Matching the characteristics of a service to the preferences of customers

The central task of any market-oriented firm is to ensure that its product provides a mix of attributes that is consistent with the preferences of its customers. Attempts to measure the extent to which products meet consumer needs are often fraught with difficulties associated with eliciting and analysing the responses. We propose a simple index that can be applied to ordinal or cardinal data and will provide a convenient summary of the extent to which a product meets consumer expectations. The index, though simple, is shown to be robust, and is applied to the problem of analyzing the quality of banking services provided to small firms in the UK.     

LET'S END, NOT MEND, SOCIAL SECURITY

Social Security is a paternalist measure, supposedly forcing people to save for their old-age years, based on the assumption that they are not far-seeing enough to do so on their own behalf. It is only 'supposed', since the funds mulcted from each generation go not to finance their own retirements, but those of their predecessors. As in the case of all coercive schemes, this one cannot be shown to improve the lot of anyone (with the exception of those who do the imposing). Specifically, this measure has negative implications for family bonds, as it substitutes the state for a function previously carried out by the extended family.     

The ethics of leveraged management buyouts revisited

Although previous ethical analyses of management buyouts have presented useful insights, they have been flawed in three major ways. First, they define the transaction too narrowly, emphasizing the going private aspect and ignoring the leveraged aspect. Leveraging alters the nature of the transaction substantially and warrants additional ethical analysis. Second, these previous analyses ignore the impact of buyouts on non-stockholder constituents of the firm, an omission which renders their implicit utilitarian approach incomplete. Third, these analyses do not include Rawlsian, libertarian, or Kantian perspectives on ethics. This paper addresses these shortcomings and finds the ethical status of leveraged management buyouts to be highly suspect. Thomas M. Jones is a Professor of Organization and Environment in the School of Business Administration at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has written on such subjects as business ethics, corporate social responsibility, corporate governance, boards of directors, shareholder litigation, and business and society paradigms. His work has appeared in the Academy of Management Review, California Management Review, Boston University Law Review and the Hastings Law Journal.Reed O. Hunt, III is currently working for the Seattle Office of Peterson Consulting Limited Partnership, a national business dispute resolution consulting firm.     

ANOTHER LOOK AT ‘BANK COMPETITION AND FINANCIAL STABILITY: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING’?

This study replicates Zigraiova and Havranek's (2016) meta-analysis of banking competition and financial stability. It performs multiple types of replications: a ‘Reproduction’ replication where Z&H's data and code are verified to reproduce the results of their study; a ‘Repetition’ replication where the studies used by Z&H are independently recoded and then re-analysed; an ‘Extension’ replication where additional studies on banking competition and stability are analysed; and a ‘Robustness Analysis’ where we check Z&H's results using an alternative empirical procedure. Our analysis strongly confirms Z&H's main finding that competition in the banking sector has an economically negligible effect on financial stability. This result is consistently confirmed across a variety of replication analyses. Most impressively, we confirm their finding even when we analyse a completely independent set of 35 studies not included in Z&H's meta-analysis. Our results for Z&H's other findings are less supportive. As the first comprehensive replication of a meta-analysis, this study also provides insights into the robustness of meta-analysis. We find that meta-regression analysis, where estimated effects are related to data, estimation, and study characteristics, is sensitive to how data are coded and to the choice of estimation procedure; and that this sensitivity extends to ‘best practice’ estimates.     

Diversification in British industry in the 1970s

This work is original research which is based on data gathered from annual reports and accounts. It covers some 267 businesses which had the largest annual turnovers for manufacturing companies, within Britain, in 1971 and were still in existence in 1979. The data have been subjected to analysis to reveal preferred product-market postures, movements in posture, effects of annual turnover size on strategies, and the effects of being located within specific industries. In comparison with the work of D. F. Channon for the preceding twenty years it can be seen that, on the whole, the trend towards diversification has continued throughout the broad spectrum of British Industry.     

Diversification: The growing confusion

Over the years the concepts of diversification have been simplified and a system of shorthand has developed for discussing the issues surrounding the strategy. Because of this a confusion in terminology has developed and sight of the fundamental principles involved has been lost within the vagaries of fashion. Selection of a particular strategy ought to be based on the clear identification of the benefits that the strategy will offer. Those benefits should be used to help solve specific problems. Only by returning to this type of thinking can the legitimacy of diversification be revived and the alternating acclamation and denunciation of the strategy be overcome.     

The contribution of organic farming to rural development: An exploration of the socio-economic linkages of organic and non-organic farms in England

Organic farming has experienced considerable growth in recent years. Proponents of organic farming point to the environmental and nutritional benefits of organic systems, although these are contested by some. More recently, it has been argued that organic farming can provide rural development benefits through enhanced employment and through closer connections with the local economy, reconnecting consumers with producers and stimulating positive economic multipliers. Against the background of claims made for the rural development potential of organic farming, this paper considers the generation and retention of income, purchasing patterns, and direct employment impacts of a large sample of organic and non-organic farmers in England. The paper reveals some important distinctions between the characteristics of organic and non-organic farms and farmers. It is argued that most of these differences do not stem directly from differences in farming systems but, rather, reflect considerable differences in the people who operate organic farms as well as the distinctive business configurations they frequently adopt.     

Leaning for the Tape: Evidence of Gaming Behavior in Equity Mutual Funds

We present evidence that fund managers inflate quarter-end portfolio prices with last-minute purchases of stocks already held. The magnitude of price inflation ranges from 0.5 percent per year for large-cap funds to well over 2 percent for small-cap funds. We find that the cross section of inflation matches the cross section of incentives from the flow/performance relation, that a surge of trading in the quarter's last minutes coincides with a surge in equity prices, and that the inflation is greatest for the stocks held by funds with the most incentive to inflate, controlling for the stocks' size and performance.     

Proposing and Testing an Intellectual Capital-Based View of the Firm

abstract    This study examines one specific aspect of the resource-based view, intellectual capital, and its three knowledge components – human, organizational, and social capital. We hypothesize that the impact of each component on financial performance is contingent upon the values of the other components, and that these leveraging effects are themselves contingent upon the industry conditions in which a business operates. Our hypotheses are supported using line-of-business survey and FDIC data (within-industry/within-geographic region) from two non-competing resource niches of the banking industry (personal and commercial banking).