The Effect of Country‐Level Investor Protection on the Voluntary Assurance of Sustainability Reports

Over the last several years, sustainable (or socially responsible) investing has experienced rapid growth around the world reflecting an increasing awareness by investors of social, environmental, ethical, and corporate governance issues. This heightened awareness among investors has resulted in a demand for sustainability reporting and a corresponding increase in demand for assurance of sustainability information to enhance its credibility. Using an investor‐based view, we examine the impact of country‐level investor protection on reporting companies’ voluntary sustainability assurance decisions. We find that both the decision to obtain voluntary sustainability report assurance and the decision to obtain higher quality assurance are more likely for firms domiciled in countries that have weaker investor protection. Our results indicate that managers in low investor protection countries use voluntary sustainability assurance as a substitute monitoring mechanism.     

Implementing a Market Orientation in Small Manufacturing Firms: From Cognitive Model to Action

Using in-depth interviews of the CEO/Presidents of 21 small manufacturing firms, this research explored how leaders with a high market-oriented cognitive model have intentionally pursued the implementation of that model and how their activities differed from leaders with a low market-oriented cognitive model. Results indicated that leaders in high market-oriented organizations appeared to be working from cognitive models that reflected market-oriented values, and norms consistent with those suggested by Homburg and Pflesser. Additionally, results indicated strong consistencies across firms in the mechanisms used by leaders to implement their high market-oriented cognitive models and different but equally strong consistencies in the mechanisms used by leaders to implement their low market-oriented cognitive models. Structurally, high market-oriented leaders expressed less departmentalization than low market-oriented firms, used some form of internal customer/supplier networks, had very open communication systems, and established performance management systems designed to initiate and reward market-oriented behaviors among employees.     

Britt,Steuart Henderson. Psychological Principles of Marketing and Consumer Behavior. Lexington,Mass.: Lexington Books, 1978

Abstract

Conventionally, an advertiser's spending on the creative component of an advertising campaign is small in relation to the media budget and is channeled exclusively to a single advertising agency. Gross challenged those conventions more than 20 years ago, using a mathematical model of advertising effectiveness. His model suggested spending more on the creative component and doing so in a competition among several independent sources. The model assumed a normal distribution of effectiveness of advertisements. Data on response to consumer product ads show that the distribution of effectiveness is not normal, but quite skewed. Using Monté Carlo simulations and Gross's framework, the authors find that the skewness strengthens the case for competition. Shifting a sizable percentage of a campaign budget away from media spending and into competitive generation of creative renderings apparently can be very profitable.     

Editorial

The relationship marketing paradigm is gaining increasing credence in consumer markets. Marketers need to get close to their customers to establish exchange relationships, and this “intimacy” is achieved using database technology and direct marketing communications. However, in implementing relationship marketing in this way, the potential exists for the use of technology to result in invasions of individual consumer privacy. The literature on relationship marketing and privacy are reviewed, and the findings of six exploratory focus group discussions, conducted in the UK, are presented. The study suggests that what some consumers define as “intrusion” is similar to what has been called “intimacy” by marketers. Nine propositions are presented which reflect the implications of current approaches to relationship marketing in consumer markets. In particular, the integral elements of meaningful relationships are absent or inhibited as a result of consumer concerns over intrusions of their privacy. Thus, marketers need to adapt their attitudes, behaviours, and processes in order to accommodate the participation of the consumer in the relationship. The implications for marketers are identified, and directions are offered for future research.     

Market entry in japan—Some problems and solutions 1

Japan is recognised as a major competitor in world markets but is less well‐known as an attractive market in its own right. This paper proposes that with the right strategies it is possible to successfully penetrate the difficult Japanese market. Problems and opportunities presented by the market are discussed, and some of the findings of a survey of Japanese and German managers in Japan and German‐based managers are reviewed. The paper covers the survey findings on market characteristics, barriers to entry, information requirements, factors contributing to success and methods of market entry. German and UK sources of information and advice on the Japanese market are given for those interested in pursuing the matter further.     

South Africa's economics of education: A stocktaking and an agenda for the way forward

This paper reviews some of the existing economics of education literature from the perspective of South Africa's education policymaking needs. It also puts forward a suggested research agenda for future work. The review is arranged according to five areas of research: rates of return, production functions, teacher incentives, benefit incidence analysis and cross-country comparisons. Production functions, especially if translated to cost-effectiveness models, can point to important policy solutions. Teacher incentives is a policy area that is in need of a better theoretical and empirical basis. Rates of return are difficult for policymakers to interpret, but suggest a need for a qualification below the Grade 12 level. While benefit incidence analysis can demonstrate large improvements in the equity of public financing, cross-country comparisons reveal that not only is the distribution of schooling outcomes particularly unequal, on average it is well below what the country's level of development would predict.     

The first Sterling Area†

Between the eleventh century and mid‐thirteenth century a Sterling Area evolved in the British Isles, with a common currency based upon the English silver penny and equivalents of it produced in Scotland and Ireland. This Sterling Area began to contract in the second half of the fourteenth century, when reductions in the bullion content of Scottish coins ended the equivalence of the English and Scottish currencies, and in the fifteenth century Ireland developed its own coinage. Estimates of the currency of the Sterling Area are provided, taking the chronology of its growth and contraction into account. Estimates of the sterling currency are not estimates of the currency of England, and they cannot be combined with data relating exclusively to England in economic modelling, without qualification. Per capita currency estimates and values of coin hoards and single coin finds are at a high level around 1400, falling in the second half of the fifteenth century, indicating that the European ‘bullion famine’ of the 1390s to c. 1415 had less effect on the currency than the second late medieval bullion crisis, from the 1430s to the 1460s.     

Shaping online consumer choice by partitioning the Web

This research explores how partitioning attributes in online search interfaces changes the valuations of those attributes—and impacts subsequent choice—such that attributes that are displayed as separate categories tend to receive greater decision weight than attributes grouped under umbrella categories. Across several choice domains—cars, dates, and hotels—we show that different attribute partitions impact the importance assigned to attributes (Studies 1 and 2), as well as consumer choices (Studies 3 and 4). We argue that these effects are due in part to users' willingness to use the implicit recommendations of interface designers to determine the importance of attributes, a willingness that extends to following explicit recommendations of online agents based on those attributes (Study 5). © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.