What can we learn from Switzerland?

The collapse of Swissair will be a good litmus test for what is advanced here. Although it is too soon to tell at the time of writing (October 2001) it would be extremely uncharacteristic for the company to be rescued with public funds, despite its hugely symbolic nature as an erstwhile source of national pride.     

Rethinking the Role of Value Communication in Business Corporations from a Sociological Perspective – Why Organisations Need Value-Based Semantics to Cope with Societal and Organisational Fuzziness

Why is it so plausible that business organisations in contemporary society use values in their communication? In order to answer this question, a sociological, system theoretical approach is applied which approaches values not pre-empirically as invisible drivers for action but as observable semantics that form organisational behaviour. In terms of empirical material, it will be shown that business organisations resort to a communication of values whenever uncertainty or complexity is very high. Inevitably, value semantics are applied in organisations first when the speakers are uncertain about which stakeholders to whom they have to address (uncertainty) or when different stakeholder groups have to be addressed simultaneously (complexity); second, when the identity of the organisation has to be described; and third, when future strategic options that cannot be expressed by quantitative terms have to be communicated. Values accordingly play a role in organisational practice when certain aspects are indeterminate. Therefore, they are a means for organisations to communicate under fuzzy circumstances. On the basis of these findings, new approaches to value management can now be formulated.     

The Great Recession of 2008: Impact on the Bangladeshi economy and international business implications

This article examines the current global financial crisis (GFC) and its impact on Bangladesh's economy and discusses international business implications for the country within an institution‐based analytical framework. The article finds that the macroeconomy of Bangladesh has shown remarkable resilience in the face of this massive global crisis, and the impact has been minimal and limited to a moderate slowdown of the economy The country thus could be poised for taking advantage of international business opportunities as the global economy begins to recover. Further, JPMorgan's Frontier Five and Goldman Sachs's Next Eleven classification of Bangladesh indicates enormous potential for growth and development. The article suggests that the Bangladeshi diaspora could serve as a connecting hub so that “brain gain” could be achieved through labor migration and remittances. Strategic alliances among home and foreign firms are also important to the future capacity building of the country. However, strategic management in the form of further institutional, structural, and policy reforms are critical in enabling the country to develop an international‐business‐friendly environment conducive to taking advantage of evolving global opportunities and realizing its full potential. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Performing Under Pressure: Winning Customers Through Improvisation in Team Selling

The sales presentation is one of the most challenging and dynamic aspect of the sales process. Often-times, the presentation is composed of teams. The purpose of this study is to examine how improvisation manifests itself in the context of the sales team presentation. Utilizing the theoretical foundations of team dynamics and relationships, unplanned behavior, and emotional intelligence, a model of sales team improvisation is developed. A two-phase research design was employed via qualitative in-depth interviews from buyers and sellers followed by a quantitative survey of experienced sales team professionals. Our results find that improvisation impacts the relationship between emotional intelligence and team presentation performance outcomes. Although team selling is common in practice, a dearth of research exists in the sales literature. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on team dynamics and emotion in selling. Additionally, this study is one of the first to specifically investigate improvisation in the high pressure context of sales team presentations.     

Exploring safety impacts of pedestrian-crossing configurations at signalized junctions on urban roads with public transport routes

This study explored the impacts of pedestrian-crossing configurations and other design features, on accident occurrences at signalized junctions situated on central public transport routes (PTRs) of urban arterials. Statistical tests and negative-binomial regression models were applied to identify factors affecting accidents and to examine accident numbers of the PTR junctions as opposed to comparison-sites. At the PTR junctions, a consistent impact of pedestrian-crossing configurations on accidents was found, where a gradated-crossing with mixed-shifting is the least safe. Four-legged junctions tend to higher accident numbers relative to the three-legged junctions. PTR junctions are characterized by higher accident numbers, related to comparison-sites, when controlling for other design characteristics. The study findings may assist in selecting preferable design solutions while planning PTR.     

Making a first impression as a start-up: Strategies to overcome low initial trust perceptions in digital innovation adoption

High failure rates of digital innovations by start-ups indicate that consumers' initial trust perceptions are make-or-break for their survival. Hence, start-ups have to design adequate business models to manage consumers' initial trust perceptions of digital innovations. Five experiments explore how start-ups can signal trustworthiness in order to overcome low initial trust perceptions and boost adoption. We find three specific design strategies of start-ups' digital business models – customer ratings, benefit communication, and revenue model – to be effective to overcome low initial trust perceptions and to increase adoption of digital innovations. The findings demonstrate that initial trust serves as a critical mediator in the relationship between these design strategies and consumers' adoption intentions. Additionally, the chosen revenue model has differential effects on privacy concerns, which mediate the relationship between revenue model and initial trust. The present empirical insights help start-ups to craft business model design strategies for successful digital innovation launch.     

The UK Gender Pay Gap 1997–2015: What Is the Role of the Public Sector?

The Labour Force Survey is used to examine the influence of sector on the UK gender pay gap 1997–2015. The assessment is twofold: first comparing gender pay gaps within sectors and second through identifying the contribution of the concentration of women in the public sector to the overall gender pay gap. The long‐term narrowing of the gender pay gap, which predominately reflects relative improvements in women's productivity‐related characteristics, is found to stall in 2010 within each sector. This is considered in the context of claims that public sector austerity represents a critical turning point in progress toward gender equality at work.     

The cross-section of equity returns and assets’ fundamental cash-flow risk

The decomposition of consumption beta into a component driven by assets’ cash-flow news and one related to assets’ discount-rate news reveals that macroeconomic risks embodied in cash flows largely account for the cross-sectional dynamics of average stock returns. Empirically, we find that differences in expected excess returns between low book-to-market and high book-to-market portfolios are associated with differences in their cash-flow betas, and thus reflect macroeconomic, especially consumption-related risks. This result holds true for a broad set of consumption-based asset pricing models. In addition, the results indicate that the risk premium on equity markets is primarily driven by the exposure of assets’ cash-flow components to the cyclical variability of durable consumption goods.