Winning at all costs: An exploration of bottom‐line mentality,Machiavellianism, and organisational citizenship behaviour

This study seeks to advance the bottom‐line mentality literature by exploring an antecedent and outcome of employee bottom‐line mentality. We build and test a moderated‐mediation model by arguing that the personality trait of Machiavellianism promotes an employee's adoption of a bottom‐line mentality. Moreover, drawing on trait activation theory, we argue that this relationship is fully activated when the employee perceives that the organisation endorses a bottom‐line mentality. To expand our theoretical model, we also suggest that employee bottom‐line mentality inhibits organisational citizenship behaviour directed towards co‐workers. Lastly, we investigate whether an employee's perception of an organisation's bottom‐line mentality conditionally moderates the indirect effect of Machiavellianism on organisational citizenship behaviour directed towards co‐workers through the mediated mechanism of employee bottom‐line mentality. Our theoretical model is tested across two distinct studies. Study 1, a field study conducted within a variety of organisations, provides evidence for our initial predictions (Hypotheses 1 and 2). Study 2, a multisource field study conducted in multiple industries, replicates and extends the findings from Study 1 by providing evidence for the entire moderated‐mediation model. We find support for our hypothesised model across both studies. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, and suggestions for future research are identified.     

Competitive forces affecting capacity decisions of South Dakota feedlot operations

A strategic management framework for the analysis of small and medium size firm behavior within a fragmented industry structure is developed. This literature predicts falling profits in the long run will drive out less efficient firms as the industry consolidates. This literature also predicts successful firms will engage in value-added production and/or adopt a cost reduction strategy to gain a competitive advantage through the development of niche markets. This framework is applied to the feedlot industry in South Dakota. A survey was conducted to collect feedlot operator responses on future capacity decisions. Empirical analysis identified linkages between future capacity decisions and competitive forces hypothesized in the agricultural management literature, which are responsible for driving consolidation in the U.S. feedlot industry. The survey also collected information on value-added production and management practices. These data were used to test the “niche market” hypotheses discussed in the strategic management literature. The analysis provides evidence that firms that engage in value-added practices have a lower probability of indicating they will decrease the capacity of their feedlot.     

The Green Solow model

We argue that a key empirical finding in environmental economics—the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC)—and the core model of modern macroeconomics—the Solow model—are intimately related. Once we amend the Solow model to incorporate technological progress in abatement, the EKC is a necessary by product of convergence to a sustainable growth path. We explain why current methods for estimating an EKC are likely to fail; provide an alternative empirical method directly tied to our theory; and estimate our model on carbon emissions from 173 countries over the 1960–1998 period.     

Producing and Procuring Horticultural Crops with Chinese Characteristics: The Case of Northern China

The main goal of our paper is to understand what types of farmers have been able to participate in the horticultural revolution, how they interact with markets and how supply chains affect their production decisions and incomes. We also want to understand if the rise of supermarkets has changed supply chains. Our analysis uses spatially sampled data from 200 communities and 500 households in the Greater Beijing area. In contrast to fears of some researchers, we find small and poor farmers actively participate in the emergence of China’s horticulture economy. Moreover, there has been almost no penetration of modern wholesalers or retailers into rural communities.     

Why did the communist party reform in China,but not in the Soviet Union? The political economy of agricultural transition

The dramatic transition from Communism to market economies across Asia and Europe started in the Chinese countryside in the 1970s. Since then more than a billion of people, many of them very poor, have been affected by radical reforms in agriculture. However, there are enormous differences in the reform strategies that countries have chosen. This paper presents a set of arguments to explain why countries have chosen different reform policies.     

Knowledge translation and exchange in the Canadian microbial food safety system: A quantitative assessment of researcher awareness,attitude, and activities with government policymakers

Knowledge translation and exchange (KTE) is a process through which research evidence can more effectively inform decision making in policy and practice environments. A telephone survey of Canadian microbial food safety researchers was conducted in 2009 to examine aspects of researcher KTE activities with government policymakers. Overall, researcher awareness of and engagement in KTE activities was high, although engagement was mainly through end-of-research dissemination activities rather than throughout the research process (integrated knowledge translation) and engagement in some high-quality KTE activities was low. Government researchers were significantly more likely to engage in KTE activities with federal policymakers and did so with greater frequency than non-government researchers.     

An exploration of livestock-development policies in western China

Limited agricultural land potential, poorly integrated markets and low rural incomes are all interrelated problems for agricultural households in western China. Within the wide range of development options available, this paper focuses on the impact of forage-growing subsidies and reducing livestock feed trade barriers on agricultural household incomes and enterprise mixes in the Qingyang Prefecture of Gansu Province, China. A heterogeneous-agent model is used to assess the local consequences of these two policies. Data from a survey conducted in 2009 are used as inputs into the model. The results indicate that a simultaneous reduction in livestock feed trade barriers and an introduction of forage-growing subsidies lifts net household incomes by approximately 10%. Different scenarios have different impacts on incomes, land allocation decisions and grain purchases, with heterogeneity also found among household income responses. Livestock-development policies have the potential to lift household incomes however there are tradeoffs between income and grain self-sufficiency.     

Gender,borrowing patterns and self-employment: some evidence for England

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we try to identify whether women have different borrowing patterns from men when trying to get into self-employment along with the factors that explain these different propensities. Second, we try to quantify the impact of these differences in borrowing propensity on women’s willingness to become self-employed. The empirical analysis is carried out on a sample of individuals drawn from the English Household Survey of Entrepreneurship, 2003. Our results show that (1) women are less likely than men to seek external finance and that (2) gender differences in access to finance are affecting adversely the transition into self-employment.     

Moral Stress: Considering the Nature and Effects of Managerial Moral Uncertainty

To better illuminate aspects of stress that are relevant to the moral domain, we present a definition and theoretical model of “moral stress.” Our definition posits that moral stress is a psychological state born of an individual’s uncertainty about his or her ability to fulfill relevant moral obligations. This definition assumes a self-and-others relational basis for moral stress. Accordingly, our model draws from a theory of the self (identity theory) and a theory of others (stakeholder theory) to suggest that this uncertainty arises as a manager faces competing claims for limited resources from multiple stakeholders and/or across multiple role identities. We further propose that the extent to which the manager is attentive to the moral aspects of the claims (i.e., moral attentiveness) moderates these effects. We identify several consequences of managerial moral stress and discuss theoretical, empirical, and practical implications of our approach. Most importantly, we argue that this work paves an important path for considering stress through the lens of morality.