Shoppers,Start Your Engines

If Christmas did not exist,Toys‘R’Us would have to invent it—or someother joyful family-themed holiday togive millions of people the license to goon a weeks-long spending bender.Thesedays Christmas shopping is not just asport,it’s a spectator sport.We tune into the local news on Black Friday to     

A longitudinal ethnographic study of night‐freight pilots

This paper records the lived reality of night‐freight operations at a UK‐registered airline. Observations were made over an 18‐month period. The paper answers calls for more research into the working and living conditions of night‐freight pilots. Pilots perceived numerous issues. These included cultural cleavage, terms and conditions, roster instability and the impact of night flying on physical and psychological health. Some issues (volatile rosters and deep first nights, for example) had the potential to increase operational risk. Two sub‐cultures were identified within the airline: the quality‐of‐working‐life sub‐culture and competitiveness and corporate survival sub‐culture. A ‘paradox of control’ was observed. While pilots controlled the aircraft in flight, their patterns and conditions of work were decided by roster managers, crewing officers and other office‐based technocrats. Technocrats’ directive power was resented by some pilots. Some claimed that technocrats did not understand the lived reality of the line, resulting in ‘uninformed’ decisions that augmented operational risk. The study involved a single airline. No claims are made for the generalisability of the findings. More studies are required.     

The Logic of Membership of Sectoral Business Associations

This paper assesses the logic of membership of sectoral business associations in Britain using evidence from a proportionate stratified random sample of associations. The British system gives no statuatory status to business associations. As a result the size and fragmentation of associations is similar to the US, membership of associations is interpreted in terms of the logic of specific business service demand and the logic of collective activities. Expectations from models of collective action, associability and involvement are used to interpret association membership. The paper argues that the normal distinction between associations as trade, professional or "peak" bodies is too simplistic in not properly differentiating the types of member. The paper employs instead a set of six categories dependent on the type of members: companies, owner-managers, the self-employed, and individuals, as well as bodies with mixed membership, and federations (which are associations of associations). Survey evidence demonstrates that member motives for joining, lapsing and constraining service development differ significantly between association types and tend most strongly to emphasise the logic of individual services as complements to the logic collective activity. Analysis of the rates of joining and lapsing membership show evidence of reluctance to join and high rates of lapsing.     

Transfer of Marketing Knowledge Within Business‐Nonprofit Collaborations

Companies often develop collaborative joint ventures with nonprofits, and sometimes help their nonprofit partners with the marketing activities associated with these projects. Often, the assistance furnished is embodied in a transfer of knowledge from a firm to a nonprofit and involves knowledge about marketing techniques, strategies and methods. This article presents the results of a survey concerning the extents, natures and effectiveness of marketing knowledge transfers taking place between 291 UK enterprises and their nonprofit partner organisations. The survey covered the knowledge transfer methods that companies employed, the scope of the knowledge communicated, the factors that encouraged or impeded marketing knowledge transfer, and the considerations that determined which partner completed most of the marketing tasks associated with a project. It emerged that knowledge transfers occurred mainly through face‐to‐face communications, though with little formal teamworking. Both the extent and the effectiveness of transfers depended on the degree of marketing knowledge within the nonprofit partner, on levels of knowledge specificity and project complexity, and on the financial importance of the collaboration. The extent of knowledge transfer was additionally influenced by cultural and organisational distance. Similar considerations affected commercial partners' decisions to do most of the marketing work required by a collaboration. Such decisions were especially likely if anti‐marketing bias existed within the nonprofit organisation and if the nonprofit's staff knew little about marketing.     

Intermediation for technology diffusion and user innovation in a developing rural economy: a social learning perspective

Technology intermediaries are seen as potent vehicles for addressing perennial problems in transferring technology from university to industry in developed and developing countries. This paper examines what constitutes effective user-end intermediation in a low-technology, developing economy context, which is an under-researched topic. The social learning in technological innovation framework is extended using situated learning theory in a longitudinal instrumental case study of an exemplar technology intermediation programme. The paper documents the role that academic-related research and advisory centres can play as intermediaries in brokering, facilitating and configuring technology, against the backdrop of a group of small-scale pisciculture businesses in a rural area of Colombia. In doing so, it demonstrates how technology intermediation activities can be optimized in the domestication and innofusion of technology amongst end-users. The design components featured in this instrumental case of intermediation can inform policy making and practice relating to technology transfer from university to rural industry. Future research on this subject should consider the intermediation components put forward, as well as the impact of such interventions, in different countries and industrial sectors. Such research would allow for theoretical replication and help improve technology domestication and innofusion in different contexts, especially in less-developed countries.     

Promotional message strategies for disability charities' employment services

One hundred and eight managers responsible for employee recruitment completed mail questionnaires designed to assess their affective, cognitive and conative reactions to two promotional messages for a disability charity's employment (job‐finding) service. The first message contained a mainly altruistic appeal; the second emphasised the financial and other practical benefits of employing a disabled person. Overall the sample reacted more favourably to the latter communication. Heads of department and general managers found the altruistic message to be significantly less appealing than did personnel or human resources managers. Responses were significantly influenced by a recruiting manager's personal experiences of disabled individuals; by the state of the labour market; and by perceptions (possibly unfounded) that non‐disabled employees within a firm would feel uncomfortable if they were made to work alongside a disabled person. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Pro‐Consumer Price Ceilings under Regulatory Uncertainty*

We examine optimal price ceilings when the regulator is uncertain about demand and maximizes expected consumer surplus. With perfect competition, if regulatory uncertainty is large enough, then softer intervention is called for, with the price ceiling set at a relatively high level compared with a full information scenario. In an imperfectly competitive setting where symmetric firms compete in supply functions, with large enough uncertainty, the optimal ceiling increases with the degree of competition, so greater competitive pressure justifies less restrictive regulation. Under perfect competition, we also determine a cut‐off level of rationing efficiency below which a price ceiling should not be used.     

The information revolution,innovation diffusion and economic growth: an examination of causal links in European countries

Quality & Quantity - Over the last 5 decades, the economic landscape in Europe has been transformed rapidly due to innovation, digitisation of the economy, and emergence of new sources of...     

Inter-linkages between competition and stabilisation policies in the banking sector and stock market development in Europe

The banking sector and the stock market in Europe have been adversely impacted by a series of global financial crises over the last two decades. Major financial reforms were implemented to enhance the stability and competition within the banking sector. Measures were also implemented to create a vibrant stock market in Europe to stimulate economic growth in Europe. This study examines the interactions between stock market development, banking competition, and banking stability in European countries from 1996 to 2016. The purpose of the study is to understand the inter-linkages between these variables to ascertain the spillover impact of policy reforms in the banking sector on the stock market and vice-versa. Using a vector error-correction model, the study finds long-run and short-run inter-linkages between banking competition, banking stability, and stock market development in European countries. The study’s most robust result is that banking competition and banking stability stimulate stock market development in the long run. There is also some evidence that healthy competition in the banking sector and stock market development instils greater stability in the banking sector. The results suggest that policy measures put in place to create a vibrant stock market must include elevating banking competition and banking stability, with policymakers being cognizant that causality may be bidirectional.