Worthiness versus Self‐Interest in Charitable Giving: Evidence from a Low‐Income,Minority Neighborhood

We examine the impact of perceived worthiness and financial self‐interest on charitable giving. Both participants and recipients come from a low‐income, predominantly African‐American community in the United States. To examine this issue, we introduce a “Comparative Dictator Game,” where participants make dictator allocations for four possible recipients, each with different characteristics. We find higher charitable giving toward more “worthy” (i.e., disabled, females who are head of household, and individuals with more children) recipients when individuals donate money to different recipients. Additionally, subjects then select their preferred recipient/allocation. When only one recipient must be selected for a donation, individuals select recipients to whom they provided smaller donations and recipients with children. The results highlight the trade‐off between a desire to engage in philanthropy, supporting those who are deserving, and financial self‐interest.     

The main determinants of banking crises in OECD countries

Banks’ stability can be affected by economic fluctuations, banks’ risk-taking behavior, connections among banks and countries’ financial system structure. At the same time, banking regulation and supervision were designed to protect banks from failure, but a large number of banking crises were not prevented recently. Using binary response models for panel data and focusing on OECD countries, this paper studies the main determinants of banking crises over a period of 21 years. Results suggest a bank’s high debt and a country’s low GDP growth rate as the major determinants of banking crises. There is also evidence of contagion across countries from the same geographical region and from G7 to other countries, and that bank-based financial systems are less prone to borderline banking crises. Regulatory and supervision practices are found not to have been relevant in bankruptcy prevention.     

Susceptibility to Advertising and Perceived Friend Norms: A Meta-Analysis of Materialism in Youths “Meta-Analysis of Materialism in Youths”

This study presents a meta-analysis assessing the antecedents that are associated with the influence that advertising and friends' behaviours have on the formation of materialistic behaviours in youth. We carried out a systematic review in which we identified an initial 217 studies. Of these, 32 were ultimately included in the analysis. Our results revealed significant relationships for the constructs associated directly with susceptibility to advertising (advertising viewing attitudes, attention to advertising, celebrity endorsements in advertising, advertising exposure and TV viewing frequency) and for perceived friends' norms (friends' attitudes, social comparisons with friends and communication with friends) with materialism in youth.     

Effects of perceived retail crowding: a meta-analytic study

ABSTRACT

We performed a meta-analysis to understand the crowding construct in the retail context. The systematic review identified 535 studies, of which 69 were present in the analysis conducted, generating 504 quantitative relationships. Our meta-analysis indicated that the perception of crowding generates many negative feelings, a few positive feelings, minimal perceived value, low attractiveness of the environment and low short- and long-term consequent behaviours. At the methodological level, it was found that student samples and experiments tend to produce a stronger impact on the relationship between crowding and satisfaction. It was also found that the effect of crowding perception on customer satisfaction differed according to cultural influence. Finally, the results did not demonstrate an influence of the type of density (human vs spatial) on the relationship between retail crowding and satisfaction.     

Victims of road accidents with serious injuries and dependence on some individual,climatic and infrastructure factors on federal highways in Brazil

Abstract

Road or urban traffic accidents in Brazil have a large presence in external causes of mortality. The main goal of this study is to discover significant factors in the incidence of accidents on Brazilian highways based on a database with information on each person injured on federal highways in Brazil reported by the Federal Highway Police. Some factors are considered in the study as cause of the accident, type of accident, stage of the day, weather condition, highway type, highway facility, age of the victim, gender of the victim and type of vehicle. From the obtained results of chi-square tests and logistic regression models, it was observed statistical dependence (p?<?0.05) of the occurrence of injured people with serious injuries and the factors cause of the accident, type of accident, day, highway type and vehicle type. Considering the dead victims, the covariates age, time of day, highway type, highway facility, gender and type of vehicle showed significance (p?<?0.05). These results are of great interest for authorities to increase road enforcement, improve highway facilities and target the production of vehicles with better safety standards.     

Sociomateriality: Theories,methodology, and practice

This article aims to present the theoretical trends that constitute the notion of sociomateriality in the field of organizational studies and to describe a methodological framework for conducting empirical research in this field. It is a contribution for those interested in understanding and using the sociomateriality approach theoretically and methodologically. The main conclusion is that sociomateriality is a valuable alternative not only for comprehending how the entanglement of human and non-human actors may produce organizations, their practices, and changes, but also for (re)thinking organizational phenomena both ontologically and methodologically.     

Factors in the effective transfer of knowledge from multinational enterprises to their foreign subsidiaries: a Mozambican case study

The purpose of this article is to better understand the role of internal stakeholders in subsidiaries of multinational companies (MNCs) in order to offer potential insights into the cross‐border transfer of knowledge from those companies’ headquarters to their subsidiaries. The focus is upon subsidiaries in developing countries, here Mozambique. More specifically, the article is concerned with identifying factors that influence the learning of internal stakeholders and noting practices which seem associated with a high level of absorptive capacity and performance of subsidiaries. The starting point is evidence of ineffective transfer of knowledge by MNCs to their subsidiaries in developing countries, with consequent sub‐standard performance. The research reported involves four case studies of Portuguese companies operating in Mozambique and draws on data from interviews with senior and middle managers in the firms’ Mozambican subsidiaries. The results obtained suggest that successful knowledge transfer to overseas subsidiaries is found under the following conditions. First, the parent company knows the local context and provides a flow of relevant information. Second, application of knowledge locally is done flexibly to suit local circumstances. Next, a participatory approach is used so that local staff can see why the knowledge conveyed is necessary. Fourth, explanation and demonstration are key techniques, with major roles for on‐the‐job training, continuous improvement and training at headquarters. Finally, issues arising from local culture may need to be addressed.     

The Aggregate Behavior of Banks: A Proposal for Prudential Supervision

This study seeks to investigate a macroeconomic approach that could help bank regulators and supervisors perform their task of ensuring financial stability. To achieve this, an attempt is made to explain the behavior of banks by analyzing aggregate time series of credit lending and deposit-taking, which are the variables involved in financial intermediation. This article's main contribution is to present evidence of banks’ behavior in their role as financial intermediaries, in terms of the performance of the variables that represent their credit-granting or deposit-taking decisions. For this purpose the study used a vector autoregressive model to construct impulse response functions and the Granger test. The results demonstrate the existence of bilateral causality between credit lending and deposit--taking, suggesting that banks actively manage the financial intermediation process. In addition, the results show that shocks to deposits destabilize the credit lending process, and credit supply shocks, in turn, destabilize deposit-taking. The latter result is important for understanding how financial instability can arise, and is thus relevant for the bank regulator.     

Omnichannel approach: Factors affecting consumer acceptance

Abstract

The omnichannel approach is a new commercial opportunity that aims to offer consumers a unique and satisfying experience through any touch point. This research aims to understand the factors that might lead consumers to accept and use this new approach. The conceptual model was tested empirically using primary data collected from 210 Portuguese participants. The results reported suggest that perceptions of usefulness, ease of use, and compatibility have a positive effect on brand experience, which strongly affects the behavioral intention to use. Additionally, a moderation analysis, using user status as a moderator, shows that while usefulness is important to uniquely explain use intention for low frequency, ease of use is only a good predictor of use intention for high-frequency users. This research provides useful insights for academic research by shedding light on this new phenomenon, and simultaneously for businesses by deriving some implications for defining their omnichannel strategies.     

Operating Factors That Help to Improve Performance in Subsidiaries with Low Absorptive Capacity

This article aims to investigate the process of knowledge transfer from headquarters to subsidiaries located in developing countries. We studied four cases with activities in the industrial sector. The results obtained reveal that an efficient transfer of knowledge depends on the contribution of headquarters to overcoming cultural differences; evolution of the learning process and the contribution of the recipient; and implementation and consolidation of new knowledge in the subsidiary. The cultural influence is decisive in the evolution of the performance of the subsidiary through the local production and sale of new competitive products. The weak absorption capacity of local individuals means that the business model of the headquarters cannot be replicated in the Mozambican market.