Adoption of Online Grocery Shopping: Personal or Household Characteristics?

This article analyzes how sociodemographic characteristics impact the adoption of online grocery shopping, and relies on the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability (MOA) model to explore what these sociodemographics actually capture and how they are linked with consumer motivations. The researchers exploit a survey among 468 customers of Belgian supermarket chain Colruyt. Their logistic regression shows that while variables at the personal level do affect adoption of the online channel, consumers’ motivations to adopt in fact lie on the household level. In particular, the effect of age disappears or becomes less strong when it is combined with household characteristics. An examination of respondents’ self-reported motivations confirms that age does not only capture a person’s ability to use the technology but also its usefulness for that person’s household, in that age is correlated with the presence of young children and the working situation in the household.     

Career mentoring in context: A multilevel study on differentiated career mentoring and career mentoring climate

This study explores how supervisor career mentoring contributes to contemporary organizational career development, which strives to foster employees' promotability while strengthening their intention to stay. Specifically, we focus on the implications of career mentoring in team contexts. Applying a multilevel framework, we distinguish between individual‐level differentiated mentoring (i.e., an employee's mentoring perceptions as compared to those of other team members) and group‐level career mentoring climate (i.e., the average perception across all group members). In a workplace setting, we collected data from vocational job starters (N ranged from 230 to 290) and their company supervisors (N ranged from 56 to 68). We find that career mentoring climate positively relates to promotability, more so than differentiated career mentoring. Both career mentoring climate and differentiated career mentoring are positively related to the intention to stay. At the individual level, this relationship is mediated by job satisfaction. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of differentiated and group‐level mentoring.     

Optimal surveillance against foot‐and‐mouth disease: the case of bulk milk testing in Australia

Previous foot‐and‐mouth disease (FMD) outbreaks and simulation‐based analyses suggest substantial payoffs from detecting an incursion early. However, no economic measures for early detection have been analysed in an optimising framework. We investigate the use of bulk milk testing (BMT) for active surveillance against an FMD incursion in Australia. We find that BMT can be justified, but only when the FMD entry probability is sufficiently high or the cost of BMT is low. However, BMT is well suited for post‐outbreak surveillance, to shorten the length of time and size of an epidemic and to facilitate an earlier return to market.     

本土化和全球化并存下的企业责任和公司治理(英文)

近几年,公司治理日渐成为新的研究热点,吸引了各界广泛的兴趣。从传统意义上说,公司治理研究的是不同国家背景下的企业内部决策权分配的问题。本文却旨在超越传统观念,试图将公司治理概念与日益凸显的全球化统一起来。 为更好地探讨新的公司治理形式,我们粗泛地把它定义为：多重参与者影响下的、聚焦于企业合法利用国内外资源的企业战略决策。此定义带有与“战略方向”意义相一致的内涵。两者均承认治理决策对企业战略方向有影响,后者决定了企业和股东能否获得好的投资回报。 在战略管理领域,“公司治理专注于解决公司内部决策权分配的问题”（Gollis 和 Montgomery,1997）是一个被广泛接受的观点。传统观点认为,企业决策权的制定应局限于对企业资源有明确主张的内部利益相关者,而今,越来越多的人认识到企业外部的利益相关者也应获得企业决策权的合法权（Hill 和 Jones,2007）。尽管拓宽后的公司治理概念（也就是说,超越企业边界的社会群体与从中选举产生的董事会影响企业资源配置的决策权）常被归入企业社会责任范畴;可一量考虑到企业社会责任涵盖经济,生态和社会等内容,公司治理概念的外延也随之变得广阔起来——它要解决的问题不仅包括如何为公司股东聚焦财富,同时也包括如何对自然与社会环境施加直接的影响。 让我们把基本假设阐述得更清晰些。首先,政府的三个层面,即联邦、州（或省）及地方,对公司治理的影响是有效且关联的;其次,国际关系的描述性效用（可识别为各国基于企业资源决策的竞争性互动）对公司治理的影响越发显著。考虑到影响战略方向与绩效的国际层面互动,我们假设,除了三个传统的政府层面外,还存有重要性不弱于前者的第四层面（称其为超国家层面或许更恰当）。在此层面上,有众多影响企业治理的参与另两种组织（跨国公司、非政府组织）进行了详细讨论。 很明显,跨国公司、非政府组织是影响公司治理的新要素,它的出现已得到文献详细论述（Dah 和Jeegen,2003）。随着非政府组织影响的延展,要掌握当代公司治理的演化,我们需对“全球”和“本土”等几组概念进行扩展。举例而文言主,从“本土”视角看,拉丁美洲仅意味着地球的某一特定方位,如果拉丁美洲真的与世隔绝,用“本土”描述这一时空统一体当然是正确的。然而,由于快速沟通的实现,尤其是互联网的出现,只要点击鼠标,“本土”即刻成为了“全球”。因此,“本土”和“全球”合而为一是全球化的结果。 非政府组织领导者非常清楚全球性的根本改变,他们利用这种改变来增强自己的优势,并依据即定目标最大地发挥该组织的影响力。利用互联网的信息传播或是CNN的新闻报道,基于很低的成本,“绿色和平”组织可在几秒内把一件地区性小事（村落传闻）变成全球性大事（国际流言）。有鉴于此,“本上”不仅仅是方位,它还是发生在这个方位上的所有事件,而这些事件能迅速转化为国际性焦点。无疑,本土和全球已融为一体,我们也必须将他们视为一体。 为进一步阐明公司治理近几年已发生根本变化的观点,本文运用三个安全例来支持这种改变是如何在利益相关者试图影响公司战略方向的情况下发生的。案例一讲述执行墨西哥组装工厂计划的跨国公司回应关于外界呼吁其自主披露战略导向的故事。案例二描写的是沃尔玛在美国某社区建立分店的意图遭非政府组织与当地市民反对而最终落败的历程。案例三介绍多元化的利益相关者（政府、非政府组织、跨国公司、联合国等）如何通过国际制裁、国内立法和行业自治等手段以保护钻石产业免受战略性威胁。     

MONETARY VALUATION OF INSURANCE AGAINST FLOOD RISK UNDER CLIMATE CHANGE*

Climate change is projected to increase the risk of natural disasters, such as floods and storms, in certain regions. This is likely to raise the demand for natural disaster insurance. We present a stated preference survey using choice modeling with mixed logit estimation methods in order to examine the effects of climate change and the availability of government compensation on the demand for flood insurance by Dutch homeowners. Currently, no private insurance against flood damage is offered in the Netherlands. The results indicate that there are opportunities for the development of a flood insurance market.     

Willingness and ability of Bulgarian consumers to pay for improved public health care services

An application of the contingent valuation method to the willingness and ability of Bulgarian consumers to pay for public health care services is presented. The study uses data from a household survey conducted in May–June 2000. The willingness and ability to pay for outpatient, inpatient and dental services is investigated. A combination of interval checklist and open-ended questions are used to elicit the willingness-to-pay amounts. The impact of the sociodemographic characteristics on the responses is examined by a generalized Tobit regression. Based on the regression equation, the welfare effects of various fee levels are simulated.     

Fiscal deficits,monetary reform and inflation stabilization in romania

Developing countries have witnessed an increase in foreign bank participation during the last decade. Using bank level data for the period 1991–2001, we examine the influence of foreign banks on the financing of small firms in Tanzania. Despite dominating the banking sector, results suggest that the financing of small firms by foreign banks is insignificant compared to domestic banks. Clearly, there is a need for a new approach to policy that will encourage significant foreign bank lending to small firms.     

Financialisation and Rising Shareholder Power in Kaleckian/Post-Kaleckian Models of Distribution and Growth

We establish the link between rising shareholder power on the firm level, increasing pressure on labour, and redistribution at the expense of wages, with the macroeconomic effects on capacity utilisation, profits and capital accumulation. Three channels of transmission of ‘financialisation’ and increasing shareholder power, the ‘preference channel’, the ‘finance channel’ and the ‘distribution channel’, are introduced into two different variants of the Kaleckian distribution and growth model, the Kaleckian model and the Post-Kaleckian model. Within these models, three potential regimes of accumulation are derived, the ‘contractive’ regime, the ‘profits without investment’ regime, and the ‘finance-led growth’ regime. Only the ‘profits without investment’ regime generates a strict micro-macro identity, whereas the other two regimes are characterised by fallacies of composition, a ‘paradox of accumulation’ in the ‘finance-led growth’ regime and a ‘paradox of profits’ in the ‘contractive’ regime.