International buyer behaviour–commitment relationship: An investigation of the empirical link in importing

Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm this article examines relationships between knowledge, trust, communication, volatility and sustainable competitive advantage as the exogenous and endogenous variables with importer commitment as the dependent variable. The primary data was gathered from a survey of 224 commercial and industrial firms, headquartered in Bangladesh, coming from a wide cross section of industries. Statistical analysis was carried out using Structural Equation Modelling via AMOS. The study's key findings revealed that all exogenous/endogenous variables had a significant impact on importer commitment. That is, knowledge, trust, communication, volatility and sustainable competitive advantage had a significant direct impact on importer commitment. Additionally, cultural similarity, communication, volatility and supplier opportunism all had a significant indirect impact on importer commitment. This finding makes a significant contribution to the relational side of the RBV.     

The influence of restaurant co-workers’ perceived warmth and competence on employees’ turnover intentions: The mediating role of job attitudes

The current study examines the influence of co-workers’ perceived warmth and competence on employees’ job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions in a casual dining restaurant setting. The warmth and competence dimensions represent two fundamental social dimensions that people often use to evaluate other individuals or groups. The current findings determined that co-workers’ perceived warmth and competence had significant effects on employees’ job satisfaction, which in turn improved their organizational commitment.Furthermore, job satisfaction and organizational commitment mediated the relationships between co-workers’ perceived warmth and competence and employees’ turnover intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

私人股权投资基金运作模式选择与对策研究

私人股权投资基金有契约型、公司型、合伙型三种组织运作模式，在法律的合规性、避免双重征税、投资管理的效率性、监督管理的有效性等诸多方面有较多差异。通过对三种股权投资基金的运作模式的分析，提出信托型私人股权投资运作模式在现阶段是理性决策。公司型私人股权投资运作模式适合早期阶段，有限合伙人股权运作模式是最终发展目标。     

Managerial Commitment to Sustainable Supply Chain Management Projects

Most companies are under pressure to improve the environmental sustainability of their supply chains. However, there is considerable variance in companies' ability to successfully deploy environmental management projects. One important factor, according to articles in the academic and business press, is the ability of champions of sustainable supply chain management (SCM) projects within organizations to gain the commitment of colleagues (e.g., other managers from a variety of functions) to help these projects succeed. Therefore, this paper examines variables that affect a project champion's ability to gain this commitment from colleagues. In particular, building on existing research, this research employs a video‐based experimental design to examine the effect of the influence approach that the project champion employs, the values of the person the champion is trying to influence, and the organizational climate. The results suggest that organizational climate and certain individual values directly affect commitment. There are also interactions between values and influence tactics. The research adds to the field's growing knowledge on the antecedents of sustainable SCM within companies while providing valuable guidance for environmental champions and for top managers.     

Bridging the Gap Between Strategy and Performance: Using Leadership Style to Enable Structural Elements

Successful leaders create structural elements in order to achieve the performance objectives set forth by organizational strategy. Supply chain oriented structural elements are reflected in an organization's relationships, both within the firm and with supply chain partners. In this research effort, we examine how such structural elements can be created as a means through which to enhance performance. Our hypothesized model is rooted in strategy‐structure‐performance theory and integrates elements of servant leadership theory and social exchange theory to explain how building organizational commitment via servant leadership behaviors can ultimately impact performance. We use a survey method to collect data from 158 motor carriers. The results of our structural equation model support our hypotheses and serve to extend the discussion of supply chain structural elements and the role of leadership style in achieving organizational performance.     

Does contingent pay encourage positive employee attitudes and intensify work?

This article explores the relationships between three dimensions of contingent pay – performance‐related pay, profit‐related pay and employee share‐ownership – and positive employee attitudes (job satisfaction, employee commitment and trust in management). The article also examines a conflicting argument that contingent pay may intensify work, and this can detract from its positive impact on employee attitudes. Of the three contingent pay dimensions, only performance‐related pay had direct positive relationships with all three employee attitudes. Profit‐related pay and employee share‐ownership had a mix of negative and no significant direct relationships with employee attitudes, but profit‐related pay showed U‐shaped curvilinear relationships with all three employee attitudes. The results also indicated that performance‐related pay is associated with work intensification, and this offsets some of its positive impact on employee attitudes.     

Does risk sharing increase with risk aversion and risk when commitment is limited?

I consider a risk-sharing game with limited commitment, and study how the discount factor above which perfect risk sharing is self-enforcing in the long run depends on agents׳ risk aversion and the riskiness of their endowment. When agents face no aggregate risk, a mean-preserving spread may destroy the sustainability of perfect risk sharing if each agent׳s endowment may take more than three values. With aggregate risk the same can happen with only two possible endowment realizations. With respect to risk aversion the intuitive comparative statics result holds without aggregate risk, but it holds only under strong assumptions in the presence of aggregate risk. In simple settings with two endowment values I also show that the threshold discount factor co-moves with popular measures of risk sharing.     

Can Agents Be Better Off with Pay Caps?

A popular way to discipline the managers of companies or banks that got into trouble during the recent financial crisis has been to impose caps on managers' pay. Using a small extension of the standard principal–agent model, we argue that pay caps might serve the opposite purpose, because the agent might be better off with a pay cap. Specifically, we show that, given a fixed effort level to be implemented, the agent's expected utility can be decreasing in an upper bound for the agent's reward. The effect of pay caps on the general structure of optimal incentive contracts is also characterized. While an improvement of contracting information always helps the principal, it might increase or decrease the marginal cost of imposing pay caps.     

The Impact of Position Difference on Employees’ Organizational Commitment After the Merger of Life Insurance Companies

We investigate the impacts of job position and survey time period on employee’s organizational commitment of insurance company after the merger. Our results show that both job position and survey time period are significant determinants to employee’s organizational commitment. Results also show that there is no interaction effect between survey time period and job position. For each year, during the survey time period, the mean of organization commitment of agent employees is significantly higher than staff employees. The mean difference of organizational commitment between agent and staff employees shrank year by year during the survey time period.     

Selling Versus Leasing of Durable Goods: The Impact on Marketing Channels

While many durable products are sold through intermediaries, there is limited understanding of how channel performance is influenced by transactions involving durable goods in a competitive market. In particular, extant research shows that intermediaries can significantly impact the leasing versus selling policy of a monopolistic manufacturer. This article seeks to fill that gap by examining the selling versus leasing choice of duopolistic manufacturers in the context of decentralized channels. Our analysis demonstrates that in addition to the unique equilibrium of selling, a prisoner's dilemma may arise where both manufacturers are better off if they were to lease their products.