Simulation study of a closed-loop job shop

This study investigates the behavior of a job shop depicted as an integral component of a firm. A market places demands for the firm's products by dynamically evaluating the organization's quoted delivery times and actual delivery performance. The closed-loop model simulated in this study is described and the salient research results are reported. These experimental outcomes suggest that other conventional open-loop job shop studies tend to neglect important interactions with factors external to the shop itself.     

A causal analysis of environment-reward-satisfaction linkages for the sales representative

A causal model that postulated linkages of organizational environmental variables, reward variables, and satisfaction for sales representatives was investigated. Findings indicated that the usual assumptions concerning an organization's inability to contribution to intrinsic rewards may not hold.     

Coase's lighthouse

Roger Bate argues that Professor Ronald Coase's famous article The Lighthouse in Economics has important lessons for resolving environmental problems.     

Using Forecasting Criteria to Identify Value Relevance in the Relationship Between Accounting Numbers and Market Value

We explain and demonstrate a disciplined and systematic approach to repeatable modelling using forecast criteria, in addition to the usual statistical estimation criteria, to identify value relevance in regressions of the market‐accounting relation. The method was used in Cooke et al. ( 2009 ). It is illustrated here in the case of a single firm over a 59‐year period. Market and accounting data for the U.S. firm Abbott Laboratories Inc. from 1955 are modelled using a testing‐down, error correction approach. Hold‐out samples of 10 to 15 years are used to assess forecasting performance relative to a random walk. Emphasis is placed upon the use of simple, directly observable and theory‐independent model variables that can be replicated with other sample data. In this case, logarithmic transformations of all variables have to be computed in order to achieve correct statistical specification, implying a multiplicative relationship in the raw data. The strongest cointegrating accounting variable with forecasting ability for Abbott's market value is earnings. The model parameters exhibit long‐run stability and the accounting regressor marginally improves forecasts of market value compared to a random walk, demonstrating ‘value relevance’.     

Does Cultural Distance Hinder Trade in Goods? A Comparative Study of Nine OECD Member Nations

We examine the effect of cultural distance, a proxy for the lack of a minimum reservoir of trust necessary to initiate and complete trade deals, on bilateral trade flows. Employing data for 67 countries that span the years 1996–2001, we estimate a series of modified gravity specifications and find that cultural dissimilarity between nations has an economically significant and consistently negative effect on aggregate and disaggregated trade flows; however, estimated effects vary in magnitude and economic significance across measures of trade and our cohort of OECD reference countries. The consistently negative influence of cultural distance indicates that policymakers may wish to consider mechanisms that enhance the build-up of trust and commitment when seeking to facilitate the initiation and completion of international trade deals. Our findings also imply that coefficient estimates from related studies that do not account for the trade-inhibiting effect of cultural distance may be biased.     

The determinants of Internet financial reporting

Responding to the widespread adoption of the Internet and the rapidly growing demands for information from stakeholders, corporations around the world are using the Internet for business and financial disclosures. Internet reporting has the benefits of low cost, wider reach, frequency and speed. Despite these benefits Internet reporting varies across companies and across countries. We study Internet financial reporting (IFR), in particular the presentation and content of IFR, of 660 large companies in 22 countries to identify the firm, and environmental determinants of IFR. The study revealed that firm size, listing on US stock exchanges and technology were firm specific determinants of IFR. Given that IFR is not just about the content of disclosure, but also about employing new presentation methods, the environment of disclosure was included in the research. The overarching disclosure environment of a country was found to be an important environmental driver for IFR presentation and less strongly for IFR content. The presentation aspect of IFR was more associated with the identified determinants than the content of IFR, which suggests that Internet presentation technologies were more related to the determinants than the content of the reports on the company Web sites.     

The dark side of individual blockholder philanthropy

We examine the market reaction to charitable pledges by individual blockholders of public firms. As this philanthropy may signal a weakening preference for wealth maximization and may be indicative of distraction or relaxed monitoring, these agency costs may overwhelm any reputation benefits. We find decreased firm value and lower pay-for-performance sensitivity, the effects of which are most severe where monitoring needs are high, the blockholder is a director, or when the firm has ex ante high corporate social responsibility ratings. Our results are robust to controlling for prior charitable foundation involvement, busy director–blockholders, dual-class share structures, blockholder exit, and pre-pledge firm sentiment.     

The anthropocenic imaginary: political ecologies of tourism in a geological epoch

Abstract

The Anthropocene is fundamentally a social imaginary that is both shaped by and is reshaping tourism practice. In this article, we enroll the concept of the anthropocenic imaginary to describe how the Anthropocene is symbolically and materially produced as well as the ways in which it draws on the historical separation of Humanity and Nature. As the structural roots from which the anthropocenic imaginary has grown, this binary co-produces new and old forms of political and ecological inclusion and exclusion. We demonstrate how core themes in tourism studies have fertilized the seeds from which the theoretical branches of post-humanist, capitalist and ecological imaginaries in tourism have taken shape. These anthropocenic imaginaries, we argue, are appropriated in market-based solutions to environmental degradation that emanate from neoliberal contexts internal to the problem. Thus, we question the reconciliation of capitalist accumulation and environmental limits in sustainable tourism. This article and the papers in this issue push forward emerging approaches in the political ecology of tourism that recognize the Anthropocene as both a geological epoch and conceptual regime. In doing so, the issue contributes to emerging conversations on the relationship between politics, ecology and tourism in the so-called recent age of man.