Export diversification: How much does the choice of the trading partner matter?

This paper studies how a country's export diversification varies across destination markets. It develops an extension of the Romalis (2004) model which yields two testable predictions. According to the first, exports between similarly endowed countries (“South–South” and “North–North”) are more diversified than exports between differently endowed countries (“South–North” and “North–South”). The second implication is that, for given countries' production patterns, low bilateral trade costs lead to greater export diversification. These predictions find empirical support in a panel of 102 trade partners and 4998 HS-6 industries over the period 1995–2007. Results show that similarities between trading partners in physical capital, land and human capital endowments per worker are associated with more diversified bilateral exports. Exports are also more diversified when bilateral trade costs are relatively low.     

Is bank staff interaction associated with customer saving behavior in banks?

Major changes are underway in the U.S. retail banking sector toward heavy investments in technology and fewer in personnel. Using the 2017 survey of household economics and decision‐making (SHED) (n = 11,359), we examine the relationship between saving behavior related to emergency, long‐term and periodic expenses and personal, technological, and hybrid bank account access methods. Binary logistic regression models were used to estimate the odds of reporting various saving behaviors in relation to various banking access methods. Findings suggest that the personal access method is positively associated with savings behavior for periodic expenses for the general population, and negatively associated with emergency savings in people with lower education attainment. Technology is associated with all types of saving behavior, while the hybrid access method is associated only with saving for periodic expenses. As investments in self‐service technology increase, the importance of access methods to savings behavior must be considered.     

Do they Know it’s CSR at all? An Exploration of Socially Responsible Music Consumption

Porter and Kramer (Harv Bus Rev 84(12):78–92, 2006; Harv Bus Rev 89(1/2), 62–77, 2011) introduced ‘shared value’ as a ‘new conception of capitalism,’ claiming it is a powerful driver of economic growth and reconciliation between business and society. The idea has generated strong interest in business and academia; however, its theoretical precepts have not been rigorously assessed. In this paper, we provide a systematic and thorough analysis of shared value, focusing on its ontological and epistemological properties. Our review highlights that ‘shared value’ has spread into the language of multiple disciplines, but that its current conceptualization is vague, and it presents important discrepancies in the way it is defined and operationalized, such that it is more of a buzzword than a substantive concept. It also overlaps with many other (related) concepts and lacks empirical grounding. We offer recommendations for defining and measuring the concept, take a step toward disentangling it from related concepts, and identify relevant theories and research methods that would facilitate extending the knowledge frontier on shared value.     

Instrumental client relationship development among top-ranking service professionals

Informal client contact forms a crucial part of the daily routine of service professionals, in particular among top-ranking professionals working for consultancy and accountancy firms. In this paper, we investigate how 34 service professionals develop informal client contact, by studying their networking styles. Our study shows many similarities in informal client contact between two groups of service professionals grouped by gender, but we also found subtle differences in what we coin instrumental and expressive relations. Contrary to gender stereotypes, we found that female service professionals tended toward instrumental networking styles, using professionalism and distance and allowing the high quality of their work compensate for network deficits, contingent upon their clients’ gender. Male service professionals drew on expressive relations to develop emotional bonding with their male clients in particular, but nonetheless toward instrumental purposes. Our study contributes to service industries literature by theoretically and empirically establishing the different informal networking styles between top-ranking service professionals, and the role of emotional bonding in particular. In doing so, the paper helps to better understand the intricacies of informal client contact as a critical dimension of the professional services industry.     

Environmental Performance Focus in Private Family Firms: The Role of Social Embeddedness

The macro-level business ethics in Scholasticism contrasts with modern Anglo-Saxon Capitalism, which is very influential worldwide. Scholasticism, developed between the thirteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries, deals with key elements of free market morality, including private property, contracts, profits, prices, and free competition. For over 500 years Scholasticism tried to understand economic phenomena and business activities and reflected on them from an ethical perspective. Scholasticism offered the crucial lesson of the centrality of justice and the role of practical wisdom in considering market morality. Justice is seen as both a virtue and a principle, and commutative justice (justice in exchanges) with the common good of society as the reference for the Scholastics, is regarded as being especially important.     

Vertical and financial ownership: Competition policy and the evolution of the UK pub market

Abstract

Traditionally the UK brewing industry was vertically integrated with brewers owning and controlling pubs. This came to an abrupt end in the forced divestment of a large proportion of the major brewers' pub estates in the 1989 ‘Beer Orders’. The divested pubs spawned the independent pub companies. This study of regulatory policy and financial services interest in the UK brewing industry poses the question of whether the original industrial structure was preferable to what has emerged subsequently. The contribution of the article is in highlighting the risks and rewards of regulatory intervention in deeply-embedded organisation and the sustainability of alternative business models that emerge.     

The Dilemma of Accountability for Professionals: A Challenge for Mainstream Management Theories

Professional institutions are increasingly confronted by fiscal constraints and political pressures to improve and increase their accountability in a competitive consumer-driven market. Accordingly, the need to ensure efficiency and accountability is of strategic importance. This article reports on a qualitative study of medical professionals that assessed the utility of financial incentives and external control methods derived from agency theory to ensure accountability of professionals. The authors argue that approaches derived from stewardship and institutional theories can extend the principal–agent perspective to sustain greater social and ethical accountability.     

How foreign firms achieve competitive advantage in the Chinese emerging economy: Managerial ties and market orientation

As China experience unprecedented changes in its social, legal, and economic institutions, on what should foreign firms focus more to overcome this challenge, managerial ties or market orientation? This study investigates how managerial ties and market orientation affect competitive advantage and, consequently, firm performance in China. On the basis of a survey of 179 foreign firms in China, we find that both managerial ties and market orientation can lead to firm success—but in different ways. Market orientation enhances firm performance by providing differentiation and cost advantages, whereas managerial ties improve performance through an institutional advantage (i.e., superiority in securing scarce resources and institutional support). Institutional advantage, in turn, leads to differentiation and cost advantages and consequently superior performance.     

Dodo Lé Là: how consumers promote a local iconic brand in postcolonial creole culture

ABSTRACT

This videography shows how consumers in the Reunion Island (France) promote a local Dodo beer towards an iconic status through their identity work. An alternative approach to Holt’s theorising on iconic brands is taken on two levels. First, the videography contributes by offering a non-American, postcolonial and creole aspect of a brand myth-making, as well as the ‘promotion’ of the brand by the local consumers and multi-ethnic community. Second, the consumers’ voice in citing the brand is examined (Nakassis, 2012. American Anthropologist, 114(4), 624–638.). Based on the findings, the citing of the brand happens in two different ways: when including it into personalised identity narratives and when producing new brand tokens, thus nurturing the brand ontology further.     

An Exploratory Study of Regulatory Failure in the Australian Home Mortgage Market

Regulators have long been interested in protecting consumers borrowing for a home as it is likely the single greatest financial obligation they will undertake. In this paper we examine the approach taken in Australia to mandating the disclosure of simple comparison data to reduce the complexity involved in the home loan decision. This article highlights that while the form of the legislated disclosure significantly improves decision accuracy, the failure of the regulator to account for the consumer's purchase behavior and lenders' motivations has undermined its effectiveness. We provide a number of recommendations for how to rectify these failings, principally that regulators need to consider the role of borrower information search and lender motivation as part of any regulatory reform.