Classroom Games: A Prisoner's Dilemma

This survey of intermediate microeconomic textbooks will be helpful to those in the throes of selecting a suitable text. The author identifies the major review criteria and examines nine widely used books, grouping them by type of approach.     

DOES FISCAL DECENTRALIZATION AFFECT INFRASTRUCTURE QUALITY? AN EXAMINATION OF U.S. STATES

A transportation network is vital to an economy. However, the U.S. highway infrastructure suffers from insufficient maintenance creating inefficiencies such as increased travel times and increase in accidents. The means to fund the infrastructure and their maintenance is a point of debate. In this paper, we examine the role of political institutions and decision‐making on the quality of highway infrastructure by focusing on the role of fiscal decentralization. Using generalized linear model estimation on state data from 1992 to 2012, we find evidence that fiscal decentralization improves infrastructure quality. These results are robust to the choice of control variables and method of estimation. (JEL D73, H42, H72)     

Mind the gap: the role of HRM in creating,capturing and leveraging rare knowledge in hostile environments

Abstract

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) have increasingly entered markets in less developed regions of the world afflicted with weak institutions and political conflict. Some are characterised by ‘extreme’ cases of institutional voids and terrorism, creating a hostile environment for the organisation and its people. This in-depth qualitative study of a service company, a European telecommunications joint venture in Afghanistan, seeks to shed light and build theory on the human resource management (HRM) dimension of managerial learning and knowledge acquisition in hostile environments, as part of the MNE’s organisational learning process. Specifically, we investigate how knowledge gaps can be addressed through supportive HR practices, and how knowledge classified as ‘rare’ can be captured and leveraged through HR interventions such as debriefing. We stipulate that HR practices and interventions adapted to hostile environments, together with expatriate willingness to learn and share new knowledge, play a critical role in the creation, capturing and leveraging of rare knowledge for subsequent use by the MNE in other hostile locations. The study has implications for international HRM and organisational resilience, under the proposition that competitive advantage can be gained through exploitation of rare knowledge acquired in hostile environments.     

How store attributes impact shoppers’ loyalty: do different national cultures follow the same loyalty building process?

This paper takes a first step toward verifying the robustness of a comprehensive loyalty building model across different national cultures, according to Hofstede’s distinction between individualist and collectivist countries. To this end, we test a two-stage model. After collecting data from 12 countries with different cultural traits, we test the two models in two macro groups: individualist and collectivist countries. The study’s results show that the intensity of some core loyalty model paths – particularly the relationships between store loyalty and its main drivers (perceived value and customer satisfaction) – are contingent on the country’s culture. In particular, the impact of customer satisfaction on store loyalty intention is greater in collectivist countries than in individualist countries. By contrast, the impact of perceived value on store loyalty is greater in individualist than in collectivist countries. Moreover, the cultural dimension moderates the impact of the stores’ environment and promotions on satisfaction. By contrast, some other paths show robustness to national culture.     

International Accounting Education Standards Board: Organisational legitimacy within the field of professional accountancy education

This research considers the organisational legitimacy of the International Accounting Education Standards Board (IAESB), and whether it is perceived or accepted as the appropriate standard setter for professional accountancy education across the globe. We define the organisational field in which the IAESB operates to influence education practice, and frame the research through the lens of both strategic and institutional traditions of organisational legitimacy. In this context, we examine the extent to which 21 selected professional accountancy bodies, operating in diverse jurisdictions across the globe, disclose compliance with IAESB pronouncements. Our results show that disclosed compliance does not always indicate conformity of practice amongst the professional bodies which have obligated themselves to comply with International Education Standards (IES). We discuss reasons for this varied immunity to IES practice and the impact this has on the IAESB achieving its self-declared objective of developing and influencing globally acceptable and implementable standards for professional accountancy education. This research should be useful to professional accountancy educationalists, and to the IAESB in pursuit of its objective.     

Exploring the role of internationalization knowledge in fostering strategic renewal: A dynamic capabilities perspective

Internationalization knowledge (IK) is important to successfully enter and develop competitive strategies abroad. Yet, how IK is advanced and improved across the multinational enterprise (MNE), and how this contributes to the MNE’s strategic renewal is less understood. This analysis is based on an in-depth case study of Microsoft International to explore how IK is advanced, improved, and integrated across the enterprise. Our findings suggest that IK plays a critical role in fostering strategic renewal of an MNE. More specifically, sensing, seizing, and transforming capabilities jointly provide the necessary basis that enable IK to facilitate strategic renewal. We contribute to the literature by (1) explicating three categories of IK and their hierarchical relationship; (2) reveal how three distinct capabilities required by MNEs capture and integrate the three categories of IK across the enterprise; and, (3) offering that strategic renewal is triggered by routines based on the development and integration of IK.     

Neutralization techniques as a moderating mechanism: Ethically questionable behavior in the Romanian consumer context

On the basis of an empirical investigation in the context of Romania, this paper identifies a moderating role of neutralization techniques within ethically questionable consumer behavior. The quantitative study is based on a synthesized model of theory of planned behavior incorporating the factor of perceived unfairness and neutralization techniques. Significantly, neutralization techniques are shown to have a negative, but definite impact on the action to behave unethically. This leads to their consideration as a process of thinking, rather than as static judgment. As such, neutralization techniques are conceptually distinctive to the other factors. The paper analyzes the results specific to the Romanian context, but noting implications for an understanding of the morality of markets with similar historical, political, and economic conditions. Overall, the findings offer a more nuanced reading of consumer behavior. The paper places moral flexibility in terms of a specific cultural context, but also reveals how neutralization techniques can moderate ethically questionable behaviors beyond matters of self‐interest, which, in turn, has implications for how companies can consider their responsibilities in relation to their customers.     

Reflection and professional identity development in design education

Design thinking positions designers as the drivers of the design space yet academic discourse is largely silent on the topic of professional identity development in design. Professional identity, or the dynamic narratives that individuals construct and maintain to integrate their personal qualities with professional responsibilities, has not been widely addressed in design education either. The study investigated the use of reflective writing in an introductory design course to help students explore and interpret their design beliefs, experiences, and self-awareness in support of professional identity development work. The results indicate that authorial presence, analysis, and narrative quality are common qualities in reflective responses, but emotion is notably lacking from student writing. Students were highly reflective in relation to a general experience with uncertainty and were least reflective when discussing ideation processes. Implications for design education and related research are analysed and discussed.