Are benevolent dictators altruistic in groups? A within-subject design

We use a within-subject experimental design to investigate whether systematic relationships exist across distinct features of individual preferences: altruism in a two-person context, risk aversion in monetary outcomes, and social preferences in a group context. We find that altruism is related to demographic variables, including years of education, gender, and age. Perhaps most importantly, self allocation in a two-person dictator game is related to social preferences in a group context. Participants who are more generous in a dictator game are more likely to vote against their self-interest in a group tax redistribution game which we interpret to be an expression of social preferences.     

An Examination of New Product Development Best Practice

Efforts continue to identify new product development (NPD) best practices. Examples of recognized studies include those by the Product Development and Management Association's Comparative Performance Assessment Study and the American Productivity Quality Center NPD best practices study. While these studies designate practices that distinguish top‐performing companies, it is unclear whether NPD practitioners as a group (not just researchers) are knowledgeable about what represents a NPD best practice. The importance of this is that it offers insight into how NPD practitioners are translating potential NPD knowledge into actual NPD practice. In other words, are practitioners aware of and able to implement NPD best practices designated by noteworthy studies? The answer to this question ascertains a current state of the field toward understanding NPD best practice and the maturity level of various practices. Answering this question further contributes to our understanding of the diffusion of NPD best practices knowledge by NPD professionals, possibly identifying gaps between prescribed and actual practice. Beginning the empirical examination by conducting a Delphi methodology with 20 leading innovation researchers, the study examined the likely dimensions of NPD and corresponding definitions to validate the NPD practices framework originally proposed by Kahn, Barczak, and Moss. A survey was then conducted with practitioners from the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland to gauge opinions about perceptions of the importance of different NPD dimensions, specific characteristics reflected by each of these dimensions, and the level of NPD practice maturity that these characteristics would represent. The study is therefore unique in that it relies on the opinions of NPD practitioners to see what they perceive as best practice versus prior studies where the researcher has identified and prescribed best practices. Results of the present study find that seven NPD dimensions are recommended, whereas the 2006 Kahn, Barczak, and Moss framework had suggested six dimensions. Among practitioners across the three country contexts, there is consensus on which dimensions are more important, providing evidence that NPD dimensions may be generalizable across Western contexts. Strategy was rated higher than any of the other dimensions followed by research, commercialization, and process. Project climate and metrics were perceived as the lowest in importance. The high weighting on strategy and low weighting on metrics and project climate reinforce previous best practice findings. Regarding the characteristics of each best practice dimension, practitioners appear able to distinguish what constitutes poor versus best practice, but consensus on distinguishing middle range practices are not as clear. The suggested implications of these findings are that managers should emphasize strategy when undertaking NPD efforts and consider the fit of their projects with this strategy. The results further imply that there are clearly some poor practices that managers should avoid and best practices to which managers should ascribe. For academics, the results strongly suggest a need to do a better job of diffusing NPD knowledge and research on best practices. Particular attention by academics to the issues of metrics, project climate, and company culture appears warranted.     

Studying processes in and around networks

The industrial marketing literature on business networks has drawn attention to the importance and yet the complexities of managing in a context of fluid and dynamic inter-organizational relationships. This context also poses significant challenges to researchers who wish to better understand the evolution of networks and the processes occurring in and around them in order to generate valuable theoretical insight and actionable knowledge for practitioners. After reviewing the nature of process research, this paper considers the key methodological choices and tradeoffs faced by process researchers interested in studying network dynamics. These choices and tradeoffs are illustrated by drawing on a series of exemplary process studies of networks derived from the entrepreneurship, strategic management, organization theory and industrial marketing literatures. The paper concludes by proposing that future studies might benefit from focusing on key network transformations and from mobilizing programmatic investments.     

Dutch-auction IPOs: institutional development and underpricing performance

The Dutch-auction method of bringing IPOs to market has been used sparingly since its initiation in 1999 despite the potential for this method to lead to more fully-priced issues. The development of Dutch-auctioned IPOs is documented here, and institutional details are reviewed. An empirical investigation of the characteristics of these IPOs is presented. The evidence indicates smaller magnitudes of underpricing of Dutch-auctioned IPOs relative to traditional IPOs. A multi-variate analysis indicates, however, that this smaller degree of underpricing is due to factors other than the Dutch-auction process. The evidence strongly reinforces the institutional rationing hypothesis for underpricing. It also contributes to the international evidence of the failure of auctioned IPOs to avoid underpricing.     

International Sister-Cities: Bridging the Global-Local Divide

With the demise of the sharp urban-rural divide as a framework for urban analyses, debates have arisen regarding the utility of the city as a theoretically significant construct. Recently however, the growing emphasis on globalization has brought the analysis of global cities into sharp focus. The countervailing trend emphasizes the significance of the local. International sister-cities provide a site of analysis which illustrates the global-local interface and yet delves deeper. Initially conceived as a post-war means of developing friendships and cultural ties, sister-cities were based on similarities such as name or economic function. More recently, greater recognition has been given to the economic foundations and benefits of these connections. Providing an extension to an integrated approach to the study of sister-cities based on the multifold relationship between culture and commerce, this paper adds a further dimension by focusing on simultaneously operating multi-level entrepreneurial partnerships necessary to sustain active sister-city relationships. Drawing on New Zealand examples of twinning arrangements, it is demonstrated that the emergence and development of embedded partnership ties is vital to deriving sustainable economic and social benefits. While the global outreach of the sister-cities phenomenon appears to transcend the geographic confines of cities, strong locality considerations and local activism nevertheless predominate. A novel feature of this paper is the conceptualization of a hybrid form of entrepreneurialism, municipal-community entrepreneurship, which is argued as a valuable facilitator of the economic and social vibrancy of cities. to the two cities, it is broadening out to include cultural and work exchanges.     

Third-degree price discrimination in a short-stay accommodation industry

This article analyses the pricing in the short-stay accommodation industry in Tasmania. It utilizes a novel 2008 survey of Tasmanian short-stay accommodation firms in which business managers were asked about their perception of the elasticity of their firm’s demand in each of the market segments that their firm supplied. This direct observation of elasticity allows us to demonstrate that firms’ price across market segments act in a manner consistent with the Lerner index and the theory of third-degree price discrimination. Further we show, in line with expectations based on the literature, that increased quality of the accommodation lowers the elasticity of demand, while the elasticity of demand is higher in winter. Surprisingly, Internet sales channels do not exhibit a different elasticity of demand to other sales channels.     

Improved rangeland management with an Earth Resource Survey system

Recent advances in communications and satellite technology now make it possible to provide large, synoptic imagery of the earth's surface at relatively low cost. This paper reports on acase study that was designed to estimate the benefits that might be realized by rangeland managers from an Earth Resources Survey system. Information needs and current practices are first discussed and then related to available remote sensing and data distribution techniques. The analysis showed that cost savings from an applications system would be broadly evident in the areas of resource re-allocation, range productivity, and livestock management. Depending upon the assumptions concerning the discount rate and factors affecting technological diffusion, total benefits were estimated to range from $38.7 million to $115.4 million over 10-year operational period.