may have important impacts on the competitive position of U.S. soybean exports through exchange rates. Two relationships are investigated: (a) the effects of U.S. monetary growth on the agricultural trade weighted exchange rates, and (b) the responsiveness of agricultural commodity prices and U.S. exports to exchange rate movements. Results indicate that a weak dollar increases imports of soybeans and soymeal significantly which serves to increase the equilibrium world price and increase both U.S. and Brazil/Argentina exports in the long run. However, during periods of more expansionary U.S. monetary policy there is little evidence of significant increases in market share position for U.S. soybeans and soymeal in world markets.