Clarence E. Ayres and the Socialist Planning Debate

This article argues that two different manifestations of rational behavior can coexist and collide in a relatively homogeneous society. In the Ticuna community of Arara in the Colombian Amazon; on the one hand, the majority of villagers tend to reach relatively lower levels of material wealth, following Polanyi’s idea of the pre-modern man (1968a; 1968b; 1968c), and also Sahlins’ (1972) idea of the original affluent man. On the other hand, community leaders and schoolteachers tend to accumulate material wealth, following Polanyi’s idea of modern-man (1968a; 1968b). These behavioral frameworks help explain the limited success of certain types of development programs in the Ticuna community.     

Limitations and Strengths of Pan-Asian Advertising Media: A Review for International Advertisers

Economic growth in Asia has led to a proliferation in the supply of pan-regional media. Most of these are elitist media targeting affluent businessmen and travellers. The increasing importance of the Chinese-speaking market spurs the growth of Chinese language pan-Asian media. The emergence of satellite television networks popularizes pan-regional media to a broader audience, although its penetration is still small in comparison to local media. When selecting pan-regional media for advertising in the region, advertisers are advised to use data from pan-Asian audience surveys, publication audit figures and competitive advertising expenditure reports in examining the cost-efficiency of each media vehicle. In choosing between pan-regional and local media, advertisers should consider the homogeneity and socio-economic status of their target audience, the importance of international recognition and consistency in image for the brand, geographic strengths, and other added values of the media.     

Becoming a founder: How founder role identity affects entrepreneurial transitions and persistence in founding

We develop a new theory that views organizational founding as involving a role transition. Through the construct of founder role identity, we delineate how identity centrality and complexity affect individuals' ability to exit a work role in order to undertake founding activities. We argue that individuals are challenged to adjust to the founder role requirements and incorporate the new role into an overall self-concept. We then delineate how configurations of founder role identities influence persistence, and the longer-term outcomes of dormancy and successful founding.     

Strategic Human Resource Management as Ethical Stewardship

The research about strategic human resource management (SHRM) has suggested that human resource professionals (HRPs) have the opportunity to play a greater role in contributing to organizational success if they are effective in developing systems and policies aligned with the organization??s values, goals, and mission. We suggest that HRPs need to raise the standard of their performance and that the competitive demands of the modern economic environment create implicit ethical duties that HRPs owe to their organizations. We define ethical stewardship as a model of governance that honors obligations due to the many stakeholders and that maximizes long-term organizational wealth creation. We propose that if HRPs adopt an ethical stewardship framework and the qualities of transformative leaders, they will be more aware of their ethical duties to their organizations and more effective in helping their organizations to create increased wealth, achieve desired organizational outcomes, and establish work environments that are more satisfying to employees.     

Supersize It: The Growth of Retail Chains and the Rise of the “Big‐Box” Store

This paper documents and explains the recent rise of “big‐box” general merchandisers. Data from the Census of Retail Trade for 1977–2007 show that general‐merchandise chains grew much faster than specialist retail chains, and that general merchandisers that added the most stores also made the biggest increases to their product offerings. We explain these facts with a stylized model in which a retailer’s scale economies interact with consumer gains from one‐stop shopping to generate a complementarity between a retailer’s scale and scope.     

Corporate Governance and the Cost of Capital: Evidence from Australian Companies

The authors examine a sample of large Australian companies over a 10‐year period with the aim of analyzing the role that firm‐level corporate governance mechanisms such as insider ownership and independent boards play in explaining a company's cost of capital. The Australian corporate system offers a unique environment for assessing the impact of corporate governance mechanisms. Australian companies have board structures and mechanisms that are similar in design to Anglo‐Saxon boards while offering a striking contrast to those of German and Japanese boards. At the same time, however, the Australian market for corporate control is much less active as a corrective mechanism against management entrenchment than its U.S. and U.K. counterparts, making the role of internal governance mechanisms potentially more important in Australia than elsewhere. The authors report that greater insider ownership, the presence of institutional blockholders, and independent boards are all associated with reductions in the perceived risk of a firm, thereby leading investors to demand lower rates of return on capital. In so doing, the study provides evidence of the important role of corporate governance in increasing corporate values.     

Measuring Confucian values among East Asian consumers: a four country study

This study aims to make a conceptual and empirical contribution by developing and operationalizing suitable scales to capture certain Confucian values (face saving, humility, group orientation, hierarchy and reciprocity) that can influence East Asian consumers. Based on the pertinent literature, focus group discussions with extended East Asian families and East Asian scholar interviews, we develop and validate our measures on data from over 400 respondents across four East Asian cities (Tokyo, Hanoi, Beijing and Singapore). Despite some variance, our findings signal that East Asians are highly influenced by such traditional values. Several implications are extracted and future research directions suggested.     

Vietnamese Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Safe Pork in Hanoi

Abstract

Food safety is one of the main concerns and the biggest challenge for consumers due to its direct influence on human health. In order to deal with unsafe food situation, the demand for food hygiene has increased in recent years as well as the consequent increase in price accepted by consumers. This study aimed to estimate consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) and to examine the determining factors influencing their WTP for safe pork using double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation method (DBDC CVM). The data were collected from a survey with a sample size of 134 respondents in Hanoi, Vietnam using two sets of questionnaires on the consumption of rib and shoulder of pork. The results revealed that the percentages of the consumers willing to pay a premium for more hygiene shoulder and rib of pork were 81.75% and 73.01%, respectively. The mean WTP was 129,000 VND (US$6.07) for both safe shoulder and rib, 48.7% and 37.8% higher than the regular market price, respectively. The results showed that consumers’ awareness of the risk of unhealthy pork, household income and expenditure were the positive determinants to WTP; meanwhile, the amount of pork consumption per month negatively affected the willingness to pay more for shoulder and rib of pork.