“She did what? There is no way I would do that!” The Potential Interpersonal Harm Caused by Mispredicting One’s Behavior

When forecasting their own behavior, people are often inaccurate and tend to predict that they will engage in more socially desirable behavior than they actually do. The problem with inaccurate behavioral forecasts is that they can lead to negative consequences both for the self and for others. One particularly negative consequence may be that such errors can produce overly harsh evaluations and condemnation of others who do not act in a way that most people predict they themselves would act. This paper identifies these common behavioral forecasting errors, why they occur, and the negative interpersonal and unintended, unethical consequences they can have.     

Environmental awakening in the Swedish pulp and paper industry: pollution resistance and firm responses in the Early 20th century

The purpose of this article is to analyse in what way a conflict in the early 20th century (1904–1911) over a Swedish pulp mill's emissions into air and water impacted on the technology choices and strategies of the mill. The article also analyses what characterized the company's other responses to the complaints, in the form of counter‐arguments, as well as engagement of experts. The access to information about the deliberations at the mill's board meetings is very rare in historical studies of company behaviour in relation to the environment, and provides us with a unique opportunity to comprehend in what way business strategies were developed during the course of the conflict. Technology choices are often characterized by the search for knowledge that enables a company to employ existing but not yet developed technical potentials, rather than choices between known technical solutions. We emphasize that this is particularly evident in a case where a company is forced to alter its technology in order to solve previously unknown environmental problems. In spite of a persistent search, the mill did not find any ready‐made technological solutions to the environmental problems faced and was therefore forced to engage scientific expertise and even initiate basic scientific research. In 1911, the Swedish Supreme Administrative Court ordered the mill to undertake a number of pollution abatement investments. Interestingly – and partly in line with the so‐called Porter hypothesis – the long‐run economics of these investments turned out to be more favourable than anticipated prior to the verdict. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The Paradoxical Behavioral Effects of a Directional Goal on Investors' Risk Perceptions and Valuation Judgments

Market participants who evaluate risk often have a preference or goal for positive company performance. The authors test how such a directional goal affects risk perceptions and the relation between risk perceptions and assessments of value in an investment context. Compared with investors without directional goals—who, consistent with prior behavioral research, focus on negative aspects of risk—the authors find that those with directional goals assess risk as being more symmetric (i.e., they are less focused on downside risk). However, investors with directional goals are also less likely to consider risk when assessing value. Taken together, these results suggest that a directional goal reduces one behavioral effect identified in prior literature (the tendency to focus on downside risk), but creates another behavioral effect (ignoring risk in assessing value). The authors discuss implications for standard setters and regulators seeking to communicate risk information to market participants.     

Innovation management in service firms: a research agenda

This article suggests an agenda for further research on innovation management in service firms. It investigates differences and similarities between issues identified by previous academic research and issues brought up by practitioners within the area of innovation management in service firms. The results show that there are some major differences; for instance, researchers stress a need for formalized processes for development work, while practitioners focus on facilitating innovation in everyday operations. The main conclusion is that in order to bridge the gap between research and practice we would encourage further research on innovation in service firms to (1) conduct micro studies of innovation work, (2) view innovation in the context of everyday operations and (3) focus on co-workers’ innovative potential.     

Perceived risk and the earthquake insurance purchase decision: a commentary on a paper by Lennart Sjöberg

Sjöberg in his 1994 report entitled 'Perceived risk vs. demand for risk reduction' has argued that 'risk perception' involves two separable components: the probability that an event will occur and the consequences of this event. Based on three empirical studies, Sjöberg concluded that one of these two factors is far more important than the other: that the perceived severity of consequences is a better predictor of demand for mitigation than the perceived probability of harm or risk. This paper focuses on the second of the three reported studies involving the adoption of home insurance in Sweden. The empirical analysis reported here, based on survey research in California, supports the conclusion that perceived probability of occurrence continues to be an important factor in the decision to purchase voluntary hazards insurance.     

Patterns and determinants of entry and exit in industrial sectors in Sweden

This paper uses a unique dataset which gives a complete picture of the pattern of entry and exit in industrial sectors in Sweden during the period 1997–2001. The importance of profitability, industrial market growth, tangible capital intensity, intangible capital intensity and economies of scale for entry and exit are investigated. A fixed effects panel data model is used, and it is shown that the inclusion of unobserved industry-specific effects explains many of the inter-industrial differences in entry and exit rates. For policymakers, this implies that it is difficult to formulate an entrepreneurship policy that can be expected to be equally successful across all industries. It is also shown that investments in intangible assets is one way to compete, while economies of scale tend to deter entry rates.     

Creating and consuming experiences in retail store environments: Comparing retailer and consumer perspectives

This article investigates the substance of arguments about an experience-oriented economy and experience-seeking consumption in retailing. Employing a case study research approach (n=7) and the Critical Incident Technique (n=252), we show how retailers as well as consumers relate to in-store experiences. The results point out that retailers’ use ever more advanced techniques in order to create compelling in-store experiences to their consumers. In contrast, the depiction given by consumers reveals that their in-store experiences to a large extent are constituted by traditional values such as the behavior of the personnel, a satisfactory selection of products and a layout that facilitates the store visit.     

Exit and Entry Over the Product Life Cycle: Evidence from the Swedish Manufacturing Industry

In this paper the process of exit and entry of firms in the Swedish manufacturing industry is investigated within the framework of the product life cycle. The product life cycle theory explains how the high degree of uncertainty, as regards product designs and production methods, which is connected to the early stages of the product life cycle requires a high level of knowledge-intensity. Since uncertainty decrease over the product life cycle, less knowledge is needed in production during later stages of the product life cycle. This implies that knowledge-intensity differs for firms that exit and enter in different stages of the product life cycle. Four hypotheses regarding these relationships are stated and empirically tested in this paper, using data at the 5-digit SIC-level for the Swedish manufacturing industry during 1990–1996. The empirical results show that entrants in the early stages of the product life cycle are more knowledge-intensive than incumbent firms. It is also found that firms exiting in early stages of the product life cycle are more knowledge-intensive than firms exiting in later stages.