The effects of product knowledge on the evaluation of warranteed brands

This study explores the effects of consumer knowledge on respondents' evaluations of both known and unknown brands that include either a 2-year or a 20-year warranty. Both experts and nonexperts evaluated warranty as more important than brand name in their product quality decision. Warranty length was positively correlated with product quality perceptions for both known and unknown brands. With the unknown brand, nonexperts perceived significant improvement in product quality when the warranty length was increased from 2 to 20 years. For the known brand, nonexperts perceived little difference in quality for the two warranty lengths. Experts indicated no significant differences in perceived quality, given the four brand/warranty-length conditions. The results indicate that warranty length is most heavily weighted as a cue to product quality when consumers are not highly knowledgeable, and the brand name is not well known. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Children and the Changing World of Advertising

Concerns about children's ability to fully comprehend and evaluate advertising messages has stimulated substantial research and heated debate among scholars, business leaders, consumer advocates, and public policy makers for more than three decades. During that time, some very fundamental questions about the fairness of marketing to children have been raised, yet many remain unresolved today. With the emergence of increasingly sophisticated advertising media, promotional offers and creative appeals in recent years, new issues have also developed. This paper provides a basis for further examination of some the key questions in this area, and suggests how children's advertising research can be employed to illuminate them.     

E‐learning: emerging uses,empirical results and future directions

The use of network technology to deliver training is the latest trend in the training and development industry and has been heralded as the ‘e‐learning revolution.’ In an effort to separate hype from reality, this paper reviews practitioner and research literature on e‐learning, incorporating unpublished information from interviews with managers and consultants directly involved in e‐learning initiatives. Specific attention is given to why organizations use e‐learning, what the potential drawbacks to e‐learning are, what we know from research about e‐learning and what the future of e‐learning may hold.     

Preserving a Professional Institution: Emotion in Discursive Institutional Work

We studied the discursive institutional work written by pharmacy leaders as part of a larger institutional project to preserve the institution of pharmacy. Our analysis of monthly editorials printed in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association from 1960 to 2003 shows how different discrete emotions were systematically incorporated in specific rhetorical argument structures over the course of an institutional project. In contrast to previous research, we show how discursive institutional work that is directed to members of the same specific social group (e.g., a profession) can vary over time in response to significant events and changes in practices of the target audience. Our longitudinal study shows that the relative frequency of argument types, the incorporation of emotion, and the content of rhetorical argumentation changed over time. We contribute to theory about the role of emotions in discursive institutional work by unpacking the role of discrete emotions and showing how such discourse evolves over time in concert with field conditions.     

A profit-maximizing model of Federal Home Loan Bank behavior

In this article the price-setting behavior of the district Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs) is investigated. Previous studies have viewed the FHLB system as a policy authority that sets the interest rate on FHLB advances in an attempt to stabilize mortgage and housing markets. In this study a profit-maximizing model of FHLB behavior is developed and empirically tested, and the results compared to a model of the FHLB system as a policy authority. The empirical results offer support for the hypothesis of profit-maximizing behavior and indicate that, in addition to the FHLB's cost of funds, factors that influence thrift demand for FHLB advances, deposits, and capital stock are important in explaining FHLB choice variables.     

New Zealand secondary technology teachers’ perceptions: “technological” or “technical” thinking?

Technology education in the New Zealand context has seen significant change since it’s inception as a technical subject. The changing nature of the subject in New Zealand secondary schools is influenced by some teachers’ preoccupation with the making of quality product outcomes, rather than their enactment of the curriculum, which conceptualises a wider remit. Research into the perceptions of technology teachers’ interpretation and enactment of the curriculum suggests that to enable change, teachers need to adopt a form of “technological thinking”, in support of their “technical thinking”. Technological thinking is a notion presented to support teachers to explore a range of differing pedagogical approaches and learning outcomes, reflective of the intent of the New Zealand curriculum, which aims to foster learning environments that are innovative and responsive to students’ social and academic needs.     

Responses by Australian auditors to the global financial crisis

We examine the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) on auditor behaviour in Australia. Using a sample of listed companies, we examine whether the GFC impacted the propensity of auditors to issue going concern modifications and increased audit effort as reflected in audit fees and audit reporting lag. Controlling for client characteristics, we find an increase in the propensity to issue going concern opinions during the period 2008–2009 compared with the period 2005–2007 and that Big N auditors responded to the GFC earlier than non‐Big N auditors. In relation to audit effort, we find evidence of increased audit fees during the period 2008–2009 compared with the period 2005–2007. There is, however, no evidence of increased audit reporting lags during the GFC.     

Maternity rights and mothers' return to work

This paper uses a cohort of 12,000 births to examine the effect of maternity rights on mothers' post-birth return to employment decisions. It uses a discrete hazard model to disentangle the effects of the terms of maternity rights entitlements from other factors that influence the timing of a mother's return to work. Mothers with rights have an underlying (but unobserved) stronger attachment to the labour market that prompts earlier return than on average. We take this into account by estimating a counterfactual distribution of return times using a sample of women who failed to qualify for maternity rights but who have similar levels of labour market attachment. Even when differential attachment is taken into account there remains a substantial impact of maternity rights on behaviour.