Colliding Employer‐Employee Perspectives of Employee Turnover: Evidence from a Born‐Global Industry

Set in the context of internationalization of the global division of labor, this article provides a deeper exploration of qualitative themes of conflicting accounts of employees’ reasons to quit and managerial strategies to prevent employee turnover in six business process outsourcing firms operating in India. Such differences in cognition and action between the two constituencies suggest that the decision to quit is not a linear and rational process as highlighted in most extant models of employee turnover. Our findings suggest that employees are attached more to a place or people they work with rather than the organization per se. Intergenerational differences between Generation Y knowledge workers and Generation X managers and the ineffectiveness of espoused human resource practices suggest the presence of “push” human resource management (HRM) systems. Our findings have implications for employee turnover models, intergenerational theory and high‐commitment HRM, and practitioners. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Improving portfolio diversification: Identifying the right baskets for putting your eggs

We measure the economic value of diversification for international multiasset investment strategies. This study implements five existing diversification measures and proposes a novel measure of diversification, the unsystematic risk ratio (URR). Only the URR and the effective number of bets measures predict the future risk‐adjusted performance. These relations are robust to the choice of investment horizon and degree of relative risk aversion. The diversification benefits are larger for the frontier and emerging markets than for the developed markets, for multiasset strategies than for single asset class strategies, and for the pre‐crisis and post‐crisis periods than for the financial crisis period.     

Self-care for the researcher: dark tourism in Varanasi,India

ABSTRACT

Dark tourism is a popular niche of tourism that allows tourists to come into close proximity with death, atrocity, and the macabre, and therefore has the potential to be an emotional and even traumatic encounter for tourists. While this context has inspired tourism researchers to investigate dark tourists’ motivations, as well as the marketing and representation of dark tourism sites, we have yet to attend to its implications for the researcher. This paper analyzes the emotional experiences and aftermath of fieldwork at the cremation grounds of Varanasi, India, which involved working closely with tourists, Doms, and Aghoris by focusing on the relations of reflexivity, positionality, and emotionality. As a result, we suggest a number of reflexive and self-care practices to be put into place so as to attend to the researchers’ emotional well-being in the fieldwork process.     

Impulse buying and variety seeking: A trait-correlates perspective

Impulse buying and variety seeking are low-effort feelings-based behaviors, yet the similarities and differences in their socio-psychological origin are under-explored. This article addresses this gap with a conceptual framework incorporating several individual and situational factors with a focus on three relevant consumer traits — consumer impulsiveness (CI), optimum stimulation level (OSL), and self-monitoring (SM). Findings from a survey with retail shoppers about their actual purchase decisions show that both CI and OSL have a positive association with the level of impulse buying and variety seeking. However, CI is more strongly associated with impulse buying and OSL with variety seeking. Moreover, SM relates negatively with impulse buying and positively with variety seeking; it also moderates the influence of CI and OSL on both the behaviors in opposite directions. Finally, the article discusses the contribution of this research, its limitations and some directions for future research.     

Greater Reliance on Major Customers and Auditor Going-Concern Opinions

In this study, we predict and provide evidence that distressed firms that rely more heavily on major customers for sales have a comparatively higher incidence of receiving going-concern opinions (GCOs). Moreover, we find that the effect of increased reliance on major customers is driven by firms that are more distressed. We also theorize that variations in key characteristics of the relationship between a distressed firm and its largest major customer are incrementally linked to GCOs, and present evidence consistent with this. Specifically, we find that the effect of greater reliance on major customers is driven by firms that are relatively smaller than their largest major customer. Additionally, we find that greater reliance on major customers is positively (negatively) associated with GCOs when firms are in a shorter (longer) relationship with their major customer and when firms have a different auditor to (same auditor as) the largest major customer. Overall, our study indicates that supply chain relationships are relevant business risks associated with auditors' going-concern assessments.     

SEQUENTIAL EXPERT ADVICE: SUPERIORITY OF CLOSED‐DOOR MEETINGS

Two career‐concerned experts sequentially give advice to a Bayesian decision maker (D). We find that secrecy dominates transparency, yielding superior decisions for D. Secrecy empowers the expert moving late to be pivotal more often. Further, (i) only secrecy enables the second expert to partially communicate her information and its high precision to D and swing the decision away from first expert's recommendation; (ii) if experts have high average precision, then the second expert is effective only under secrecy. These results are obtained when experts only recommend decisions. If they also report the quality of advice, fully revealing equilibrium may exist.     

Temporality and the role of shocks in explaining changes in socioemotional wealth and entrepreneurial orientation of small and medium family enterprises

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - This paper explores the relationship between the nature of shocks (family vs. business related), the relative importance of socioemotional...     

The transition from linear economy to circular economy for sustainability among SMEs: A study on prospects,impediments, and prerequisites

The circular economy (CE) is a more holistic approach that advocates towards extracting the value from the waste and reaching sustainability goals. The objective of the present study is to highlight the prospects, impediments, and prerequisites while transiting from the linear economy (LE) to CE of SMEs. The study gathers information on prospects, impediments, and prerequisites for the transition of LE to a CE from recent studies . A semi-structured interview questionnaire was prepared, and a survey was conducted on representatives of six SMEs . Further, six caselets were developed to understand the prospects, impediments, and prerequisites based on the findings of the interview and previous information gained from existing literature . The major prospects favoring transition from LE to CE found in the study are significance of 3R (reduce and reuse and recycling) approach, CE leads to competitive advantage, recycling attracts consumers in few cases, CE helps in achieving sustainability goals and reuse of materials are significant in resource conservation. There are certain impediments found such as issues associated with awareness, recyclability issues, financial challenges, and weak management vision of SMEs towards CE implementation. Other resource-based impediments were found related to trained employees, lack of experience. Whereas, consumer acceptability is also a major concern towards implementing CE. The findings of the study suggest major prerequisites towards CE implementations such as strong “management will,” innovation, technology up-gradation, training to employees, motivation, and appropriate guidelines. Government pressure to implement CE cannot be an effective step towards the transition of LE to CE.