Antecedents of early terminations in franchising: franchisor versus franchisee cancelations

Franchisors capitalize on franchisee entrepreneurial capacity to grow. However, enabling franchisees to develop their ventures may damage system consistency. This dilemma makes conflict particularly prevalent in the field of franchising. Nevertheless, prior research has reported an incomplete picture of factors leading to serious disagreement and premature termination in franchise partnerships. We address this gap, first, by adding the entrepreneurial autonomy of franchisees as a relevant but underexplored source of conflict and, second, by providing a more fine-grained analysis of franchisors’ versus franchisees’ drivers of termination. Specifically, we focus on the controversial issues of pricing and local advertising policies and analyze how expanding franchisees’ entrepreneurial autonomy in these decision areas is related to contract terminations depending on who ended the relationship (the franchisor or a franchisee). The study also highlights less controversial requirements and conditions (e.g., upfront investments, franchisor experience …) that may reduce early terminations. Our empirical objectives are met by using survey data from a sample of franchisor companies. The results show how the performance outcomes of entrepreneurial autonomy differ depending on the decision area in which it is exercised. Results also throw light on the consequences of various critical franchise policies that may be masked if both types of termination (franchisors vs. franchisees) are considered together.     

New approaches in transportation planning: happiness and transport economics

The measurement of social and psychological phenomena has been advanced by recent progress in the fields of behavioural economics and hedonic psychology. In addition, the increased interest in understanding how individuals perceive their own quality of life, has led to investigating the relations between various macro and individual level variables, generically subsumed as happiness. For many “happiness is considered to be an ultimate goal in life” and it plays an important role in the way people perceive the overall society they live in. Therefore, social scientists and behavioural economists are now stressing the importance of well-being measures, related to people’s evaluations of their quality of life in addition to economic indicators. In the transport sector, project evaluation is mainly based on cost–benefit analyses using economic indicators. However, any provided transportation project/service impacts the quality of the travel experience, the well-being of travellers and their travel behaviour. Competitiveness of modes may be also affected by the promotion of derived or experienced travellers’ well-being. Thus, existing behavioural travel choice models should be enhanced with regards to their behavioural validity incorporating the impacts of travelling happiness/ satisfaction. This study aims to understand and model the impact of stated (anticipated) happiness in the decision choice between a private transport mode—car, and a public transport mode—metro.     

Governance and Timber Harvests

Resource economics theory implies that risks associated with weak governance have an ambiguous impact on extraction, with the net impact depending on the relative strengths of depletion and investment effects. Previous empirical studies have found that improved governance tends to reduce deforestation but to raise oil production. Here, we present evidence that the marginal impact of improved governance on timber harvests in developing countries during 1984–2006 was nonmonotonic. It tended to raise harvests in countries with weaker governance but to reduce harvests in countries with stronger governance. This nonmonotonic impact occurred for both an index of governmental integrity (corruption, bureaucracy quality, law and order) and an index of governmental stability. A simulation of hypothetical increases in these governance indices to the maximum 2006 values observed in the sample predicted that improved governance would reduce harvests in most countries but could raise harvests in some, with large increases occurring in countries with the weakest governance.     

Partner Empowerment and Relationship Failure in Franchising

Franchisors must empower franchisees to take decisions on a package of peripheral elements in response to pressure for local adaptations and for entrepreneurial autonomy. However, little is known about which specific elements should be decentralized and to what extent adaptation of such elements affects disputes between franchisor and franchisees. This study explores these issues by analyzing which decision rights should be franchisees’ responsibility to reduce early terminations instigated by the franchisor. The results show that delegating decision rights on local advertising and personnel reduces early terminations while delegation of pricing tends to increase them, regardless of the size of the system. Interestingly, successful delegation in other decision‐areas is contingent on the brand‐name value. More specifically, only larger chains seem to benefit from delegating assortment and decoration decisions.     

Benefit Transfer in Europe: How Reliable Are Transfers between Countries?

The benefits for specific health impacts related to air and water quality were measured in simultaneous contingent valuation surveys conducted in five different European countries. Consistent inter-country differences in willingness to pay to avoid ill health episodes could not be explained by measurable differences in individual characteristics. International transfer of unit values resulted in an average transfer error of 38%. Accounting for measurable differences among countries in health status, income and other demographic measures, either through ad hoc adjustments to the transferred values or through value function transfer, did not improve transfer performance.     

A ‘Natural Experiment’ Approach to Contingent Valuation of Private and Public UV Health Risk Reduction Strategies in Low and High Risk Countries

We present the results of a natural experiment to test how variations in exogenous risk levels affect resultant willingness to pay (WTP) for risk reduction. The case study presented considers WTP for reductions in the skin cancer risks associated with exposure to solar UV radiation. A common design contingent valuation survey is conducted in four countries, across which variation in geographical latitude and genetic mix mean that exogenous risks differ substantially. Survey respondents were presented with both a private and public good route for affecting risk reduction. In both cases, results confirm that once adjustment had been made for expected relationships with other covariates (such as income and risk averting behaviour), valuation responses for both goods conformed to expectations with the ordering of values across countries reflecting the ordering of scientifically established health risks. This suggests that links between values and objective health risks may be observed within such situations and provides a justification for continuing research into more natural representations of risk and risk reductions in order to yield consistent and robust measures of associated values.     

A possible explanation of the gender gap among accounting academics: evidence from the choice of research field

Despite the significant increase in the number of women in accounting research over past decades, the percentage of female full professors in accounting is still low. One of the problems may relate to the research area(s) they choose to specialize in. Is the relatively slow promotion of women due to their decision to concentrate in ‘nonmainstream’ fields of research? In this study, we collect data on 1,042 male and female accounting academics. Using the research interests declared on each academic web page, we find that accounting researchers show no significant gender differences in their choice of research fields. Hence, we conclude that the underpromotion of women cannot be attributed to their choice of ‘nonmainstream’ fields.     

Developing and validating an instrument for measuring managers’ attitudes toward older workers

Three studies were carried out to develop and validate an instrument for measuring managers’ attitudes toward older workers. In the first study we explore (a) managers’ attitudes toward older workers, and (b) retirees’ perceptions about their last experiences before retirement. In the second study, 51 items emerging from the first study and from the literature were developed. The corresponding questionnaire was then applied to a sample of 224 Portuguese managers who were also invited to make decisions in three scenarios involving younger and older workers. The third study replicated the second one with a sample of 249 Brazilian managers. The main findings are: (a) five types of managers’ attitudes toward older workers were identified (adaptability, value of older workers’ competencies, organizational conscientiousness, social capital/generosity and performance); (b) these attitudes predict how managers select older vs. younger workers in hiring and selecting employees to participate in training; (c) the empirical patterns identified in the Portuguese and Brazilian samples are similar; (d) in spite of recognizing positive qualities in older workers, managers discriminate against them; (e) managers develop different attitudinal profiles toward older workers, which has consequences for how they make decisions about those workers.     

Competing in taxes and investment under fiscal equalization

The paper considers a model of federation with two heterogeneous regions that try to attract the capital by competing in capital income taxes and public investment that enhance the productivity of capital. Regions' choices determine allocation of capital across the regions and their revenues under a tax sharing scheme. This framework allows for the examination of different approaches to fiscal equalization schemes [Boadway, R., Flatters, F., 1982. Efficiency and equalization payments in a federal system of government: a synthesis and extension of recent results, Canadian Journal of Economics 15, 613-633; Weingast, B.R., 2006. Second Generation Fiscal Federalism: Implication for Decentralized Democratic Governance and Economic Development, Working Paper, Hoover Institution, Stanford University]. We show that tax competition distorts (downwards) public investments and that the equalization grants discourage public investments with a little effect on equilibrium taxes. However, the equalization schemes remain beneficial not only for the federation and, under a low degree of regional asymmetry, also for each region.     

A systematic review of women's entrepreneurship and internationalization literature

There has been an increased interest in women's entrepreneurship research due to the changing sociocultural conditions in the global marketplace. Despite this trend, there is still a lack of understanding about the role women entrepreneurs play in the internationalization process of firms. The aim of this article is to systematically review the literature on women's entrepreneurship and internationalization by examining the trends in the research. A bibliometric analysis is conducted on articles in the Web of Science databases to understand which researchers are publishing the most and how they are related to other researchers in the field. In addition, a content analysis of the articles from the bibliometric analysis is conducted that reveals three main clusters from the research: (a) epistemological position and gender, (b) cultural and social reasons for the creation of businesses, and (c) motivations, business characteristics, and performance. From the bibliometric and content analysis, implications for policy makers and future research directions for women's entrepreneurship and internationalization patterns are stated.