By the teeth: A critical examination of James Scott's The moral economy of the peasant

Peasant households in Southeast Asia and elsewhere live on the margin of subsistence. Their survival strategies make them technological conservatives and weavers of reciprocal webs of social obligation and dependence. James C. Scott has argued that the fabric of this “moral economy” both guarantees subsistence for the peasants and forms the touchstone on which their judgements of social justice are tested. When those who should offer succor withdraw it, peasants are outraged and from their anger springs peasant rebellion. Two South Asian peasant rebellions of the 1940s (Telengana and Tebhaga) fail to support Scott's account and raise major questions about his historical method. Two others case studies focused on the early years of colonial contact (the Padri Wars and the capitalist transformation of the Kaveri delta) lead the authors to question sharply the existence of a “moral economy of the peasant” and to suggest that Scott has inadvertently presented a landlord's view of peasant society.     

Achieving Temporal Ambidexterity in New Ventures

Organizations face a common intertemporal choice problem, where actions suitable in the shortterm are different from those that work in the longterm. Building on the organizational ambidexterity theory, we argue that organizations can reconcile their short‐term and long‐term tensions, but this does necessitate managerial endeavours that orchestrate this reconciliation. We introduce the concept of temporal ambidexterity and define four intertemporal tensions involving an organization’s objectives, resources, markets, and uncertainty. We examine how firms can address these tensions successfully in the context of new ventures, and to do so we focus on three managerial capabilities of founder‐CEOs: expertise breadth, external connectivity, and empowering leadership. Results from 243 new ventures in China suggest that temporal ambidexterity improves with these managerial capabilities, and more so for younger ventures. Our findings shed light on solutions and mechanisms by which intertemporal balance is fulfilled, particularly for new ventures in a dynamic environment.     

How costly is the Sarbanes Oxley Act? Evidence on the effects of the Act on corporate profitability

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was intended to protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures. However, critics have argued that the costs of SOX far outweigh its intended benefits. Prior studies based on stock-price reactions to SOX-related events document mixed evidence on the expected impact of SOX. In contrast, we provide evidence on the net realized costs of SOX by examining its impact on operating profitability. We find that average cash flows decline by 1.3% of total assets after SOX. These costs are more significant for smaller firms, for more complex firms, and for firms with lower-growth opportunities. Annually, these costs range from $6 million for smaller firms to $39 million for larger firms. Further, we document that net SOX-related costs are not limited to one-time expenses associated with internal-control design and implementation. In aggregate, for the 1428 firms in our sample, these costs amount to about $19 billion per year. Profitability is lower for up to four years post-SOX. To our knowledge, ours are the first estimates of the realized net costs imposed by SOX.     

The impact of early imprinting on the evolution of new venture networks

Given the argued importance of networks to new ventures, this paper is intended to fill a noted gap in the literature pertaining to the factors that influence the evolution of new ventures' alliance networks. Drawing on the imprinting literature, we propose that one has to look beyond the first partner per se, and instead focus on the extant relationships the initial partner has with other firms. More specifically, we argue and find that the network size and centrality of a new venture's initial alliance partner influence the subsequent size of the new venture's network.     

What Does Granger Causality Prove? A Critical Examination of the Interpretation of Granger Causality Results on Price Effects of Index Trading in Agricultural Commodity Markets

The influence of index trading on price levels, returns, spreads or volatility in agricultural commodity markets is frequently investigated with bivariate Granger Causality (GC) tests. A joint review of existing empirical studies reveals scant and inconsistent evidence of GC from index activity to prices. Some findings of reverse GC from prices to index activity are reported. The literature offers three different interpretations of GC test results: (i) as prima facie causal evidence; (ii) as a test for informational efficiency of the markets; or (iii) as a test for the ability of one variable to improve the forecast of another variable. A critical examination of these interpretations against an extended theoretical background reveals that none allows direct inferences about the existence or absence of an influence from index trading activity on the price mechanism in the market. This severely limits the usefulness of a stand‐alone application of GC tests.     

ACCOUNTING FOR NONMARKET HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION WITHIN A NATIONAL ACCOUNTS FRAMEWORK

The satellite accounts illustrated in this paper reflect the household's role as a producer and an investor in durables as well as a consumer by modifying the NIPA's to (1) incorporate the value of nonmarket (unpaid) household work into GDP; and (2) treat expenditures on consumer durables as investment and measure the value of the services those durables provide. Additionally, an Input–Output (I–O) model highlights the household's functions as a producer and investor in much greater detail for the year 1992 by incorporating a household industry for each time-use activity and by showing the inputs to and outputs from each household industry's production.     

The influence of C2C communications in online brand communities on customer purchase behavior

Increasingly, consumers use the internet as a vehicle for pre-purchase information gathering. While technical specifications and potentially biased selling points can be gleaned from corporate web sites, online brand communities are becoming essential conduits for the customer-to-customer (C2C) sharing of product information and experiences. This study develops and tests a model of online C2C communications in developing desirable online brand community outcomes. Two studies were used to test the model. In Study 1, a netnography technique was employed and conversations between brand community members were coded and combined with survey data to test the research model. In Study 2 an experiment was conducted to further test the sequence of events in our base model. Our findings show that online brand communities are effective tools for influencing sales, regardless of whether these communities reside on company-owned or independently-owned websites. In addition, we demonstrate interesting asymmetrical effects, whereby the positive information shared by community members has a stronger moderating influence on purchase behavior than negative information. Further, we find that online brand communities are effective customer retention tools for retaining both experienced and novice customers. These findings highlight the need for all firms to carefully consider their online community strategies.     

Measuring the Impact of a Business Ethics Course and Community Service Experience on Students’ Values and Opinions

Until now, there has been little research assessingthe impact and extent of business ethics education andservice learning upon students values and opinions. This paper studies the influence of these variables byanalyzing 129 junior-level students ethical valuesand opinions before and after these experiences. Through the use of the Students Values and OpinionsSurvey (SVOS) as a measurement gauge, we foundsignificant support for our hypotheses that a businessethics course and a community service experiencepositively affect students values and opinions. Thus, we found desirable improvement in the ethicalvalues and opinions of students after they wereexposed to service learning and business ethicseducation. In addition, we explored the impact ofservice learning by gender and prior communityservice. We did not find a significant difference inthe effect of service learning for men or women, butdid find that prior community service increased thepositive impact for students completing theircommunity service requirement in this study.