Attributions and behavioral intentions of inexperienced salespersons to failure: An empirical investigation

The goal of this research was to determine how inexperienced sales representatives (rookies) interpret and respond to their sales failure situations. The authors studied 296 rookie financial services sales representatives'performance attributions for a previous unsuccessful sales interaction and their intended behaviors for a future, similar selling situation. This provided the authors the opportunity to compare their results with Dixon, Spiro and Jamil's (2001) findings for experienced sales representatives (veterans). In the event of a sales failure, rookies'responses do not parallel those of veterans. The results suggest that rookies are likely to engage in several inappropriate behaviors in response to failed sales encounters. Implications for managers and directions for future research are discussed. Andrea L. Dixon (Andrea. Dixon@uc.edu) (Ph.D., Indiana University) is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Cincinnati. Her research focuses on selling behaviors, team selling, integrating technology and personal selling, and the role of developmental relationships in enhancing creativity and productivity in the sales division. The primary focus of her research is improving the performance of sales representatives and the sales organization or unit. She has published in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, theJournal of Marketing, and theJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management. She currently serves on the editorial review boards of theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science and theJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management. Dixon is the vice chair for conference programming of the Selling and Sales Management Special Interest Group of the American Marketing Association. Rosann L. Spiro (spiro@ indiana.edu), Ph. D., is a professor of marketing and chairperson of the Marketing Department at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where she teaches Sales Management, Personal Selling, International Marketing, Business-to-Business Marketing Strategy, and Managerial Research in Marketing. Her research interests focus on sales strategy, sales management, and personal selling. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Consumer Research, theJournal of Business, and theJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management. She currently serves on the editorial review boards of theJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management andMarketing Management. She is also a coauthor of a leading sales management text,Management of a Sales Force (11 th ed.). She formerly served as the chairperson of the Board of the American Marketing Association. Curtently she serves on an Advisory Board for the Univted States Bureau of Census and is the chair of the Selling and Sales Management Special Interest Group of the American Marketing Association. Lukas P. Forbes (Lukas.Forbes@wku.edu) is an assistant professor of marketing in the Gordon Ford College of Business at Western Kentucky University. He received his B.S. from the United States Military Academy at West Point, his M.B.A. from worcester Polytechnic Institute, and is completing his Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky. His research interests include personal selling, services, and product development. He has previously published in the American Marketing Association Educators and Frontiers in Services conference proceedings.     

Investment allocation: A comparison of the reform experiences of Hungary and Yugoslavia

Both Yugoslavia and Hungary, despite reform efforts, have continued to exhibit investment cycles. An analysis is presented of why the Yugoslav and Hungarian experiences have been so similar despite major institutional differences. An examination of three different capital allocation systems in Yugoslavia identifies both institutional and behavioral factors that undermine reform efforts and reproduce investment cycles not only in Yugoslavia, but also in Hungary and other socialist economies.     

Warrant price responses to credit spread changes: Fact or fiction?

We use a new approach to analyze the relationship between warrant prices and issuers’ credit spreads. This approach allows us to gain insights into whether issuers use their credit risk systematically to increase their profits. In a post‐Lehman sample, we find strong support for a systematic use since issuers decrease prices less after cred it spread increases than they increase prices after credit spread decreases. Credit spread decreases are accompanied by price increases on several successive days. This sluggish adjustment in prices can be explained by the fact that retail investors’ purchase decisions depend on product prices.     

Monitoring and forecasting annual public deficit every month: the case of France

In this paper we forecast annual budget deficits using monthly information. Using French monthly data on central government revenues and expenditures, the method we propose consists of: (1) estimating monthly ARIMA models for all items of central government revenues and expenditures; (2) inferring the annual ARIMA models from the monthly models; (3) using the inferred annual ARIMA models to perform one-step-ahead forecasts for each item; (4) compounding the annual forecasts of all revenues and expenditures to obtain an annual budget deficit forecast. The major empirical benefit of this technique is that as soon as new monthly data become available, annual deficit forecasts are updated. This allows us to detect in advance possible slippages in central government finances. For years 2002–2004, forecasts obtained following the proposed approach are compared with a benchmark method and with official predictions published by the French government. An evaluation of their relative performance is provided.      

Die Erschließung vorhandener Wasserkraftpotenziale in Österreich im Spannungsfeld von Energiepolitik und ökologischen Schutzzielen

The intensified use of hydropower plays a substantial role in the Austrian energy sector. There are indeed plans to open up the remaining potentials, especially in the field of small-scale hydropower. However, hydropower creates multiple impacts. Although investments in hydropower are undisputed due to security of supply issues, climate change and dependency concerns, the technology is subject to some disadvantages. Hydropower plants are often seen as a blot on the landscape and a threat for the ecosystem, especially for fish and other water-dependent wildlife. Accordingly, hydropower plants are principally in conflict with nature conservation as for instance the European Water Framework Directive. With the help of a discrete choice model the trade-off between economic and climate-related advantages and the negative environmental side effects of new hydropower schemes was identified and quantified. While people value the economic (employment effects) and environmental (reduced air emissions) benefits related to the generation of electricity from hydroelectric power, they wish to be compensated for the loss of nature and landscape new hydropower plants are associated with. Moreover, confirmation of the “Not in my backyard” phenomenon was found, meaning that people generally prefer the construction of new hydropower stations, but not close to their homes.     

When the mirror gets misted up: Modularity and technological change

This study investigates how component technological change affects the relationship between product modularity and organizational modularity (the across‐firm mirroring hypothesis). Studying the air conditioning industry, we show that the across‐firm mirroring hypothesis does not hold for technologically dynamic components and the associated supply relationships. In this case, the mirror gets “misted up” with buyers and suppliers having recourse to information sharing even in the presence of highly modular components. Our study contributes to the debate on the organizational implications of modularity and its ramifications for the theory of the firm. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the Measurement of Strength of Preference in Units of Money

We report an experimental study that aims to elicit monetary measures of strength of preference in choices involving pairs of risky prospects. Despite extensive testing to refine the instruments used, we find that these money measures are systematically biased upwards relative to subsequent binary choices. We discuss possible reasons for this bias and its broader implications.     

Credit demand and supply shocks in Italy during the Great Recession

In this article, we use Structural VAR analysis to disentangle credit demand and supply shocks and their effect on real economic activity in Italy during the 2008 to 2014 crisis period. The three endogenous variables considered are the loan interest rate, the loans growth rate and the employment to population ratio. The data are observed at annual frequency for each of 103 Italian provinces. The empirical evidence suggests that the variance of the shocks varies across four Italian macro-regions: North, Centre, South and Islands, and hece heteroscedasticity is used to identify (ex ante) the structural shocks. Sign restrictions are used to interpret shocks ex post. The empirical findings suggest a prominent role of credit supply shock in shaping real activity dynamics and also that credit crunch hits the North of Italy less than the remaining macro-regions, especially the South of Italy.     

Varieties of entrepreneurship: exploring the institutional foundations of different entrepreneurship types through ‘Varieties-of-Capitalism’ arguments

While entrepreneurship researchers agree that institutions ‘matter’ for entrepreneurship, they also have a rather encompassing understanding of institutions as almost any external factor that influences entrepreneurship. Ultimately, this literature thus comes up with a long list of institutional factors that may explain entrepreneurial differences between countries. But which institutions are most influential? How do these institutions relate to different types of entrepreneurship? And to what extent are institutions complementary to each other in the way they sustain different entrepreneurship types? The literature on ‘Varieties-of-Capitalism’ (VoC) offers a parsimonious theoretical framework to address these questions. Based on the VoC literature, we theoretically derive a consistent set of institutional indicators that can explain differences in entrepreneurship types between countries. Based on principal component and cluster analyses, we illustrate how 21 Western developed economies cluster around four distinct institutional settings. Furthermore, we use simple OLS regressions to show how these institutional constellations are related to different types of entrepreneurship. We conclude that four different ‘Varieties of Entrepreneurship’ can be identified across the Western world. The main implication of our findings is that a ‘perfect’ institutional constellation, equally facilitating different types of entrepreneurship, does not exist. Policy-makers seeking to stimulate entrepreneurship are thus faced with the trade-off of targeting policy reforms to that entrepreneurship type they intend to promote—at the expense of other types of entrepreneurship and the broader societal consequences such reforms will have.     

THE WAGE IMPACT OF TEACHERS UNIONS: A META‐ANALYSIS

The literature examining the impact of teachers unions on education is very large and diverse. We meta‐analyze the literature on the wage impacts of teachers unions to try to draw out general findings, the importance of empirical model specification, and samples. A key finding of this study is that the average wage impact estimated by the included papers is modest, around 2%–4.5%. Our findings also suggest that the quality of an empirical strategy significantly affects the size of the estimated impact. We find that teachers union wage impacts have varied over time. The largest impacts appear to be following the rapid expansion of teacher unionism in the 1970s. Finally, we gain new insight into the goals of teachers unions by using the increased statistical power of meta‐analytic techniques to show that unions increase the wages of new teachers and not just senior teachers. (JEL J51, I21, I30)