Pre‐sale information and hammer prices for Australian Indigenous art

Using sales data from 1987–2011 we investigate the role that pre‐sale price information plays in determining hammer prices for Australian Indigenous artworks. Importantly, we control for the degree of market concentration as this might influence buyers’ perceptions of fairness in relation to price estimates which are provided by auction houses. Auction houses therefore act as important intermediaries between art sellers and art buyers. The results suggest that pre‐sale estimates and market concentration have a differential impact on hammer prices, depending on the point in the conditional realised price distribution under examination.     

The effects of supplier capabilities on industrial customers’ loyalty: the role of dependence

This research examines whether suppliers’ capabilities impact OEM customers’ dependence on the supplier and thereby generate customer loyalty. Using a sample of purchasing managers focusing on a single key component supplier, we examine three supplier capabilities, two dependence dimensions, and three aspects of customer loyalty. Core offering capability increases the customer firm’s benefit-based dependence. Operations capability has a more comprehensive effect, enhancing both benefit-based and cost-based dependence. Benefit-based dependence leads to relational loyalty and, through its effect on relational loyalty, to insensitivity to competitive offerings and future purchase expansion. Cost-based dependence motivates insensitivity to competitive offerings, but does not affect relational loyalty or purchase expansion. The supplier’s communication capability is associated with relational loyalty, but this effect does not flow through the customer firm’s dependence. The divergent pattern of antecedents and effects of benefit-based dependence and cost-based dependence may explain the inconsistent and insignificant research findings in previous research on dependence. Our results suggest that adopting a bi-dimensional model of dependence more fully captures the theoretical domain of dependence, thereby permitting researchers to better examine its role in supply chain, channel, and marketing relationships.     

Innovation And Inter-Firm Co-Operation: The Case Of The West Midlands

Drawing upon the innovative milieux and industrial districts literature, the paper provides substantial empirical evidence that firms have a greater chance of being innovative if they co-operate with other firms over innovation, albeit undertaking no investment in RLD. This is an important result especially for small firms. In particular, the paper focuses on inter-firm cwperation along the supply chain, using a swey of firms in the West Midlands to investi-gate co-operation over innovation between suppliers and buyers. A probit model is used to test the link between innovation performance and four innovation inputs: R&D expenditure, R&D personnel, networking with suppliers and networking with client firms.     

Body Image and Beliefs About Appearance: Constraints on the Leisure of College-Age and Middle-Age Women

Reducing adolescent substance use is important in South Africa, a developing nation with increasing adolescent substance use, lack of leisure/recreation opportunities, and high rates of adolescent discretionary time. Previous research suggests leisure boredom and adolescent substance use co-occur in this setting. Using longitudinal data from 2,580 South African adolescents as they progressed from the 8th to 11th grade, the current study disentangles the associations of trait and state leisure boredom with substance use, and examines how ability to restructure boring situations moderates those associations. On average, individuals with higher trait boredom used more substances, and on occasions when state boredom was high, the prototypical adolescent used more substances. Although restructuring did not moderate these associations, greater ability was associated with lower substance use independent of leisure boredom. Findings illustrated the importance of considering how trait and state aspects of leisure may contribute to adolescents’ risk behavior and addressed through preventive intervention.     

Strategic Issues in the Australian Tourism Industry: A 10-year Analysis of National Strategies and Plans

Predicting future events, trends and issues that may affect the tourism industry is not an exact science. Already the 21st century has seen a number of significant, radical and unexpected events, including September 11, SARS and, more recently, the worldwide economic downturn and natural disasters, such as earthquakes and cyclonic activity. Within this increasingly volatile global landscape, more than ever there is a need for the tourism industry to embrace a disciplined, structured and continuous approach to identifying and monitoring future trends and issues to inform policymaking and strategic planning. Yet in Australia it has been claimed that a preoccupation with marketing and short-term tactical planning, at the expense of long-term, strategic thinking, has led to limited planning perspectives for tourism. To explore these claims, this paper reports on a content analysis of 28 Australian national-level tourism strategic planning documents across a 10-year period (2000–2009 inclusive).     

Market-Consistent Valuation and Funding of Cash Balance Pensions

Cash balance pension benefits are accumulated at guaranteed crediting rates, usually based on yields on government securities. Viewed as a financial liability, the benefit is a form of interest rate derivative, which can be valued using financial models and theory. In this article, we derive the market value for a range of commonly used crediting rates, assuming the accrued benefit liability comprises the past contributions, allowing for full interest credits up to a known future retirement date. We use the Hull-White interest rate model to determine crediting rates and to determine the market value. We explore the risks associated with different crediting rate choices by evaluating the liability using market data from 1998 to 2013. We propose two other approaches to the accrued benefit. The first approach assumes the accrued benefit comprises past contributions with interest up to the valuation date, but no future interest credits. Future credits on past contributions are assumed funded through future contributions. The second method projects all contributions and interest to retirement and assumes equal units of accrual of this projected benefit in each year of service. We compare the three approaches through numerical examples.     

Updating Wilkie’s Economic Scenario Generator for U.S. Applications

The Wilkie economic scenario generator has had a significant influence on economic scenario generators since the first formal publication in 1986 by Wilkie. In this article we update the model parameters using U.S. data to 2014, and review the model performance. In particular, we consider stationarity assumptions, parameter stability, and structural breaks.     

Men of Steel Meet the Market: Interpreting Firm Behavior in Russia’s Metallurgy Industry

In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty (2014) explains growing income inequality via the difference between the rate of return on capital and the growth rate of the economy: the “r > g” inequality. Even if it is true that r > g leads to increasing inequality, nearly every school of economic thought predicts that r will fall as the economy grows. Thus, for Capital (2014) to be a comprehensive theory of inequality, a more adequate theory of r is required. I term this the “Piketty Problem.” I offer a solution to this problem from an institutionalist perspective.     

Road bowling in Ireland: social space and the context of context

ABSTRACT

Consumer research has offered a multitude of understandings of space. While these insights have contributed both to absolute and relativistic appreciations, the discourse has tended more often towards absolute representations. Through an examination of Irish road bowling, built from a four-year ethnography, we position Henri Lefebvre’s triadic model of social space as a heuristic device that may be used to further relativistic representations of space. In doing so we expose how Irish road bowlers produce space on public roads. We find that such space and the actions of road bowlers within it are deeply influenced by both historic and contemporary socio-cultural discourses. In this way, we highlight how Lefebvre can be used to get at the context of context and offer an alternative understanding of normative and existential communitas.     

Workplace Romance 2.0: Developing a Communication Ethics Model to Address Potential Sexual Harassment from Inappropriate Social Media Contacts Between Coworkers

This article examines ethical implications from workplace romances that may subsequently turn into sexual harassment through the use of social media technologies, such as YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, text messaging, IMing, and other forms of digital communication between office colleagues. We examine common ethical models such as Jones (Acad Manag Rev 16:366–395, 1991) issue-contingent decision-making model, Rest’s (Moral development: Advances in research and theory, 1986) Stages of Ethical Decision-Making model, and Pierce and Aguinis’s (J Org Behav 26(6):727–732,2005) review of workplace romance versus sexual harassment issues. The article makes a contribution by developing a new communication ethics model that includes response positive and response negative contingencies to guide decision-making about inappropriate social media contacts that spillover into the workplace. In addition, we recommend that human resource personnel take a more active role in communicating appropriate ethical rules of conduct concerning the use of social media technologies inside and outside the office.