The future of in-store technology

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science - This paper introduces a conceptual framework for understanding new and futuristic in-store technology infusions. First, we develop a...     

The political economy of industrialisation

This paper analyses how incentives under different sets of political institutions map into policies that promote industrialisation. I set out an endogenous growth model with non-overlapping generations, where agents are heterogeneous with respect to wealth, skills and political power. The skills of the political elite play a crucial role for industrialisation to occur. It is shown that a flat wealth distribution and a skilled political elite enhance development the most in elitist regimes, while democracies perform as well as elitist regimes in terms of industrialisation. The theoretical results regarding elitist regimes are in line with evidence on the Industrial Revolution.     

Gratitude works: its impact and the mediating role of affective commitment in driving positive outcomes

After studying the effects of Louisiana’s post-hurricane “thank you” campaigns, the researchers find expressions of gratitude significantly improve perceptions of Louisiana in the midst of its recovery. Through a national survey conducted November 2006, they find that those who saw or heard a thank you advertisement have more positive attitudes toward the state and its people, a greater willingness to pay a premium for its products, services and travel to the state, and spread positive word-of-mouth, thus justifying the use of public funds to support the campaign. The authors investigate the role of participation on the effectiveness of expressions of gratitude and identify the mediating role of affective commitment in driving the positive results attributed to expressions of gratitude.     

Patent Settlements as a Barrier to Entry

We formulate a model of entry with two incumbent firms—a patent holder and an infringer—and a potential entrant, with asymmetric information about the validity of the infringed patent (patent strength) between incumbent firms and the entrant. Within this framework we show that patent settlements between the incumbent firms can be mutually beneficial even when the cost of trial is zero and the settlement agreement takes the form of a simple fixed license fee. For patents of intermediate strength, settlements are a tool for entry deterrence. The two parties agree on a high settlement amount which sends a credible signal to “outsiders” that the patent is not weak and therefore entry will not be profitable. This provides a novel explanation for the role of settlements and to the recent observation of high license fees negotiated in settlement agreements. It suggests that firms should disclose the settlement amount if they want to keep out further entrants. We also show that even nonreverse settlements that entail only a fixed fee can be anticompetitive because they are used to block entry.     

Leading knowledge-workers through situated ambiguity

The paper explores how formal leaders make sense of and deal with autonomy of knowledge-workers. Based on interviews, I suggest that leaders make sense of knowledge-workers’ autonomy as ranging from perfectly autonomous to too autonomous to less independent to acting childish. This ambiguity was dealt with by making sense of leading as ranging from facilitative and supportive approaches to more controlling, even reprimanding acts. This empirical investigation of constructions of ‘leader/ship’ and ‘followers’ contributes to leader/ship-follower/ship literature. The paper’s contribution to theory lies in the notion of situated ambiguity; a way to understand the emerging way through which formal leaders navigate and smoothly move between their own differing perspectives, different practical situations, various culturally acceptable understandings of leaders and knowledge-workers.     

Telling and selling the value of diversity and inclusion—External consultants' discursive strategies and practices

On the basis of a qualitative study of a subgroup of diversity professionals, external diversity and inclusion (D&I) consultants, we explore D&I consultants' discursive strategies and practices situated within organisational structures, relations, and interactions of power and knowledge. Theoretically, the research reveals how D&I consultants' own discursive strategies interact with existing organisational and societal discourses of diversity, incrementally shaping their continual evolution. A classification is developed, which sets out four approaches taken by consultants with regard to their discursive strategies in relation to clients. The findings suggest that HR practitioners need to work in tandem with external consultants to develop strategies to improve the status and legitimacy of diversity work if the field is to progress the organisational D&I agenda.     

EFFECTS OF SECTOR AGGREGATION ON CO2 MULTIPLIERS IN MULTIREGIONAL INPUT–OUTPUT ANALYSES

The past few years have seen the emergence of several global multiregional input–output (MRIO) databases. Due to the cost and complexity of developing such extensive tables, industry sectors are generally represented at a rather aggregate level. Currently, one of the most important applications of input–output analysis is environmental assessments, for which highly aggregate sectors may not be sufficient to yield accurate results. We experiment with four of the most important global MRIO systems available, analyzing the sensitivity of a set of aggregate CO₂ multipliers to aggregations in the MRIO tables used to calculate them. Across databases, we find (a) significant sensitivity to background system detail and (b) that sub-sectors contained within the same aggregate MRIO sector may exhibit highly different carbon multipliers. We conclude that the additional information provided by the extra sector detail may warrant the additional costs of compilation, due to the heterogeneous nature of economic sectors in terms of their environmental characteristics.     

Measuring the impact of work reorganization on firm performance: evidence from French manufacturing, 1995–1999

In this paper, we apply the method of selective matching to estimate the causal effect of organizational changes on employment, stock of capital, value added, and factor productivity. Derived from a panel of 2404 French manufacturing firms in 1997, our estimates show that work reorganization improves firm performance overall through a more efficient use of labor and capital, without requiring any increase in the factors of production.     

Fiscal Policy in Europe: How Effective Are Automatic Stabilisers?

It is largely recognised that fiscal policy will have largerresponsibilities for cyclicalstabilisation in EMU given the loss of the monetary instrument.At the same time, theEMU's budgetary framework emphasises the need to rely onautomatic fiscal stabilisers,rather than active policies in cushioning the business cycle.We show that automaticstabilisers are relatively powerful in the event of shocksto private consumption, but lessso in the case of shocks to private investment and exports.In the case of supply sideshocks, the automatic stabilisers are largely ineffective,but this may actually be a goodthing to the extent that supply-side disturbances call forstructural adjustment rather thancyclical stabilisation.