Modeling Ethical Business Culture: Development of the Ethical Business Culture Survey and Its Use to Validate the CEBC Model of Ethical Business Culture

This article reports the results of research to develop a survey instrument and its use to validate an ethical business culture construct (CEBC Model). The reported three-stage quantitative study builds on our previous qualitative work, aimed at identifying dimensions of ethical business cultures. The research resulted in a parsimonious construct, covering five dimensions of ethical business cultures, and a ten-question instrument, measuring this construct. In this article, we report results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and convergent construct validity testing, discuss the potential applications of the construct and instrument in assessment and development of ethical business cultures, and provide recommendations for industry practitioners and for further research.     

The sales recovery audit: Learning to walk the talk

Little research attention has been devoted to the impact of salesperson failure and recovery management on customer relationship development. This paper develops a theoretically anchored and externally validated sales recovery audit for the purpose of assessing sales organization performance in these matters. Results based on a survey of 177 sales managers indicate that practice of sales recovery efforts lags behind their perceived importance as they relate to organizational success. The sales recovery audit presented here can be a useful tool to continuously evaluate and enhance sales recovery efforts for the purpose of building a stronger relationship selling organization.     

Lending technologies,lending specialization,and minority access to small-business loans

We investigate minority access to small-business loans using a probit model of loan application denial that recognizes two loan types (line-of-credit loans and non-line-of-credit loans) made by two lender types (commercial banks and nonbank financial institutions). We estimate our model on data from the 1998 Survey of Small Business Finances. We find evidence consistent with minority equal access to bank credit lines and nonbank non-line-of-credit loans in highly competitive loan markets; in less competitive markets we find evidence consistent with unequal access to these loans. We also find evidence consistent with unequal minority access to bank non-line-of-credit loans, regardless of loan market competitiveness. Our findings differ from previous research which treats small-business loans as a homogenous product and finds evidence consistent with unequal minority access to small-business loans generally. We argue that the existence of multiple small-business lending technologies and loan specialization by lenders account for our findings and demonstrate the need to treat small-business loans as a heterogeneous product when investigating equal access to small-business credit.     

Estimating the Impact of Currency Unions on Trade: Solving the Glick and Rose Puzzle

Does leaving a currency union reduce international trade? This paper uses a historical approach to re‐examine the puzzling large apparent impact of currency unions on trade. I find that the early time series estimates were driven by the gradual decaying of colonial trade ties and other major geopolitical factors, including warfare, communist takeovers and ethnic cleansing episodes. My methodology, which carries lessons for other uses of gravity equations in policy analysis, yields point estimates of currency unions on trade that are not statistically distinct from zero.     

A longitudinal examination of negative political advertising and advertisement attitudes: a North American example

This study examined the cognitive and affective components of advertisement attitudes towards positive and negative political advertising. Simulated advertisements for two US presidential campaigns conducted eight years apart were given to student samples at two state universities. The results indicated that, while overall attitudes had not changed, when examining sponsor‐positive advertisements and opponent‐negative advertisements separately the components of advertisement attitudes had changed over the eight‐year time span, particularly for female subjects.     

Technology,Trade Sensitivity,and Labor Displacement

This study examines the relationship between international trade, technology, and exposure to job displacement, using data on displaced workers as well as those at risk of job dislocation, for the two-year sample periods 1986-1987 and 1990-1991. Workers employed in manufacturing industries with elevated import penetration or high shares of R&D personnel appear to have increased rates of job loss. However, the risk of job loss is materially reduced when a relatively high proportion of employees report working with computers. The opposing effects on displacement probabilities of R&D employment intensity and computer-use carry over to the nonmanufacturing sector.     

Strategic marketing concepts and models

In this second of two articles on strategic marketing planning the author describes the techniques that have been developed to aid analysis of marketing information. Analytical frameworks such as the product life‐cycle, the growth‐share matrix, the Business Assessment Array and the Directional Policy Matrix are discussed and the benefits and pitfalls associated with strategic planning frameworks are considered by the author.     

This ad’s for you: the indirect effect of advertising perceptions on salesperson effort and performance

Considerable research explores advertising’s role in influencing consumer perceptions and behavior. However, advertising’s impact on another key audience—the sales force—has been largely overlooked. Drawing from social identity and expectancy theories, and using survey and objective performance data across multiple wholesalers, the authors demonstrate that a salesperson’s perception of brand advertising has a significant effect on salesperson effort and performance by positively influencing the extent to which the salesperson identifies with the brand and his or her expectancy that such effort will generate results. These effects are moderated by internal communications and brand size. Model results suggest that advertising’s role may extend beyond “pull” to “push” by motivating salespeople to exert more effort on behalf of a brand. As a result, firms should take steps to proactively manage salesperson perceptions of brand advertising while also considering this dual role when assessing advertising effectiveness and efficiency.     

A voluntary brain-drain tax

A major roadblock to the implementation of Bhagwati's proposal to allow developing countries to tax skilled emigrants residing in developed countries (the “brain drain”) is the administrative problems associated with collecting this tax in the absence of developed-country cooperation. This paper provides a partial solution to these problems, involving the tax treatment of emigrants who return to their countries of origin. The tax system is structured so that returning emigrants who previously paid the brain-drain tax face lower tax payments than those who evaded the brain-drain tax. Given the expected value of this tax benefit, emigrants are willing to pay the brain-drain tax. In the basic model, a source country's optimal tax system includes this brain-drain tax and does not distort migration decisions.