Can we live without a dog? Consumption life cycles in dog-owner relationships

This article uses an observational study of dog ownership to explicate understanding of consumer behavior in the marketing of pet and pet-related products. A close examination of the relationship between dog and dog owner reveals more than metaphorical parallels in consumer behavior. Dog ownership reveals a reciprocal altruism that prohibitive restrictions support. These restrictions are protective and punitive. The values and beliefs of the dog owner underpin these restrictions. The dependency on primitive cognitive functions within the domestic environment enables the dog owner to internalize an ideal through the relationship with the pet. This internalization explicates the need for businesses to support pet and pet-related products by core values rather than slogans and glossy programs to complement the dog owner's view of the relationship with their dog.     

Stabilization policy and income distribution in developing countries

The trade-off between income distribution and stabilization is one of the least understood in development economics. The paper reviews the recent literature on the effects of devaluation and monetary and fiscal policy. Devaluation is shown to have a significant impact on incomes through both its expenditure switching and reducing effects, this varying with the time perspective taken. The implications of these effects for poverty are explored, and shown in principle to be complex and uncertain. Similarly, monetary and fiscal restraint is shown to influence income distribution through changes in the level and structure of output. How changes in monetary and fiscal policy affect the poor in developing countries is again difficult to determine theoretically. The labor market is shown to be a key determinant of how policy changes are transmitted to poverty groups. The paper concludes that rigorous empirical research on this subject is long overdue.     

The effects of zoning on population and employment density

This article examines zoning's impacts on population and employment density. It develops a model to explore the effects of zoning on the density of residential and nonresidential land use. Drawing on this model, density gradients that incorporate the effects of zoning are estimated for Greensboro, North Carolina. The model is used to simulate the effects of a change in restrictive-use residential zoning. The simulation shows that a 1 percent increase in the level of restrictive-use residential zoning across all neighborhoods in the city is associated with a 0.3 percent increase in gross population density and a 0.1 percent decline in net density (intensity). It suggests that restrictive-use zoning affects both the density and the intensity of residential land use through its effects on the value of residential land.     

Enacting the vision for sustainable development

Utopia, as a concept, is now used with varying intentions, engendering semantic confusion. When substituted with the notion of visioning, it can be also problematic, if sometimes for different reasons. An implicit engagement in visioning is examined in a community-based futures process for creating a strategy for the sustainable management of natural resources in the Mary River catchment, in Queensland, Australia. It is found that visioning, if it can be binding and impelling for common-interest groups, can be just as unrealistically utopian, or as slippery as the scaly creatures it is trying to protect, when applied afresh to a community exploring change from a variety of initial ideals and needs. It may be seen as an emergent property of active learning.     

Corporate governance,industrial relations and trends in company‐level restructuring in Europe: convergence towards the Anglo‐American model?

This article addresses the issue of how patterns of corporate restructuring are shaped by national systems of corporate governance and industrial relations. Using case studies of three multinationals, it sheds light on the question of whether the way in which restructuring takes place is converging towards the norms characteristic of the Anglo‐American model. It is argued that considerable changes are evident among national systems, but that these changes are not all occurring at the same pace, nor are all countries moving in the same direction. Consequently, the way that multinational companies restructure their activities varies markedly according to both the business system in their country of origin and the various host systems in which they are located.     

How anticipated employee mobility affects acquisition likelihood: Evidence from a natural experiment

This study draws on strategic factor market theory and argues that acquirers' decisions regarding whether to bid for a firm reflect their expectations about employee departure from the firm post‐acquisition, suggesting a negative relationship between the anticipated employee departure from a firm and the likelihood of the firm becoming an acquisition target. Using a natural experiment and a difference‐in‐differences approach, we find causal evidence that constraints on employee mobility raise the likelihood of a firm becoming an acquisition target. The causal effect is stronger when a firm employs more knowledge workers in its workforce and when it faces greater in‐state competition; by contrast, the effect is weaker when a firm is protected by a stronger intellectual property regime that mitigates the consequences of employee mobility. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A model to explore the ethics of erotic stimuli in print advertising

This paper discusses a test of a hypothetical model of the role of perceived ethical feelings about the use of female nudity/erotic stimuli in print advertising. Specifically, the linkages between perceived ethicalness of the use of the print ad (as measured by the Reidenbach and Robin ethics scale) and attitude toward the ad, brand, and purchase intention are explored.