THE EFFECT OF GOVERNMENT POLICY ON TOBACCO ADVERTISING STRATEGIES

This paper contributes to the very limited literature examining the factors determining tobacco companies' advertising strategies. The paper explores whether firms in the UK tobacco market significantly changed their advertising expenditure in the face of proposed changes to the UK and European Commission tobacco advertising legislation. The results suggest that changes in legislation have little impact on firms' advertising strategies for existing brands, but that legislative changes impact upon product launch dates. Our results also offer some information on the nature of firm interdependencies in the UK tobacco industry.     

Fair Trade Consumption: In Support of the Out-Group

Two sets of self-transcendence values – universalism and benevolence – act as a source of motivation for the promotion of the welfare of the other rather than the self. This article sought to determine the exact nature of the interaction between these sets of values and the consumption of fair trade products. In an earlier study, universalism values were found to have a significant influence on fair trade consumption whereas benevolence values did not, despite their shared goal and values theory. Additionally, there was supporting evidence in the extant literature that benevolence values should influence fair trade consumption behavior. This study took a closer look at the individual values that make up the value categories universalism and benevolence to better understand and describe this universalism–benevolence distinction in fair trade consumption. It was established that perhaps group membership has an influence on the decision to buy fair trade products. Specifically, it seems that an overriding sense of responsibility to one’s own group – the in-group – prevents some consumers from identifying with, empathizing with, and subsequently sharing resources with fair trade producers; members of out-groups in far-flung corners of the globe. It appears that the universalism–benevolence distinction in fair trade consumption might also be described as an in-group–out-group distinction.     

Relationship Banking, Liquidity, and Investment in the German Industrialization

Close bank relationships are thought to ameliorate firms' liquidity constraints—a phenomenon frequently measured by liquidity sensitivity of investment. Using German firms during the formative years of universal banking (1903–1913), this paper shows that, even controlling for selection bias, investment is more sensitive to internal liquidity for bank-networked firms than unattached firms. The firm exhibiting the greatest liquidity sensitivity, however, faced no apparent liquidity constraint. The findings yield two implications: they support recent research rejecting a linear relationship between liquidity sensitivity and financing constraints, and they suggest that relationship banking provides no consistent lessening of firms' liquidity sensitivity.     

Local Conditions and Debt in Collections

Using credit reporting firm records on 7 million individuals in the United States, we first demonstrate that debt in collections varies significantly across the country; specifically, the South and West regions have higher shares of individuals with debt in collections than other regions. Second, we identify local factors that are strongly related to debt in collections. Results from our regression models show that neighborhoods with higher rates of debt in collections are more likely to have (1) lower health insurance coverage; (2) lower home values and homeownership rates, (3) a higher share of delinquent and underwater mortgages, (4) lower household incomes, and (5) a higher share of African Americans and Latinos. While our analysis does not identify the causal mechanisms that determine financial distress, the analyses developed here can facilitate research on such mechanisms.     

Restricted electricity use among poor urban households

For a variety of reasons, this article argues, electricity must be seen by policy‐makers in South Africa not as the sole provider of all future household energy needs, but rather as one component of an energy mix which includes such ‘transitional’ fuels as coal, gas and paraffin. The reasons for this are that electricity is expensive for poor households; it is subject to power failures and disconnections for non‐payment; the poor find it difficult to monitor and to control their consumption; appliances are expensive and several are required to make best use of electricity; people prefer other fuels because they are familiar and have strong personal and cultural associations, and because Eskom is not trusted owing to its past ties to illegitimate local authorities and misunderstanding of electricity and how its use is monitored and charged for. Further, it is mistaken to equate ‘development’ with total electrification: most developed countries have fuel mixes which include gas and coal, particularly for cooking and heating. Accepting an affordable fuel mix for the poor in particular would focus attention on the problems currently associated with paraffin, gas and coal, namely fires, poisoning and air pollution.     

Rhetoric, argument and impression management in hostile takeover defence documents

This exploratory study extends the analysis of narrative disclosures from routine reporting contexts such as annual reports and press releases to non-routine takeover documents where the financial consequences of narrative disclosures can be substantial. Rhetoric and argument in the form of impression management techniques in narrative disclosures are examined. Prior thematic content analysis methods for analysing good and bad news disclosures are adapted to the attacking and defensive themes in the defence documents of target companies subject to hostile takeover bids. The paper examines the incidence, extent and implications of impression management in ten hostile takeover defence documents issued by target companies listed on the London Stock Exchange between 1 January 2006 and 30 June 2008. Three impression management strategies – thematic, visual and rhetorical manipulation – are investigated using content analysis methodologies. The findings of the research indicate that thematic, visual and rhetorical manipulation is evident in hostile takeover defence documents. Attacking and defensive sentences were found to comprise the majority of the defence documents analysed. Such sentences exhibited varying degrees of visual and rhetorical emphasis, which served to award greater or lesser degrees of prominence to the information conveyed by target company management.While exploratory in nature, this paper concludes with suggestions for future more systematic research allowing for greater generalisations from the findings.     

Creating institutional meaning: Accounting and taxation law perspectives of carbon permits

Emissions trading schemes based on the idea that markets are an efficient means to allocate resources have created the need for a tradeable right, the carbon permit. The measurement and recognition of this right has the potential to significantly affect the financial reports and cash flows of entities and is therefore of interest to market participants. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the different meanings attached to the term, carbon permit, from two institutional frameworks, accounting and taxation, using discourse analysis of identified key documents available during the design and public discussion of the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in Australia.     

Microelectronics in the Clothing Industry: Firm Strategy and the Skills Debate

This article examines the impact of CAD/CAM on the UK clothing industry. It questions the extent to which computerisation has led to a greater choice over production strategy and argues that upskilling has not occurred.     

The language of social entrepreneurs

This paper questions the application of the entrepreneurship discourse to social entrepreneurship in the UK and looks at how people ‘doing’ social enterprise appropriate or re-write the discourse to articulate their own realities. Drawing on phenomenological enquiry and discourse analysis, the study analyses the micro discourses of social entrepreneurs, as opposed to the meta rhetorics of (social) entrepreneurship. Analysis using both corpus linguistics software and Critical Discourse Analysis showed a preoccupation among interviewees with local issues, collective action, geographical community and local power struggles. Echoes of the enterprise discourse are evident but couched in linguistic devices that suggest a modified social construction of entrepreneurship, in which interviewees draw their legitimacy from a local or social morality. These findings are at odds ideologically with the discursive shifts of UK social enterprise policy over the last decade, in which a managerially defined rhetoric of enterprise is used to promote efficiency, business discipline and financial independence. The paper raises critical awareness of the tension in meanings appropriated to the enterprise discourse by social enterprise policy and practice and illustrates the value of discourse analysis for entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship research.     

Internationalization of multi-source feedback systems: a six-country exploratory analysis of 360-degree feedback

In the past few years, few human resource practices have received as much attention as multi-source feedback systems (MSFSs). In the US and Canada, it is estimated that over one-third of organizations are using some form of MSFS and recent surveys show that this practice is still gaining popularity. Concurrently, a substantial amount of literature has focused on the effectiveness of this performance management practice. However, while few would dispute the popularity of MSFS, relatively little has been published on the use of these systems outside North America and thus little is known about their form and effectiveness in international contexts. This paper outlines the results of an international survey of MSFS. Interview data from HR managers and consultants from Argentina, Australia, China, Slovakia, Spain and the UK demonstrate that MSFS are being implemented, in slightly different ways, in each of these six countries. The main challenges in the application of MSFS in these various countries are the communication efforts necessary before and after implementation, and the inherent difficulty in giving and receiving feedback. The results of this study also provide data as to the perceived future of MSFS in each of the countries surveyed.