Claiming a family brand identity: The role of website storytelling

This study focuses on the creation of a family identity as a central communication objective in business storytelling. We contribute to the field of business website marketing by identifying, through textual analysis of US winery website narratives, how businesses communicate family brand identities. Results show that three claims that are critical for family brand identities—character, temporal continuity, and distinctiveness—do appear in the website texts. Our study provides beginning evidence that family identity does not require family ownership alone but can be built upon complementary narrative elements and tactics, including kinship references and heritage storytelling. Both content and linguistic style of narratives are useful in conveying a family brand identity to an external public for website design. Implications are discussed.     

Consumption in the public eye: The influence of social presence on service experience

Continuous improvement in managing customer relationships is a necessity for companies wishing to remain competitive in today's global marketplace. The two studies presented herein respond to this need by developing and testing a new nomological net that features social presence and its moderators as antecedents to service satisfaction. Study 1 discovers that when service experiences are positive, social presence enhances service satisfaction. Study 2 examines the interaction between service experience valence, social presence type and self-construal prime. The results show that when an interdependent self-construal is primed, social presence (both in-group and out-group) increases service satisfaction (dissatisfaction) during a positive (negative) service encounter, whereas, when an independent self-construal is primed, social presence exerts little impact on service satisfaction. Managers can benefit from these findings by considering the impact of social presence as they design their servicescapes.     

ICT,Innovation and Firm Performance: The Transition Economies Context

The aim of this article is to investigate the impact of information communication technologies (ICT) and innovation activities on firm performance using the Business Environment Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) firm-level data in the three rounds: 2002, 2005, and 2008. The novelty of this research is based on the idea of studying the usage of ICT and innovation activities on firm performance by using dynamic approach so that we can estimate the adjustments that arise from the impact of ICT and innovation activities. The rapid technological development and the growing use of information technology (IT) in business organizations have become the center of attention in past few years. A bulk of literature has been published on the use of IT in different industries, different types of business organizations, and in different areas of business management. On the other hand, the probability of the firm to undertake innovation activities has shown to enhance firm performance. This study implements various estimations on BEEPS observations to test whether the change in the usage of ICT and other innovation determinants have increase the probability of firms to undertake innovation activities. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Knowledge spillover-based strategic entrepreneurship

Research on knowledge spillovers (KS) has each been the subject of much scholarly attention, but has mostly been considered independently rather than in combination with each other important issue – strategic entrepreneurship (SE). The purpose of this special issue is to integrate these two approaches and to develop theory in addition to empirically investigate the phenomenon inspiring future research on the topic. This paper draws on the knowledge spillover-based strategic entrepreneurship in a multilevel context, examines the logic of the approach, and introduces the special issue by summarizing the papers contributions. Future research suggestions from the papers included in the special journal issue are also discussed and explained.     

Long‐Lived Consumers,Intertemporal Bundling and Collusion

In a repeated price game with long but finitely‐lived consumers, long‐term contracts facilitate collusion. Intertemporal bundling reduces the gains from business stealing but has little effect on the cost of the resulting price war. When consumers anticipate future price wars, the maximum deviation profit is a single period of consumer surplus per consumer. Hence long‐term contracts do not increase the incentive to deviate per consumer, but do reduce the the number of consumers currently in the market by locking them into past contracts, so tacit collusion is sustainable for a wider range of discount factors and market structures.     

Rural Amenity Values and Length of Residency

New residents of rural communities are often assumed to have preferences for development and conservation that differ from those of longer-term residents. However, the literature offers little to quantify presumed preference heterogeneity. This article assesses whether stated preferences differ according to length of residency. Results are based on a conjoint (choice experiment) survey of Rhode Island rural residents. Heterogeneity—according to length of town residency—is modeled using dummy variables, multiplicative interactions, and Lagrangian interpolation polynomials. Results are compared across the three models, and identify a range of attributes for which willingness to pay depends on length of residency.     

Applying Ethical Theories: Interpreting and Responding to Student Plagiarism

Given the tremendous proliferation of student plagiarism involving the Internet, the purpose of this study is to determine which theory of ethical reasoning students invoke when defending their transgressions: deontology, utilitarianism, rational self-interest, Machiavellianism, cultural relativism, or situational ethics. Understanding which theory of ethical reasoning students employ is critical, as preemptive steps can be taken by faculty to counteract this reasoning and prevent plagiarism. Additionally, it has been demonstrated that unethical behavior in school can lead to unethical behavior in business; therefore, correcting unethical behavior in school can have a positive impact on organizational ethics. To meet this objective, a content analysis was conducted on the written records of students formally charged with plagiarizing at a large West Coast university. Each case was classified according to the primary ethical reasoning that the student used to justify plagiarism. Results indicate that students predominately invoke deontology, situational ethics, and Machiavellianism. Based on these findings, specific recommendations are offered to curb plagiarism. This research is the result of a long-standing interest in new technology and plagiarism. Very early ideas on this subject were presented by the authors at the ABC West Conference in New Orleans in March 2003. Dr. Neil Granitz teaches Marketing at Cal State Fullerton. He has published articles in the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Marketing Education, and the Quarterly Journal of E-Commerce. Moreover, Neil is a consultant for the fast-food industry, the airline industry, and an Internet advertising agency. Before earning his MBA at McGill University in Montreal and a Ph.D. in Marketing at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, Neil Granitz gained extensive corporate experience in market and consumer research. Neil’s research focuses on three areas: (1) Instilling meaning and motivation into marketing education, (2) E-Commerce: Development and effect on marketing educators and practitioners, and (3) Awareness of ethics: Its influence on the internal culture of organization. Dr. Dana Loewy teaches Business Communication at Cal State Fullerton. Having earned a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in English and translation, she is a well-published freelance translator, interpreter, and brand-name consultant. Fluent in several languages, among them German and Czech, Dana has published critical articles in many areas of interest and various poetry as well as prose translations, most notably the 1997 volume The Early Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert from Northwestern University Press.     

Impact of relational coordination on job satisfaction and quality outcomes: a study of nursing homes

This article develops a relational perspective on the coordination of work. Existing theory suggests that relational forms of coordination should improve performance in settings that are highly interdependent, uncertain and time‐constrained. Going beyond previous work, we argue that relational coordination should also improve job satisfaction by helping employees to accomplish their work more effectively and by serving as a source of positive connection at work. Using a cross‐sectional sample of nursing aides and residents in 15 nursing homes, we investigate the impact of relational coordination on quality outcomes and job satisfaction.