JAPANESE ANTITRUST: RECONCILING THEORY AND EVIDENCE

Japanese antitrust law exempts a variety of vertical and horizontal restraints that remain closely regulated in the United States. Despite these dissimilar antitrust environments, however, market concentration, firms' exercise of market power, and deadweight loss from monopoly are highly similar in the two countries. The hypothesis that antitrust alters the relative mix of price to non-price competition rather than the absolute level that competition assumes might explain this empirical puzzle. Thus, this paper studies Japanese antitrust exemptions for resale price maintenance and export cartel associations to illustrate how adopting vertical and horizontal restraints has allowed Japanese firms to substitute towards forms of non-price competition better tailored to industry characteristics.     

Reviews

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Effects of an Employee Volunteering Program on the Work Force: The ABN-AMRO Case

One of the new ways used by companies to demonstrate their social responsibility is to encourage employee volunteering, whereby employees engage in socially beneficial activities on company time, while being paid by the company. The reasoning is that it is good for employee motivation (internal effects) and good for the company reputation (external effects). This article reports an empirical investigation of the internal effects of employee volunteering conducted amongst employees of the Dutch ABN-AMRO bank. The study showed that (a) socio-demographic characteristics from employee volunteers markedly differ from those of non-volunteers and community volunteers and (b) employee volunteering seems to have positive effects on attitudes and behavior towards the organization.     

The Effects of Locus of Control on Word‐of‐mouth Communication

Word‐of‐mouth can be a powerful tool for and against marketing a brand. The effect of personality can have a significant effect on an individual's word‐of‐mouth behaviour. One of the most popular personality constructs is the locus of control. This research studied the influence of the locus of control on consumer word‐of‐mouth communications. The results showed that individuals who scored high on their internal locus of control were more likely to engage in word‐of‐mouth communication with their out‐groups. In addition, individuals who scored high on their external locus of control were more likely to engage in word‐of‐mouth communication with their in‐group. Out‐groups are defined as people with a weaker ties relationship, while in‐groups are defined as people with a stronger ties relationship (i.e. close friends and family). These findings would help marketers in directing their promotional programmes more effectively.     

The Relationship Between Leaders’ Group-Oriented Values and Follower Identification with and Endorsement of Leaders: The Moderating Role of Leaders’ Group Membership

In this article, we hypothesize that leaders who display group-oriented values (i.e., values that focus on the welfare of the group rather than on the self-interest of the leader) will be evaluated more positively by their followers than leaders who do not display group-oriented values. Importantly, we expected these effects to be more pronounced for leaders who are ingroup members (i.e., stemming from the same social group as their followers) than for leaders who are outgroup members (i.e., leaders stemming from a different social group than their followers). We tested our hypotheses in two studies. Results of a field study (N = 95) showed the expected relationship between leaders’ group-oriented values and followers’ identification with their leaders. A scenario study (N = 137) replicated the results and extended it to followers’ endorsement of their leaders. Overall, these findings suggest that displaying group-oriented values pays off more for ingroup than for outgroup leaders.     

The Social Identity Approach to Effective Leadership: An Overview and Some Ideas on Cross-Cultural Generalizability

When employees identify with the groups and organizations they work for, this typically has positive implications for work-related attitudes and behaviors. The present paper provides a focused overview of the social identity approach to leadership and some ideas on its cross-cultural generalizability. To this end, we will first outline the basic tenets of the social identity approach and summarize the relations of organizational identification with work-related variables. Then, we will discuss the role of social identity-related concepts for effective leadership. In particular, we will present empirical studies on the following three aspects: (1) the transfer of leader identification onto their followers, (2) the role of leader prototypicality, and (3) the ways for leaders to actively manage the identities of the groups they lead. Finally, we will provide some suggestions on how to implement the principles of identity management into practice and offer suggestions for future research, with a special focus on China.