The half‐empty office: dilemmas in managing locational flexibility

Through a case study contrasting the impacts of formalised and informal teleworking practices on office‐based workers, multidimensional dilemmas between flexibility, control and equity are uncovered. Formal schemes, although problematic and rare, possess some advantages in resolving the three dimensions. A model is proposed to test findings further.     

Relative Effects of IFRS Adoption and IFRS Convergence on Financial Statement Comparability

One of the primary objectives of both adoption of IFRS and convergence between IFRS and U.S. GAAP is to increase financial statement comparability. Using a unique setting in Germany, we compare the effectiveness of these two approaches in achieving this desired outcome. Our empirical tests show that both adoption and convergence lead to an increase in comparability after the new enforcement regulation in 2005. However, difference‐in‐differences tests show that adoption does not lead to a significant incremental increase in comparability beyond convergence. The findings of this study should be of interest to regulators and standard setters as they assess alternative methods of aligning domestic standards with IFRS.     

Austrian economics and the analysis of labor markets

Theory and policy relating to labor markets is dominated by the mainstream labor market model, although a less well-known, socioeconomic version can also be identified. The mainstream model is methodologically flawed and forced, thereby, to relegate any (serious) investigation of labor market institutions and/or social structures to the margins of its analysis. The socioeconomic account is not so much methodologically flawed, as methodologically ambivalent. While this ambivalence does not actually prevent the investigation of institutions and/or social structures, it does promote ambiguity whenever we inquire into the precise nature of the interaction between them and labor markets. Insights from Austrian economics, when used in collaboration with critical realist methodology, can play a part in augmenting the socioeconomic account, generating a totally new approach to the analysis of labor markets.

Tariff (De‐) Escalation with Successive Oligopoly

This paper explores the issue of a simultaneous reduction in tariffs at different stages of a vertically related market where each stage is oligopolistic. When vertically related markets are characterized as a successive oligopoly, reducing tariffs by an equivalent amount on upstream and downstream imports will have a differential effect on market access and hence profits at each stage as a result of a combination of horizontal and vertical effects. These differential effects have implications for the tariff structure post‐trade reform.     

Culture and age as moderators in the corporate reputation and loyalty relationship

This study investigates the moderating role of culture and relationship age in the relationship between customer-based corporate reputation (CBR) and customer loyalty using data from two service contexts (retailing and fast-food restaurants) in three countries (France, the U.K., and the U.S.) that differ with regards to two cultural values—uncertainty avoidance and time orientation. Results suggest that CBR has similar effects on affective and intentional loyalty in all three countries. However, culture interacts with relationship age, such that relationship age magnifies the effect of CBR in France, while relationship age suppresses CBR's effect in the U.K. and the U.S. The authors provide explanations for these effects based on cultural theories. Managerial and research implications are developed.     

Investigating mediators between corporate reputation and customer citizenship behaviors

Recent corporate reputation research focuses on customers as an important stakeholder group for whom firm reputation matters. The authors hypothesize that customer-based corporate reputation (CBR) may affect customer citizenship behaviors (CCB) and that both commitment and loyalty mediate the CBR-CCB relationship. The tests of the hypotheses use a sample of 583 service customers who evaluate the reputation of service firms. These results suggest that commitment and loyalty mediate the relationship between CBR and one type of CCB, that is, helping the company. The authors discuss the implications for marketing research and practice.     

Teaching Inflation Targeting: An Analysis for Intermediate Macro

Over the last decade, many central banks have adopted policies known as inflation targeting. If intermediate-level macroeconomics students are to be prepared to think about current policy issues, it is important to provide them with an introduction to the macroeconomic implications of inflation targeting. Unfortunately, the standard aggregate demand-aggregate supply frameworks commonly used to teach intermediate macroeconomics are not well suited for this task because they are expressed in terms of output and the price level and because they fail to make explicit the policy objectives of the central bank. The author provides a simple graphical device involving the output gap and the inflation rate that overcomes these problems and that can be used to teach intermediate macroeconomics students about inflation targeting.     

Promotional Competitions: A Taxonomy of Campaign Framing Choices Integrating Economic,Informational, and Affective Objectives

Promotional competitions remain underresearched with only limited conceptualization of campaign design (framing) options evident. Our research addresses the following questions: What are the specific framing options available to campaign planners? What framing strategies should decision-makers apply to optimize campaign performance against promotional aims and objectives? We analyze a sample of promotional competition campaigns in the Australian market to identify the range of specific framing options. We present a taxonomy of Action, Entry, and Prize choices, integrating the key promotional aims of economic, informational, and affective influence. Academic and practitioner implications are discussed and a future research agenda is proposed.