Critical factors in computing externalities for electricity resources

The New York State Environmental Externalities Cost Study and computerized externality model (EXMOD) are used to examine the specification of methods design and application factors in the computation of electricity externalities. We report the sensitivity of externality estimates with alternative specifications for 15 different factors in the analysis, including the selection of facility type, site, and operating characteristics; air emission assumptions and air modeling procedures; dose-response assumptions; economic valuation assumptions; and other modeling procedures and assumptions. Many of the factors that most influence externality computations can be well specified in the analysis, such as the facility type, age, characteristics, emission rates, whether there is SO₂ trading, and the inclusion of long range impacts. Most significant among the factors for which there remains significant scientific uncertainty are the selection and application of air dispersion models, selection of air pollution thresholds for health impacts, reduced life span risks associated with ozone exposure and with long-term exposure to PM₁₀, values for CO₂ damages, and the value to be applied to increased risks of reduced life span for individuals age 65 or older.     

An efficient market? Going public in London, 1891–1911

There have been claims that British capital was not well deployed in Victorian Britain. There was, allegedly, a lack of support for new and dynamic companies in comparison to the situation in Germany and the US. We find no evidence to support these claims. The London Stock Exchange welcomed young, old, domestic, and foreign firms. It provided funds to firms in old, existing industries as well as patenting firms in ‘new‐tech’ industries at similar costs of capital. If investors did show a preference for older and foreign firms, it was because those firms offered investors better long‐run performance. In addition, we show some evidence that investors who worked in the same industry and lived close to the firm going public were allotted more shares in high‐quality initial public offerings.     

Unpicking antecedents of CRM adoption: a two-stage model

Most CRM work focuses on consumer applications. This paper addresses the operational adoption issues facing the organisation deploying CRM practices. There are a plethora of challenges facing organisations when adopting CRM. Previous research is limited to either examining the CRM adoption process at an individual/employees level or an organisational level. Hence, in this paper the myriad of organisational, marketing and technical antecedents that seem to impinge upon employee perceptions and organisational implementation of CRM are structured in a two-stage model. Using a stratified sample of 10 organisations across 4 sectors, 7 hypotheses are tested on data collected from 301 practitioners. A two-stage model is analysed using structural equation modelling. Findings reveal that CRM implementation relates to employee perceptions of CRM. This paper deepens our understanding of organisational practices to adopt CRM, so as an organisation properly profits from the expected benefits of CRM.     

The liability of closeness: Business relatedness and foreign subsidiary performance

It is widely accepted that business relatedness, defined as the extent to which a foreign subsidiary is related to its parent's core business, has a positive effect on subsidiary performance. With a sample of 165 Japanese subsidiaries located in China, however, we found that modestly related subsidiaries, on average, outperformed both unrelated and closely related subsidiaries, and that closely related subsidiaries performed poorly especially when the parent had a heavy majority ownership in the subsidiary and the subsidiary was at its early stage of operating in the host market. Our results indicate that being too closely related to the parent could be potentially detrimental, suggesting a liability of closeness.     

People and processes in marketing planning: The benefits of controlling implementation

Marketing planning is not new. Although being adopted increasingly by businesses of all types, it is still not utilized universally. As a process, though, marketing planning is often poorly facilitated and implementation of its recommendations is not always well directed or controlled. Managed thoughtfully and monitored, marketing planning has many benefits to offer a business, not least in enhancing managers’ understanding of marketing and markets, their motivation and their desire to communicate. This paper examines the barriers facing effective implementation of marketing plans as observed during many long‐term marketing planning initiatives. It proceeds to present a planning programme which overcomes many of the most common hurdles and leads to several additional benefits from marketing planning.     

Pan-European Advertising: Think Europe—Act Local

Changes in Europe resulting from the unification of EC countries and the accessibility of new Eastern European markets have fundamentally altered the trading environment in which advertising agencies operate. As the advertising industry attempts to get to grips with legislative and media changes, agencies are working hard to create alliances and develop networks which encompass markets in which they did not traditionally have a presence. This article draws on a combination of quantitative and qualitative information collected from secondary sources and extended personal interviews with key agency personnel, advertisers and representatives from the UK's Advertising Association and The Advertising Standards Authority. The objective is to show how the advertising industry and agencies are continuing to gear up to meeting the new demands of the Europeanized market.     

Hardening soft accounting information: Games for planning organizational change

This study provides theory and field evidence on the social process of hardening soft accounting information to make it persuasive for planning organizational change. Accounting information intended to support organizational change is often soft, that is, there is lack of interpersonal agreement about its quality. For example, employees can lack agreement about the quality of accounting information (e.g., activity-based costing) because the information is constructed from subjective information obtained from interviews and surveys. This information can contain unintentional errors as well as intentional distortions that are intended to avoid revealing embarrassing inefficiencies and/or to resist painful organizational change. We use concepts from applied game theory and social psychology to identify from the accounting literature four multi-person games that may be played to harden soft accounting information. These hardening games are characterized in terms of payoffs, players, the comparability of soft accounting information, and the rules of the games that are expected to emerge. We interpret the field evidence as indicating that the hardening games that emerge depend on who the players are and the comparability of their soft accounting information. In addition, we provide evidence on how the rules of the games that harden the information emerge from the players’ social interactions. Finally, we provide evidence on how an organization learns by trial-and-error how to harden soft accounting information by changing the players and the comparability of the soft accounting information.     

How does PLM technology support knowledge transfer and translation in new product development? Transparency and boundary spanners in an international context

Information Technology is often viewed as imposing too much standardization and limiting flexibility in New Product Development (NPD). This paper aims at understanding how the use of Product Lifecycle Management Technology (PLM) contributes to knowledge sharing in an international NPD environment. The research is based on a longitudinal case study of a consumer goods industry group and involved development teams in Europe and local suppliers in China. Knowledge transfer and translation were observed through the reduction of communication glitches among members and increased NPD work with Chinese suppliers. The results of the case study indicate that (1), with an important codification effort, the use of PLM technology resulted in higher data and network transparency and enhanced knowledge transfer; (2) PLM served as a particularly useful tool for knowledge translation especially for boundary spanners in their work relationships. While PLM can be considered the main mechanism for knowledge transfer in this context, the case suggests that knowledge translation requires a boundary spanner intervention and that, with the use of PLM, they reinforce each other. Particularly noteworthy was a positive shift in the boundary spanners' roles from the project leader to the outsourcing engineer. In turn, this unintended consequence reinforced their credibility and the legitimacy of the use of the system with the Chinese suppliers.     

Effects of organizational process change on responsibility accounting and managers’ revelations of private knowledge

We report the results of a nine-year field study that examines how responsibility accounting (RA) is used to manage horizontal relationships among several responsibility center (RC) managers including those who work on committees or cross-functional teams. We find theory-consistent evidence that the goal-congruent design or redesign of accounting and participation practices in general, and of RA in particular, depends on the magnitude, scope, and speed of organizational process change. When there is a change in the magnitude, scope, and speed of organizational process change, we find that the measurability of RC managers’ financial performance can change, and we also find that using RA to manage RC boundaries is an important mechanism for achieving goal-congruent behavior and avoiding dysfunctional behavior. Moreover, we show that several accounting and participation practices (e.g., activity-based costing, open book accounting, project budgeting, cross-functional teams) support RC boundary management that involves framing or reframing RC boundaries so as to influence competitive or cooperative behavior among RC managers. Finally, this study contributes by introducing a new research method to the accounting literature that is effective in structuring and interpreting longitudinal field data in relation to theoretical expectations.