Nutrition knowledge of caterers and constraints to offering more healthy meals

The study determined whether school and workplace caterers in the South East of England have the necessary knowledge to provide more healthy meals, and the constraints preventing them offering them. Results indicated that most caterers knew about current nutritional guidelines and sources of nutrients, and thus should be able to produce healthy meal choices. Most caterers believed that certain foods could be prepared successfully using alternative ingredients or cooking methods. The main constraints to offering more healthy options were taste, cost and what customers wanted. The main changes that had been made were the use of reduced-fat ingredients and cooking practices aimed at reducing the fat content of dishes.     

Managing perceived risk for credit card purchase through supplementary services

The present study aims to understand the significance of supplementary services as nonpersonal sources of information to consumers to handle perceived risk associated with the purchase of credit card services. The impact of supplementary services is particularly studied towards functional risk and psychological risk. The study is based on primary data collected by a survey with the help of a questionnaire administered through personal interviews. It is found that supplementary services can play a significant role in controlling functional and psychological perceived risk associated with credit card services. Marketers of credit cards can enhance the value of services to customers and can thus enhance purchase possibilities by reducing perceived risk through supplementary services that are controllable. Perceived risk in financial services marketing is an important factor from the consumers’ point of view for purchase decisions and is also an issue of significance to service marketers. It is an original attempt to examine the relationship between perceived risk and supplementary services.     

The effectiveness of pre-release advertising for motion pictures: An empirical investigation using a simulated market

We use data on a movie’s stock price as it trades on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a popular online market simulation, to study the impact of movie advertising. We find that advertising has a positive and statistically significant effect on expected revenues, but that the effect varies strongly across movies of different “quality”. The point estimate implies that the returns to advertising for the average movie are negative.     

The development of capabilities in new firms

This research explores evidence of corporate capabilities for conducting acquisition and alliance deals in young firms. We hypothesize that investors conjecture about the future based on information about a firm's capabilities. Each successive deal carries intrinsic value, creates experience, generates feedback, and yields information about the firm's underlying capabilities. We evaluate whether stock prices impute expectations that firms will capably pursue particular programs of acquisitions and alliances. The analysis covers how investor responses change across successive deals on the theory that firms with a concentrated program of deals may develop capabilities more intensively than those with programs that involve both acquisitions and alliances. The dataset covers the population of firms that went through an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States between 1988 and 1999. It contains information on all of their post‐IPO acquisitions and alliances, and on how their stock prices changed in response to the announcement of each deal. The results suggest that within the first year after IPO, investors expect firms to execute particular streams of alliances and acquisitions that reflect their unique histories of demonstrated capabilities. We also find evidence that investors cannot fully anticipate deal programs. The findings support a capabilities‐based view of the firm and also show that accurate inference using event‐study methods may require digging deep into the early histories of firms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

IMPORT LIBERALIZATION AND PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN INDIAN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES IN THE 1990s

Total factor productivity growth in Indian manufacturing decelerated in the 1990s, a decade of major economic reforms in India. Econometric analysis presented in the paper indicates that the lowering of effective protection to industries favorably affected productivity growth. The results suggest that gestation lags in investment projects and slower agricultural growth in the 1990s had an adverse effect on productivity growth. The analysis reveals that underutilization of industrial capacity was an important cause of the productivity slowdown. With corrections for capacity utilization, the estimated productivity growth in the 1990s is found to be about the same as in the 1980s.     

What happens to international new ventures beyond start-up: An exploratory study

Since its inception, research in international entrepreneurship has focused mainly on how and why international new ventures internationalize early on. To date, there has been hardly any research regarding the issue of continuing corporate growth in such ventures beyond their start-up phase or initial internationalization. Theoretically, we ground our study within the dynamic capabilities view of the firm and through an inductive theory building research explore how and whether international new ventures made-it beyond the start-up phase, aiming to generate early theoretical constructs to guide international entrepreneurship research in this substantive area. Grounded in data, we develop the following constructs related to made-it points: strategic experimentation, tensions in organizational gestalt, and legitimacy lies. To get to a made-it point, entrepreneurs experiment with their venture at several levels: organizational, business model, and operational. These experimentation efforts are fueled by tensions that exist in the organizational gestalt, such as ownership structure, business proposition to the market, and product development process. To legitimate themselves and their venture in the stakeholders’ eyes, entrepreneurs may tell legitimacy lies. We maintain that international new ventures do not reach a made-it point if they only manage to develop substantive capabilities to produce desired outputs at various levels within the venture but fail to create dynamic capabilities to change and reconfigure existing substantive capabilities.     

Creating a healthy working environment with leadership: the concept of health-promoting leadership

In this paper, a concept of health-promoting leadership is presented that focuses on the interaction between working environment and leadership behavior. Seven key aspects define health-promoting leadership: health awareness, low workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values. The self-assessment version of the questionnaire was used in this study for the first time. Analyzing the data of 299 leaders, the results showed satisfactory reliability and validity coefficients for all dimensions. Structural equation modeling indicates that all dimensions can be assigned on a main factor of health-promoting leadership. The questionnaire offers two main advantages: first, it is possible to measure health-promoting behavior strategies of leaders and thus show their leadership potential. Second, the instrument allows analyzing critical aspects in the working environment and further helps establish basic conditions in the workplace, where a health-promoting workplace can be created.