The Impact of Relational Capital on the Success of New Business Start‐Ups

This study seeks to highlight the key role played by relational capital in new business start‐ups. Following a review of previous research examining the success factors of new ventures and the role played by intellectual capital, our study sets out to achieve this objective by analyzing the impact of a set of intangible relational assets on the initial success of new business start‐ups. Based on a study of 130 firms, we analyzed six hypotheses regarding the possible positive relationship between the relational capital of a start‐up company and its success in its first few years of business.     

Supervisor Role Modeling,Ethics-Related Organizational Policies,and Employee Ethical Intention: The Moderating Impact of Moral Ideology

The moral ideology of banking and insurance employees in Spain was examined along with supervisor role modeling and ethics-related policies and procedures for their association with ethical behavioral intent. In addition to main effects, we found evidence supporting that the person–situation interactionist perspective in supervisor role modeling had a stronger positive relationship with ethical intention among employees with relativist moral ideology. Also as hypothesized, formal ethical polices and procedures were positively related to ethical intention among those with universal beliefs, but the relationship was much weaker among relativists. Thus, firms wishing to optimally promote ethical attitudes and behavior must tailor their organization-based initiatives to the individual characteristics of their employees.     

How do Agricultural Programmes Alter Crop Production? Evidence from Ecuador

Evaluating agricultural programmes requires considering not only the programmes’ influence on input and output indicators, but also considering the relationship between these indicators as embodied in the production technology. This article examines the impact on production of an intervention in the Ecuadorian Sierra designed to improve returns to potato production through training and through linking smallholders to high‐value markets. Critical to identifying the impact of the programme is the careful construction of a counterfactual and meticulous data collection. To assess the impact of the programme on production, a weighted estimation, where weights are constructed through propensity score matching, is employed to estimate a production function within a damage abatement framework. The function incorporates a series of interaction terms to assess the impact of the programme on the production technology. The findings provide evidence that the programme enhances yields both through a general shift in technology as well as increased input use. The results suggest that the use of effective farming techniques that are learned through the programme induce this technological shift.     

Ethics in Global Business and in a Plural Society

The contemporary confluence of globalization and ethical pluralism is at the origin of many ethical challenges that confront business nowadays, both in practice and in theory. One of the challenges arising from the development of globalization has to do with respect for cultural diversity. It is often said that the success of economic globalization tends towards social and cultural homogeneity. To the extent that cultural diversity is usually seen as a valuable reality, that global trend seems to contradict our efforts to respect ethical pluralism, both personal and cultural, within society. In this paper I argue that (a) ethical minimalism, despite its emphasis on tolerance and justice, does not take pluralism seriously into account in present-day society, and (b) ethical minimalism is not suited to balancing the homogenizing trend of globalization. Certainly ethical norms are necessary, but by no means are they sufficient in themselves to encourage either justice or tolerance; nor are they sufficient to inspire and encourage good practices and sound regulations. Instead, virtue-based ethics has the capacity of inspiring and encouraging good practices. Particularly, virtue-based ethics is able to inspire a serious dialogue about ethical and legal issues both in the public arena and within organizations.     

Differences in Roma and non-Roma students’ ratings of their peers’ popularity: an inquiry into the oppositional culture in Hungarian schools with the use of a survey experiment

Quality & Quantity - Oppositional culture theory posits that students who belong to oppressed ethnic minority groups define their ethnic identity in opposition to the majority of students....     

THE BIAS OF THE MULTIPLIER MATRIX WHEN SUPPLY AND USE TABLES ARE STOCHASTIC

The literature on stochastic input–output (I–O) analysis has paid considerable attention to the bias in the Leontief inverse. This paper extends previous studies by assuming supply and use tables (SUTs rather than I–O tables or input coefficients matrices) to be stochastic. This is a natural starting point because SUTs have become the basic data sources for I–O applications. In a Monte Carlo simulation experiment, a given SUT is randomized in two different ways and the effects are determined for eight different multiplier matrices. The analysis is carried out for Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Finland, using their SUTs for 2006. The findings indicate that, in general, biases are statistically significant but negligibly small. This corroborates earlier findings obtained for stochastic I–O tables.     

The Optimal Timing of Adoption of a Green Technology

We study the optimal timing of adoption of a cleaner technology and its effects on the rate of growth of an economy in the context of an AK endogenous growth model. We show that the results depend upon the behavior of the marginal utility of environmental quality with respect to consumption. When it is increasing, we derive the capital level at the optimal timing of adoption. We show that this capital threshold is independent of the initial conditions on the stock of capital, implying that capital-poor countries tend to take longer to adopt. Also, country-specific characteristics, as the existence of high barriers to adoption, may lead to different capital thresholds for different countries. If the marginal utility of environmental quality decreases with consumption, a country should never delay adoption; the optimal policy is either to adopt immediately or, if adoption costs are “too high”, to never adopt. The policy implications of these results are discussed in the context of the international debate surrounding the environmental political agenda.      

The contribution of social tourism to sustainable tourism: a case study of seasonally adjusted programmes in Spain

Recent policy from the European Union has attempted to justify social tourism initiatives on the basis that they lead to a more sustainable tourism industry. However, the majority of latest research in the field has been focused on the benefits for participants, with the addition of some evidence on the economic impacts of such programmes on destinations, which have pointed towards sustainability outcomes including: a longer tourism season, more even spread of demand, and longer periods of employment for tourism workers. Yet there is a lack of direct evidence linking such programme to these outcomes. This paper aimed to explore this important disconnect between policy assumptions and evidence-based outcomes through an analysis of the deseasonalising effects of the Spanish social tourism programme for older people. The research found that this programme does have an effect on the seasonal nature of employment and economic activity in most regions studied, but that the huge volume of demand from international tourists in the high seasons masks the quantitative effects in the regions with the highest seasonal concentration of international tourists. Recommendations for policy and practice in sustainable tourism are made that are transferable to many countries and regions that adopt social tourism programmes.     

Reciprocity between soccer events and visited destination in a border context

ABSTRACT

The study proposes a conceptual model based on hypothesized relationships among team fanship, satisfaction with the event, and host city as antecedents of behavioral intentions in the United States–Mexico border context. The analysis used data from 290 visitors who attended three soccer games of the Xoloitzcuintles team of Tijuana. The results revealed (1) the emotions felt at the visited destination had significant influences on fanship, satisfaction with event venue, and intentional behavior; (2) fanship and event satisfaction do not seem to influence the visitors’ intentions to return and recommend the visited place; (3) gender and duration of the stay showed a significant moderating function.