Participation of working women in decision‐making process as consumer

In a world where the role of women in decision‐making is seldom adequately appreciated, they make a remarkable contribution due to their hard work and sense of confidence. It is observed that women are mostly involved in repetitive and monotonous household work irrespective of the fact that they share most of family responsibilities and perform a wide range of duties in and outside home. On the other hand men perform activities, which require skills, but there is sufficient evidence, which show a clear, although slow shift of stereotype sex roles. In early societies, decision‐making was predominantly done by menfolk being the breadwinner of the family. With modernization and education women have been empowered to make the best use of human and non‐human resources in management of the family with respect to efficient use of time and energy. So, a study was undertaken to know how far the working women of Faridkot district participate in the decision‐making process with the following objectives:

• (a) to find out the level of participation of working women in the decision‐making process as consumer.
• (b) to find out the level of difficulty among working women at different steps of the decision‐making process.

The present investigation pertaining to Faridkot district of Punjab state of India was exploratory in nature. A sample of 100 working women was selected by simple random sampling procedure. The responses were recorded through a well structured and pretested questionnaire including an index developed to measure level of participation and difficulty as realized by working women in the decision‐making process. After collecting the data, it was analysed by employing simple statistical tests like frequency percentages The important findings emanated out of the present investigation are as follows:

• ? Most of the respondents were middle aged, educated up to graduation level, having nuclear family, small size of family with monthly income more than Rs.5000.00. It was also observed that majority of the respondents were in the teaching and medical professions.
• ? Working women were found to be involved more in the case of food items (79.0–93.0%) as compared to non‐food items (6.0–46.0%) with an exception of their major participation (78.0%) at the stage of identifying the problem in case of non‐food items.
• ? The study revealed that the time consumed at various steps of consumer decision‐making process is minimum for most of the steps in case of food items but moderate to maximum in case of non‐food items. But for analysing the alternatives the time consumed was moderate to maximum for both the categories.
• ? Findings also revealed that difficulty level was from moderate to high (32.0–98.0%) in most of the steps in case of food items whereas, in case of non‐food items it was from low to high (11.0–78.0%)

     

Understanding corporate B2B web sites' effectiveness from North American and European perspective

The globalization of economic activities has led multinational business-to-business (B2B) firms to use their corporate web sites extensively to communicate with their stakeholders. Using a field study of 368 business customers, this paper examines three factors of information that influence corporate web sites' effectiveness in a B2B context and whether these factors differ by web site user's national origin. Results indicate that informativeness of a corporate web site is important for both North American and European visitors. Quality of information is important for European users but not an important aspect for North American users. Usability is the most important factor for North American users but it is not important for European users. Implications of these results are discussed for managerial practices and further research.     

Inventory buffers in recoverable manufacturing

Recoverable manufacturing is becoming an increasingly important alternative to firms as they develop environmentally sound strategies aimed at minimizing waste and resources. It helps minimize costs and conserve resources through methods such as extending product life cycles via remanufacturing which uses only a fraction of the resources and energy associated with a new product. In this study the creation and location of inventory buffers (delay buffers) and their impact on other managerial operating decisions is examined in the context of a remanufacturing environment. It is shown that inventory buffer decisions are significantly impacted by the method used to release parts from the disassembly stage to the remanufacturing stage within the remanufacturing environment. Based on observations and on discussions with managers in remanufacturing facilities several managerial propositions are stated. These propositions are examined, via a simulation model of an operating facility, and recommendations as to the inventory buffer to use in conjunction with the disassembly release policy (for parts) are made for the remanufacturing environment.     

Warranty as a Signal of Quality: The Moderating Effect of Consumer Knowledge on Quality Evaluations

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Model Misspecification and Underdiversification

In this paper, we study intertemporal portfolio choice when an investor accounts explicitly for model misspecification. We develop a framework that allows for ambiguity about not just the joint distribution of returns for all stocks in the portfolio, but also for different levels of ambiguity for the marginal distribution of returns for any subset of these stocks. We find that when the overall ambiguity about the joint distribution of returns is high, then small differences in ambiguity for the marginal return distribution will result in a portfolio that is significantly underdiversified relative to the standard mean‐variance portfolio.     

Litigation reform,accounting discretion,and the cost of equity

In this paper, we isolate a context – the 1995 Public Securities Litigation Reform Act – where information risk (accruals quality) is likely to change, and investigate whether the increase in accounting discretion associated with litigation reform is viewed by investors as basically opportunistic (i.e., as distorting reported earnings) or as improving the ability of reported earnings to reflect economic value. We measure accounting discretion using both positive (i.e., income-increasing) as well as absolute performance-adjusted abnormal accruals. Our analysis focuses on a constant sample of firms over a 10-year (1992–2001) period, and is structured in two stages. In the first-stage, we utilize an instrumental variable technique that isolates the increase in accounting discretion associated with the 1995 Act. In the second-stage, we relate the predicted increase in accounting discretion associated with litigation reform – obtained from the first-stage regression – to the ex ante equity risk premium for Big N audit clients. Our results suggest that the increase in accounting discretion associated with the 1995 Act was viewed by investors as basically opportunistic. Further, the exogenous nature of the 1995 Act suggests that the observed increase (and pricing) of accounting discretion is related to litigation reform rather than some omitted firm-specific operating characteristic. Overall, our findings suggest that litigation reform affects firm value through managers’ exercise of accounting discretion and cost of equity capital channels.     

In Defense of Incentive Compensation: Its Effect on Corporate Acquisition Policy

Financial economists have long recognized that compensation design, particularly the use of equity-based compensation, can provide strong motivation for corporate managers to make value-maximizing decisions. But the perception of excesses in equity-based pay for U.S. executives has become pervasive and has led many to question its efficacy. The fundamental problem is one of measurement–while it is relatively easy to measure the cost of equity-based compensation, it is difficult to determine the extent to which equitybased compensation actually causes managers to direct corporate resources into value-maximizing ventures.
The authors of this article focus on corporate acquisition policy and argue that if equity-based pay is an effective motivator, it should limit management's inclination to overpay for acquisitions and to make unwise acquisitions. In their study of 1,719 mergers and tender offers over the period 1993–1998, the authors found that bidding companies with higher proportions of equity-based pay paid lower takeover premiums, acquired targets with stronger growth opportunities, and undertook acquisitions that were received more favorably by the market both upon announcement and over time.     

Does implementation guidance affect opportunistic reporting and value relevance of earnings?

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