Management Students’ Attitudes Toward Business Ethics: A Comparison Between France and Romania

This study focuses on the differences in the perception of business ethics across two groups of management students from France and Romania (n = 220). Data was collected via the ATBEQ to measure preferences for three business philosophies: Machiavellianism, Social Darwinism, and Moral Objectivism. The results show that Romanian students present more favorable attitudes toward Machiavellianism than French students; whereas, French students valued Social Darwinism and Moral Objectivism more highly. For Machiavellianism and Moral Objectivism the results are consistent with the literature and our hypotheses. However, contrary to our expectations, we find that Social Darwinism is more important in France than Romania. The results indicate that religious practice does not influence preferences for the three business philosophies. In terms of gender differences, women have less favorable attitudes toward Machiavellianism and more favorable attitudes toward Moral Objectivism than men.     

A framework for innovative service design

Drawing on research from design science, marketing, and service science, our paper provides an integrated framework for evaluating and directing innovative service design. The main goal of our review is to highlight the strengths of existing frameworks and to suggest how they can be enhanced in combination with design science principles. Based on our review, we propose a new framework for the design of innovative services that integrates several key paradigmatic approaches and identifies fundamental open research questions. Our approach is unique as it combines three service disciplines, namely services marketing, service science, and design science, and provides a new framework that describes step by step the procedure that needs to be taken and the conditions that need to be met for developing innovative services. We believe that providing such a framework is a valuable addition to the literature.     

The dynamics and evolution of the service marketing literature: 1993–2003

This article analyzes service research published in marketing journals between 1993 and 2003. Two levels of analysis of the dynamics and evolution of the service marketing literature are distinguished: first, the dynamics of specific themes of the service marketing literature, and second, the structural evolution of these themes. Through a content analysis, we study the dynamics of individual themes in the service marketing literature as well as the relationships between these themes. Multiple correspondence analysis provides maps of themes and of the most frequent contributors, and a framework to track the structural dynamics and structural evolution of this literature over time. An evaluation of past predictions about the dynamics and evolution of service research is also provided with a discussion of its future.     

Robust Imitation Strategies

Performance is the lifeblood of a firm's management. Performance itself depends on the adaptation of strategy based on learning and the environment. An important way that firms adapt their strategy is through imitation or mimetic isomorphism. Imitation implies a referent for such adaptations. This article seeks to determine who or what should serve as that referent. Accordingly, this research (1) develops a broad and rich model of industry dynamics, bringing together literature from industrial economics, strategic groups, learning, and resource‐based theories; (2) examines the robustness of imitations strategies; and (3) develops a framework of the managerial implications of imitative behavior in varying industry conditions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A multi-country,multi-sector replication challenge to the validity of the cultural tightness-looseness measure

Asia Pacific Journal of Management - In this study, we assess the internal and external validity of Gelfand et al.’s (2011) recently developed measure of cultural tightness-looseness (CTL)....     

The customer experience ecosystem in two cultural contexts

This study focuses on the development of a customer experience ecosystem during a journey which is embedded in meso- and macro-layers. Using the critical incident technique, the author collected in-depth interview data from bank customers in Switzerland and Iran to empirically study this ecosystem, including customer–company interaction in the micro-layer and social context of the meso-layer. Moreover, in a macro-layer analysis, the Hofstede cultural dimension was employed to show the role of cultural context in this ecosystem. The findings indicate that customer experience in the pre-encounter stage is mostly shaped by customer past experience and social context rather than company touchpoint. The importance of these factors is different in the two cultural contexts. Although customer experience in the encounter stage is mainly the result of customer and company interactions, other people have a role in this stage and cultural differences between the two countries largely explain these differences. Moreover, in the post-encounter stage, customers in different cultural contexts use various factors to evaluate their experiences and the effects on their emotional and behavioral responses. The findings provide key managerial implications for national and international companies with respect to the role of multiple layers in customer experience management.     

Correction to: A multi-country,multi-sector replication challenge to the validity of the cultural tightness-looseness measure

Asia Pacific Journal of Management - The original version of this article unfortunately contained mistakes. Appendix heading was misplaced and first entry of the Appendix table was incorrectly...     

Scaled insurance cash flows: representation and computation via change of measure techniques

Finance and Stochastics - We consider general multi-state life insurance payment processes and study the expected accumulated cash flows that arise when modifying the payments by scaling factors...