When will the longest expansion end?

Business Economics - What might cause the current expansion to come to an end? Without a negative shock, expansions go on and on. The economy is now enjoying even faster growth due to the tax cuts,...     

The interplay of corporate entrepreneurship,environmental orientation,and performance in clean‐tech firms—A double‐edged sword

Clean‐tech innovations are an important driver in solving global issues such as climate change and for the sustainable development of economies around the world. Whereas a large part of the literature focuses on clean‐tech ventures, less is known on corporate entrepreneurship, that is, entrepreneurial behavior in established firms and its relation to sustainability. This paper extends the sustainable entrepreneurship debate to corporate entrepreneurship, which represents a fruitful avenue to further developing clean technologies. We focus particularly on clean‐tech firms' organizational preparedness for corporate entrepreneurship (OPCE), that is, how well a firm's structures and processes are set for entrepreneurial activities. On the basis of contingency theory, this study investigates how the level of OPCE influences the environmental and financial performance of clean‐tech firms and whether their environmental orientation affects these relationships. Building on data from 103 firms, we find support for a positive effect of OPCE on both environmental and financial performance. Both effects are stronger the higher the external environmental orientation. In contrast, the leverage of internal environmental orientation is not equally positive. Our study reveals that the effect of OPCE on financial performance diminishes for firms that are more strongly driven by an internal than an external environmental orientation.     

Marketing firm performance: When does marketing lead to financial gains?

The research investigated whether economic context and prior financial reinforcement/punishment moderate the effectiveness of marketing behavior in generating gains for the firm. An experiment with a longitudinal design was conducted using 1,759 companies from 2000 to 2017. The results demonstrate that marketing is effective in gaining market share when the country's economy is growing. In contrast, it increases return on assets and Tobin's Q when the country's economy is in recession, this increase being maximized when the company was financially reinforced. The study helps explain the circumstances in which marketing activities boost firms' financial gains.     

The decision game: a serious game approach to understanding environmental risk management decisions

Abstract

Here we describe the implementation of an experimental research tool called the Decision Game that we used to collect data on household flood risk management decisions. Participants using this tool play an interactive game that involves making household decisions about place of residence and a variety of household expenditures, including spending on flood insurance and private flood risk mitigation. Participants also answer survey questions before and after playing the game; the pre-game survey collected demographic information, and the post-game survey collected information about participant experiences with flooding and flood mitigation. Online and face-to-face participants showed similar engagement with the experiment, and most participants appeared to have made deliberate and considered decisions about risk mitigation. Online study participants had similar responses to those who participated in person, although face-to-face participants seemed slightly more likely to mitigate against risk. Overall, participants in this research were younger, more educated and more likely to rent a home than the average Canadian. Serious games may be useful for augmenting existing data gathering strategies used in understanding environmental decision making, particularly for rare catastrophic events for which stated preference surveys may be less informative. Serious games allow for sharing a mixture of information with study participants, including maps, video clips, text and even immersive 3D experiences, and can be administered online to increase participation levels. Future research will consider longer duration online experiments and more immersive interaction frameworks.     

How Adult Attachment Styles Relate to Perceived Psychological Contract Breach and Affective Organizational Commitment

The current study examines the relationship between adult attachment style and both perceived psychological contract breach and affective organizational commitment in a sample of college students with employment experience. Attachment style is argued to be an individual difference factor that affects how an individual perceives organizational events based on theory and existing empirical research related to adult attachment style. Individuals with insecure attachment styles were predicted to perceive more psychological contract breach and have lower levels of affective organizational commitment. The results reveal that individuals with higher levels of preoccupied and dismissive attachment styles perceived higher levels of psychological contract breach, and preoccupied attachment style significantly and negatively relates to affective organizational commitment. The relationship between attachment style and psychological contract dimensions was stronger for relational than transactional contract dimensions. Evidence is also found that perceived psychological contract breach mediates the relationship between preoccupied attachment style and affective commitment. Future potential research directions are described. The implications of these findings for managerial practice is discussed.     

From “Lemons” to Lemonade: Lessening the Impact of Adverse Selection through Buyer Trust

This research extends overlapping streams of research examining asymmetric information, adverse selection, and buyer trust by presenting an empirical investigation of the process by which a market for “lemons” emerges in the claiming market for thoroughbred racehorses. The study focuses attention on the potential of quality signals and buyer trust to lessen the impact of adverse selection. Incorporating concepts from economics, marketing, and psychology, a conceptual model suggests that adversely selected racehorses, distinguished by an unintentional signal from sellers to potential buyers, will be priced lower than otherwise similar racehorses perceived to be less subject to adverse selection. Data from one day of claiming races at 16 American racetracks (744 racehorses) are used to test this study hypothesis. Results provide evidence for adverse selection and a mitigating quality signal in the thoroughbred claiming market. Implications for buyers and sellers in this market, as well as more general implications, are discussed and an avenue for future research is proposed.     

Work and common health problems

This paper reviews the evidence on the relationship between work and health. It concludes that, overall, the beneficial effects of work outweigh the risks of work, and are greater than the harmful effects of long-term worklessness. That contrasts with increasing trends of sickness absence, long-term incapacity and ill-health retirement attributed to common health problems. It suggests that there needs to be a fundamental shift in how we think about common health problems and work--in health care, the workplace and society.