The effects of relationship quality on customer retaliation

This research examines the effects of relationship quality (RQ) on customers' desires to retaliate after service failures. We posit that the effects of RQ are contingent upon the attributions customers make about the firm’s controllability over a service failure. Two competing hypotheses are examined and reconciled. The “love is blind” hypothesis posits that when low controllability is inferred, high RQ customers experience a lesser desire for retaliation than low RQ customers. On the other hand, the “love becomes hate” hypothesis specifies that when high controllability is inferred, high RQ customers experience a greater desire for retaliation than low RQ customers. The hypotheses are tested with a survey-based design and a partial least squares (PLS) model that incorporates a multiplicative latent construct.     

The effect of rankings on honesty in budget reporting

We conduct an experiment to investigate the effect of rankings, which are pervasive in practice, on the honesty of managers’ budget reports, which is important for sound decision making in organizations. Participants in our experiment are ranked in one of four ways: (1) firm profit, (2) own compensation, (3) both firm profit and own compensation, and (4) randomly, which serves as our baseline condition. None of the rankings affect participants’ remuneration. Compared to our baseline (random rankings) setting, where participants indeed exhibit honesty concerns, we find that rankings based on firm profit significantly increase honesty and that rankings based on own compensation significantly decrease honesty. Participants who received both rankings were significantly more honest than participants in the own compensation rankings condition. We did not, however, find significant differences in honesty between the both rankings and firm profit rankings conditions. As such, participants in the both rankings condition seemed to focus more on the firm profit metric than on the financially congruent own compensation metric. We also find that our results are stable across periods, suggesting that the effects of rankings neither increased nor dissipated over time. We discuss the contributions of our study and concomitant findings to accounting research and practice.     

Marshallian labour market pooling: Evidence from Italy

This paper employs a unique Italian data source to take a comprehensive approach to labour market pooling. It jointly considers many different aspects of the agglomeration — labour market relationship, including turnover, learning, matching, and hold up. It also considers labour market pooling from the perspective of both workers and firms and across a range of industries. Overall, the paper finds some support for theories of labour market pooling, but the support is weak. Specifically, there is a general positive relationship of turnover to local population density, which is consistent with theories of agglomeration and uncertainty. There is also evidence of on-the-job learning that is consistent with theories of labour pooling, labour poaching, and hold up. In addition, the paper provides evidence consistent with agglomeration improving job matches. However, the labour market pooling gains that we measure are small in magnitude and seem unlikely to account for a substantial share of the agglomeration benefits accruing to Italian workers and firms.     

An Asymmetric Information Model of Lockouts

This note proposes an asymmetric information model of collective bargaining where the firm has the bargaining power and the union the private information. Results show that the firm may use lockouts to induce the union to reveal its private information.     

An Empirical Study of the Impact of CEO Characteristics on New Firms' Time to IPO*

An initial public offering (IPO) is one of the most critical events in the life of a firm. As the IPO market continues to attract attention from both entrepreneurs and investors, research examining the relationship between the firm's characteristics and its IPO performance is growing. In this paper, we use the upper echelon perspective to empirically examine the relationship between the firm's chief executive officer (CEO) and the firm's time to IPO, a relationship that has so far received little attention. Using data obtained from 237 IPOs in the U.S. software industry, we found that the CEO's prior executive experience, network, and age are significantly related to the new firm's time to IPO. This study extends the understanding of the important role of the CEO in the IPO and provides investors greater insight into those variables that influence the speed with which firms go public.     

The Term Structure of Interest Rates in a Small Open Economy: A Stochastic Analysis

This article employs a rational expectations IS-LM model with price adjustment to study the effect of domestic monetary and fiscal policy and world interest rate disturbances on the real and nominal small open economy term structure of interest rates. The impact of both temporary and permanent shocks are investigated. Notable results include the fact that monetary expansions lead to positive yield curves, while the implications of fiscal expansions and increases in the world interest rate depend crucially on the duration of the shock.     

An evidence-based review of e-HRM and strategic human resource management

One stated purpose of electronic human resource management (e-HRM) is to make the HRM function more strategic. The goal of this paper is to examine the research on e-HRM to provide evidence-based guidance to researchers and practitioners on the relationship between e-HRM and strategic HRM. We review 40 studies published from 1999 to 2011 using integrative synthesis as our evidence-based methodology. Results reveal that theoretical and empirical research in this area is still at an early stage. We find no empirical evidence showing that e-HRM predicts strategic outcomes. There is evidence suggesting that strategic HRM predicts e-HRM outcomes and that the relationship appears context dependent, however, research designs are not sufficient to establish causal direction. Our review highlights the need for more empirical studies on e-HRM and strategic HRM outcomes at a macro level.     

Environmental Effects of Production and Consumption Activities Within an Economy: the Aragon Case

The goal of this research paper is to analyze the households’ environmental impact in a regional economy such as Aragon, focusing on water consumption, and water and atmosphere pollution. Our objective is to include not only the direct impact but also the indirect one that is generated by the production of goods and services in global and per capita. The framework of analysis is a SAMEA (Social Accounting Matrix and Environmental Accounts) built for Aragon in 1999. This SAMEA is composed by SAM (Social Accounting Matrix) and also the Water Accounts, the Water Pollution Accounts and the Atmosphere Emissions Accounts. For this reason, the SAMEA describes the relationship between the institutional activities and the environment. In order to obtain environmental impact of household activity in Aragon and to measure the individual responsibility, we are going to calculate indicators from the SAMEA model considering only households as exogenous account. The environmental effects are estimated for two water resources categories, for six water pollution categories and for six atmosphere emissions categories.