The service imperative

Services dominate the world's established economies (such as those of the US, Germany, and Finland) and are becoming increasingly important in developing economies, including those of China and India. Yet most companies, national governments, and universities do not put much energy into service research, innovation, or education. This ironic juxtaposition of facts has led us, along with others, to promote a focus on service research and service innovation across companies and institutions. We call this the “service imperative.” In this article, we present our view of the service imperative as a burning platform that is giving birth to many hopeful directions for the future of the global economy. We believe that companies and nations that embrace the service imperative will prosper and benefit, as will individuals who do the same. We also contend that widespread embracing of the service imperative can lead to improved quality of life for people worldwide.     

The price of peace in the household: A commentary on “The Price of Unconditional Love: Consumer Decisions Concerning High-Dollar Veterinary Care”

Brockman et al. [Brockman, Beverly K, Taylor, Valerie A, Brockman, Christopher M. The price of unconditional love: consumer decisions concerning high-dollar veterinary care. J Bus Res Forthcom 2007] use an interpretive approach to investigate a consumer decision made under emotional circumstances. Unlike mundane purchases of food and household appliances, emotional consumer decisions that affect the entire family are ripe for conflict. This commentary highlights gaps in our understanding of household decision making that the work of Brockman et al. suggests and proposes ways in which new insights are achievable in established streams of research.     

Joint Estimation of Multiple CVM Scenarios under a Double Bounded Questioning Format

Contingent valuation surveys frequently ask the same respondent for willingness to pay (WTP) for either different programs or different levels of provision of a single program. When multiple scenarios are considered by the respondent, the errors in the estimates of WTP are likely to be correlated across scenarios. Failing to account for correlation may lead to erroneous inferences concerning differences in WTP. This paper presents a technique that can be used to jointly estimate WTP for multiple scenarios proposed within a survey when the double-bounded questioning format is used. Monte Carlo simulations are employed to show that estimates derived from the joint model provide lower parameter variances as well as tighter confidence intervals surrounding WTP. The model is used to estimate WTP values for data collected in telephone interviews of California residents concerning WTP for fire reduction programs in Oregon and California. Variance properties of these estimates are shown to be similar to those estimated using simulated data.     

Benchmarking the performance of recommended allocations to equities,bonds, and cash by international investment houses

We conduct performance tests of the recommended asset allocations made by a panel of international investment houses (the “Houses”) from 1982 through 2005. We compare the returns and Sharpe Ratios from the recommended-weight portfolio against those of several benchmark portfolios and to a set of 10,000 returns and Sharpe Ratios from randomly shuffled-weight and shuffled-weight change portfolios. We find that the Houses generally fail to outperform the benchmarks. The shuffled-weight change benchmark exhibits a robust “style-preserving” property in that the average portfolio standard deviation is nearly equal to the portfolio standard deviation from the actual recommended weights.     

Strategic ambidexterity and performance in international new ventures

We drew on the literature on ambidextrous organizations to propose that international new ventures (INVs) that concurrently pursue paradoxical pairs of strategies—known as the capability of strategic ambidexterity—can achieve superior performance. These paradoxical strategies are: (a) few investments and many countries, and (b) standardization and innovation. Our hypotheses were tested using data from 70 Canadian INVs. This is the first study that attempts to theoretically and empirically link ambidexterity and INV performance. Our findings suggest that INVs that are capable of pursuing and implementing paradoxical strategies achieve superior performance over those lacking such capability. Copyright © 2008 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Incorporating Service-Learning into the Economics Curriculum

Service-learning courses provide students the opportunity to apply and relate economic concepts and theories to real-world experiences within the community and to reflect on the relationship between theory and practice. One form of service-learning is student-based instruction, which involves college students teaching economics in the neighboring community, such as to high school students. The author provides a detailed application of the student-based instruction model of service-learning to an Economics of Race and Gender course at a liberal arts college. Upon completion of the project, students completed a survey about their service-learning experiences. The results indicated that the service-learning project enhanced student learning and created a more enriching course experience.

Occupational Segregation by Race and Sex in Brazil, 1989-2001

Race and sex differentials in labor market outcomes in Brazil appear substantial, phenomena often tied to occupational segregation. This paper presents an array of Duncan indices of dissimilarity to investigate the magnitude and contours of occupational differentiation in Brazil, as well as changes in the recent past, constructed from Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicilios (PNAD) microdata for 1989 and 2001. Findings include the facts that measurable occupational differentation by sex is over twice as high as that by race and that differentiation on both counts is highest among people 35 and older and outside the Northeastern region. Occupational differentiation by race appears comparable among women and men, but may be higher among women if accurately measured. Racial differentiation grows with education, while sexual segregation declines. Differentiation has declined modestly since 1989 in almost all categories except by race among younger people, men and the most educated.

Response to the Comment: “What is Heterodox Economics? Conversations with Historians of Economic Thought”

The comment to “What is Heterodox Economics? Conversations with Historians of Economic Thought” spotlights critical issues in the possibility and probability of articulation and proposes a compelling argument in the explanation of the “inability of heterodoxy to define itself...” The core argument suggests that heterodox groups of economic thought cannot successfully articulate the nature of its varied programs until it recognizes and articulates the metaphysically and ontologically different system of knowledge which serves as the foundation for heterodox thought.     

Mentoring: A Path to Prosocial Behavior

Public accounting firms can build integrity within their organizations through early detection of fraud. One way to reduce and detect fraud is to encourage whistleblowing as a prosocial behavior. We explore the impact of mentoring on intention to report fraud. A survey with 120 responses from the US public accountants suggests that quality mentoring relationships, a common feature in the profession, and caring ethical climate positively relate to internal reporting of fraud. Two intermediate variables, trust and affective commitment, mediate these effects. Mentor-relationship quality also increases perceptions of caring ethical climate. The study contributes to two bodies of research by (1) finding extended benefits from mentoring, beyond those typically discussed in academic literature; and (2) identifying a previously unexplored firm intervention capable of positively influencing prosocial behavior and combating fraud.