Multinational Corporations and Local Communities: A Critical Analysis of Conflict

As conflict between multinational corporations and local communities escalates, scholars, executives, activists, and community leaders are calling for companies to become more accountable for the impact of their activities on external stakeholders. In order for business to do so, managers must first understand the causes of conflict with local communities, and communities must understand what courses of action are available to challenge activities they deem harmful to their interests. In this article, I present a framework for examining the factors that contribute to multinational and community conflict including stakeholder power inequality, stakeholder perception gaps and cultural context. Moreover, I describe some of the ways that communities can increase their leverage in conflict situations.     

Pioneering Advantage in New Service Development: A Multi-Country Study of Managerial Perceptions

Pioneering advantage in manufacturing firms has received much attention in the management and marketing literature. Few research studies, however, have been conducted to investigate the pioneering advantages and disadvantages involved in new service development, especially across several geographic regions. We build a theoretical framework of pioneering advantage in service industries based on the distinguishing characteristics of services. From this framework, we develop a set of testable propositions about the importance of several types of pioneering advantage (economic, preemptive, technological, and behavioral advantages) to service managers. Specifically, we propose that all of these types of pioneering advantages are important to service managers, and that these managers perceive that pioneering results in improved firm performance. We also propose that, due to the distinguishing characteristics of services such as intangibility and heterogeneity, service managers will not perceive the risks of pioneering in a service industry to be severe. In addition, we propose that certain types of pioneering advantage will be more important to service managers in Western countries than in Asian Pacific countries due to cultural and business environmental differences. In particular, we propose that service managers from Western firms perceive preemptive advantages of pioneering to be more important than do their Asian Pacific counterparts, and service managers from Asian Pacific firms perceive behavioral advantages of pioneering to be more important than do their Western counterparts. To test our propositions empirically, we develop a set of pioneering principles from the literature. We then collect and analyze data from a sample of 982 senior managers in service industries from nine countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong,1 South Korea, and Singapore. We find evidence of several significant cross‐cultural differences consistent with our propositions. In fact, seven of the eight propositions are strongly or partially supported. The only nonsupported proposition concerned the importance of technological advantage. We find that technological advantages of pioneering are much less important to service managers than are other pioneering advantages. We conclude with strategic recommendations for managers involved in new service development and international or global competition, and provide directions for future research. We note that the insights from this study can help managers from both the West and the Asian Pacific region to better understand their global competitors who pursue a new service pioneering strategy, and can potentially help them select entry deterrence strategies more effectively.     

TOWARD BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN THEORY AND EMPIRICAL REALITY

Introductory (i.e. first year) undergraduate learners often perceive economics to be remote from reality and overly theoretical, leading to a lack of motivation and enthusiasm to study economics. A general survey of curriculum practice reveals that lecture materials and the pedagogic approach to teaching introductory economics often do not place the current “mainstream” economic theory into its philosophical context. The result being that the learners are unable to bridge the gap between abstract economic theory and empirical reality. This paper argues that research into effective teaching and learning should focus not only on learner characteristics but also on curriculum content and its philosophical underpinnings, in order to research why students hold these negative perceptions. The paper recommends that introductory undergraduate teaching needs to engage in a critical examination, with the learner, of the philosophical underpinnings of “mainstream” economic theory and to introduce debates about the implications of these into the curriculum. This would create exciting new opportunities for teachers and learners to explore the connections between economic theory and social science in general and should come a long way in changing the negative perceptions of introductory undergraduate economics.     

The impact of customer ratings on consumer choice of fresh produce: A stated preference experiment approach

The importance of customer ratings or reviews in online shopping has been recognized in the previous literature; however, few have studied how online customer rating scores affect consumers’ fresh produce purchases and its importance relative to other fresh produce attributes. The quality of fresh produce demonstrates high uncertainty and variation; therefore, the impact of user-generated content such as customer rating scores on the choice of fresh produce may be more complex than on other product categories. Moreover, previous studies on customer ratings have not examined the price premium that retailers can obtain based on better ratings of fresh produce. Using a stated preference approach (i.e., choice experiment), this study measures the willingness to pay for a higher customer rating score and explores its relative importance to other popular fresh produce attributes (i.e., organic, place of origin, and shelf life). The results show that customer rating is the second most important attribute after the place of origin and is more important than production methods (e.g., organic and naturally grown) for fresh strawberry purchases. Also, rating scores demonstrate a diminishing marginal impact on consumer willingness to pay. Younger consumers and households with children are willing to pay more for fresh produce with high ratings than those with low ratings.     

Assessing the Normative Legitimacy of Investment Arbitration: The EU’s Investment Court System

The inclusion of an investment chapter in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has encountered significant opposition, especially in relation to Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). In this context, the EU has proposed several changes to the traditional procedures, including the creation of an investment court. The need to reform ISDS has long been recognised, but the key question remains: What is required for such a dispute settlement mechanism to have legitimate authority? Drawing from insights in legal theory and political philosophy, we examine what could be adequate criteria for the normative legitimacy of ISDS. We argue that ISDS can only be minimally legitimate if there are sufficient procedural safeguards to ensure fair access to the proceedings and equal consideration of their interest for all those affected by investment tribunals’ or courts’ decisions. Furthermore, we emphasize the need to look beyond what potential beneficial and adverse consequences of ISDS are, and explain that the appointment of the judges by the state parties and the reintroduction of some control of the state parties over dispute settlement outcomes are not sufficient to guarantee the normative legitimacy of ISDS.     

The prevalence and co-occurrence of psychiatric conditions among entrepreneurs and their families

Small Business Economics - Psychiatric conditions and sub-threshold psychiatric temperaments may influence entrepreneurs’ affect, cognition, energy, motivation, circadian rhythms, activity...     

The Shrinking City as a Growth Machine: Detroit's Reinvention of Growth through Triage,Foundation Work and Talent Attraction

Despite Detroit's reputation for social and financial crisis, developers and investors have successfully pursued growth and land-use intensification in recent years. However, in Molotch's initial conception of the growth machine, environments of extreme decline go under analyzed. While scholars have investigated the role of growth in Detroit, they have narrowly focused on a single document: the Detroit Future City framework. This work looks more holistically at the development networks leveraged to pursue growth through a discourse analysis of a broader set of development documents and interviews with development professionals, uncovering ways the growth machine adapts to this unlikely environment for growth. Rather than proposing an alternative to growth for a shrinking city, growth elites (led by philanthropic foundations) propose development scenarios leveraging triage to channel diminished amounts of development resources. In doing this, Greater Downtown, with its investment potential, is polarized from other areas of the city seen as risky investments. In addition to focusing growth in investment-friendly areas, growth coalitions pursue incentives and branding campaigns to attract talent and affluence. These dynamics are a divergence from the growth machine model that supports the narrative that growth benefits all residents in favor of a narrative of triage.     

‘A‘ohe pau ke ‘ike ka hālau ho‘okahi [All knowledge is not taught in the same school]1 Welcoming Kānaka Hawai‘i Waves of Knowing and Revisiting Leisure

As we reflect on the leisure science canon, we use this occasion to ponder how our scholarship has engaged with communities with alternative worldviews compared with the Euro-North American worldview dominant in leisure scholarship. While some Indigenous cultural practices may, at first glance, seem similar to behaviors found in Euro-North American leisure space-time, such a comparison is often problematic when an Indigenous language has no equivalent concept or word for leisure and the worldview assumes a different relational reality. Drawing on our ongoing research working with Kanaka Hawai‘i, we offer a discussion of the relevance and need for Ieisure scholars and practitioners to engage with Indigenous worldviews, ways of knowing and being. We specifically focus on approaches and dispositions relevant to scholars and practitioners as we look to nourishing possibilities for richer relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples through leisure.     

POVERTY, TNEQUALTTY, AND FAMTLY LIVING STANDARDS IMPACTS ACROSS SEVEN NATIONS: THE EFFECT OF NONCASH SUBSIDIES FOR HEALTH, EDUCATION AND HOUSING

The main aim of this paper has been to summarize the impact of noncash income–health and health education benefits, and imputed rent-on living standards, income distribution and poverty in seven nations at the beginning of the 1980s using the Luxembourg Income Study database. Our results do not give rise to a pattern of national differences in poverty rates or income inequality which are markedly different from that which emerges from previous LIS research based on cash income alone. While these results may be sensitive to the techniques used to measure and value noncash benefits in this paper, it appears that noncash income reinforces the redistributive impact or conventional (cash) tax-transfer mechanisms rather than acting to offset them in any major way.