Educating business schools about safety & health is no accident

This paper summarizes the consequences of safety and health inattentiveness, and reviews four primary dangers in the workplace. In addition, perspectives of employee health and safety are presented from industry and academia which provide the basis for a strong recommendation to include safety and health issues in business school curricula. Wayne H. Stewart's areas of research and teaching interest include Social Responsibility in Management, Entrepreneurship, and International Business. Wayne is currently on the editorial board of the International Journal of Case Studies, and has published in the Journal of Management Learning, as well as participating in several academic conferences. Donna E. Ledgerwood is currently the Secretary for the Southern Management Association. Donna was President of the Southwest Academy of Management in 1993 and served as the Academy of Management's Director of Exhibits/Publisher Relations and Director of Advertising from 1983–1991. Having written one of the first articles on sexual harassment in 1980, Donna serves on the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of Business Strategies and has published in the Labor Law Journal, the Monthly Labor Review, and the Personnel Administrator. Ruth C. May's areas of expertise are International Business, Business Policy and Strategy and International Human Resource Management. Specializing in the transfer of Western management practices to the former Soviet Union, Ruth is currently involved in the development of training programs and privatization processes in central Russia. She has published in the Academy of Management Executive, Multinational Business Review, and Socialist Labor (Russia).     

Firm-level interactions between exporting and productivity: Industry-specific evidence

This paper investigates interactions between exporting and productivity at the firm level, using a panel of firms in the UK chemical industry. This is both highly technology intensive and the UK’s largest exporting sector. We find exporters are more productive than non-exporters, but are also on average smaller. This superior productivity performance among exporters appears to be caused by both self-selection and learning-by-exporting effects. In contrast to other studies, we find learning effects are significantly positive among new entrants, weaker for more experienced exporters and negative for established exporters. JEL no. F14, D21, L65     

Linking thoughts to feelings: Investigating cognitive appraisals and consumption emotions in a mixed-emotions context

While emotions have been shown to have significant influence on various consumer behaviors, the cognitive appraisals linked to consumption emotions have not been fully explored. This research investigates how individuals' cognitive interpretations of situations correspond to the emotions they experience in these contexts. Using analysis of variance and multiple discriminant analysis, our results show a systematic relationship between cognitive appraisals and 10 consumption emotions. The author's findings offer theoretical insights into these consumption emotions, the appraisal/consumption emotion correspondence, basisversus subordinate-level category differences in emotions, and mixed consumption emotions. The findings provide a practical framework for academics and practitioners interested in better understanding and managing consumption emotions. Julie A. Ruth (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is an assistant professor of marketing in the School of Business—Camden at Rutgers University. Her research interests include affect and emotions, consumer relationships, and consumer response to brand strategies such as brand alliances and sponsorships. Frédéric F. Brunel (Ph.D., University of Washington) is an assistant professor of marketing in the School of Management at Boston University. His research interests include consumer perceptions of product design and aesthetics, consumer attitude and affect, and gender and sociocultural issues in consumption. Cele C. Otnes (Ph.D., University of Tennessee) is an associate professor of business administration in the College of Commerce and Business Administration at the University of Illinois, Urbana. Her research interests include consumer rituals, affect and consumer ambivalence, and gift exchange.     

Intra-industry trade with multinational firms

Recent developments, including the analysis of firm-level adjustment to falling trade costs, have contributed to a revival of interest in intra-industry trade (IIT). Most empirical work still relies on the standard Grubel-Lloyd measure. This however refers only to international trade, disregarding income flows stimulated by repatriated profits of multinational firms. Given the overwhelming importance of the latter, this is a major shortcoming. This paper provides a guide to measurement and estimation of the determinants of bilateral IIT shares from the perspective of new trade theory with multinational firms. We develop an analytically solvable general equilibrium model to investigate the impact of investment costs, multinational activities and income flows from repatriated profits. We also discuss and quantify the bias of the Grubel-Lloyd index associated with repatriated profit flows of multinationals. Using bias-corrected versions of the Grubel-Lloyd index as the dependent variable, we demonstrate that the determinants motivated by our theoretical analysis offer important insights into variations in IIT shares.     

Does Exporting Increase Productivity? A Microeconometric Analysis of Matched Firms

Exporting involves sunk costs, so some firms export whilst others do not. This proposition derives from a number of models of firm behavior and has been exposed to microeconometric analysis. Evidence from the latter suggests that exporting firms are generally more productive than nonexporters. They self‐select, in that they are more productive before they enter export markets, but the evidence suggests that entry does not make them any more productive. This paper investigates exporting and firm performance for a large panel of UK manufacturing firms, applying matching techniques. The authors find that exporters are more productive and they do self‐select. In contrast to other evidence, however, exporting further increases firm productivity.     

Employment and absenteeism in working-age persons with multiple sclerosis

Aims: To better understand the impact of the clinical course of multiple sclerosis (MS) and disability on employment, absenteeism, and related factors.

Materials and methods: This study included respondents to the North American Research Committee on Multiple Sclerosis Registry spring 2015 update survey who were US or Canadian residents, aged 18–65 years and reported having relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS), secondary progressive MS (SPMS), or primary progressive MS (PPMS). The RRMS and SPMS participants were combined to form the relapsing-onset MS (RMS) group and compared with the PPMS group regarding employment status, absenteeism, and disability. Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between employment-related outcomes and factors that may affect these relationships.

Results: Of the 8004 survey respondents, 5887 (73.6%) were 18–65 years of age. The PPMS group (n?=?344) had a higher proportion of males and older mean age at the time of the survey and at time of diagnosis than the RMS group (n?=?4829). Female sex, age, age at diagnosis, cognitive and hand function impairment, fatigue, higher disability levels, ≥3 comorbidities, and a diagnosis of PPMS were associated with not working. After adjustment for disability, the employed PPMS sub-group reported similar levels of absenteeism to the employed RMS sub-group.

Limitations: Limitations of the study include self-report of information and the possibility that participants may not fully represent the working-age MS population.

Conclusions: In MS, employment status and absenteeism are negatively affected by disability, cognitive impairment, and fatigue. These findings underscore the need for therapies that prevent disability progression and other symptoms that negatively affect productivity in persons with MS to enable them to persist in the workforce.     

Do Immigrant Groups Differ in Welfare Usage? Evidence from the U.S.

The study of welfare participation in the United States prior to the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and afterward has primarily focused on comparing native and immigrant households. Analyses that have gone beyond this broad classification have focused on comparisons across race, with particular focus on Hispanic immigrants. This paper moves away from the existing literature by investigating whether there is a difference in welfare usage among immigrant based on their birthplace. Using a probit model, we investigate this potential difference by testing two related hypotheses. Our results suggest that the probability of welfare usage for immigrants with similar characteristic, differ for some immigrant groups. We also find that for some immigrant groups, citizen and noncitizens differ with respect to welfare usage.     

Museum pricing: challenges to theory development and practice

• The museum sector has undergone considerable change in the last few decades, which has been a result of both internal and external forces. The topic of pricing in museums, however, has attracted little interest from researchers in the field despite the sector's need to understand it better. This study aimed to address this gap in knowledge. Results of a comprehensive literature review on pricing highlight that the topic of pricing in museums is problematic, as a range of issues, social, political and often value-laden, must be considered before pricing decisions can be made. The study highlights that there is diversity in the sector with regard to pricing, but that museums generally adopt a unilateral approach to pricing. Researchers in entrepreneurial marketing have noted that conventional pricing theory is being turned on its head and they argue that deciding what prices to charge represents one of the more entrepreneurial strategies for organisations. This study indicates that, within the context of museums, marketers are failing to recognise and capitalise on such pricing opportunities. Approaches to setting multiple museum pricing strategies, depending on the market context, are proposed in this paper. In this way, knowledge of museum pricing can optimise the organisational outcomes of museums while continuing to meet their social responsibilities.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.