The creation of momentum for change through the process of strategic issue diagnosis

This paper presents a model of how decision-makers interpret stategic issues. The model of strategic issue diagnosis identifies three critical events: activation, assessments of urgency and assessments of feasibility. The relationship of each of these interpretive assessments to the creation of momentum for change allows one to predict if and how organizations will respond to a changed decision environment. The paper further links strategic issue diagnosis to organizational responses by highlighting the systematic effect of two contextual variables—the organization's belief structure and its resources—upon the assessments in diagnosis. In this way, the model of issue diagnosis provides a framework for understanding how and why organizations respond differently to strategic issues.     

Reliability of risk management: Market insurance,self-insurance and self-protection reconsidered

This paper examines the three main tools of risk management in a setting where reliability cannot be guaranteed. Thus, for example, insurers might be insolvent, sprinkler systems might be inoperative and alarm systems might be faulty. These types of nonreliability are shown to have significant consequences for risk management. In particular, the relationships between increased risk aversion and the use of the various risk management tools do not carry over from models with full reliability. Moreover, the well-known result of Ehrlich and Becker, that market insurance and selfinsurance are substitutes, is shown to fail in the presence of nonreliability risk.     

A characterisation of the perfect equilibria of infinite horizon games

This paper builds on the work of Fudenberg and Levine (J. Econ. Theory31 (1983), 251–268). It shows that the perfect equilibria of any game in which events become uniformly unimportant as their distance into the future increases can be characterised as limits of sequences of perfect approximate equilibrium points of finite horizon approximations to the game. The result holds both for a strong and for a weak topology. The topologies are tractable, and the nature of convergence relative to them is transparent. Finally, the weak topology is probably the weakest tractable topology in which the result holds.     

Managerial utility-maximizing operating decisions under compound demand risk

This paper examines the demand and cost conditions under which utility maximizing pricing-risk and advertising-risk relationships are determinate. The structure of the firm's demand uncertainty captures both uncertain customer arrivals and uncertain individual customer demand. In addition to standard demand restrictions and constant marginal cost, determinate results depend upon the degree of managerial risk-aversion, the correlation between individual demand and customer arrival disturbances, the firm's cost fixity, and bounded product differentiation effects of advertising. The symmetry between price-cuts and advertising as demand-increasing costs is extensively examined; firm equilibrium requires that price-cuts not be an inferior input for increasing demand.     

A Descriptive Analysis of the AREUEA Members: 1978

A survey of AREUEA members reveals that the association is a diverse professional organization composed of individuals from academia, the government and the real estate industry. This paper presents the data obtained from this survey and identifies the membership by type of employment, teaching and research interests, other professional affiliations and professional designations.     

Ethical values of individuals at different levels in the organizational hierarchy of a single firm

This study examines the ethical values of respondents by level in the organizational hierarchy of a single firm. It also explores the possible impacts of gender, education and years of experience on respondents' values as well as their perceptions of how the organization and professional associations influence their personal values. Results showed that, although there were differences in individuals' ethical values by hierarchical level, significantly more differences were observed by the length of tenure with the organization. While respondents, as a whole, were rather ambivalent in their perception of the organization's and professional associations' influence on their values, sales/service persons frequently felt pressured to modify their values in order to achieve company goals. James R. Harris is Associate Professor of Marketing at Auburn University. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Retailing, and elsewhere. He has taught the Legal and Social Environment course at the graduate level for a number of years.     

T wave lability: a clue for separating the good from the bad, when ugly

Non-specific T wave abnormalities have challenged both the clinician and the insurance medical director for decades. Distinction between pathologic and physiologic T wave changes often requires costly and time-consuming diagnostic studies. The literature is reviewed on the subject of T wave manipulation by the oral administration of both potassium and glucose, introducing the concept of T wave lability. Based on this concept, a simple technique is suggested which, in many cases, can safely, expeditiously and inexpensively distinguish between organic and functional T wave changes. When employed in the investigation of asymptomatic insurance applicants with unexplained T wave abnormalities but no known cardiovascular or renal disease, this technique appears to be sufficiently reliable to classify the risk posed by non-specific T wave changes without resorting to a sophisticated, lengthy and costly cardiovascular investigation.     

The formation of green strategies in Chinese firms: matching corporate environmental responses and individual principles

This study examines how Chinese firms began responding to worsening environmental concerns in the late 1990s. Combining predictions from control theory, escalation of commitment, and goal theory, we seek to explain how leaders' cognitions shape the formation of novel responses to the value‐laden issue of corporate greening. We propose an iterative model that links leaders' principles with corporate actions and test it using survey data gathered from 360 firms. The model views strategy organically, as a set of adaptive goals and behaviors, and highlights the role of systemic and local feedback loops in strategy formation. We find that top executives who champion new strategic initiatives monitor early success or failure, and adjust their efforts to match early performance feedback. Perceptions of satisfactory performance strengthen leaders' efforts towards their initial target, while perceptions of unsatisfactory performance diminish them. This feedback relationship is invariant throughout favorable or unfavorable expectancies of success, contrary to the contingent prediction of control theory. The model also examines how top‐down and bottom‐up strategic initiatives combine to help firms maintain a positive momentum of change when champions' efforts decline in the face of premature failure signals. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.