When Your Source Is Smiling,Consumers May Automatically Smile with You: Investigating the Source Expressive Display Hypothesis

Facial expressions act as a powerful readout device, influencing a viewer's own emotional response. Drawing from facial feedback theory, the mediating role of source expressive display‐based judgments on the influence of source facial expressions on consumer attitudes toward advertising stimuli, attitudes toward endorsed brands, and behavioral intention is examined. In addition, the examination of expressive display‐based judgments as an automatic phenomenon, contingent on the familiarity of the source and the perceived match with the product endorsed is investigated. Across three studies, the facial expression of a source (resting vs. smiling) is manipulated within endorsement contexts. Results demonstrate that when an endorser is pictured in an advertisement with a smiling facial expression, consumers report feeling more pleasant (pleasure), with this positive emotional response mediating the relationship between source expressive display and attitude toward an advertisement, attitude toward a brand, and purchase intention. Results also indicate that the emotional response derived from the presence of a smiling source in an advertisement occurs effortlessly, yet only for a familiar source and one that is perceived to match the product endorsed, indicating this process can be defined as automatic under certain conditions. The findings from these studies provide advertisers with an effective cue to enhance a consumer's emotional response to advertisements, which in turn heighten advertisement, brand, and behavioral based judgments.     

Corporate disclosure reactions to Australia’s first national emission reporting scheme

This study investigates the strategic and potentially legitimising nature of voluntary emissions reporting by Australian companies. The study contributes to the existing literature by extending the chronological history of emissions disclosure and examining changes in emission disclosure practices during the implementation period of the National Pollutant Inventory (NPI). The NPI was Australia’s first extensive emission measurement and public reporting requirement. Disclosures are identified as being reactive to the introduction of actual emissions regulation; however, the extent of disclosure is not complete both within and between companies.     

APRA's Expert Judgment Ratings and Solvency Cover of Australian General Insurers

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority's (APRA's) supervisors use expert judgment to rate the risk of failure of general insurers (GIs). Using statistical data, we model the determinants of GI ratings and solvency cover and find: (1) sufficient predictive power in statistical data to identify GIs for earlier review and assist in quality assurance of APRA's ratings and (2) that profitability, solvency cover, investment, and underwriting risk play different roles in rating foreign branch and Australian-incorporated GIs. We conclude that supervisors generally correctly incorporate our a priori expectations of the effects of risk indicators on GI risk into their ratings.     

Employment and location patterns of advanced services in non-urban Canada

British building societies have developed into major financial institutions with a major influence on both the housing and savings market. This article examines one facet of their influence: the pattern of mortgage lending within a city, the city of Glasgow. Variations in urban lending are examined and an assessment is made of how far lending patterns can be attributed to the structure of the building society industry and, among other influences, differences in society size and branch location.     

Global managers and Japanese multinationals: internationalization and management in Japanese financial institutions

The paper examines the internationalization of Japanese banks in the 1980s and 1990s and the experiences of managers within them. These banks underwent a vast expansion in international activities in the 1980s, followed by an equally rapid contraction in the 1990s. Building on a series of interviews conducted in London and Tokyo in the period 1999-2001, the paper examines how this impacted on the careers and expectations of both Japanese and non-Japanese managers. The paper argues that the organizations have been fundamentally changed by these experiences and have become in varying ways ‘transnational social spaces’. The idea of multinationals as transnational social spaces is developed as a general way of linking flows (of people, practices and ideas) inside the firm to broader processes in the development of global political economy.     

Does a Bank’s Loan Screening and Monitoring Matter?

We investigate the relationship between the borrower’s abnormal loan announcement return and the bank’s loan screening and monitoring using a new ex-ante proxy for loan screening and monitoring. While recent studies have suggested that bank loan relationships and related loan screening and monitoring services may no longer matter, we find significant loan announcement returns over the 1995–1999 period and, controlling for borrower and loan characteristics, a statistically significant positive relationship between the proxy and the borrower’s standardized CAR. While consistent with a bank’s loan screening and monitoring adding value to the borrower, the economic effect is relatively small.

How SmithKline Beecham makes better resource-allocation decisions

Major resource-allocation decisions are never easy. For a pharmaceuticals company like SmithKline Beecham, the problem is this: How do you make good decisions in a high-risk, technically complex business when the information you need to make those decisions comes largely from the project champions who are competing against one another for resources? In 1993, the company experimented with ways of depoliticizing the process and improving the quality of decision making. In most resource-allocation processes, project advocates develop a single plan of action and present it as the only viable approach. In SB's new process, the company found an effective way to get around the all-or-nothing thinking that only reinforces the project-champion culture. Project teams were required--and helped--to create meaningful alternatives to current development plans. What would they do with more money? With less? With none at all? In another important departure from common practice, SB separated the discussion of project alternatives from their financial evaluations. In doing so, SB was able to avoid the premature evaluations that kill both creativity and the opportunity to improve decision making. The new process at SB has allowed the organization to spend less time arguing about how to value its R&D projects and more time figuring out how to make them more valuable. In the end, the company learned that by tackling the soft issues around resource allocation--such as information quality, credibility, and trust--it had also addressed the hard ones: how much to invest and where to invest it.