Transaction services and SME internationalization: The effect of home and host country bank relationships on international investment and growth

Building on the argument put forward by North and Wallis (1994) that the transaction sector enables economic growth by lowering the costs of transacting, we investigate how internationalizing firms’ host and home country bank relationships affect their international specific investments and growth. Banks provide payment, liquidity, and risk management services, which are essential to international business relationships, yet little is known about how banks affect international business relationships. In a sample of 255 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we find that host and home country bank relationships affect the dependent variables differently. We contribute to the literature by explicating the role and effects of banks in international business relationships. Our findings have implications for understanding transaction services in international business as well as the choices made by their customers.     

Consumers' Attitudes Toward Labelling of Ethical Products: The Case of Organic and Fair Trade Products

This article aims to investigate the factors that influence consumer attitudes to use labelling information in purchasing organic and Fair Trade products and to verify if labelling is a valid tool of direct shopping aid to consumers, with a view to derive inferences that may contribute to better strategic and tactical marketing decisions. A quantitative survey with a sample of 300 consumers living in south Italy was conducted to explore consumers' knowledge and attitudes toward labelling of organic and fair trade products. Data generated in this way were submitted to exploratory and segmentation analysis. The results indicate significant differences in consumer attitudes and behavior for ethical products and show the importance of new variables, other than demographics characteristics, that can influence the purchasing behavior and label information use.     

Network cohesion in global expansion: An evolutionary view

Increasingly, competitive advantage does not reside in a single firm's capabilities or resources, but in interfirm networks that compete with other networks. Recognizing that deployment of the network as a cohesive and coordinated organization is critical when it operates globally, we ask: How does global expansion, in particular entry into emerging markets, affect the cohesion of a large interfirm network and with what consequences? We examine this question through an evolutionary perspective, conceptualizing the process of variation–selection–replication–retention as one cycle of a network-level routine of global expansion. Movement through the cycle accelerates with high levels of network cohesion such that market entry and foreign establishment may become more rapid. We present a longitudinal analysis of the Toyota Group from founding through to its more recent entry into emerging markets, and identify the dangers of a diversion in any stage of this network routine. Our findings highlight the role uncertainty in the emerging market context and speed-based competition plays in the loss of network cohesion, and point to the ongoing, and possibly increased, importance of the core firm's role in maintaining network cohesion and global competitive advantage.     

Testing Fairness Principles for Public Environmental Infrastructure Decisions

Group Decision and Negotiation - Public infrastructure decisions affect many stakeholders with various benefits and costs. For public decisions, it is crucial that decision-making processes and...     

Response style corrected market segmentation for ordinal data

Survey data collected for market segmentation studies is typically ordinal in nature. As such, it is susceptible to response styles. Ignoring response styles can lead to market segments which do not differ in beliefs, but merely in how segment members use survey answer options and which possibly occur in addition to the belief segments. We propose a finite mixture model which simultaneously segments and corrects for response styles, permits heterogeneity in both beliefs and response styles, accommodates a range of different response styles, does not impose a certain relationship between the response style and belief segments, and is suitable for ordinal data. The performance of the model is tested using both artificial and empirical survey data.     

Convex duality and Orlicz spaces in expected utility maximization

In this paper, we report further progress toward a complete theory of state‐independent expected utility maximization with semimartingale price processes for arbitrary utility function. Without any technical assumptions, we establish a surprising Fenchel duality result on conjugate Orlicz spaces, offering a new economic insight into the nature of primal optima and providing a fresh perspective on the classical papers of Kramkov and Schachermayer. The analysis points to an intriguing interplay between no‐arbitrage conditions and standard convex optimization and motivates the study of the fundamental theorem of asset pricing for Orlicz tame strategies.     

Female franchisees; a lost opportunity for franchising sector growth?

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate why female franchisees are under-represented in franchise ownership. A qualitative approach was adopted using a collective, instrumental case study of 30 female franchisees. A number of different types of influences were identified in the literature and then elucidated and assessed. It was found that push and pull factors, work–family life balance, franchising sector characteristics and external influences act as variable incentives and disincentives among female franchisees’ selection of the franchise business model with different levels of risk-taking propensity. The marketing efforts of franchises would be more effective if the way in which the identified influences that impinge on the selection of the franchise business model informed the prospecting of potential female franchisees. A further need is identified for franchises to adjust their recruitment programmes to reflect the variable effect of incentives and disincentives at different levels of capital investment. Limited research specifically examines the selection of the franchise business model by female franchisees with various levels of risk-taking propensity and identifies the nature of influences that act as incentives and/or disincentives on that selection decision.     

Instructional Manipulation Checks: A longitudinal analysis with implications for MTurk

Instructional Manipulation Checks (IMCs) assess respondent behavior by, for example, asking participants not to answer a trick question. We find IMCs can be used to detect problematic response behavior in longitudinal surveys. This is important because a Latent Class Analysis based on IMC-failure in the two reported studies reveals that between 9% and 12% of respondents can be labelled Inattentive Stayers at the first survey-wave and between 13% and 17% at the third wave. The tendency of Inattentive Stayers to remain in the panel is particularly relevant for online panel services such as MTurk, with workers participating in many surveys over longer time-periods. We find IMC-failure to be mitigated by a warning to respondents that their attention will be checked early in the survey, but not by repeated exposure to IMCs, or a timer leaving questions on the screen longer. Respondent personality also plays a role in IMC-failure, which implies persistency of undesirable respondent behavior.     

Under the AEGIS of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship: employment growth and gender of founders among European firms

An increasing number of theoretical and empirical analyses address the role of innovation as one of the main sources of firm growth. More recently, studies have looked at the role of gender diversity as a possible determinant of innovation and entrepreneurial performance. However, the relationship between gender and employment growth—a dimension of entrepreneurial performance—still remains unexplored to a large degree. This paper contributes to the empirical literature on gender and entrepreneurial performance in several ways. First, it examines the role played by both innovation and gender ownership as determinants of employment growth rates of young, knowledge-intensive entrepreneurial (KIE) firms. Second, it investigates the indirect impact of contributing factors—such as the characteristics of the market, knowledge-based capital, and human capital—on employment growth. And third, it relies on a rich new cross-sectional data set on young, KIE firms across European Union (EU) countries. The data set contains information not only on the gender of the firm’s founders but also on the market environment, business strategy, and innovative and economic performance of firms.     

To Be or Not to be Temp? An Analysis of the Moderating Role of Motives for Accepting Temporary Employment

We investigate the role of contract volition and motives for accepting temporary employment in the relationship between precariousness of life and negative psychological symptoms in a sample of 275 Italian temps. Results suggest that the negative effect of contract volition on negative psychological symptoms is partially mediated by precariousness of life. A moderated mediation model shows that specific motives moderate the negative effects of contract volition on precariousness of life, so that when contract volition is higher, workers with weaker motives feel less precarious. This study broadens our understanding of temporary employment outcomes by showing that the negative consequences of precariousness of life seem to be less troublesome among temporary workers with higher contract volition and lower motivation. © 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.