Where is the opportunity without the customer? An integration of marketing activities, the entrepreneurship process, and institutional theory

Marketing and entrepreneurship have long been recognized as two key responsibilities of the firm. Despite their tight integration in practice, marketing and entrepreneurship as domains of scholarly inquiry have largely progressed within their respective disciplinary boundaries with minimal cross-disciplinary fertilization. Furthermore, although firms increasingly undertake their marketing and entrepreneurial activities across diverse settings, academe has provided little insight into how changes in the institutional environment may substantially alter the processes and outcomes of these undertakings. Herein, we integrate research on marketing activities, the entrepreneurship process, and institutional theory in an effort to address this gap. We first discuss market orientation as enhancing a firm??s opportunity recognition and innovation, whereas marketing mix decisions enhance opportunity exploitation. We then examine how entrepreneurship leads to innovation directed toward market orientation and marketing mix activities. Based on this foundation, we examine differences in marketing and entrepreneurship activities across institutional contexts.     

CSR Policies: Effects on Labour Productivity in Spanish Micro and Small Manufacturing Companies

Journal of Business Ethics - This paper analyses empirical evidence of efforts to enable Spanish micro and small manufacturing companies to boost their labour productivity rates through the...     

The crucial epoch: Essential knowledge for living in a world in transformation

Mankind is entering the most crucial epoch in its history. The global economic and socio-technical industrial system in place since World War II is coming to a close. What takes its place is up to mankind to decide. Drawing on current work in non-equilibrium thermodynamics, evolutionary biology, cybernetics and systems science theory, the author identifies crucial bifurcation epochs in human history where new biological species and human societies have evolved from the old, replacing themselves with better adapted successors. Although scientists speak of bifurcation as essentially random, human societies are able to exercise foresight and take purposeful action. At this critical juncture, as post-industrial civilization comes to an end, this is the choice that humanity is morally bound to exercise.     

Bureaucratic corruption and profit tax evasion

Firms may evade taxes on profits and can also avoid fulfilling legal restrictions on production activities by bribing bureaucrats. It is shown that the existence of tax evasion does not affect corruption activities at the firm level, while the budgetary repercussions of tax evasion induce less corruption. Policy measures which alter the gains or losses from corruption have a non-systematic impact on tax evasion behaviour.      

Taxes,Strikes and Wages

A union and a firm bargain about wage increases. The firm possesses private information about its revenues. A two-period screening model is used to derive equilibrium wage demands by the union and to calculate measures of strike activity. Changes in wage demands and dispute probabilities due to alterations in various taxes are analysed. A more progressive income tax, a lower level of income taxes and higher payroll taxes reduce wages and strike activity. Hence, tax policy can be used not only to affect wages and employment, but lso to influence strike incidence.     

Measurement Error in Access to Markets*

Microeconometric studies increasingly utilize travel times to markets as a determinant of economic behaviour. These studies typically use self‐reported measures from surveys, often characterized by measurement error. This paper is the first validation study of access to markets data. Unique data from Peru allow comparison of self‐reported variables with scientifically calculated variables. We investigate the determinants of the deviation between imputed and self‐reported data and show that it is non‐classical and dependent on observable socio‐economic variables. Our results suggest that studies using self‐reported measures of access may be estimating biased effects.     

Governance, organizational capabilities, and restructuring in transition economies

This paper focuses on the links between governance, firm capabilities and restructuring following the large-scale privatization process in Central and Eastern European transition economies using an integrative approach. Restructuring in these countries has been motivated by political and institutional changes and less so by market forces. Accordingly, political processes have produced political solutions such as “give-away” privatizations to insiders. These privatizations, in contrast to divestitures to outside owners, have realized less substantive restructuring because non-market incentives, such as too much managerial equity ownership, have created managerial entrenchment. In addition, we propose a connection between governance and organizational learning suggesting that learning is inhibited by excessive managerial ownership and lack of board knowledge regarding its oversight function. Furthermore, this entrenchment and poor board functioning may be perpetuated in financial-industrial groups, which have emerged as substitutes for market intermediaries in emerging economies. Thus, we propose that outside ownership involvement and the development of organizational capabilities may facilitate restructuring in the Central and Eastern European context. Our theoretical arguments are supported by case study evidence from transition economies.     

How Economic Incentives May Destroy Social,Ecological and Existential Values: The Case of Executive Compensation

Executive compensation has long been a prominent topic in the management literature. A main question that is also given substantial attention in the business ethics literature—even more so in the wake of the recent financial crisis—is whether increasing levels of executive compensation can be justified from an ethical point of view. Also, the relationship of executive compensation to instances of unethical behavior or outcomes has received considerable attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore the social, ecological, and existential costs of economic incentives, by discussing how relying on increasing levels of executive compensation may have an adverse effect on managerial performance in a broad sense. Specifically, we argue that one-dimensional economic incentives may destroy existential, social, and systemic values that influence the manager’s commitment to ensure responsible business conduct, and have negative spillover effects that may reduce the manager’s performance. There are well-documented findings that demonstrate that reliance on sources of extrinsic motivation (such as economic incentives) may displace intrinsic motivation. Our perspective is a holistic one, in the sense that we will explore the influence of sources of extrinsic motivation on the manager’s intrinsic commitment to different types of values. We will in particular investigate how it may influence the manager’s ethical reflection and behavior or lack thereof.