Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises' Collaborative Buyer–Supplier Relationships: Boundary Spanning Individual Perspectives

Boundary‐spanning individuals (BSIs) play a critical role in supply chain management, especially in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) where interactions with buyers and suppliers can depend heavily on just a few individuals. This study, utilizing data from Korean manufacturing‐sector SMEs, explores whether cooperative social value orientations of SMEs' BSIs influence the effects of collaborative buyer‐supplier initiatives. The results suggested that the performance implication of decision‐sharing initiative increases when BSIs have a high level of cooperative social value orientation. However, it also negatively moderates the relationship between risk/benefit sharing (involving financial losses or gains) and performance suggesting possible negative side effects. However, we found that such orientation also negatively moderates the relationship between risk/benefit sharing (involving direct financial losses or gains) and relationship performance suggesting possible negative side effects.     

Cultural distance and cross-border bank linkages

This study investigates the effect of cultural distance on global bank linkages using country-pair data for the period 1990–2013. We followed Schwartz (2006) to measure cultural distance, and employed the number of bank pairs involved in cross-border syndicated lending from the source to target countries as a measure of bank linkages. We found that cultural distance has a negative association with bank linkages. This effect is stronger in countries featuring higher informational asymmetries, as represented by weaker institutions, higher uncertainty, or revolution shocks. Our results hold even when employing alternative measures of bank linkages and cultural distance, and when considering the potential endogeneity of cultural distance.     

Customer satisfaction and the cost of capital

Using a sample of U.S. firms from 1995 through 2015 and the customer satisfaction scores from the American Customer Satisfaction Index, we find strong evidence that firms with higher customer satisfaction scores enjoy lower cost of equity capital, even after controlling for other factors that determine the cost of equity. In addition, results from a propensity score matched sample analysis, a difference-in-differences analysis, and instrumental variable regressions suggest that our findings are robust to accounting for endogeneity. We also document that customer satisfaction is positively related to investor recognition and financial report quality. The effect of customer satisfaction on the cost of equity increases with the level of information asymmetry, consistent with customer satisfaction mitigating information asymmetry. Overall, our findings suggest that customer satisfaction lowers a firm’s risk and significantly attenuates its financing costs.

     

The daughter effect: do CEOs with daughters hire more women to their board?

Using a sample of S&P 100 firms, we find that CEOs with a daughter are more likely to hire new women to their board of directors than CEOs without a daughter. Our results provide additional evidence that parents’ attitudes and actions are affected by the gender of their children and that the effect is strong enough to influence important decisions at large corporations.     

“一带一路”归国学术人才学科分布分析

运用简历分析研究方法,对中国109所"211工程大学"教师的简历进行大数据分析,研究了来自"一带一路"沿线国家和地区的归国学术人才的学科分布情况。研究结果显示:来自"一带一路"沿线国家和地区的归国学术人才主要来自新加坡、俄罗斯和以色列,主要流入北京、上海和江苏;来自"一带一路"沿线国家和地区的归国学术人才的学科背景主要是工学和理学,具体的专业方向是材料学、工程技术类、电子信息类、土木类、化学、生物学和物理学。     

Conflict technology in cooperation: The group size paradox revisited

This paper studies the implications of punishment‐induced conflict in a public goods game. It shows, under plausible assumptions, how larger group size sometimes enhances punishing behavior in social dilemmas and hence supports higher levels of cooperation. Unlike existing approaches that focus on uncoordinated punishment, I consider punishment as a coordinated activity that may be resisted by those being punished and study the implications of punishment‐induced conflict situations. Developing a conflict model of punishment and combining it with a standard public good game, I show that coordinated punishment can yield the concentration effect of punishment, leading to a larger group advantage; that is, the larger the group, the easier it becomes to organize cooperation. The key idea is that when punishers coordinate their punishment, punishers as a coalition successfully divide defectors and punish each defector one by one. Surprisingly, even when coordination among punishers decays as group size increases, as long as the rate of decaying remains relatively slow the larger group advantage still obtains.     

Do Alternative Real Estate Investment Vehicles Add Value to REITs? Evidence from German Open-ended Property Funds

Besides the more commonly used REITs, German investors can also invest in a lesser-known real estate vehicle, Open-ended Property Funds. OPFs are considered a compromise between listed and direct real estate investments. OPF fund managers generally provide daily (perfect) liquidity. However, if liquidity falls below 5%, share redemptions in these funds can be temporarily suspended for a period of up to two years. During this time, investors will only be able to sell shares on the secondary market (exchange), and are thus subject to significant liquidity risk. The objective of this paper is to analyze whether OPFs add value to investor portfolios above that provided by REITs. We show that OPFs have a diversification advantage over REITs in low-risk portfolios, despite their larger potential liquidity risk. REIT liquidity is comparable to that of ordinary common stock, but OPFs exhibit an average initial discount to funds’ NAV of about 6% when share redemptions are temporarily suspended. However, in the long-run, this potential redemption suspension does not negatively influence OPF performance (in case OPFs reopen again). This makes OPFs an attractive investment alternative to REITs for investors who have a high level of risk aversion and a long-term investment horizon, such as endowments, insurance companies, and pension funds.     

A longitudinal study of online non-relationship intentions

In their eagerness to develop relationships with customers, some marketers often overlook the fact that not all consumers may be interested in maintaining a relationship with the firm. In this research, the authors develop a theoretical model as to why many customers do not wish to maintain a relationship with e-businesses and test the model over time. The results show that consumer-relationship value perceptions affect non-relationship intentions. Moreover, even though non-relationship intentions in a certain time period do not directly affect non-relationship intentions in the immediate future time period, promotion events may play a mediating role in this relationship.     

Designing loyalty programs that matter to customers

This study explores a model proposing a customer loyalty program as an identity marketing tool that evokes customer's identity salience (one's perception that a loyalty program membership is important to his/her identity). The results of a Web-based experiment indicate that identity salience is heightened by (1) the uniqueness and exclusiveness of a loyalty program (distinctiveness), and (2) by the fit between the function of the program's rewards and the customer's identity goal (identity congruence). The heightened identity salience, in turn, positively influences the customer's attitude toward the retailer, satisfaction with the loyalty program and the perceived quality of his/her relationship with the retailer.     

Characterisation and Diagnosis of Rural—Urban Interface Farming in the Tu Liem and Thanh Tri Districts of Hanoi City,Vietnam

A research project was carried out in two areas in the outskirts of Hanoi city using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The objective was to study interactions among the vegetable farming systems and the peri-urban context within which they are situated. The farms studied were characterised as small-scale farms that use high inputs of soil amendments and pesticides for diversified crop rotation systems. The main source of irrigation water and nutrients for vegetable farming in southern Hanoi is wastewater from the To Lich River. In northern Hanoi, irrigation water is obtained directly from the Red River and nutrients are supplied through high fertiliser inputs. The concentrations of COD (144–287 mg l^?1), N-NH₄ ⁺ (1–25 mg l^?1), PO₄ ^3? (0.5–4 mg l^?1) and coliform (525 × 10³?28 × 10⁶ MPN 100 ml^?1) along the To Lich River was much higher than the limits specified in the Vietnamese standard for water used in agriculture. A higher Cu content in soil in Phuc Ly seems to be linked to the high input of chicken manure at the site. However, the contents of heavy metals in irrigation water, in vegetables and in the soil surface layer at the two sites were lower than the Vietnamese maximum permissible levels.