Ten Predictions on Chinese Mobilephone Market in 2015

According to the Quarterly Report on the Chinese Moile Market(Q3/2014)eleased by IDC,the year of 2014 saw a domestic smart phone delivery of 420 million sets,up 19.9%year-on-year.However,IDC estimates that comparing with 2014 the product delivery of smart phones will grow by around 7.8%in 2015,which will be the first time for smart phone delivery to grow at a single digit rate in China since 2009.     

Ethical Context, Organizational Commitment, and Person-Organization Fit

The purpose of this study was to assess the relationships among ethical context, organizational commitment, and person-organization fit using a sample of 304 young working adults. Results indicated that corporate ethical values signifying different cultural aspects of an ethical context were positively related to both organizational commitment and person-organization fit. Organizational commitment was also positively related to person-organization fit. The findings suggest that the development and promotion of an ethical context might enhance employees' workplace experiences, and companies should consider adopting ethical policies that support principled conduct, punish unethical actions, and increase individual perceptions of an ethical company environment.     

Measuring the ABCs of Leisure Experience: Awareness,Boredom, Challenge,Distress

Abstract

The psychometric properties of four aspects of leisure experience (Awareness, Boredom, Challenge, Distress), originally identified and tested with adolescents, were investigated with college students. Findings indicated that the original subscales were internally consistent and could be applied, with minor modification, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, college major, or employment. Interrelationships among the four leisure constructs of Awareness, Boredom, Challenge, and Distress were found to vary as a function of both gender and ethnicity, yielding different profiles of African-American, Asian-American, European-American, and Hispanic-American male and female students.     

Knowledge Effects on Curiosity and New Product Advertising

Abstract

Advertisers commonly advocate when writing ad copy, “Keep it simple!” In keeping with this belief, ads are typically written at less than the tenth grade level. The authors assert that this view may be too simple in view of the complex processes underlying cognitive processing. In an experiment where print ads did not vary in terms of their concreteness, the authors found that increasing levels of readability made no differences in recall, attitudinal judgments or purchase intent.     

Raising Value at Risk

In this paper I consider the properties for a coherent risk measure, outlined by Artzner et al. (1996), and relate these requirements to a well-known measure, value at risk (VaR), which attempts to evaluate economic risk. I show how the usual method of calculating VaR does not adhere to the coherency requirements and discuss the implications of such a result. As well, I discuss the use of the mean excess loss function to help solve this problem.     

Flattening the organization: the effect of organizational reporting structure on budgeting effectiveness

This study investigates whether increasing a superior’s span of control improves the effectiveness of the budgeting process. We characterize the superior’s utility function as consisting of utilities for norm enforcement and wealth, leading the superior to reject profitable projects believed to contain excessive slack. We develop theory to predict that superiors become more willing to reject projects as their span of control increases. Further, subordinates anticipate superiors’ behavior and reduce slack as span of control increases. Experimental results are consistent with these predictions. As span of control increases, superiors show a greater willingness to reject projects that they believe contain excessive slack, and subordinates submit budgets with less slack. The net result is that superiors earn more profit per subordinate under an expanded span of control. Our study suggests that increasing span of control can improve the effectiveness of the budgeting process, an important component of most firms’ control environments.     

European integration and the legacy of the post‐world war II German expulsions in East‐Central Europe

Efforts towards the formal integration of Poland and the Czech Republic into the European Union have opened the Pandora's box of issues concerning the expulsion of Germans and the confiscation of their property after the Second World War. This paper explains why Sudeten German expellees have been at the forefront of the drive for compensation and property restitution and why Czech‐German relations have been significantly more strained after 1989. As Poland and the Czech Republic prepare to join the EU, the potential for controversy over the involvement of European‐wide institutions in lingering disputes concerning the expulsions as well as over Germans acquiring property in areas formerly part of Germany is also a focus of concern.     

Green segmentation and environmental certification: insights from forest products

Firms engage in environmental marketing in order to appeal to environmentally conscious consumers. Within the context of the forest product industry, this research uses data from two studies to empirically test whether a relationship exists between demographic/psychographic characteristics and reported environmentally conscious intentions. In both studies, the results indicate that the environmental marketing of certified/ecolabeled forest products appeals to a segment of environmentally conscious consumers. This appeal occurs for both a value‐added product (furniture) and a non‐value‐added product (plywood). Thus, there is support for the argument that environmental marketing to environmentally conscious consumers can result in ‘green segmentation’. Key findings from this study suggest that those consumers reporting the strongest preferences for environmentally certified forest products were more willing to pay a premium for certified products, more likely to display environmentally conscious behavior and more likely to perceive that green consumer purchases effectively benefit the environment. These characteristics were most common among females and those familiar with the concept of environmental certification. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and EPR Environment.     

Short selling and stock returns: Evidence from the UK

The practice of shorting stocks was put forward as one of the causes of the recent financial crisis whereas Shiller (2003), for example, considers shorting an essential element of an efficient market. Shorting involves selling borrowed stocks and subsequently closing the position by purchasing and returning the stock to the lender. A profit will be realised if the stock's price decreases. Shorting enables investors who do not own a perceived overvalued stock to sell. Using a high-frequency UK dataset for the period between September 2003 and April 2010, our findings suggest shorting indicates evidence of overvalued stocks as significantly negative abnormal stock returns appear to follow an increase in shorting. These results do not hold, however, for shorting which occurs around the ex-dividend date. We further find that these results hold during the recent financial crisis.