An integrated model of sales managers’ communication practices

Drawing from several diverse streams of research, the authors develop the rationale and empirical background for considering the role of sales manager communication practices. Using a multifaceted conceptualization of communication as its base, the study justifies, proposes, and evaluates a model describing the relations among sales managers’ communication practices and salesperson ambiguity, satisfaction, performance, and commitment. The results support the hypothesized model and suggest that sales manager communication practices are associated with these important salesperson job outcomes. Mark C. Johlke is an assistant professor of marketing in the Cameron School of Business at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Wilmington, North Carolina. Dale F. Duhan is an associate professor of marketing and director of International Bussiness Programs in the College of Business Administration at Texas University, Lubbock, Texas. Roy D. Howell is dean of the College of Business Administration at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas. Robert W. Wilkes is the United Supermarkets professor of marketing and marketing area coordinator in the College of Business Administration at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas.     

The Political Economy of Price Cap Regulation

The last decade has witnessed a dramatic substitutionof price cap regulation for rate-of-return regulationin the telecommunications industry. The 1996Telecommunications Act empowers state regulators toset the terms of competitive entry in local telephonemarkets. We investigate whether the form of regulationendogenously affects the regulator's behavior withrespect to competitive entry. The evidence revealsthat regulators in price cap jurisdictions tend to setmore liberal terms of entry in comparison withregulators in rate-of-return jurisdictions. Thissuggests that price cap regulation suffers fromincomplete contracting, undermining the potentiallysuperior incentive properties of this importantregulatory reform.     

Modeling and Analysis of Reverse Logistics

Many modeling techniques have been developed to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of forward logistics and supply chain management. As this article will illustrate, modeling techniques can be helpful in improving the management of reverse logistics as well. Companies and researchers are just beginning to appreciate the important differences between forward and reverse chains, and there is great opportunity to apply modeling methodologies to managing reverse logistics problems and issues. This article describes how modeling techniques can be utilized to improve reverse logistics processes and aid in solving real‐world reverse logistics problems. We focus on specific reverse logistics processes that firms, which sell products, are likely to address. In fact, the area of reverse logistics has broadened of late to include many activities that were not originally part of simply returning consumer products to a retailer. Herein, we present an overview of opportunities, where improved modeling efforts should be able to provide substantial benefits to supply chain professionals.     

Are Production Decisions Decoupled under a Bond Scheme? Experimental Evidence

Experimental economics procedures were used to investigate impacts of a proposed bond scheme on production decisions. As expected, production with subsidy payments tied to a support price was substantially higher than with no policy. A shift from the support price to equivalent annual or lump-sum payments not tied to price resulted in production at or near no-policy levels, providing empirical evidence to support the theoretical prediction that bond schemes would not result in production distortions. Potential extensions to the basic model used in this study also are presented.     

Island matching

A plausible micro foundation for the matching function, postulated in models of equilibrium unemployment, is proposed. The flow of matches formed is an increasing and concave function of the number of jobs and workers to be matched holding the other constant, but exhibits increasing to scale. Nevertheless, the function is consistent with the observed Beveridge curve and the log linear relationship between the job finding rate and the vacancy-unemployment ratio. Although a market equilibrium in which wages are determined by ex post auctions is not constrained efficient, a modified auction exists that decentralizes the solution to the social planner's problem.     

Employee leasing. The antebellum 1800s and the twenty-first century: A historical perspective of the contingent labour force

Management strategies have evolved over the centuries in response to economic and social needs of individuals and organizations. The maintenance of a flexible labour force was a management practice employed by industrialists more than a century ago. The use of employee leasing in the United States dates back to the industrial revolution that occurred during the nineteenth century. Industrialists leased bondsmen to supplement their labour force. This practice, known as 'hiring-out', permitted employers to obtain labour without making heavy investments in human resources. The motivations for maintaining a contingent labour force today are essentially unchanged from a century ago. This paper addresses the nineteenth-century use of a contingent labour force by the large Southern firm of Andrew Brown and Company in the period prior to the US Civil War.     

Transferable quotas,enforcement costs and typical firms: An empirical application to the Norwegian trawler fleet

An alternative to traditional regulations of fisheries to avoid rent dissipation is the use of individual transferable quotas (ITQ _s ) where prices in the quota market provide the necessary information to owners of harvest rights to contract with each other. However, even under such a decentralized regime, information on the underlying technology of the fishing vessels is also necessary. First, since most fisheries consist of many interrelated production processes, in order to avoid rent dissipation by discarding wrong output mix etc., the structure of production in the multispecies fishery must be known to design a proper quota system. Second, an ITQ system may create incentives for misreporting by understating the actual catch. This may especially be the case where the expected degree of self-enforcement is low. The paper proposes a way to reduce the information requirements under regulation with asymmetric information by constructing a typical firm and comparing performance for the other vessels to this firm. Based on the typical firm, and if the industry is relatively homogenous, the performance and hence catch of any other firm in the industry can be predicted within a certain range. Further, the paper applies this idea to the Norwegian trawler fleet to assess the production structure in terms of jointness, input-output separability, and the supply and demand elasticities for the fishing firms. This information characterizes the fishery and thus how the quota system may be designed and how to construct a yardstick in order to reduce the enforcement cost under a decentralized regulation of ITQs.The authors would like to thank Trond Bjørndal, Røgnvaldur Hannesson, Ola Flaaten and two referees for useful comments and suggestions.