Alliance competence, resources, and alliance success: Conceptualization, measurement, and initial test

This research examines the effect of an alliance competence on resource-based alliance success. The fundamental thesis guiding this research is that an alliance competence contributes to alliance success, both directly and through the acquisition and creation of resources. Using survey data gathered from 145 alliances, empirical tests of the hypotheses provide support for the posited explanation of alliance success. The findings indicate that an alliance competence is not only antecedent to the resources that are necessary for alliance success but also to alliance success itself. C. Jay Lambe (Ph.D., The Darden School at University of Virginia) is an assistant professor of marketing in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech. For 10 years prior to entering academe, he was engaged in business-to-business marketing for both Xerox and AT&T. His research interests include business-to-business marketing, relationship marketing, marketing strategy, and sales management. He has publications in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, theJournal of Product Innovation Management, theEuropean Journal of Marketing, theJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, theInternational Journal of Management Reviews, theJournal of Business-to-Business Marketing, and theJournal of Relationship Marketing. He also serves as a reviewer for theJournal of Business-to-Business Marketing. Prior to joining the faculty at Virginia Tech, he was one of five Texas Tech University faculty members chosen in 1999 from the entire university for the annual Outstanding Faculty Member Award by the Mortar Board and Omicron Delta Kappa (Texas Tech University student organizations that recognize excellence in teaching). Robert E. Spekman is the Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration at the Darden School at the University of Virginia. He was formerly a professor of marketing and associate director of the Center for Telecommunications at the University of Southern California. He is an internationally recognized authority on business-to-business marketing and strategic alliances. His consulting experiences range from marketing research and competitive analysis, to strategic market planning, supply chain management, channels of distribution design and implementation, and strategic partnering. He has taught in a number of executive programs in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Europe. His executive program experience ranges from general marketing strategy, to sales force management, to channels strategy, to creating strategic alliances, to business-to-business marketing strategy, to a number of single-company and senior executive management programs. He has edited and/or written seven books and has authored (coauthored) more than 80 articles and papers. He also serves as a reviewer for a number of marketing and management journals, as well as for the National Science Foundation. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Southern California, he taught in the College of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. During his tenure at Maryland, he was granted the Most Distinguished Faculty Award by the MBA students on three separate occasions. Shelby D. Hunt is the J. B. Hoskins and P. W. Horn Professor of Marketing at Texas Tech University, Lubbock. A past editor of theJournal of Marketing (1985–87), he is the author ofModern Marketing Theory: Critical Issues in the Philosophy of Marketing Science (South-Western, 1991) andA General Theory of Competition: Resources, Competences, Productivity, Economic Growth (Sage, 2000). He has written numerous articles on competitive theory, macromarketing, ethics, channels of distribution, philosophy of science, and marketing theory. Three of hisJournal of Marketing articles—“The Nature and Scope of Marketing” (1976), “General Theories and Fundamental Explananda of Marketing” (1983), and “The Comparative Advantage Theory of Competition” (1995) (with Robert M. Morgan)—won the Harold H. Maynard Award for the best article on marketing theory. His 1985Journal of Business Research article with Lawrence B. Chonko, “Ethics and Marketing Management,” received the 2000 Elsevier Science Exceptional Quality and High Scholarly Impact award. His 1989 article, ”Reification and Realism in Marketing: in Defense of Reason,” won theJournal of Macromarketing Charles C. Slater Award. For his contributions to theory and science in marketing, he received the 1986 Paul D. Converse Award from the American Marketing Association, the 1987 Outstanding Marketing Educator Award from the Academy of Marketing Science, and the 1992 American Marketing Association/Richard D. Irwin Distinguished Marketing Educator Award.     

When consumers complain: A path analysis of the key antecedents of consumer complaint response estimates

When do consumers complain? This study probes this question by developing a conceptual framework that includes multiple theoretical perspectives, empirically testing a portion of the proposed model, and using dissatisfaction/complaint data from three different service industries. The hypothesized model uses multidimensional consumer complaint response estimates including voice, private, and third-party responses as dependent variables. Results support several proposed relationships, provide a high level of explained variance, and indicate a moderating role for dissatisfaction intensity. The complaint response estimates are characterized by disparate influence pathways, and expectancy value judgments emerge as critical determinants with positive and negative crossover effects. Attitude toward complaining is more dominant under low dissatisfaction intensity than it is under the high dissatisfaction condition. Important differences emerge across service categories. Implications of this work for managers and researchers in understanding when consumers complain are enumerated.     

Correction to: Earnings announcement return extrapolation

Review of Accounting Studies - A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11142-021-09605-9     

The competitive solution and the health care problems of today

Mark Pauly claims that a "competitive" health care system will solve the health care cost crisis. This article examines how well the competitive solution deals with the five central problems of the health care system: (1) almost universal lack of adequate health insurance for nursing homes and home care; (2) Medicaid's penurious approach to payment for health services for the poor; (3) the emergence of a dual health care system, especially for children; (4) the entrenched waste and inefficiency of the health care system; and (5) consumers' inability to judge the quality of health care. The competitive solution does not eliminate any of these problems--and may not even improve some of them.     

Multi-Dimensional Procurement Auctions for Power Reserves: Robust Incentive-Compatible Scoring and Settlement Rules

System operators in the electricity industry purchase reserve capacity in a procurement auction in which suppliers offer two-part bids, one part for making capacity available and another part for supplying incremental energy when called. Key ingredients of an efficient auction design are the scoring rule for comparing bids, and the settlement rule for paying accepted bids. We use the principle of incentive compatibility to establish that very simple rules suffice. In particular, the scoring rule uses only the capacity part of the bid, and energy supplies are paid the spot price. This is the design adopted in California.     

Cost Heterogeneity and the Potential Savings from Market-Based Policies

Policy makers and analysts are often faced with situations where it is unclear whether market-based instruments hold real promise of reducing costs, relative to conventional uniform standards. We develop analytic expressions that can be employed with modest amounts of information to estimate the potential cost savings associated with market-based policies, with an application to the environmental policy realm. These simple formulae can identify instruments that merit more detailed investigation. We illustrate the use of these results with an application to nitrogen oxides control by electric utilities in the United States.     

The tax (dis)advantage of a firm issuing options on its own stock

It is common for firms to issue or purchase options on the firm's own stock. Examples include convertible bonds, warrants, call options as employee compensation, and the sale of put options as part of share repurchase programs. This paper shows that option positions with implicit borrowing—such as put sales and call purchases—are tax-disadvantaged relative to the equivalent synthetic option with explicit borrowing. Conversely, option positions with implicit lending—such as warrants—are tax-advantaged. I also show that firms are better off from a tax perspective issuing bifurcated convertible bonds—bonds plus warrants—rather than an otherwise equivalent standard convertible.     

Cost Structures and Nash Play in Repeated Cournot Games

This paper reports an experiment designed to assess the effects of a rotation in the marginal cost curve on convergence in a repeated Cournot triopoly. Increasing the cost curve's slope both reduces the serially-undominated set to the Nash prediction, and increases the peakedness of earnings. We observe higher rates of Nash equilibrium play in the design with the steeper marginal cost schedule, but only when participants are also rematched after each decision. Examination of response patterns suggests that the treatment with a steeper marginal cost curve and with a re-matching of participants across periods induces the selection of Nash Consistent responses.     

Tofacitinib in the treatment of moderate-to-severe rheumatoid arthritis: a cost-effectiveness analysis compared with adalimumab in Taiwan

Aims: Tofacitinib is an oral Janus kinase inhibitor for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This analysis investigated the cost-effectiveness of the second-line treatment with tofacitinib, compared with adalimumab, both plus methotrexate (MTX), in patients with moderate-to-severe RA and an inadequate response to the first-line MTX, from a Taiwan National Health Insurance Administration perspective.

Materials and methods: A patient-level simulation model was used to project lifetime costs and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). Base-case analysis compared second-line treatment with tofacitinib 5?mg twice daily plus MTX vs adalimumab 40?mg every 2?weeks plus MTX. Patients switched or discontinued treatment due to a lack or loss of effectiveness or a serious adverse event. Efficacy was measured by change in Health Assessment Questionnaire-Disability Index (HAQ-DI) score. HAQ-DI scores were used to predict mortality and resource utilization, and were mapped onto utility values to estimate QALYs. Efficacy and safety data were derived from clinical trials and other secondary sources. Uncertainty in model parameters was explored using one-way deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses.

Results: Patients gained 0.09 more QALYs with second-line tofacitinib plus MTX compared with adalimumab plus MTX (5.13 vs 5.04, respectively) at an additional cost of New Taiwan Dollars (NT$) 12,881. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was NT$143,122/QALY. One-way sensitivity analysis confirmed the base-case result was robust.

Limitations: The lack of available clinical data, particularly for HAQ-DI scores, may introduce some bias in the analysis. No patients were in an early stage of RA, which may limit the generalizability of these results. Base-case results from our study are not necessarily generalizable to countries with healthcare systems that differ considerably from Taiwan.

Conclusions: From a payer perspective, second-line treatment with tofacitinib plus MTX is a cost-effective treatment strategy, compared with adalimumab plus MTX, in patients with moderate-to-severe RA in Taiwan.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00853385.