The Impact of Salesperson Perception of Firm Market Orientation on Behaviors and Consulting Effectiveness

The purpose of this study was to study market orientation as an antecedent of salespersons' behaviors that should, in turn, influence the ability of the salesperson to add value to the product or service. There have been many studies of personal antecedents of salespersons behaviors and performance, with little predictive success. But there are few studies of firm-level influences on salesperson behaviors and their outcomes. A survey was sent to non-retail salespeople utilizing previously validated scales for all constructs of interest. The survey responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling to test hypotheses. Results suggest that market orientation has an indirect influence on salesperson consulting through adaptive selling and active listening behaviors. Active listening fully mediates the relationship between customer orientation and salesperson consulting, while salesperson consulting fully mediates the relationship between active listening and consulting effectiveness. Half of the influence of market orientation on salesperson consulting effectiveness is direct, while the other half of its influence is indirect through those salesperson behaviors. The author provides explanations for these results and implications for managers and researchers.     

Dilation bootstrap

We propose a methodology for combining several sources of model and data incompleteness and partial identification, which we call Composition Theorem. We apply this methodology to the construction of confidence regions with partially identified models of general form. The region is obtained by inverting a test of internal consistency of the econometric structure. We develop a dilation bootstrap methodology to deal with sampling uncertainty without reference to the hypothesized economic structure. It requires bootstrapping the quantile process for univariate data and a novel generalization of the latter to higher dimensions. Once the dilation is chosen to control the confidence level, the unknown true distribution of the observed data can be replaced by the known empirical distribution and confidence regions can then be obtained as in Galichon and Henry (2011) and Beresteanu et al. (2011).     

Inflation and output dynamics in a model with labor market search and capital accumulation

In a sticky-price model with labor market search and habit persistence, Walsh (2005) shows that inertia in the interest rate policy helps to reconcile the inflation and output persistence with empirical observations for the US economy. We show that this finding is sensitive with regard to the introduction of capital formation. While we are able to replicate the findings for the inflation inertia in a model with capital adjustment costs and variable capacity utilization, the output response to an interest shock is found to be too large and no longer hump-shaped in this case. In addition we find that the response of output to a technology shock can only be reconciled with empirical findings if either the adjustment of the utilization rate is very costly or there is only a modest amount of nominal rigidity in the economy.     

Estimating firm-level and country-level effects in cross-sectional analyses: An application of hierarchical modeling in corporate disclosure studies

Researchers in the field of international accounting are often confronted with observations of firms clustered into higher-level units such as countries. Using data from a corporate disclosure study including 797 firm observations from 34 countries, we demonstrate that the inferences obtained from the most commonly used Ordinary Least Square (OLS) test, which pools the firm and country data either under the disaggregation or aggregation approach, are problematic and misleading. To overcome the methodological limitation, we subsequently employ hierarchical modeling to simultaneously estimate both firm-level (within-country) and country-level (cross-country) disclosure determinants. We find that the clustering effects are significant in almost all firm-level variables. Once such effects are adjusted, only three firm-specific variables are significantly associated with corporate disclosure. Evidence provided by this study has important implications for most international accounting studies conducted in cross-level contexts.     

中国失衡时代是否已终结

过去十年,全球性不均衡问题逐渐成为各国宏观经济政策的中心议题。本文重点分析了当前中国的外部失衡问题,研究了2008年后促使中国经常账户盈余下降的影响因素,预测了中国外部顺差的走向。本文认为,未来几年中国的经常账户盈余将保持适度。外部失衡不能反映当今中国国际收支的主要特征。随着中国国内经济越来越依赖投资的拉动,内部失衡问题将愈发明显。     

Collectivist values for learning in organizational relationships in China: the role of trust and vertical coordination

Partners must engage in integrative interaction in order to combine diverse expertise and experiences into effective learning. Results from 103 pairs of customer and supplier organizations in China indicate that trust and vertical coordination are useful ways to characterize this integrative interaction and together they promote learning. Structural equation analysis suggests that collectivist but not individualist values are important foundations for integrative interaction between partners that result in learning. These findings were interpreted as reaffirming the value of effective relationships for coordination between partners and suggesting that collectivist values can be a source of effective organizational relationships.     

Analysing the wealth effects of UK divestitures: An examination of domestic and international sales

Here we analyse divestiture announcement effects for UK multinational corporations accounting for the location of the unit sold. We find some bias in market reactions with larger abnormal returns for UK divestitures when compared to overseas sales. US sales generate larger returns than those in Continental Europe or the Asia-Pacific region. We analyse the determinants of abnormal returns using accounting and transaction data, supplemented with country specific data for overseas sales. Abnormal returns for UK sales are explained by financial characteristics of the selling firm but the size of the transaction relative to the firm is the most significant factor in overseas divestitures.     

Compliance Costs of Corporate Income Taxation in Singapore

This study is the second in a series of studies investigating tax compliance costs incurred by public-listed companies. We found evidence of a size effect which is a predominant finding of similar studies. The size effect was more pronounced when absolute measures of costs were used than when a relative measure, cost/sales turnover, was used. Additional evidence was found of limited success relating to the IRAS's moves to simplify the tax system. Specifically, only large companies with sales turnover exceeding $500m benefited and considerably reduced their overall compliance costs. Most of the decrease was a result of the computational component of compliance costs. This resulted in the gap in absolute costs narrowing between Group 3 and any of the other categories of companies. There was also greater reliance on external professionals, the smaller the company. Views elicited indicate that more could be done to increase accessibility to IRAS publications for Group 1 and Group 2 companies.