Adapting to succeed? Leveraging the brand equity of best sellers to succeed at the box office

Many movies are based on best-selling novels. While book adaptation is an often used strategy in the motion picture industry, it has received little academic attention. Using a multi-method approach, this research investigates the drivers behind the success of book-based movies. In Study 1, we analyze over 700 movies and find that book-based movies perform better at the box office on the opening weekend than non-book movies. However, this superior performance dissipates after the opening weekend. Further, the opening weekend performance of book-based movies is positively driven by book equity, book-movie similarity, and recency between the book??s peak equity and movie release. After the opening weekend, many of these book-related variables cease to have an impact, and the effect of movie-related variables (e.g., reviews) increases. Because Study 1 documents that book-movie similarity positively impacts the movie??s performance, contrary to prior findings that content similarity has negative or null impact on performance of a movie sequel, we undertake a second study to reconcile the discrepancy. Study 2 finds that content similarity results in satiation and therefore hampers the movie success for sequels; however, when a movie is adapted from a book, due to experiential modality change (i.e., from book format to film format rather than film to film), content similarity increases the movie??s chance of success.     

Growing Economic Interdependence of China and the Gulf Cooperation Council

The six nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council （GCC） have approximately 40percent of total proven oil reserves as well as 23 percent of the world＇s gas reserves. Although rising oil revenues have led to greater outward investment flows, there is also a growing need for significant expansion of the domestic energy sector＇s capacity. Meanwhile, China＇s sustained economic boom has resulted in China emerging as the world＇s second largest consumer and importer o foil, with close to 40percent of its import demand presently sourced from the GCC. This share will grow significantly in the future. Commercial relations between the GCC and China have to date been dominated by energy-related bilateral investment flows and China＇s oil imports. Although this will continue to be a central feature, trade and investment links in non-energy areas will further broaden and deepen the relationship. China ＇s relationship with the USA in terms of energy is also emerging as a major issue. Rather than being competitors, a mutual dependence on stable and secure supplies from the GCC highlights the need for a cooperative relationship.     

Endogenous formation of coops and cooperative leagues

The labor-managed Mondragon cooperatives in the Basque country, and La Lega coops concentrated in North Central Italy, are grouped into leagues that enable them to reap economies of scale in key services such as R&D, marketing and finance. These leagues are relatively rare and there are fewer than a dozen of them globally. We develop a game-theoretic model of league formation to capture some of the strategic incentives behind the formation of labor-managed cooperatives (coops) and their agglomeration into a league. We then compare these incentives with those of conventional profit-maximizing firms to organize into a league. The main result of this paper shows that a divergence in these incentives stemming from their organizational differences may lead to the formation of a league of firms but not one of coops. This turns out to be true even though the coop has lower costs of production and the existence of a coop league would have been socially efficient. Anticipating the non-existence of a coop league then creates a disincentive for individual agents to form coops in the first place. This explains the relative rarity of coops, competing individually or as a part of a league, with conventional firms in imperfect markets.     

Comparative Organizational Characteristics of Indian State-Owned Enterprises

This article evaluates the organizational characteristics, defined as returns to scale and most productive scale size, for a sample of 67 Indian state-owned enterprises in comparison with 63 private and 27 foreign-owned enterprises. State-owned units suffer from decreasing returns to scale with diseconomies being associated with their large size. The average most productive scale size of the state-owned firms is considerably smaller than average actual size, establishing the need for a break-up of existing units into many smaller units so as to gain efficiencies. A policy of restructuring these organizations before privatization will enable privatization to be eventually more successful.     

Marketing challenges of technical industries in developing countries

A rapidly changing technology-based industry such as electronics in the environment of a developing country has many unique problems in organizational marketing. The problems and possible strategies under such conditions are discussed in this article.     

The effects of diversity on business performance: Report of the diversity research network

This article summarizes the results and conclusions reached in studies of the relationships between race and gender diversity and business performance carried out in four large firms by a research consortium known as the Diversity Research Network. These researchers were asked by the BOLD Initiative to conduct this research to test arguments regarding the “business case” for diversity. Few positive or negative direct effects of diversity on performance were observed. Instead a number of different aspects of the organizational context and some group processes moderated diversity‐performance relationships. This suggests a more nuanced view of the “business case” for diversity may be appropriate. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Nature of the relationship between international expansion and performance: The case of emerging market firms

Internationally expanding companies would like to see how they compare with rivals in terms of the effect of internationalization on financial performance (for their sector and their firm). Virtually all such studies have focused on advanced nations. This study, on internationalization of firms based in an emerging economy (India), provides a unique research setting and sheds additional light on this relationship. It tests for the shape of the internationalization–performance curve for emerging market firms, and investigates differences between service firms and manufacturers in the threshold effect between the initial and later stages of internationalization. We find a U-shaped curve depicting the internationalization–performance relationship of Indian firms. Service sector firms tend to gain the positive benefits of internationalization sooner than manufacturing companies.     

A mathematical model for projecting the demand for scientists and technologists in national R & D institutes

This paper presents an analytical framework for man-power planning which is being developed as an aid to projecting the demand for scientists and technologists in India. It is presented in the hope that it might be of interest to people concerned with this issue In other developing countries. In using the model the main problem is that of measuring the output in the R & D institutes. In attempting this it is inevitable that some degree of subjective judgment is involved. The method adopted is described in the paper, and using a very simple input—output type of matrix and data taken from five-year plans, some preliminary results have been obtained which enable an assessment to be made of the demand for various kinds of scientists and technologists in the national R & D institutes in India.     

Analyzing the underlying dimensions of firm profitability

In this paper we decompose a traditional measure for firm's performance, return on sales, into four components that capture the impact of productivity, price recovery, product mix and capacity utilization, respectively, on a firm's profitability. The new measures are used as an illustration to explain changes in the performance of firms in the US telecommunications industry following deregulation. Changes in the overall profitability margin of these firms are explained by substantial but offsetting changes in their productivity, price recovery ability, product-mix maximization and capacity utilization, that have occurred as a consequence of deregulation. The new measures enable us not only to illustrate relative differences between firms in a given cross-section but also to shed light on how changes take place over time in the different components that underlie firms' profitability.