Market orientation and marketing in nonprofit organizations. Indications for fundraising from Victoria

The effectiveness of a market orientation has been established in other parts of the world. Using a modified replication study of 401 nonprofit organizations from Victoria, this research took some initial steps to assess fundraising and marketing activities. Studies in Australia have usually focused on only one part of the Third Sector. This study takes a different view and uses a criteria sampling method to survey all 11 sections named by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The self‐reported data of fundraising activities showed that there were several choices available to all nonprofit organizations that can lead to an improvement in organizational performance. Results suggest that should nonprofit organizations have knowledge generating systems that evaluate their performance, this will improve outcomes for them. Even though organizational size is strongly linked to fundraising performance, there are key drivers that can aid even small organizations in their efforts. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social Capital as a Microlevel Origin of Organizational Capabilities

The microlevel concept of social capital has received significant attention in management and sociological research but has not yet been empirically associated with the development of organizational capabilities. The major purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of social capital with marketing and research and development (R&D) capability and to explore how the environmental context moderates the social capital–organizational capability link. It is suggested that top management's social capital provides a firm with important information and control benefits that facilitate effective access to the knowledge and resources necessary for building superior organizational capabilities. In addition, we identify the role of two important environmental factors influencing the social capital–organizational capability link: technological turbulence and competitive intensity. The strength of the relationship between social capital and organizational capabilities is proposed to vary depending on the level of these two environmental characteristics. This study conceptualizes and operationalizes social capital as a multidimensional construct reflected by the structural dimension of tie strength, the relational dimension of trust, and the cognitive dimension of solidarity. Survey and archival data on 280 firms from various industries are analyzed using structural equation modeling. Empirical support for the proposed three‐dimensional structure of social capital is found. Results further indicate that social capital is a significant antecedent to both marketing and R&D capability, which in turn significantly affect firm performance. While a positive relationship between social capital and organizational capabilities is supported in general, the strength of this relationship depends on the environmental context the firm is embedded in. The positive effect of social capital on marketing capability increases in environments with high technological turbulence and competitive intensity; the opposite holds for R&D capability. This research contributes to the resource‐based view by introducing social capital as an important microlevel factor promoting the development of organizational capabilities. By identifying and evaluating two important environmental contingencies, our study also decreases some of the ambiguity surrounding the effectiveness of antecedents to organizational capabilities. The findings further help practitioners decide under what circumstances investing in top‐managers' social capital provides an effective means for achieving superior performance through enhanced organizational capabilities. This should have an important bearing on issues such as management training and incentives as well as on hiring policies.     

Online boundary work tactics: an affordance perspective

Studies of work/life balance have focussed on offline settings, and even though technology is considered as a boundary‐influencing feature, social media have not been the focus. Social technologies challenge the relationship between work and private life in new ways, due to their identified affordances: visibility, persistence, association and editability (Treem and Leonardi, 2012). In this paper, we present the results of a study of social media use (Facebook and Twitter) by employees of non‐governmental organisations (NGOs), and show how, through their affordances, these technologies influence the relationship and boundaries between work and non‐work, increasing visibility and reducing individual privacy. Consequently, we observe boundary work tactics that aim to protect private life from both public and professional scrutiny, in prohibitive, reactive or active ways. Our results call for organisations to develop explicit policies or guidelines for social media use, in both their own interests and those of their employees.     

Merger Incentives and the Failing Firm Defense

The merger incentives between profitable firms differ fundamentally from the incentives of a profitable firm to merge with a failing firm. We investigate these incentives under different modes of price competition and Cournot behavior. Our main finding is that firms strictly prefer exit of the failing firm to acquisition. This result may imply that other than strategic reasons, like economies of scale, must be looked for to understand why firms make use of the failing firm defense. However, when products are sufficiently heterogenous, we find that (i) the failing firm defense can be welfare enhancing and (ii) a government bail‐out increases total welfare when the number of firms is sufficiently low.     

Timing Product Replacements under Uncertainty—The Importance of Material–Price Fluctuations for the Success of Products That Are Based on New Materials

Being first to market with new products is one of the most enduring pieces of strategic advice handed to managers. This view also emphasizes the importance of launching new products that are based on new materials as soon as possible. However, when the input costs of products that embody new materials are uncertain because of volatile material prices, the advantage of being an early mover comes along with the risk of paying unexpectedly high material prices. Real‐option theory suggests delaying material substitution under uncertainty even if the new material enables superior product performance. Firms who have created the flexibility to switch between alternative inputs can benefit from responding to opportunities or threats that arise from changes in the environment. The current study formalizes this logic in a switching‐option model and tests it on a sample of material substitution projects from the manufacturing sector. Our findings shed light on how input‐cost fluctuations influence the timing–performance relationship and bring into question the common advice to launch new products as soon as possible. Instead, our results suggest that firms who align the timing of market launch to trends and fluctuations of material prices improve their competitive positions. These insights suggest novel ways for new product development (NPD) managers how to successfully use external information at the back‐end of the NPD process and how to compete in an era defined by volatile material prices and technological change.     

Economic Valuation of Ozone-Related School Absences in the South Coast Air Basin of California

Air quality in the South Coast Air Basin of southern California has improved significantly over the past decade, although pollution levels continue to exceed health-based standards on a significant number of days. This study estimates the decline in ozone-related school absences in southern California over the 1990s, reported as differences in the number of days of respiratory illness–related absences, the number of days of all illness-related absences, and the economic loss to families of those absences. The study reports differences in the number of these effects for the intervals 1990–92 to 1997–99, for rolling three-year intervals to 1997–99 across that period, and for expected future reductions in ozone. The baseline population is the cohort aged 5–18 residing in the South Coast Air Basin in 1998. For the interval 1990–92 to 1997–99, the economic value of fewer school absences ranges from $156 million annually to more than $330 million annually, with a best estimate of $245 million. This represents a benefit of nearly $75, on average, for every school-age child in the region. (JEL I10 , I12 , Q2 , Q25 )     

中国经济高速增长--不具有转型危机的"转型"

中国经历了长达2余年的高速经济增长，成功地避免了严重的转型危机，作者通过实证分析认为，中国经济高速增长的主要源泉在于高投资需求，有些潜在因素可能引发延后的转型危机。     

Forecasting Inflation Using Constant Gain Least Squares

This paper assesses the usefulness of constant gain least squares when forecasting inflation. An out‐of‐sample forecast exercise is conducted, in which univariate autoregressive models for inflation in Australia, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States are used. The results suggest that it is possible to improve the forecast accuracy by employing constant gain least squares instead of ordinary least squares. In particular, when using a gain of 0.05, constant gain least squares generally outperforms the corresponding autoregressive model estimated with ordinary least squares. In fact, at longer forecast horizons, the root mean square forecast error is reliably lowered for all four countries and for all lag lengths considered in the study.     

The Changing Shape of Global Inequality 1820–2000; Exploring a New Dataset

A new dataset for charting the development of global inequality between 1820 and 2000 is presented, based on a large variety of sources and methods for estimating (gross household) income inequality. On this basis we estimate the evolution of global income inequality over the past two centuries. Two sets of benchmarks about between‐country inequality (the Maddison 1990 benchmark and the recent 2005 ICP round) are taken into account. We find that between 1820 and 1950, increasing per capita income is combined with increasing global inequality. After 1950, global inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient or the Theil index remains more or less constant. It also appears that the global income distribution was uni‐modal in the nineteenth century, became increasingly bi‐modal between 1910 and 1970 with two world wars, a depression and de‐globalization, and was suddenly transformed back into a uni‐modal distribution between 1980 and 2000.