Physician practice acquisitions: preparing for the transaction

Hospitals embarking on acquisitions of physician practices should lay the groundwork for these transactions by: Building a framework for consistency. Preparing for possible exceptions to the framework. Broadly assessing the practice before advancing to the thorough valuation of the practice. Being alert for red flags and potential deal breakers and ready to address them.     

Migration Effects of Welfare Benefit Reform

This study tests for a migration response to the implementation of stricter rules for receiving welfare benefits (means-tested social assistance for individuals who lack sufficient work-related income), in the form of mandatory participation in activation programmes in Stockholm town districts. The results give no indications that activation programmes affect the moving choices of recipients of welfare benefits.     

Economic integration, market size and the welfare effects of trade liberalisation

Economic Integration, Market Size and the Welfare Effects of Trade Liberalisation. — This paper examines the welfare effects of regional and global integration in a model where market size matters. Regional integration leads to higher welfare in the countries of a preferential trading arrangement (PTA), but to lower welfare outside. In case the countries also decide to form a customs union (CU), both countries will experience further gains if the creation of the CU means that the average external trade barriers are raised. In turn, the outside country will in this case experience further welfare losses. If it retaliates and creates a trade war, this will lower welfare in all countries. In contrast, global integration mostly benefits both PTA countries and outside countries.     

Embedding Ethics: Dialogic Partnerships and Communitarian Business Ethics

Although emotion has become one of the most popular research areas within organizational scholarship, few studies have considered its connection with unethical behavior. Using dual-process theory, we expand on the rationalist perspective within the field of behavioral ethics by considering the process through which two discrete emotions, anger and guilt, influence unethical behavior. Across two studies using different methodologies, we found that anger increases unethical behavior whereas guilt reduces unethical behavior. These effects were mediated by impulsive and deliberative processing. Overall, our results shed light on distinct mechanisms through which emotions can influence unethical behavior. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Young consumers’ innovativeness in apparel choices: A model including consumer self‐confidence

In industries with network effects, consumer innovators help to trigger the critical mass needed for a product innovation to be successful. Thus, firms can benefit from actions that increase consumer innovativeness in their target markets. Consumer innovativeness has been associated with variables such as hedonic shopping motivation, impulsiveness and status seeking. There is limited work on the impact on consumer innovativeness of consumer characteristics that reflect consumers’ self‐confident ability to choose. This study proposes and tests a model for consumer innovativeness that incorporates variables from previous research and uncovers the importance of consumer self‐confidence. We collect survey data from 534 Chilean girls, ages 10–15. After building constructs with the help of exploratory factor analysis, we analyze the data with linear regression estimation (via OLS). Our results reveal that consumer self‐confidence is positively and significantly related to consumer innovativeness. Our findings also add evidence ‐from a younger age group‐ regarding the significance of status seeking, impulsiveness and hedonic shopping motivation on consumer innovativeness. Results suggest that companies could leverage consumer innovativeness by taking actions to increase consumers’ self‐confidence. Innovative apparel choices in young consumers could possibly also be strengthened by communicating status achievement and by enhancing shopping enjoyment.     

Methodological choices of HR research conducted in Asia

A twenty-year study of the Human Resource (HR) practices–outcome relationship has found that more rigorous methodologies have been adopted over time. However, several problematic features such as cross-sectional, single-informant, and single-level designs continue to be adopted (Bainbridge et al., Human Resource Management, 2016). Responding to calls for increased contextualization of research by investigating the relationship between the location of data collection and the methodological choices of researchers, this study answers the question “How unique are the methodological choices of HR research conducted in Asia?” Applying content analysis to 241 published articles, we compare internal, external, construct and statistical conclusion validity of studies collected in North America (n=66), Europe (n=95) and Asia (n=80, including 57 studies from China). Results show that despite similarities in cross-sectional, single-informant and single-level designs across regions, research conducted in Asia is mainly undertaken via field studies, using subjective outcome measures at the organizational level, following a post-predictive design. In addition, studies from Asia are more recent, and show a shorter time gap between data collection and publication. Theoretical and practical implications embedded in the dynamic context of Asia in general, and China more specifically are discussed.