Unlocking the potential of advanced manufacturing technologies

This research examines whether investments in advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) such as flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), computer aided design (CAD), computer aided manufacturing (CAM), robotics, etc., are more likely to lead to improved performance if they are supported by improvements in the manufacturing infrastructure of the company. This question is evaluated using data gathered from 202 manufacturing plants chosen from industries generally considered to have relatively high investments in technology.Multiple item scales are developed and adapted from sources in the literature to measure investments in technology, infrastructure, and the performance of the plant. Evidence supporting the reliability and validity of these scales is provided. Hierarchical regression is used to analyze the relationship between technology, infrastructure, and performance. The results suggest that there is an important interaction between the adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies and investments in infrastructure. Firms that invest in both AMTs and infrastructure perform better than firms which only invest in one or the other. Separate analyses on sub-samples of firms with the highest and lowest investments in AMTs show that infrastructural investments have a stronger relationship with performance in the high investment group. Thus, the data indicate that infrastructural investments provide a key to unlocking the potential of advanced manufacturing technologies.     

Legalization of drugs: Effects on the workplace

In the last few years bipartisan support for legalizing drugs has grown to a surprising level. Because of the lack of involvement of the business community in this debate, we surveyed the human resource managers of 127 firms about their perceptions of the effects of legalization. Their responses were uniformly negative, with expectations that drug use, absenteeism, worksite crime, and liability costs would increase, while the quality and quantity of work would decline. They also forecast increases in drug testing, performance monitoring, and education and rehabilitation programs as a result.     

BEYOND THE HYPE: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY/KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

Abstract.  This paper explores the debates surrounding whether or not we have now moved into a new knowledge economy and/or knowledge society and if so whether this shift is as significant and as far reaching as the industrial revolution. In this possible transformation the place of information communications technologies has been crucial. Debate has occurred across both economics and sociology with differing emphases as is shown in the ranges of definitions that we review in the paper. One consistent factor is the lack of clarity and consistency between them both within and across the disciplines. In order to explore the issues that the debates raises in a more grounded way, the paper explores them in relation to intellectual property (IP) and the intellectual commons in the process of innovation, growth and economic development. The paper is developed through an analysis first of the industrial revolution and the role within this of uncertainty, technologies, complementarities and elective affinities and the way IP was protected and controlled through patents, secrecy, being first to the market and copyright. The second part of the paper examines definitions of the knowledge economy and society and the role within these of information communication technologies in order to explore whether the ways that IP is protected and controlled have changed. In the debate about the 'knowledge economy and society' the role of innovation via human capital with a greater reliance on intellectual capabilities has been emphasized. The role of IP thus remains central but is now challenged by the rise of new forms of communication, which make its protection harder and move much of the concern with respect to regulation to a global rather than national and local level.     

Pseudo empirical likelihood method in the presence of missing data

In this paper, we propose an estimator for the population mean when some observations on the study and auxiliary variables are missing from the sample. The proposed estimator is valid for any unequal probability sampling design, and is based upon the pseudo empirical likelihood method. The proposed estimator is compared with other estimators in a simulation study.     

Book Reviews

Richard Robison, Indonesia: The Rise of Capital, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1986 pp. xxv + 425. Indexed. $19.95.

W.L. Korthals Altes, Changing Economy in Indonesia: Volume 7: Balance of Payments, 1822–1939, Amsterdam: The Royal Tropical Institute. pp. 167.

Trade Statistics, Java, 1823–73: Trade Statistics, Indonesia 1874–1937. Mededeelingen van het Centraal Kantoor voor de Statistiek nos 160 and 161

Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630–1720, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985 pp. xii + 291, map, tables. graphs, glossary, index. Cloth $38.50.

Sediono M.P. Tjondronegoro, Social Organization and Planned Development in Rural Java, Singapore, Oxford University Press for the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1984, pp. xv + 326.

A. Fujimoto and F. Matsuda (eds), An Economic Study of Rice Farming in West Java, Tokyo: NODAI Research Institute, Tokyo, University of Agriculture, 1986.

A. Fujimoto and T. Matsuda (eds), A Comparative Study of the Structure of Rice Productivity and Rural Society in Southeast Asta Two Village Studies in Indonesta and Thailand, Tokyo: University of Agriculture, 1985. Reviewed by C.L J. van der Meer (1986) Bulletin of Indanesian Economic Studies, 22(2) pp. 124–27

David Jenkins, Suharto and His Generals: Indonesian Military Politics, 1975–1983, Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, Monograph Series No. 64, 1984, pp. xiii + 280. US$12.50. David Bourchier, Dynamics of Dissent in Indonesia Sawito and the Phantom Coup, Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, Interim Reports Series, 1984, pp. 128. US$9.00.

Linda G. Martin (ed), The ASEAN Success Story: Social, Economic, and Political Dimensions, East-West Center, distributed by the University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1987, pp. xviii + 253. $15.00.

Mubyarto and Edy Suandy Hamid (eds), Kredit Pedesaan di Indonesia, Badan Penerbit Fakultas Ekonomi, U.G.M., 1986 pp, 160.

Ron Hatley, et al., Other Javas Away from the Kraton, Melbourne: Monash University, 1984, pp. 60.

K.S. Nathan and M. Pathmanathan (eds), Trilateralism in Asia: Problems and Prospects in US-Japan-ASEAN Relations, Antara Book Company, Kuala Lumpur, 1986, pp. xviii + 205. $18.00 (cloth): $12.00 (paper).     

Driving organizational citizenship behaviors and salesperson in-role behavior performance: The role of management control and perceived organizational support

Interest in management control approaches and organizational factors associated with higher levels of salesperson performance is reflected in research streams concerned with behavior-based control strategies and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). This study makes two distinct additions to the literature relating to control, organizational citizenship behaviors and salesperson performance. First, the study distinguishes between salesperson in-role behavior performance and outcome performance to model in-role behavior performance as a mediator between OCB and outcome performance. Second, the work supports sales manager control as an antecedent to OCB. A second model introduces perceived organizational support (POS) as an additional antecedent to salesperson OCB, and more important, as a consequence of sales manager control. This construct has not been included in prior salesperson OCB studies. Results show sales manage control has a stronger impact on OCB through POS, than directly, and POS has a strong impact on salesperson OCB. Nigel F. Piercy (Nigel.Piercy@wbs.ac.uk) is a professor of marketing in the Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wales and a higher doctorate (D.Litt) from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. His current research interests focus on strategic sales and account management. His work has been published in many journals including theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of International Marketing, and theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science. He is coauthor to David Cravens onStrategic Marketing (8th ed., Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2006). David W. Cravens (D.Cravens@tcu.edu) holds the Eunice and James L. West Chair of American Enterprise Studies and is a professor of marketing in the M. J. Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas. He has a doctorate in business administration from Indiana University. His areas of specialization include marketing strategy and planning, sales management, and new product planning. His research has been published in a wide range of journals including theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Marketing Research, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and theInternational Journal of Marketing. Nikala Lane (Nikala.Lane@wbs.ac.uk) is a senior lecturer in marketing in the Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wales and was previously a senior research associate at Cardiff University. Her research interests are focused on gender and ethics issues in sales and marketing management. Her work has been published widely in the international literature and includes articles in theJournal of Management Studies, theBritish Journal of Management, the Journal of Business Ethics, and theJournal of Personal Selling & Sales Management. Douglas W. Vorhies (dvorhies@bus.olemiss.edu) is an assistant professor of marketing in the School of Business Administration at the University of Mississippi. His primary research interests are in the areas of marketing strategy, marketing resources and capabilities, the links between innovation, strategic market management and performance, and professional selling and sales management. His other work has been published in many journals including theJournal of Marketing, Decision Sciences, theJournal of Product Innovation Management, theEuropean Journal of Marketing, and theJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.     

A measure of alienation from the marketplace

For the purpose of equipping researchers in marketing with a more sophisticated method to measure alienation in a marketing context, the authors have constructed and initially tested an alienation from the marketplace index. Alienation is defined in terms of Melvin Seeman's (1959) five basic variants of alienation: powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, social isolation, and self-estrangement. After pretesting, two questions per variant of alienation remained as the operational measures of alienation from the marketplace. These questions focused specifically on marketing phenomenon. Test-retest reliability was tested with 35 paired observations. Validity was checked with survey data from 140 households. In terms of face or content validity, the questions met the criterion of “looking as if” they should indicate the corresponding dimensions of alienation. Correlations between the marketplace alienation items and a measure of general alienation established concurrent validity. The authors propose that the use of the marketplace alienation index in studies involving those who are affected by our country's business climate may prove useful. For example, one would hypothesize that increasing alienation from the marketplace would be associated with support of consumerist goals, or even of additional government legislation to control problems that the individual feels is uncontrollable by him because of the bigness and indifference of modern day enterprise. Pepsico, Inc.     

Linking thoughts to feelings: Investigating cognitive appraisals and consumption emotions in a mixed-emotions context

While emotions have been shown to have significant influence on various consumer behaviors, the cognitive appraisals linked to consumption emotions have not been fully explored. This research investigates how individuals' cognitive interpretations of situations correspond to the emotions they experience in these contexts. Using analysis of variance and multiple discriminant analysis, our results show a systematic relationship between cognitive appraisals and 10 consumption emotions. The author's findings offer theoretical insights into these consumption emotions, the appraisal/consumption emotion correspondence, basisversus subordinate-level category differences in emotions, and mixed consumption emotions. The findings provide a practical framework for academics and practitioners interested in better understanding and managing consumption emotions. Julie A. Ruth (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is an assistant professor of marketing in the School of Business—Camden at Rutgers University. Her research interests include affect and emotions, consumer relationships, and consumer response to brand strategies such as brand alliances and sponsorships. Frédéric F. Brunel (Ph.D., University of Washington) is an assistant professor of marketing in the School of Management at Boston University. His research interests include consumer perceptions of product design and aesthetics, consumer attitude and affect, and gender and sociocultural issues in consumption. Cele C. Otnes (Ph.D., University of Tennessee) is an associate professor of business administration in the College of Commerce and Business Administration at the University of Illinois, Urbana. Her research interests include consumer rituals, affect and consumer ambivalence, and gift exchange.