Network dynamics of tourism development in South Korea

This study utilizes network analysis to trace the evolution in the organizations of tourism development during South Korea’s transition from a developing to a developed country spanning the period from 1945 to 1999. This is studied by examining changes within a network of organizations as their means and objectives evolve. Data are drawn from news articles that deal with tourism and development from 1945 to 1999, and coded into organizations, development-related means, and objectives. Two-mode and a one-mode metric network analysis and correspondence analysis of coded data were undertaken. The results show the dynamic nature of networks interacting among organizations along with their means and objectives. Furthermore, this study states that the “social embeddedness” of the tourism network became stronger over time, leading to further development opportunities.     

Underwriter choice and earnings management: evidence from seasoned equity offerings

Using a sample of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs), this paper examines the association between the choice of financial intermediary and earnings management. We contend that with more stringent standards for certification and intense monitoring, highly prestigious underwriters restrict firms’ incentives for earnings management to protect their reputation and to avoid potential litigation risks, while firms with greater incentives for earnings management avoid strict monitoring by choosing low-quality underwriters. Consistent with our predictions, we find an inverse association between underwriter quality and issuers’ earnings management. In addition, we find that underwriter quality is positively related to SEOs’ post-issue performance, even after controlling for the effect of earnings management. We also find that firms with low-underwriter prestige and high levels of earnings management under-perform the most. However, the effect of underwriter choice on post-issue performance does not last long.

Exploring the causal effect of religious piety on dividend policy: evidence from historical religious identification

Theory suggests that religious piety is associated with greater risk aversion and more conservative financial policies. Returns to shareholders through dividends are much more certain than returns through capital gains expected to be realized far into the future. We hypothesize that religious piety leads to a higher likelihood of dividend payments. We exploit the variation in religious piety across the US counties and estimate the effect of religion on dividend policy. To draw a causal inference, we use historical religious piety in 1971 as the instrument. Our two-stage least squares results confirm that religious piety induces firms to pay larger dividends.     

How task constraints affect inspiration search strategies

Searching for sources of inspiration is central to creative design; however, we have limited knowledge of individual inspiration search strategies in response to varying levels of task constraints. We studied 39 high-school students’ inspiration search strategies using Google Images. Low task constrainedness led to divergent search marked by quick iterations, limited design task usage, and a heterogeneous image set. Intermediate constrainedness prompted in-depth, on-task exploration characterized by slow and careful iterations with more search result examination, extensive design task usage, and homogenous images. High constrainedness led to flexible bracketing with quick, flexible design task use, ending with heterogeneous images. Images from the intermediately and highly constrained conditions generated more ideas and were perceived as more inspiring (relative to low) in a new group of students. We discuss the idea of a ‘sweet spot’ of constrainedness in an inspiration search process in design and consider implications for design research and future work.     

One for all or all for one: Does the category captain play favourites

In the consumer packaged goods industry, category captain is the company (e.g., Pepsi) that retailers (e.g., Kroger) designate as the leader of an entire product category (e.g., carbonated beverages) and collaborate with to manage the product category through the process of category management. Much uncertainty exists about the consequences of category management. We use a unique data set on the ready-to-eat cereals category in which the retailer designated a category captain. In this paper, we find that category captain does not have more to gain in terms of market shares than other products within the ready-to-eat cereals category, alleviating antitrust concerns related to category management. In addition, we find that category captain increases the market share of products that are more price competitive, not necessarily that of its own products, which points to a category captain focusing on growing the category's market as it is incentivized to do so.     

Information‐Processing Costs and Breadth of Ownership

Using the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's mandate of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) as a natural experiment, this study investigates whether and how the decreased information‐processing costs brought about by XBRL influence firms’ breadth of share ownership. We find that the XBRL mandate is associated with an increase in the total number of a firm's shareholders. This finding is consistent with the notion that XBRL facilitates a more transparent environment and decreases information‐processing costs, thereby attracting more shareholders in general. More interestingly, we find that while XBRL adoption is associated with an increase in share ownership of individual and non‐U.S. foreign institutional investors, it is associated with a decrease in share ownership of U.S. domestic institutional investors. Further evidence shows that this asymmetric shift in share ownership is more pronounced for more complex firms. Our findings, taken together, suggest that the decreased information‐processing costs brought about by XBRL help firms establish a level playing field by reducing the information disadvantages of individual and foreign institutional investors over domestic institutional investors. Our results are robust to potential endogeneity concerns and alternative research designs.     

Formative Feedback through Summative Tutorial-based Assessments: The Relationship to Student Performance

Abstract

This paper investigates the effectiveness (measured using assignment and examination performance) of an assessment design incorporating formative feedback through summative tutorial-based assessments to improve student performance, in a second-year Finance course at an Australian university. Data was collected for students who were enrolled in an undergraduate Finance course and analyzed to ascertain performance improvements. The results indicate that there is a relationship between formative feedback through the use of summative tutorial-based assessments and student performance. Our empirical evidence enriches the extant literature surrounding the effectiveness of formative feedback through summative tutorial-based assessments and fosters an interest in assessment designs that provide formative feedback.     

A Trade Model of Intermediate Products With Transportation Cost

This paper presents a trade model of intermediate products where a country has the same production technology as the outside world, and the source of trade is the unbalance in the factor endowment. The decision as to how much to process the raw material before exporting depends on the capital requirements for the processing, and the change in transportation cost due to the processing. The lower the requirements of capital coupled with a more rapid fall in the transportation cost in the earlier stage of production, the more probable that the country will export the processed intermediate good instead of the raw material.     

How should firms carry out technological diversification to improve their performance? An analysis of patenting of Korean firms

This research aims to analyze how a firm's technological diversification strategies influence its financial performances, in terms of ‘technological diversification’ in broad technology sectors and ‘technological concentration’ on its own core technology, especially in the case of Korean large firms. The data used in the analysis were panel data encompassing the years between 1990 and 2006, which linked Korean firms’ patent information registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office to the financial data of those firms collected from Korea Investors Service, Inc. (Kis-Value). For the estimation of the panel data, a fixed effect model, which considers the individual firms’ own effect on the financial performance, was used. Tobin's q was used as a dependent variable representing firm performance, while ‘broad technology diversity’ and ‘core technology diversity’ were used as the focal explanatory variables. The results show that a firm seeking to have more technological assets should invest in a broad technological diversification strategy in its search for new business opportunities; it should likewise concentrate on the core technology in order to maintain its financial performance.     

How Knowledge Management Capabilities Help Leverage Knowledge Resources and Strategic Orientation for New Product Advantages in B-to-B High-Technology Firms

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Current understanding of how new product development (NPD) teams use knowledge management capabilities to acquire, disseminate, and apply knowledge resources to achieve competitive advantages is limited by a lack of compelling theory supported by empirical evidence. This study provides a theoretical framework and empirical validation for how an NPD team manages knowledge resources and strategic orientation to enhance its knowledge management capabilities, which, in turn, lead to business-to-busienss (B-to-B) new product advantages.

Methodology/approach: A total of 100 sets of data was collected from B-to-B firms in U.S. high-tech industries. In order to validate the proposed hypotheses, we estimated the main effects using path analysis in AMOS, and tested for interaction effects using interaction term regressions.

Findings: Our findings show that the two dimensions of NPD knowledge management capabilities—acquisition and application—are important but differential drivers of product quality superiority and product differentiation. In testing whether NPD management capabilities matter for two product advantage constructs, we confirmed that product quality superiority can be enhanced by both NPD knowledge acquisition and application capabilities, whereas product differentiation can be increased strongly by NPD knowledge acquisition capabilities.

Research implications: Our research confirms the importance of strategic orientation as a driver of NPD knowledge management capabilities, which enhances understanding of how strategic factors operate under a resource-based view. Our results further provide direct empirical support for the knowledge-based view of firms, in that an NPD team’s abilities to manage and deploy knowledge-based resources by acquiring and applying NPD knowledge lead to competitive advantages, for outcomes of quality superiority and differentiation.

Practical implications: Our findings have relevance for managers in three ways. First, NPD knowledge acquisition and application capabilities have differential impacts on product quality superiority and differentiation. Second, in exploring NPD resource factors as antecedents, managers should manage levels of NPD market intelligence, resource tacitness, and NPD resource deployment differentially to directly improve NPD teams’ acquisition and application capabilities. Third, managers should not underestimate the importance of market and technological orientations in enhancing NPD knowledge management capabilities. Market orientation drives both NPD knowledge acquisition and application capabilities; technological orientation drives NPD knowledge application capabilities. Originality/value/contribution of the paper: An NPD team’s knowledge management capabilities generally, but differentially, mediate the relationships of knowledge resources and strategic orientation factors with new product competitive advantage. However, simply enhancing NPD knowledge management capabilities is not a panacea for developing product competitive advantage in B-to-B settings, because of their differential effects.