Relationship marketing,audience retention and performing arts organisation viability

Marketing strategy in performing arts organisations has become particularly important in the increasingly competitive environment in which the arts operate. Since the late 1980s there has been a necessary shift in focus to audience development away from product development. This change in focus is being encouraged to ensure the long‐term viability of performing arts organisations (PAOs) and micro‐economic reform. While government reports have recommended strategies aimed at building audience‐based recognition, this is an expensive approach for many PAOs and does not produce short‐term returns. Little attention has been paid to building enduring relationships with existing audiences as a way of having a more dramatic impact on PAOs' long‐term viability. This paper explores this theme through relationship marketing and the implication of retaining existing audiences. The paper identifies the changing cultural environment which has led to the importance of marketing. It then explains the concepts of relationship marketing and its pertinence to PAOs' viability by presenting a loyalty ladder. The structure is modelled as a dynamic conceptualisation of the relationships (audience and organisation) to assist arts managers to decide whether to focus their efforts on catching or keeping customers to maximise earned income. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

Firm relocation and site selection in suburban municipalities

This paper develops a model of the site choice decision of relocating firms in seven single-digit SIC industries. Hypotheses are tested using data on firms which have moved from Milwaukee City to its suburbs between 1964 and 1974. The industries considered are: construction; manufacturing; transportation, communications, and public utilities; wholesale trade; retail trade; finance, insurance and real estate; and services. While this problem has been examined for manufacturing with limited success, the results here are encouraging. The results show that agglomeration economies and an available labor force are important influences in the site choice among suburban locations for firms in all industries. Fiscal variables are at best only of secondary significance in the choice among suburban municipalities.     

Dual Bond Ratings: A Test of the Certification Function of Rating Agencies

Bond researchers have recently observed that issues with split ratings have yields more closely resembling the yields on bonds with the lower of the two ratings. This evidence could lead researchers to question why an issuer ever obtains more than one rating in an environment where two ratings, when split, can never reduce yields, whereas two ratings, when split, can increase yields. This paper explores the rating function in a certification framework and concludes that investors value a second rating. Bond issues with two identical ratings have yields significantly less than issues receiving that rating from only one rating agency.     

DIVESTITURE TO UNIT MANAGERS AND SHAREHOLDER WEALTH

The impact on shareholder wealth from selling units to management is examined. The two-day announcement period average abnormal return for parent firms divesting units to managers of those units is positive (0.80 percent) and significant. On average, the impact on shareholder wealth of parent firms divesting assets to managers of the unit is similar to the shareholder wealth effect for divestiture to third parties.     

Beyond Agency and Structure: Triple-Loop Learning

With the demise of Andersen, LLP and new legislation that puts an end to self-governance in public accounting, the effectiveness of current models of accounting ethics have been seriously called into question. We argue that the profession suffers from fundamental limitations in its ethical framework that makes it impossible to effectively address ongoing ethical problems. The dominant representation of professional behavior is an agency model of ethics, in which the ultimate responsibility for identifying and dealing with ethical dilemmas resides with the individual. We argue that structural forces such as control over resources, meaning systems, and community norms and values also have a strong influence on the actions of accountants and that these must also be considered. The recent legitimation crisis has forced the accounting profession and its constituencies to begin to recognize and address the structural aspects of ethics as they enable and constrain action. We propose a framework based on structuration theory and learning theory that allows for systematic, multi-level investigation of the structural forces that cause ethical dilemmas to arise and to be recognized and that influence the manner in which they are analyzed and resolved. This framework should be capable of continual critique and reconfiguration as environmental conditions change.     

BAYESIAN STATE SPACE MODELS IN MACROECONOMETRICS

State space models play an important role in macroeconometric analysis and the Bayesian approach has been shown to have many advantages. This paper outlines recent developments in state space modelling applied to macroeconomics using Bayesian methods. We outline the directions of recent research, specifically the problems being addressed and the solutions proposed. After presenting a general form for the linear Gaussian model, we discuss the interpretations and virtues of alternative estimation routines and their outputs. This discussion includes the Kalman filter and smoother, and precision-based algorithms. As the advantages of using large models have become better understood, a focus has developed on dimension reduction and computational advances to cope with high-dimensional parameter spaces. We give an overview of a number of recent advances in these directions. Many models suggested by economic theory are either non-linear or non-Gaussian, or both. We discuss work on the particle filtering approach to such models as well as other techniques that use various approximations – to either the time state and measurement equations or to the full posterior for the states – to obtain draws.     

Automation and inequality with taxes and transfers

Declines in low-skill labour shares are reviewed, and a stylised model is constructed to examine their determinants and future implications. A retrospective analysis of US shocks suggests that technological change has contributed more to raising income inequality and the wealth to GDP ratio than other changes. An anticipated future twist away from low-skill labour toward the capital, combined with population growth, risks high unemployment rates. Productivity growth at twice the pace since 1990 limits this, though inequality persists. Analysis shows that a generalisation of the US ‘earned income tax credit’ system with consumption tax outperforms alternatives of the ‘universal basic income’.     

Engineering the revolution? Imagining the role of new digital technologies in infrastructure work futures

Contemporary imaginations of the impact of new digital technologies (NDTS) are dominated by utopian visions of a ‘revolution’ in productivity and efficiency, contrasted with dystopian views of declines of work and human skills, and distrust of artificial intelligence's efficacy. This article explores imaginations of digital futures in the infrastructure sector through case study research of a global engineering organisation. Drawing on a practice approach, a typology is generated from interviews with engineers and managers to reveal that three broad imaginations compete within the organisation: technodeterminism; technoscepticism; and human-centric, all with utopian and dystopian variants. Clear relationships exist between the diverse imaginary positions taken by employees with their different roles, biographies and levels of the organisational agency. Those with relatively higher levels of agency tended towards technocentric utopianism while those with lower levels of agency displayed a resolutely dystopian version. Conversely, while the outward-facing image of the organisation promotes a utopian imagination of a technologically driven future, those with the very highest levels of the organisational agency remain technosceptic. This means that real change is slow. However, an encouraging manifesto for the future is suggested by those who are innovating NDTS to reimagine alternative infrastructure futures through improved human-centric social outcomes.