Is the Border Really That Wide?

This paper analyzes cross‐border price behavior in a three‐dimensional sample of US and Canadian retail prices. Unit‐root tests reveal that a majority of the cross‐border relative price series are stationary and that short‐run cross‐border price differences are eliminated at average speeds comparable to those for intranational prices. Cross‐border convergence is not absolute; the long‐run international price differences average two to three times their intranational counterparts. Moreover, gravity‐type equations reveal a border effect that is sizable but considerably smaller than earlier estimates. These results suggest that, while significant, the Canada–US border may not be the formidable barrier portrayed in previous studies.     

Mixed Messages: Open‐Market Repurchases Following Stock Acquisitions

Management decisions and market reactions to those decisions do not occur in isolation. Despite this fact, little or no research has examined two events when they occur in a sequence, even when theory suggests that those two events convey opposite signals. We examine firms that do a stock‐based acquisition then announce an open‐market repurchase program. These two actions, according to the signaling theory, signal conflicting valuation errors. This paper is the first to examine a sequence of events that convey seemingly conflicting signals. Among other results, we find that repurchasers who had previously made a stock‐based acquisition have a less positive market reaction than do otherwise comparable repurchasers with no previous acquisition. These results indicate that the market reactions to events are tempered by previous information‐releasing events.     

Equality and diversity in British workplaces: the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey

Drawing on key findings from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004), this article examines developments in the incidence, scope and substance of equal opportunities policy provision and practice in Britain. The discussion then considers the extent to which workplaces might be adopting diversity management practices, the potential for further research on equality and diversity using WERS 2004, and the issues that might be considered in future workplace employment relations surveys.     

Visualising the operating behaviour of SMEs in sector and cluster: Evidence from the West Midlands

Cluster policy in the UK, pursued by the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), has readily adopted a simplistic definition based upon industrial sectors and location quotients. Evidence drawn from a study of the operating behaviour of SMEs belonging to two traditional manufacturing industries within the West Midlands—automotive components and clothing—provides a critique of this approach. Whilst the automotive components industry has been designated part of a key, high priority cluster, the clothing industry has not. Using case studies from both industries, this paper shows firms both within and outside RDA cluster definitions display a remarkably similar range of behavioural characteristics. Yet, based on weakly defined cluster policy, one industry enjoys considerably more policy support than the other. The paper begins to question the logic of RDA cluster policy and to ask whether a more sophisticated and locally sympathetic manner of visualising clusters and business behaviour rather than an emphasis on employment numbers would have a greater impact for policy.     

Market orientation and performance of export ventures: the process through marketing capabilities and competitive advantages

Our study focuses on the internal process through which market orientation influences performance in export markets, and develops a model of market orientation–marketing capabilities–competitive advantages–performance relationships. Using survey data of 491 export ventures based in China, we find that marketing capabilities mediate the market orientation–performance relationship, while competitive advantages partially mediate the marketing capabilities–performance relationship. Moreover, coordination mechanism strengthens, and cost leadership strategy weakens, the effects of market orientation on new product development and marketing communication capabilities, respectively. Market turbulence attenuates the effect of market orientation on new product development capability while competitive intensity strengthens this effect.     

Environmental reporting: Toward enhanced information quality

Managers and stakeholders are increasingly aware of the importance of the environmental impact of a firm's operations when assessing risk and attempting to determine future profitability. Unfortunately, financial accounting systems often fail to fully disclose these environmentally-related costs. The reasons underlying this incomplete disclosure are myriad, ranging from measurement issues to the structure of the firm's chart of accounts. In many ways, the issues facing managers and stakeholders who are attempting to assess environmental costs arising from business operations resemble the issues faced when attempting to determine the costs of producing poor quality products. The negative impact on the environment from business operations can be viewed as a failure in the same way that the negative impact of producing a defective product can be seen as a production control failure. Similarly, costs are incurred to prevent and detect environmental failures, and the cost of failure—particularly if not addressed within the firm—can be huge and unknowable. Drawing on the experiences of firms employing quality measures and reporting, this article presents an environmental cost reporting model to provide greater transparency on environmental impact of business operations to managers and firm stakeholders.     

Customer's angry voice: Targeting employees or the organization?

Poor service encounters have the potential to leave customers feeling angry at the frontline service employee who serves them, angry at the organization, or angry at both parties. The 25 in-depth interviews (Study 1) and experimental work (Study 2) demonstrate how distributive (outcome fairness), procedural (response time) and interactional (treatment received) justice dimensions differentially affect where the customer targets her or his anger, either at the frontline employee or at the organization as a whole. Further investigation reveals sins-of-omission (when the service provider failed to act) and interactional justice mediate the effect of response time on anger at the employee. Interactional justice also partially mediates the effect of outcome fairness on anger at the organization whereas sins-of-omission do not.     

Towards community engagement: six steps to expert learning for future scenario development

This paper describes a variety of facilitated exercises for use in collaborative workshops where experts are brought together to create archetypes that feed into the design of alternative scenarios for the future of their area of expertise (e.g., forestry, housing, transportation, food systems and waste). In this case, these workshops were designed to aid in the development of a computer-based sustainability tool (GB-Quest) that supports a larger process of community engagement and dialogue focused on sustainability in the southwestern portion of British Columbia, Canada. Value-focused thinking and a narrative-based structure provided the framework for this dialogue and a template for asking hard questions about the assumptions and biases related to the alternatives. Using examples, this paper outlines and details this process and then suggests possible next steps in this ongoing process.