Do Evaluative Pressures and Group Identification Cultivate Competitive Orientations and Cynical Attitudes Among Academics?

Journal of Business Ethics - This article theorizes and analyzes how two aspects of the increasing accountingization of academia in the form of evaluative pressures and group identification,...     

Cartel Detection in Procurement Markets

Cartel detection is usually viewed as a key task of either competition authorities or compliance officials in firms with an elevated risk of cartelization. We argue that customers of hard‐core cartels can have both incentives and possibilities to detect such agreements on their own initiative through the use of market‐specific datasets. We apply a unique dataset of about 340,000 market transactions from 36 smaller and larger customers of German cement producers and show that a price screen would have allowed particularly larger customers to detect the upstream cement cartel before the competition authority. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Antecedents and Performance Outcomes of Strategic Environmental Sourcing: An Investigation of Resource‐Based Process and Contingency Effects

This study develops an understanding of the antecedents and performance‐related consequences of strategic environmental sourcing (SES). Institutional pressure and the firm's environmental engagement serve as antecedents to SES, with performance dimensions including environmental, product development, and product quality performance. While direct relationships between these dimensions and SES have been studied in prior work, the present research adds greater specificity and depth by investigating process and contingency effects on product‐level outcomes. The resource‐based theory provides the theoretical motivation for these relationships, which are tested via survey data collected from sourcing professionals in the U.S. manufacturing industry. The results emphasize environmental engagement as an important process element between institutional pressure and SES, and highlight the ability of institutional pressure to strengthen the relationship between environmental engagement and SES. Environmental performance was found as an influential conduit in the relationship between SES and both product quality and product development performance, with SES also serving as a contingency.     

A Note on the Use of Survey Research Firms to Enable Empirical Data Collection

This forward thinking article examines the risks and rewards of using survey research firms to enable empirical data collection, and issues a cautionary note about its application. An exposition and discussion of this form of data collection in supply chain management is relevant today, due to the “survey‐fatigue” among the population of business professionals from whom we seek a response. While this approach has some history in other disciplines, it is still relatively new among supply chain management researchers. To help supply chain management scholars assess the appropriateness of this type of data collection method, this forward thinking article provides invaluable guidance as derived from the authors' recent experiences with the approach. As such, we share our observations and lessons learned. The conclusion is that the use of survey research firms for empirical data collection can be a viable, alternative approach to self‐administered surveys. However, care should be taken in its application.     

Cartelization,Cartel Breakdown,and Price Behavior: Evidence from the German Cement Industry

We use a unique dataset of about 340,000 market transactions from 36 smaller and larger customers of German cement producers to study the price behavior before and after the breakdown of a German cement cartel. We find that, first, while the cartel agreement was active, cartel members set higher list prices than non-cartel members; however, larger rebates granted by the cartel members led to similar transaction prices. Second, after the cartel breakdown, both cartel- and non-cartel members reduced transaction prices to a far larger extent than list prices. We build on these results and discuss implications for competition policy.     

Message Reframing in Advertising

Various communication techniques such as humor or two‐sided argumentation are frequently used in advertising. One technique that is common but has not been conceptualized is the deliberate change of perspective of specific product or brand attributes. Based on the reframing method used in neuro‐linguistic programming (NLP) this technique is conceptualized as message reframing, defined as a communication technique that changes the conceptual and/or emotional setting or viewpoint in relation to how a brand is experienced by placing it in a different frame that fits the same brand equally well or better. The effects of message reframing in contrast to conventional advertisements as well as in contrast to humor and two‐sided argumentation are hypothesized and tested in an experimental study. The results reveal that message reframing outplays traditional advertising techniques regarding attention toward the ad, perceived novelty, attitude toward the ad, and attitude toward the brand. Moreover, message reframing does not show the deterioration of source credibility commonly observed in humorous messages, and leads to higher attention, perceived novelty, and attitude toward the ad than two‐sided messages.     

Rigid labour markets with trade and capital mobility: theory and evidence

Abstract We develop a multi‐country model with imperfect labour markets to study the effect of labour market frictions on bilateral trade flows. We use a framework that allows for goods trade and capital mobility and show that labour market imperfections exert opposite effects in the absence of capital mobility (the short run) and its presence (the long run), respectively. In the short run, a higher degree of labour market rigidity decreases the value of total trade, but increases the share of intra‐industry trade for a country that is larger than its trading partner. The reverse effects are observed when capital is allowed to cross country borders. Using data on unemployment and income distribution for 23 OECD countries, we compute the central parameter in our theoretical model that describes the degree of labour market rigidity. We use this new empirical concept to provide evidence for our theoretical findings by means of reduced‐form regressions as well as simulation results of a calibrated general equilibrium model.