The Effect of Incentive regulation on Infrastructure Modernization: Local Exchange Companies' Deployment of Digital Technology

This study examines the investment patterns of all large local exchange telephone companies in the United States over time. It identifies how different regulatoy environments have influenced the recent historical pattern of investment in modern infrastructure equipment. It focuses exclusively on the postdivestiture experience of local telephone exchange companies (LECs). It examines the growth of fiber-optic deployment and of complementary equipment associated with the modernization of today's information infrastructure. The study estimates the influence of different regulatory structures on infrastructure deployment by LECs. The study is unique in that if relates individual LEC investment patterns to LEC-specific regulatory, demographic, and economic characteristics. Thus, it isolates the contribution of state regulatory policies from that of other demographic and economic factors in the determination of infrastructure deployment at the state LEC rather than at the corporate level. Its main findings are as follows: First, price regulation (and, in particular, price caps) is a more potent regulatory mechanism than the standard earnings sharing scheme. Second, when associated with an earnings sharing scheme, price regulation is less effective in triggering infrastructure deployment than when it is implemented by itself. These results raise questions about the effectiveness of a popular regulatory instrument-earnings sharing schemes-and highlight the effectiveness of generic price-cap regulation. These results have implications for the design of regulatory policy at both the state and federal levels. In particular, given the importance currently being placed on the development of the information superhighway, regulatory emphasis should be focused more on price regulation than on regulating profits.     

A Study of Why Anomic Employees Harm Co-workers: Do Uncompassionate Feelings Matter?

Although anomic feelings have been found to lead employees to unethical performance, little is known about why this relationship is possible. The aim of this study is to test a compassion-based explanation of why anomic employees harm co-workers by displaying interpersonal deviance. The prediction is made that once sociological anomie (from the Greek, an-: absence, and -nomos: law) enters organizations in the form of employees’ private feelings of anomie—i.e., “anomia”—, this anomia will individually move staff to be uncompassionate in the workplace. Three uncompassionate feelings toward co-workers are then hypothesized to mediate the relationship between anomia and interpersonal deviance: (i) negative judgments about others, (ii) over-identification, and (iii) isolation. Data were collected from 280 employees at ten hotels in the Canary Islands (Spain). The results indicated that (a) anomia was significantly and positively linked to uncompassionate feelings and interpersonal deviance, (b) but only negative judgments about others mediated the anomia effects on interpersonal deviance. Findings suggest to managers that by spreading ethical standards that discourage negative judgments about others in the workplace, they can neutralize the mechanisms leading anomia to interpersonal deviance.     

Entrepreneurial Narratives in Sustainable Venturing: Beyond People,Profit, and Planet

Sustainable venturing, the process of starting a new sustainable enterprise, has been studied extensively through the triple‐bottom‐line lens. The narratives employed by sustainable entrepreneurs, however, have proven to be more complex and diverse. In this paper, we set out to inductively explore the narratives underlying sustainable venturing. We conducted an interpretative analysis to elucidate how these entrepreneurs perceive, think about and give meaning to sustainability as they develop their ventures. Findings allow for an expansion of the role of narratives in business venturing toward a more sophisticated conceptualization grounded in how actual entrepreneurs experience and enact sustainability in the context of their ventures.     

Entrepreneurs’ Resources,Technology Strategy,and New Technology‐Based Firms’ Performance

This study is based on the configuration approach and argues that the new technology‐based venture's performance depends on how well the entrepreneur's resources allow the chosen technology strategy to be executed, in other words, the fit between the resources and the strategy. The authors study this idea by using a sample of 175 Spanish new technology‐based ventures. The results indicate that the fit between the chosen technology strategy and the entrepreneur's resources explain the firm's performance, when this is measured through foreign market performance. That fit is also related to the technology‐based firm's financial results and generic and domestic performance.     

Identifying the factors that influence eWOM in SNSs: the case of Chile

ABSTRACT

The factors that influence electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) in social networking sites (SNSs) in Latin American countries still need to be understood. This paper looks at factors included by prior research, as well as two new factors that have the power to influence eWOM in SNSs in the region. The study is conducted in Chile, a country which already has high Internet and SNSs penetration rates and Hofstede's scores close to the average for Latin America. The results show that tie strength, normative influence, informational influence, self-presentation, and voluntary self-disclosure are all positively directly associated with eWOM in SNSs. The results also show that homophily exerts a positive indirect influence on eWOM through the mediators of tie strength, normative influence, informational influence, and self-presentation. Additionally, the results show that trust exerts a positive indirect influence on eWOM through the mediators of tie strength, normative influence, and voluntary self-disclosure.     

On the Consequences of Market Orientation across Varied Environmental Dynamism and Competitive Intensity Levels

Many firms attempt to develop market‐oriented attitudes and behaviors because of their presumably positive consequences for performance. A market orientation can provide the cultural basis for successful differentiation strategies focused on customer satisfaction. However, inconclusive evidence regarding the relationship between market orientation and performance demands an analysis of possible moderators. This paper therefore analyzes the moderating role of environmental characteristics in the market orientation–performance relationship. Heterogeneous methodologies and measures could explain some diversity in empirical results. Moreover, both the market orientation–performance relationship and the moderating effects of environment dynamism, turbulence, hostility, and complexity may depend on more general characteristics of the environment. A complete diagnostic of the moderating effect of the environment must analyze phenomena in different socioeconomic and political–regulatory contexts. Therefore, the authors (1) analyze the moderating role of environmental dynamism and competitive intensity; (2) consider a broad range of performance measures, distinguished as effectiveness, efficiency, and adaptability measures and as financial and operational measures; and (3) focus on a priority 1 region of the European Union, characterized by small and medium‐sized enterprises that face a global competitive scenario from a disadvantaged local environment. The empirical results support the positive relationship between market orientation and performance and indicate the relationship is inhibited by competitive intensity, which contrasts with existing arguments and empirical results.     

Store brand and national brand promotion attitudes antecedents

Retailers compete against national manufacturers by launching store brands. National manufactures regularly use brand promotions to fight store brands back. The purpose of this article is to find out whether attitudes toward national brand promotions and store brands have similar or different conceptual antecedents. The study presents and tests a model of the effects of shoppers´ characteristics (price and non-price-related) on attitudes toward store brand and national brand promotions. The results support that constructs relating to price impact both store brand attitude and national brand promotion attitude, but the strength of some of these relationships differ. Other shopper characteristics like brand loyalty and store loyalty, have similar negative and positive effects, respectively. These slight differences suggest that promotions of national brands might be a good tool for fighting back store brands, but manufacturers need to design and target these promotions carefully in order to avoid head-to-head competition.