Small firms embracing technology and tourism development: evidence from two nations in Central America

This research note reports the findings of a study that explored the types of technology used within hospitality-related small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The study investigated the perceptions of value and the levels of awareness of entrepreneurs and managers regarding various technologies commonly used in similar organizations in the United States. The results suggest that there are minimal technology applications in back-office and front-office processing activities in SMEs in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The evidence further suggests that the levels of awareness of entrepreneurs and managers concerning these applications are practically non-existent.     

A REPRESENTATION RESULT FOR CONCAVE SCHUR CONCAVE FUNCTIONS

A representation result is provided for concave Schur concave functions on   L ^∞(Ω)  . In particular, it is proven that any monotone concave Schur concave weakly upper semicontinuous function is the infinimum of a family of nonnegative affine combinations of Choquet integrals with respect to a convex continuous distortion of the underlying probability. The method of proof is based on the concave Fenchel transform and on Hardy and Littlewood's inequality. Under the assumption that the probability space is nonatomic, concave, weakly upper semicontinuous, law-invariant functions are shown to coincide with weakly upper semicontinuous concave Schur concave functions. A representation result is, thus, obtained for weakly upper semicontinuous concave law-invariant functions.     

OVERLAPPING SETS OF PRIORS AND THE EXISTENCE OF EFFICIENT ALLOCATIONS AND EQUILIBRIA FOR RISK MEASURES

The overlapping expectations and the collective absence of arbitrage conditions introduced in the economic literature to insure existence of Pareto optima and equilibria with short‐selling when investors have a single belief about future returns, is reconsidered. Investors use measures of risk. The overlapping sets of priors and the Pareto equilibrium conditions introduced by Heath and Ku for coherent risk measures are respectively reinterpreted as a weak no‐arbitrage and a weak collective absence of arbitrage conditions and shown to imply existence of Pareto optima and Arrow–Debreu equilibria.     

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.     

Do people who care about others cooperate more? Experimental evidence from relative incentive pay

We experimentally study ways in which social preferences affect individual and group performance under indefinitely repeated relative incentives. We also identify the mediating role that communication and leadership play in generating these effects. We find other-regarding individuals tend to depress efforts by 15% on average. However, selfish individuals are nearly three times more likely to lead players to coordinate on minimal efforts when communication is possible. Hence, the other-regarding composition of a group has complex consequences for organizational performance.     

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.