Ethical Codes in Sports Organizations: Classification Framework,Content Analysis,and the Influence of Content on Code Effectiveness

Although there is a growing body of research on social media, only few studies have considered organic products. Therefore, this study mapped the diffusion path of the social media resources for organic products in Mexico and South Korea through Twitter and compared the contents of tweets about organic products in terms of their semantic and hyperlink networks using webometric methods. The results indicate that for organic products, Koreans sent tweets much more frequently than Mexicans. Mexican tweets focused on basic food products in street markets, whereas Korean tweets highlighted promotions and firms, revealing the corporatist structure of its economy. In both cases, the findings support Twitter as a useful tool for Word-of-Mouth Communication on the online environment, among product consumers, and between consumers and enterprises.     

On the Differential Effects of European Patents

Since the invention of the European Patent System, national patent systems have continued to co-exist, although they did lose appeal. How have the different national systems been affected in view of their characteristics? In order to answer this question a constant-market-share (CMS) analysis is carried out. While on a theoretical level, the different elements adding to the appeal of each patent system are discussed, the CMS-analysis reveals the importance of country size in that the national systems of smaller countries lose.     

Cities and cyberspace: new entrepreneurial strategies

E-commerce is increasingly influencing business operations, as a major supportive medium for different strategies or as a strategy on its own. This paper seeks to identify impacts from concomitant changes on the development of cities. To this purpose, emerging time-based strategies are analysed in manufacturing and customer-services strategies are analysed in the services sector. The focus of the study is on proximity needs and what these needs imply for elimination of physical segments from value chains and insertion of virtual segments into these chains. The findings are then linked with trends for agglomeration or spread of urban activity. The conclusion is that the future of cities is far from clear. Trends for agglomeration go hand in hand with trends for spread on different spatial levels. In addition, there are huge knowledge gaps. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research to fill these gaps.     

LEGAL KNOWLEDGE AND AGILITY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

To address agility in public administration, we have developed a knowledge acquisition infrastructure for legal knowledge, based on an implementation‐oriented conceptualization of the legal system. Our objective is to reframe legal knowledge as a knowledge source in a design‐oriented task ontology, building on insights from the CommonKADS methodology for intelligent system design. The main result is to make case law and legal expert knowledge of critical incidents in organizations, two diagnostic knowledge sources underutilized in modern management and engineering, more accessible as a resource for design of agile organizational structures and intelligent systems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An exploratory study of organizational politics in Kuwait

Because politics is a way of life in organizations, organizational politics has been studied by several scholars over the past 40 years. Few studies, though, have examined organizational politics outside of the United States and Europe. This study is a further step toward closing that gap. In particular, we (1) examined the applicability of the Perceptions of Organizational Politics Scale (POPS) instrument in Kuwait, (2) examined the perceived existence of organizational politics in a public organization in Kuwait, and (3) sought to determine if perceptions of organizational politics seemed to be influenced by the same variables in Kuwait as in Western societies. The study found that the perception of organizational politics is relatively strong and that the POPS instrument was applicable in the Kuwaiti culture and could lead to an expanded understanding of organizational politics. The gender of the respondents, their tenure, and their current positions had some influence on perceptions of organizational politics. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

What does it mean to find the face of the franchise? Physical attractiveness and the evaluation of athletic performance

We show that attractiveness, as measured by facial symmetry, leads to greater rewards in professional sports. National Football League quarterbacks who are more attractive are paid greater salaries and this premium persists after controlling for player performance.     

Industry dynamics: Foundations for models with an infinite number of firms

This paper explores the connection between three important threads of economic research offering different approaches to studying the dynamics of an industry with heterogeneous firms. Finite models of the form pioneered by Ericson and Pakes (1995) capture the dynamics of a finite number of heterogeneous firms as they compete in an industry, and are typically analyzed using the concept of Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE). Infinite models of the form pioneered by Hopenhayn (1992), on the other hand, consider an infinite number of infinitesimal firms, and are typically analyzed using the concept of stationary equilibrium (SE). A third approach uses oblivious equilibrium (OE), which maintains the simplifying benefits of an infinite model but within the more realistic setting of a finite model. The paper relates these three approaches. The main result of the paper provides conditions under which SE of infinite models approximate MPE of finite models arbitrarily well in asymptotically large markets. Our conditions require that the distribution of firm states in SE obeys a certain “light-tail” condition. In a second set of results, we show that the set of OE of a finite model approaches the set of SE of the infinite model in large markets under a similar light-tail condition.