Food Values Applied to Livestock Products

Food values have been proposed in previous research as a method of identifying stable constructs of consumer preference. We conducted an online survey of 1950 US respondents using best–worst scaling applying the concept of food values to four specific meat and dairy products: ground beef, beef steak, chicken breast, and milk. We test the applicability of general food values to specific products, while further discovering the nature of heterogeneity of values by defining classes of respondents. Our findings suggest that the general food values previously proposed apply well to specific products of the livestock industry. We also found that the differences between consumer classes were driven primarily by price sensitivity, with many of the most important and least important values remaining the same.     

Public involvement in policy-making: the case of a Citizens’ Jury on genetic testing for common disorders

Abstract: Improving public involvement in policy-making is generally accepted to be a good thing, and a whole range of methods now exist in the UK that try to achieve this aim. However, few steps have been taken to involve the public directly in decisions on policy issues that will be vital in the future but are not yet on the immediate agenda of policy-makers. One attempt to do just this was made in Wales in November 1997 when a Citizens’ Jury explored future policies for genetic testing for common disorders in the NHS. This paper describes the Citizens’ Jury experiment and also includes a summary of this Jury's recommendations.     

Bring in the brewers: business entry in the Swedish brewing industry from 1830 to 2012

This article analyses long-term business entry in the Swedish brewing industry, presenting new data on its organisational historiography. Since 1830, the rate of entry has varied considerably; entries increased progressively from the 1850s, and fell at a decreasing rate from the early twentieth century. An increasing tendency to enter the trade can be observed from the mid-1980s – in particular, there has been a considerable resurgence since the turn of the millennium. The article elaborates on explanations that are both exogenous and endogenous. Above all, the results provide support for the role of endogenous conditions. The results should be viewed as complementary to previous analyses of the (Swedish) brewing industry, which either have employed shorter analytical time-frames or have mainly focused on the role of exogenous conditions, such as changes in the institutional framework.     

Editors’ introduction transitional economies: Progress and pitfalls

Many Asian countries are undergoing transition from centrally planned to market-oriented economies. The People's Republic of China (PRC) and Viet Nam have been going through this transition since the 1980s, while Mongolia and the former Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan began their transition in the 1990s with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. On the other hand, Cambodia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and Myanmar, while they have begun reforms, are still in the early stages of transition. North Korea has probably made the least progress in this regard. This Special Issue on Transitional Economies aims to provide valuable insights for Asia's developing countries still in transition and to provide them with policy recommendations for avoiding the pitfalls of transition experienced in the 1990s.     

Conceptualizing leadership across cultures

In this article, we summarize research on how the meaning of leadership varies systematically across cultures, and describe the conflict in the literature between the quest for universals and the identification of cultural contingencies in leadership theory. We review the literature on the relationships between cultural dimensions and leadership, and discuss implications of this range of research for management practice.     

Grit and self-employment: a multi-country study

Blending the literatures on grit and self-employment, we propose the role of grit in separating the self-employed from the employed. Based on a sample of 13,210 respondents from nine countries, our results indicate that not only is grit related to self-employment, but also grit is more strongly related to self-employment for risk-takers, females, and younger individuals. The findings are robust, controlling for several individual characteristics and alternate specifications, and have implications for the broader literature on self-employment.     

Transfer Pricing for the Rest of Us

Transfer pricing is a frequently discussed but often misunderstood aspect of international business. This article describes what it is, its legitimate functions in accounting for international intra-firm transactions, and its use by corporations for tax optimization. However, there may be mitigating factors that make efforts to optimize taxes more apparent than real. The issues of transfer pricing require sophisticated economic analysis for understanding and resolution, particularly as they relate to the internal and external pricing environment faced by a firm and the principles of profit allocation among different parts of a firm.