Salesperson's innovation resistance and job satisfaction in intra-organizational diffusion of sales force automation technologies: The case of South Korea

One of the rapidly growing areas in industrial marketing is the application of sales force automation (SFA) technologies to help improve the efficiency of the sales force task. What is often overlooked is that there are some potential negative effects related to SFA technologies that arise when these innovations are forcefully adopted on the individual salesperson. This study empirically examines the psychological and social antecedents of salespeople's resistance toward SFA technologies in South Korea. Unlike previous studies that only looked at adoption, this studies adds to the literature on SFA technologies by looking at resistance toward innovation in the post-adoption or intra-organizational diffusion stage. This study looks at the direct and indirect relationships between innovation resistance and some key constructs such as job satisfaction, job performance, self-efficacy, group-efficacy, innovativeness, and peer usage. This study represents also one of the very few empirical studies conducted on sales force behavior in South Korea and as such may offer some insights on sales force management in collectivist cultures.     

Adding a freight network to a national interstate input–output model: a TransNIEMO application for California

The state of the nation’s infrastructure is the subject of widespread discussion and comment because it is thought to include many deteriorating and unsafe bridges. Ever since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, there has been increasing concern over the extent to which an attack on infrastructure could result in serious economic disruption. This research develops a model to analyze the economic consequences of an attack on a major element of the highway network. We add a freight network to a national multiregional economic impact model and make freight traffic flows endogenous. The use of a sub-national interstate model recognizes that most infrastructure planning is at the state level and most political leaders’ interest is local. We base our approach on the National Interstate Economic Model (NIEMO) and refer to an elaboration that we name Transportation network and the National Interstate Economic Model (TransNIEMO). The new model enables us to study the state-specific and industry-specific economic impacts of some significant changes in the nature of highway freight movements. We tested the model for selected freight movements in and out of California. The results are entirely plausible and encourage us to elaborate and test the model for hypothetical disruptions of freight traffic throughout the US.     

A Delphi technology forecasting approach using a semi-Markov concept

This paper suggests a technology forecasting approach based on a semi-Markov model, which appropriately describes the probabilistic nature of a sequential technology development process. This approach focuses primarily on the utilization of the information that has been skipped in conventional Delphi survey data. That is, through a simple statistic, the interrelationships among sequential technology developments can be extracted in a formal structure of a semi-Markov model from the original Delphi panel's estimates. A simulation technique is developed to forecast the development process by utilizing the information on such interrelationships. This technique provides a flexible and useful tool for R&D planners or project managers, especially in postanalysis of Delphi forecasting. To make good use of the approach, a computer-based interactive Delphi data analysis system (IDEAS) is implemented in IBM PC.     

A Study of Authenticity in Traditional Korean Folk Villages

The purpose of this study is to examine the structural relations among tourist motivation, the perception of authenticity, and tourist satisfaction. Structural equation model (SEM) analysis was performed to the study model. It is confirmed that study concepts have significant relations through multiple regression analysis (MRA). The suggestions of this study are as follows. First, the authenticity is perceived through the direct tour activities consisting of the tourist's experiences on the basis of the results of the preceding studies, and it is an important factor of cultural tourism activities. Second, cultural tourism sites including traditional folk villages are to choose city dwellers, club members who like adventure and exploration, and student groups as target markets. Third, tourists are to be made to have various historical and cultural experiences by realistic and lively compositions of traditional culture.     

The Effectiveness of Regulation Fair Disclosure: Evidence from an Emerging Market

The effect of corporate disclosure in emerging markets is not clearly predictable because of the prevalent information leakage prior to disclosure. We empirically examine the effectiveness of Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) in reducing information asymmetry among equity traders in an emerging market. Specifically, we test whether fair disclosure activity is negatively related to the probability of informed trading (PIN). Multivariate tests on a sample of listed companies in Korea subject to Reg FD reveal the following: (1) more frequent disclosure under Reg FD is related to lower information asymmetry, and (2) this relation differs across the types of disclosure, with the effect of qualitative disclosures on the PIN being weaker than that of quantitative disclosures. Evidence also indicates that the negative association between fair disclosure activities and information asymmetry is more (less) pronounced for firms with poorer (better) information environments where selective information leakage is more (less) likely. The results are robust to sensitivity tests. Our findings have implications for disclosure regulations in emerging markets, given that the existing literature casts doubt on the effectiveness of corporate disclosure in such markets.     

Developing Equity Release Markets: Risk Analysis for Reverse Mortgages and Home Reversions

Equity release products are sorely needed in an aging population with high levels of home ownership. There has been a growing literature analyzing risk components and capital adequacy of reverse mortgages in recent years. However, little research has been done on the risk analysis of other equity release products, such as home reversion contracts. This is partly due to the dominance of reverse mortgage products in equity release markets worldwide. In this article we compare cash flows and risk profiles from the provider's perspective for reverse mortgage and home reversion contracts. An at-home/in long-term care split termination model is employed to calculate termination rates, and a vector autoregressive (VAR) model is used to depict the joint dynamics of economic variables including interest rates, house prices, and rental yields. We derive stochastic discount factors from the no arbitrage condition and price the no negative equity guarantee in reverse mortgages and the lease for life agreement in the home reversion plan accordingly. We compare expected payoffs and assess riskiness of these two equity release products via commonly used risk measures: Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR).     

On the complexity of repeated principal agent games?

Summary. We examine an infinitely repeated principal agent game without discounting (Radner [1985] ), in which the agent may engage in multiple projects. We focus on “linear” strategies that summarize each history into a linear function of public outcomes, and select an action according to a single threshold rule. We claim that linear strategies significantly simplify the computation needed to make strategic decisions following each history. Despite the simplicity of linear strategies, we can virtually recover the folk theorem. For any individually rational payoff vector in the interior of the set of feasible expected payoff vectors, there exists a pair of linear strategies that form a Nash equilibrium supporting the target payoff. The equilibrium strategies and the equilibrium payoff vectors form a globally stable solution (Smale [1980] ).