Does foreign direct investment promote institutional development in Africa?

Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into Africa have increased since the turn of the millennium, mainly due to FDI growth into African countries by multinational enterprises (MNEs) from developing economies. While African governments view this growth as a positive development for the continent, many governments in the West have raised concerns regarding the institutional impact of investments from developing economies. This paper examines the impact of FDI flows on institutional quality in African countries by distinguishing investments from developed versus developing economies. Previous empirical studies have found a significant relationship between FDI flows and institutional quality in African countries but regard the relationship as MNEs rewarding African countries for adopting institutional reforms. However, little attention has been paid to the reverse causality, i.e. that FDI can cause an institutional change in African countries. Using bilateral greenfield FDI flows between 56 countries during 2003?2015, we find no significant FDI effect from developed and developing economies on institutional quality in host countries. However, aggregate FDI flows from developed and developing economies have a significant positive effect on host country institutional quality but differ concerning the impact's timing. In contrast, we find no significant effect of FDI flows from China on host country institutional quality. Our results are robust to alternative measures of institutional quality.     

Willingness to use mobile application for smartphone for improving road safety

In the last few years mobile devices have reached a large amount of consumers in both developed and high-growth world economies. In 2013, 97% of the Italian population owns a mobile phone, and 62% owns a smartphone. Application software for mobile devices is largely proposed to consumers, and several mobile applications were oriented toward the improvement of road safety and road accident risk reduction. In this paper, we describe the results of a survey oriented to preventively investigate on the willingness to receive and/or to give information about road condition by means of mobile devices. Road users were informed about the characteristics of a mobile application, and then they were invited to complete a questionnaire. Experimental data were used for capturing road user attitudes toward the use of the smartphone to improve road safety, and to establish the preferences for the different features of the proposed mobile application. To this end, we choose to use the ordered probit model methodology. We demonstrate that the adopted methodology accounts for the differential impacts of the willingness to receive and/or to give information about road conditions on the overall willingness to receive and/or to give information through an application software for mobile devices.     

Saturdays of leisure and memories … : The Mexican market ‘La Pulga’ in the San Joaquin Valley (California)

This research note aims to explore the links between food, memory, nostalgia and leisure through a series of weekly visits to an itinerant Mexican market in the United States. Taking an ethnographic approach to the market of La Pulga held in the city of Merced in California’s San Joaquin Valley, we consider how, in the Mexican–American transnational context, this market provides an opportunity for Mexican migrants to interact with other Mexican people, recreating similar social dynamics displayed in traditional food markets in Mexico. We argue that as well as being a food supply centre, this market may be viewed as a space in which Mexican migrants seek to recreate their homeland and to enjoy an alternative leisure experience. Thus, the visit to the market may be observed as a complex activity in which the senses, the social interactions between Mexican migrants and the consumption of food in a festive setting play a central role in enabling these migrants to break with their everyday lives. Likewise, we suggest that the visit to the market every Saturday not only constitutes a leisure activity, but also serves to construct the ethnic and collective migratory identity that links Mexican migrants with their homeland.     

Fostering Corporate Social Responsibility Through Public Initiative: From the EU to the Spanish Case

Should CSR be approached only on a voluntary basis or should it be complemented with a compulsory regulatory framework? What type of government intervention is more effective in fostering CSR among companies? This paper is an attempt to answer these questions, reviewing the debate between proponents of the voluntary case and the obligatory case for CSR, and critically analysing current international government-led initiatives to foster CSR among companies, and national government-led initiatives in the EU area. Finally, the paper focuses on the Spanish case, as an example of the failure of an exclusively voluntary approach. Despite the rapid uprise of CSR, Spain is still far behind late in CSR promotion strategies. Most action has been undertaken by companies themselves with no common guidelines, governmental support, or independent verification. The lack of a regulatory framework for CSR or ethical investment issues and the virtual absence of other indirect incentives, explains the misbalance between private, public and Third Sector initiatives. Based on the Spanish context which is quite similar to other non-OECD countries, the authors call for a more proactive government position in CSR related issues. The conclusions of the paper detail the features of this regulatory framework and other policies to promote CSR in Spain as well as in other OECD countries.     

Dynamic Interplay of Visual and Textual Identification Strategies in Employees’ Magazines

This article explores how an organization’s identity is strategically communicated through texts and images in the employees’ magazines of a global Danish company with a worldwide readership of over 18,000 employees. Drawing on an interdisciplinary methodological framework related to organizational identification theory and social semiotics, it proposes a multimodal analysis model through which several identification strategies are explored at the level of each semiotic mode and at the level of their interplay. The article explains how identity is strategically communicated in accordance with the potential and constraints of texts and images. It claims that by exploring how these semiotic modes reinforce, complement or subvert each other, the identification strategies can be more thoroughly addressed. Shedding light on how the multimodal interplay contributes to communicate identity, this model can also be employed by communicators in order to nuance and improve their strategic communicative practice. By examining the semiotic modes’ complex interconnectivity and functional differentiation in the strategic communication of identity, this article expands the existing research work as the usual textual focus is extended to a multimodal one.     

The relationship between trainers’ media‐didactical competence and media‐didactical self‐efficacy,attitudes and use of digital media in training

The ongoing digitalization in the training sector produces new demands on the media‐didactical competence of trainers. We conducted an online survey of 279 trainers in Germany to investigate the relationships among media‐didactical competence, media‐didactical self‐efficacy, attitudes toward the use of digital media and the actual use of digital media in training. Furthermore, we compared trainers who attended a course on digital media with trainers who did not attend such a course. The analysis of the theoretically expected correlations between the variables resulted in not all hypotheses being accepted. The analysis of the group differences showed that the trainers who attended a course on digital media had higher media‐didactical competence and media‐didactical self‐efficacy scores and used digital media more often in training. There was no significant difference in negative attitudes. The implications for the promotion of the media‐didactical competence of trainers are discussed.     

Integral decision analysis in mutually exclusive capital investment projects. Case study: Hard Rock Cafe at Riviera Maya

Brands that have worldwide recognition are perceived as profitable businesses. One of the reasons for this perception might lie in the belief that these companies usually employ some degree of financial evaluation to make the right choice in terms of investment; Hard Rock Cafe is no exception. The brand opened one restaurant in the Riviera Maya in 2011 which closed within nine months. Could a better investment decision have been made if the Hard Rock Cafe Mexico management had followed the Integral Decision Analysis (IDA) method? This method gives decision-makers a chance to analyze mutually exclusive capital budgeting projects. The case study illustrates the type of elements that the model can yield, it provides a brief explanation on how this process could have been used by the Hard Rock Cafe management and it offers an explanation on how this knowledge might have helped in supporting a final investment decision. In conclusion, the IDA method used to analyze this project might reduce the risks in capital investments.     

Existence,uniqueness, and stability of optimal payoffs of eligible assets

In a capital adequacy framework, risk measures are used to determine the minimal amount of capital that a financial institution has to raise and invest in a portfolio of prespecified eligible assets in order to pass a given capital adequacy test. From a capital efficiency perspective, it is important to be able to do so at the lowest possible cost and to identify the corresponding portfolios, or, equivalently, their payoffs. We study the existence and uniqueness of such optimal payoffs as well as their behavior under a perturbation or an approximation of the underlying capital position. This behavior is naturally linked to the continuity properties of the set‐valued map that associates to each capital position the corresponding set of optimal eligible payoffs. Upper continuity can be ensured under fairly natural assumptions. Lower continuity is typically less easy to establish. While it is always satisfied in a polyhedral setting, it generally fails otherwise, even when the reference risk measure is convex. However, lower continuity can often be established for eligible payoffs that are close to being optimal. Besides capital adequacy, our results have a variety of natural applications to pricing, hedging, and capital allocation problems.     

Neighbourhood influences on organic buying

Past studies have explained organic buying as a function of sociodemographic or attitudinal consumer's traits and/or as a result of marketing influences. However, in view of mounting evidence of social effects on sustainable consumption, this paper aims to enrich our understanding of the determinants of organic demand by introducing neighbourhood effects in buying models; in particular, using scanner data from Nielsen household panelists of 2012–2013, this study tests the influence on demand of both structural variables (collapsed into a factor labelled “neighbourhood class”) and geographical location of a household, controlling for the influence of household characteristics and other marketing‐related influences (e.g., price). This paper concludes that structural class, rather than household class, positively influences organic milk purchasing. It also shows that relative class can also explain the likelihood of organic buying.     

Best Practice Marketing for Regional Tourism Destinations

This article reports on destination marketing best practices from 21 regional destinations around Australia. The results advocate an integrative approach to destination marketing that aligns with destination management and development objectives. From this, a framework is developed, within which nine best practice principles are identified as essential to successful and sustainable marketing of regional destinations. The key initiatives used to achieve success are discussed in detail, highlighting the need for destination stakeholders to foster a cooperative and strategic approach and ensure consistent design and delivery of a destination brand and image which is supported by tactical advertising and promotional strategies, effective visitor information services, and events to support the destination brand and image to target appropriate visitor markets.