Quality competition and entry deterrence: When to launch a second brand

We study the rationale for an incumbent to launch a second brand when facing potential entry into a market with quality‐differentiated products and a fringe producer. Depending on market size, the cost of a second brand and a potential entrant's setup cost the incumbent might use a second brand both when deterring and when accommodating entry. For low costs of brand proliferation, the high‐quality firm will prevent entry with limit qualities or multiple brands. The high‐quality incumbent will accommodate entry only if it cannot be prevented. Accommodation is always accompanied by an additional brand safeguarding the premium brand.     

Measuring the Implementation of Codes of Conduct. An Assessment Method Based on a Process Approach of the Responsible Organisation

More and more organisations formulate a code of conduct in order to stimulate responsible behaviour among their members. Much time and energy is usually spent fixing the content of the code but many organisations get stuck in the challenge of implementing and maintaining the code. The code then turns into nothing else than the notorious "paper in the drawer", without achieving its aims. The challenge of implementation is to utilize the dynamics which have emerged from the formulation of the code. This will support a continuous process of reflection on the central values and standards contained in the code. This paper presents an assessment method, based on the EFQM model, which intends to support this implementation process.     

Magnet status as a competitive strategy of hospital organizations: marketing a culture of excellence in nursing services

With issues of patient safety, the nursing shortage, and managed care fiscal constraints, hospital organizations can strategically capture market share, while insuring best care practices, if they adopt the "Magnet Status" accreditation model. This quality indicator signifies to the consumer a culture of excellence in nursing services and fulfills the priority of customer satisfaction as a marketing strategy objective.     

Rare events and annuity market participation

We investigate whether a rare event (like the default of the annuity provider) can explain the annuity market participation puzzle. High risk aversion is needed to change behavior in the presence of such a disastrous shock but higher risk aversion also makes annuities more valuable. Therefore, these rare events are unlikely candidates to explain the low take-up of voluntary annuities: the conclusion is robust to disentangling risk aversion from intertemporal substitution and to allowing portfolio investment in a stock market index.     

Access pricing: A comparison between full deregulation and two alternative instruments of access price regulation,cost-based and retail-minus

In this paper, two instruments of access price regulation, cost-based and retail-minus, are compared with the full deregulation hypothesis. For this purpose, a model that considers an upstream monopolist firm that sells a vital input to an independent firm and to a subsidiary firm in the downstream market is developed. The main conclusion of the paper is that retail-minus regulation avoids foreclosure and leads to better results than cost-based regulation in terms of investment level and consumer surplus. Moreover, retail-minus regulation allows a higher consumer surplus than deregulation of access price as long as the regulator carefully defines the retail-minus instrument.     

DETERMINANTS OF WOMEN'S MICROENTERPRISE SUCCESS IN AHMEDABAD,INDIA: EMPOWERMENT AND ECONOMICS

Abstract

Microenterprise success is often evaluated solely in terms of economic outcomes. These evaluations do not recognize how opportunities for success may differ across groups and contexts, and disregard the importance of power and control as factors in success. This article investigates the determinants of a two-dimensional concept of microenterprise success for women in Ahmedabad, India, by analyzing data from a 1998 study of home-based garment producers. Growing economic success for these garment producers decreased empowerment outcomes, which suggests that evaluating both economic and empowerment outcomes and their interactions is important to understanding the process of achieving success. Improving the economic outcomes of women's enterprises via better training and access to markets, credit, and capital equipment does not necessarily facilitate women's empowerment. Microenterprise scholars and practitioners must focus on improving women's status within their homes, so they may contribute to and benefit from the decisions made about how to use their resources.     

Cultural agility and international assignees’ effectiveness in cross‐cultural interactions

While many mutable competencies and immutable personality traits have been shown to have a direct positive relationship with international assignee success, this study examines whether a set of situation‐specific cross‐cultural competencies comprising cultural agility are also related to international assignee success. This study examines whether the combination of three situation‐specific responses to cultural differences (cultural adaptation, cultural minimization and cultural integration) explain any additional variance in supervisor's ratings of international assignee success above and beyond personality and cross‐cultural competencies. To test this hypothesis, supervisor‐rated of assignees’ effectiveness in working with host nationals was regressed on the number of international assignees’ cultural orientations. Controlling for personality and dynamic competencies, the overall model was significant explaining 17 per cent of the total variance. This study provides some preliminary evidence on the importance of expatriates’ possessing the ability to possess concurrent cultural orientations. The HR practices to foster cultural agility are discussed.