Agricultural Leadership Education: Past History,Present Reality,and Future Directions

The article explores the past, present, and projected future of agricultural leadership education. Beginning with roots in youth leadership development and grounded in land‐grant universities, agricultural leadership education has undergone a shift from working primarily with rural youth to a new focus on also educating undergraduate and graduate students to empower community members and create change. The renewed focus has encouraged recent growth and in the last 10 years, the profession has added three leadership majors, six leadership minors, seven leadership focus areas, seven undergraduate leadership programs, and four graduate leadership programs. Research exploring the student impact of agricultural leadership education revealed that nationwide a total of 7,904 students are exposed to 208 agricultural leadership education courses. As the discipline continues to mature, recommendations are made for continued program development. Discussion highlights prior research examining potential courses to include types of experiences, program objectives, and career connectedness relating to agricultural leadership education. Programs have ample opportunity for future growth and recommendations are made to continue the development of innovative leadership opportunities and consistent pedagogical practices across institutions.     

An information approach to international currencies

Models of currency competition focus on the 5% of trading attributable to balance-of-payments flows. We introduce an information approach that focuses on the other 95%. Important departures from traditional models arise when transactions convey information. First, prices reveal different information depending on whether trades are direct or though vehicle currencies. Second, missing markets arise due to insufficiently symmetric information, rather than insufficient transactions scale. Third, the indeterminacy of equilibrium that arises in traditional models is resolved: currency trade patterns no longer concentrate arbitrarily on market size. Empirically, we provide a first analysis of transactions across a full market triangle: the euro, yen and US dollar. The estimated transaction effects on prices support the information approach.     

Information search and consideration set formation in a web-based store environment

The research reported here attempts to understand information search and consideration set formation in a web-based choice environment. A conceptual model is used to propose hypotheses that link information search and consideration set formation with two task environment influences that are typical of online settings. A study that simulates information search and consideration set formation in a web-based choice environment is conducted to test the hypotheses. The results offer insights into how the number of available alternatives and the amount of time available may have an effect on search and evaluation in a web-based store. The research has implications for understanding how consumers shop in online stores.     

International Bribery: Does a Written Code of Ethics Make a Difference in Perceptions of Business Professionals

This article analyzes the attitudes of United States business professionals toward the issue of international bribery, and in particular, whether or not having a written code of ethics has an effect on these attitudes. A vignette relating to international bribery from a widely used survey instrument was employed in a nationwide survey of business professionals to gather information on ethical attitudes of respondents. Data were also collected on gender of respondents, whether or not respondents were self-employed, whether or not the respondents’ firms had a written code of ethics, and to what extent the respondents’ firms generated revenues from international operations. Attitudes concerning whether or not international bribery is ever acceptable exhibited wide dispersion. Respondents from firms that have a written code of ethics were significantly less likely to find international bribery acceptable. Firms that generate revenues from international operations were significantly more likely to have a written code of ethics than were firms which did not generate revenues from international operations. Implications of the findings for business policy are discussed. Joseph A. McKinney is Ben H. Williams Professor of International Economics at Baylor University. He was previously on the faculty of the University of Virginia, and has served as visiting professor to universities in Japan, France, the United Kingdom and Canada. His research interests include business ethics, international trade policy, and regional economic integration. Carlos W. Moore is the Edwin W. Streetman Professor of Marketing at Baylor University, where he has been on the faculty for more than 30 years. His research interests include business ethics, marketing and advertising evaluation, and small business strategies. He has done consulting on bank marketing and new product development.     

Self-brand connections: The role of attitude strength and autobiographical memory primes

According to the self-brand connection (SBC) construct, brand associations are used to construct one's self or to communicate one's self to others [Escalas JE. Narrative processing: building connections between brands and the self. unpublished dissertation 1996; Duke University.]. Study 1 reveals that: (1) SBCs significantly influence brand evaluations and attitude strength; (2) females exhibit stronger SBCs overall relative to their male counterparts; and (3) higher levels of SBCs impact attitude strength particularly for females in response to the gendered brand studied here — a sports organization, the WNBA. Study 2 focused on a non-gendered brand. The results showed that consumer fans who identified with the in-group (the home team) reported higher levels of SBCs than those who identified with the out-group. Finally, when autobiographical memory primes are presented from the perspective of the in-group, SBCs are higher than when these memory primes are presented from the perspective of an out-group.     

Signaling,Financial Slack and Corporate Acquisitions

This paper shows that under certain conditions a firm's decision concerning the optimal medium of exchange to use in acquiring another firm is related to the decision of which source of capital should be used to finance long-term projects. An example of this type of interaction occurs when the firm's only source of financing a positive net present value project is an equity issue. In a Myers and Majluf (1984) world of asymmetric information the value maximizing strategy for the firm is to forego the public equity offering and instead use a stock offer to acquire a firm possessing financial slack. The process is modeled using an extension of the Myers and Majluf (1984) model and demonstrates how the acquisition alternative allows managers to separate the signals regarding the investment and financing decisions. Including net pension assets into our measure of financial slack, we provide empirical supports for the ability of the extended model to explain observed merger activity.     

The Economic Forces Driving Food Safety Quality in Meat and Poultry

This article examines the impact of regulation and market-driven private actions on food safety performance in the meat and poultry industries. We find that private actions account for about 80% and regulation about 20% of the overall reduction in the share of samples of cattle and hog carcasses, ground beef, and broilers testing positive for Salmonella if all regulation and private actions were increased by identical amounts.     

Selling Anthropocene space: situated adventures in sustainable tourism

Abstract

The Anthropocene is a proposed technical term for a new geological timeframe, but it is also a conceptual tool with the potential to redefine the stakes of contemporary environmental politics. One facet that is often overlooked is that the Anthropocene is a concept with commercial potential, even if the term itself has not been widely adopted. This article presents an investigation of the commercial potential of the Anthropocene idea through the lens of self-described sustainable tourism ventures in The Bahamas. These examples demonstrate some of the ways in which Anthropocene imaginaries participate in the recreation, redesign, and rebranding of specific spaces as emergent “tourism products”, specifically the small island farm and the anthropogenic coral reef. The goal is twofold: (1) to explore the symbolic and material creativity of the Anthropocene idea as its themes are used to extend capitalist innovation, and (2) to examine the Anthropocene idea as a strategy that builds upon existing histories of inequality to enable transnational accumulation in particular locales. As a situated adventure, this article articulates a reflexive mode of political ecological research for the Anthropocene that is equipped to critically articulate emergent practices at the intersection of postcolonial tourism, environmental conservation, and sustainable development.     

Explaining credit rating differences between Japanese and U.S. agencies

We compare credit ratings assigned to Japanese firms by the two leading U.S. rating agencies and the two leading Japanese agencies. Our goal is to investigate the complaint that the U.S. agencies Moody's and Standard and Poor's (S&P) ignore special corporate governance features of Japanese firms, i.e., keiretsu affiliation. We find that it is true that ratings of Japanese firms by the U.S. agencies are systematically lower than those assigned by Japanese raters. However, the reasons for the differences are not found to be related to keiretsu affiliation. Thus, we reject one of the prominent reasons for rating differences put forth by managers of Japanese firms. This leaves open the question of what drives the difference. The phenomenon is clearly consistent with more general home bias documented in previous work.