Implicit Leadership Theories of Bruneians

A leader's effectiveness is affected by the followers’ acceptance of the leader as their leader. Followers rely on their cognitive schema to judge whether someone deserves to be considered a leader. This cognitive schema is the implicit leadership theory (ILT) individuals have on the qualities of a leader. When leaders are perceived as conforming to this ILT, they are seen as leaders, and followers accept their influence attempt. This study examined the ILT of Bruneians. The findings indicate that Bruneians are associated with a distinct ILT and shows that gender and personality variables predict the variation in ILT.     

Non-audit fees, institutional monitoring, and audit quality

We posit that the effect of non-audit fees on audit quality is conditional on the extent of institutional monitoring. We suggest that institutional investors have incentives and the ability to monitor financial reporting quality. Because of the reputation concerns and potential litigation exposure, auditors are likely to provide high audit quality, when they also provide non-audit services to clients, particularly when clients are subject to high institutional monitoring. We find evidence that, as non-audit fees increase, audit quality (measured by performance-adjusted discretionary current accruals and earnings-response coefficients) reduces only for clients with low institutional ownership but not for clients with high institutional ownership. Our results are robust after controlling for auditor industry specialization, firms’ operating volatility, size effect, and potential endogeneity between institutional ownership and audit quality.     

Relative effects of store traffic and customer traffic flow on shopper spending

This article examines the relative effects of store traffic and customer traffic flow on shopper spending in a single study. An analysis of Croatian hypermarket survey data indicates that store traffic alone does not adequately explain shopper spending. Instead, gross customer traffic flow and realized customer traffic flow are stronger drivers of money spent. The article contributes to the retailing literature by clarifying the respective roles of store traffic and customer traffic flow. Recognizing the greater revenue-generating effect of in-store traffic flow, retailers should better design their store layout and merchandizing strategies to optimize traffic movement and boost store performance.     

Consumers’ Perceived Value and Willingness to Purchase Organic Food

ABSTRACT

The demand for organic products has rapidly expanded worldwide in recent years. However, the organic market remains a niche market in most countries, and research in this area remains limited. Further investigation is necessary to better understand consumer perceptions about organic food and the circumstances in which they are willing to purchase organic food. Accordingly, the authors seek to understand the perceived value that consumers associate with organic food and the factors that impact their willingness to purchase organic food. This study is exploratory in nature and uses a qualitative approach through the use of in-depth interviews. Findings from the study suggest that consumers who perceive a positive value with regard to organic food are more willing to purchase organic food, in which health was the primary perceived benefit. For consumers who perceive a negative value with regard to organic food, they are less willing to purchase organic food. Many did not see any difference between organic food and nonorganic food. Instead, they viewed the prices of organic food as being expensive and argued that more efforts are needed on their part to source for organic food. Implications and recommendations from research findings are also presented.     

Capability building through innovation for unserved lower end mega markets

Although product innovation for unserved lower end mega markets in large developing countries has been recognized as an opportunity for improving the competitiveness of local firms, limited research has been conducted that explicitly explores how innovation capabilities can be built for these markets. This study investigates Tata Motors' Nano as an exploratory case of building innovation capabilities. This paper shows that the building of innovation capability could be achieved through creating a process that overcomes ‘the deficiency problem’ in generating radically cheap priced original products.The study's contribution to the literature is that it addresses issues of building local firms' innovation capabilities through creating original products for the unserved lower end market, in which advanced country firms have limited experience.Nano, as an unprecedented innovation in the automobile industry, reveals a path to building innovation capability that has not previously been observed. We show that detailed processes involved in generating an original product for the lower end market provide insights on the strategy in terms of target price setting, initiating innovation process overcoming ‘the deficiency problem’, and creation of complementary resources.     

House Prices and the Stance of Monetary Policy: The Case of Korea

Abstract

This paper is an empirical investigation on whether the Bank of Korea should respond to the housing price developments in conducting monetary policy. For that aim, we construct a small scale empirical model of the Korean economy, simulate the estimated model with a set of alternative monetary policy rules, and compare the stabilization performances of those rules. There turns out to be ample room for further stabilization of inflation and output, if the central bank shifts from the historically conducted monetary policy rule to the optimal rule. The stabilization gains under the optimal rule, however, are not attributable to additional policy indicators (such as housing price inflation) the optimal rule involves. Rather, the optimal rule improves upon the historical one because the former takes a quite different reaction scheme toward the historical policy indicators. Moreover, as long as the Bank of Korea maintains appropriate reactions to the historical policy indicators, housing price inflation does not contain much extra information for further stabilization     

Suppliers’ Participation in a Single Buyer Electronic Market

Business to business (B2B) is the fastest growing segment of the explosive growth of e-commerce. The purpose of this study is to identify internal factors which influence the supplier’s intention to adopt private exchange (PE), a single buyer side electronic market (EM). This study identified cost, flexibility, delivery, and quality as internal capabilities and investigated how these four factors influence suppliers’ participation in PE. The results of the study indicate the following: (1) suppliers do not believe that their capability to produce customized products for customers plays an important role in PE; (2) they still believe that standardized rather than engineered products would dominate the marketplace; and (3) a contractible factor like lower price, rather than non-contractible factors including superior flexibility of production capability, fast and reliable delivery, and quality, plays an important role in the PE.     

Internationalization of Chinese and Korean firms

This article compares and contrasts the growth of Chinese and Korean multinational enterprises (MNEs). The article identifies the similarities and differences between Chinese and Korean MNEs in terms of motivations for internationalization, expansion strategies, and paths. The goal of this article is to contribute to the literature by shifting focus on host‐country conditions to home‐country conditions in explaining the drivers for firms' internationalization. We conclude that firms are motivated to expand abroad when faced with domestic competitive disadvantages resulting from absence or deficiency of one or more of Porter's Diamond attributes in their domestic market. Implications for further studies are also explored. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Experiments on strategic choices and markets

Much of experimental research in marketing has focused on individual choices. Yet in many contexts, the outcomes of one’s choices depend on the choices of others. Furthermore, the results obtained in individual decision making context may not be applicable to these strategic choices. In this paper, we discuss three avenues for further advancing our understanding of strategic choices. First, there is a need to develop theories about how people learn to play strategic games. Second, there is an opportunity to enrich standard economic models of strategic behavior by allowing for different types of bounded rationality and by relaxing assumptions about utility formulation. These new models can help us to more accurately predict strategic choices. Finally, future research can improve marketing practice by designing better mechanisms and validating them using experiments.     

Chromosomes and the Slutsky Equation: Lessons from 21st Century Genetics for 20th Century Economics

Reductionist scientific methodology has been at the forefront of economics research for much of the past 50 years. This short essay argues that recent discoveries in genetic engineering show that the study of complex phenomena might not be best served by such an approach, but rather by one that takes into consideration more evolutionary approaches. This provides a tremendous opportunity for the field of bioeconomics to establish itself as a major school of though, going into the future.