Renters,landlords, and farmland stewardship

Are farmers better stewards of the land they own than the land they rent from others? We answer this question using a data set that identifies Ontario farmers’ conservation practices on their own land as well as the land they rent. Using a fixed‐effects regression approach, we find that the role of tenure varies for different types of conservation practices. Farmers were found to be just as likely to adopt a machinery‐related practice such as conservation tillage on their rented land as that land which they own. On the other hand, farmers were found to be less likely to adopt site‐specific conservation practices such as planting cover crops on rented land. However, this effect diminishes as the expected length of the rental relationship increases when the landlord has a farming background.     

How do small firms possibly survive? A comparison study of marketing skills and logistics infrastructure of small and large wholesalers

Most wholesalers are small family-owned firms that frequently lack marketing skills and an infrastructure capable of setting into practice state-of-the-art marketing distribution systems. They are much more consumed with daily activities and credit and collection functions than they are with developing marketing skills and logistics networks. The purpose of this exploratory study is to identify the elements of marketing skills and logistics that are associated with the performance of small and large wholesalers, and to compare and contrast these variables. Data were collected from 4500 small and large wholesalers in Hyogo and Osaka prefectures in Japan. Multiple regression analysis of this study found that the factors of supplier's financial assistance and buyer's services to wholesalers explained the performance of small wholesalers, and the factors of supplier's service to wholesalers and buyer's service to wholesalers explained the performance of large wholesalers. Multivariate analysis of variance and multiple discriminant analysis revealed that large and small wholesalers differed with respect to supplier's services to wholesalers, the supplier's financial assistance, and the wholesaler's intra logistics activities. Implications are discussed.     

Predicting the level of B2B e-commerce in industrial organizations

Through the use of business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B e-commerce), leading companies are transforming interorganizational transaction processing, trading, and collaboration into a competitive advantage. The research empirically examines several models with B2B e-commerce overall use as the dependent variable and innovation characteristics, context, channel factors, and organizational structure as the predictor variables. The results demonstrate that compatibility with existing systems, cooperative norms with customers, lateral integration within a firm, technocratic specialization, and decentralization of information technology decisions facilitate B2B e-commerce overall use. In addition, large firms are more likely than small firms to have greater levels of B2B e-commerce and firms are more likely to use B2B e-commerce with customers that use recommendations rather than threats to encourage e-commerce use.     

An investigation of the relationships between compensation practices and firm performance in the US hotel industry

Drawing on a sample of 1223 US hotels, this paper examines the relationships between compensation (direct and indirect) practices in hotel organizations and their performance. The results show that in the case of management employees, direct compensation fully mediated the relationship between indirect compensation and hotel performance. In the case of non-management employees, however, such relationship was only partially mediated by direct compensation. It is therefore important for hotel industry HR executives to pay greater attention to the nature and level of benefits being offered to non-management employees. For management employees, on the other hand, it is more important to attend to the level of direct compensation in order to ensure higher levels of organizational performance.     

Analysis of Instantaneous and Early Failures in Weibull Distribution

There are many situations in life testing experiment where an item fail instantaneously and hence the observed lifetime is reported as zero. The items that fail prematurely are called early failures. We propose a modified Weibull distribution as a suitable model to represent such situations by mixture of a singular distribution at zero and a two parameter Weibull distribution. We obtain the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters and their asymptotic distributions. The methods are illustrated on drying of woods under different experiments and schedules reported by Vanmann (Research report, 1991:2).     

Mediating roles of karma and self-enhancement in the effect of religious and spiritual primes on bystanders' reporting intention

Religious priming promotes engagement in prosocial action; however, findings about spiritual priming are relatively scant. Using Hindu (India) and Christian (U.S.) participants, a two-part study was conducted. The aim of the first part (i.e., Study 1) was to observe which motives to volunteer (i.e., egoistic or altruistic) related to religiosity and spirituality. Findings show that religiosity had a positive impact on egoistic volunteering, while spirituality had a positive impact on altruistic volunteering. The aim of the second part (i.e., Study 2) was to apply the findings from Study 1 to test priming effects in public service announcements about domestic violence prevention. The mediating effects of karma and self-enhancement in the relationship between religiosity or spirituality and reporting intention were also examined. Findings show that the religious ad was more effective than the spiritual ad in priming religiosity and spirituality among Hindus; that is, karma mediated the effect of religiosity and spirituality on their reporting intention. Among Christians, spiritual primes were effective, and self-enhancement mediated the impact of spirituality on reporting intention; at the same time, religious primes led to the direct impact of religiosity and spirituality on reporting intention. Overall, the apparent efficacy of religious and spiritual priming is promising, and the findings indicate the significance of spirituality in domestic violence prevention messaging. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

An integrated fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making model for employees' performance appraisal

Evaluating and ranking the employees working in organisations are challenging tasks involving several factors. Each employee achieves certain skill levels in various factors and the resulting information can be overwhelming. This article demonstrates how an integrated tool like fuzzy multi-attribute decision making (FMADM), with fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP), fuzzy quality function deployment (FQFD), is applied as a fair evaluating and sorting tool to support the performance appraisal (PA) system. The fuzzy linguistic approach has the advantage of reducing distortion and losing of information. FMADM focuses on the best practices of employees for the purpose of improving overall performance. Unlike traditional PAs, FMADM searches for the highly skilled employees who will serve as peers. The FMADM process identifies employees who require improvements in certain factor(s), and the magnitude of improvements required. This study supports the ideas that rating formats need re-examination as an alternative to traditional rating methods. Earlier adopted methods have seldom identified and quantified the individual factors for improvement, whereas FMADM could overcome these shortfalls. Based on the results of FMADM, the improvement of employees' performance is possible by way of providing training, talent enhancement and further qualification wherever required.     

Integration by Emerging Economy Multinationals: Perspectives from Chinese Mergers and Acquisitions

The integration process of international mergers and acquisitions by emerging economy multinationals is fraught with challenges of liabilities of foreignness and country of origin. We use insights from institutional theory and draw on the experience of Chinese international mergers and acquisitions to explore these challenges faced by emerging economy multinationals during postmerger integration. We find that these challenges, which are primarily caused by informal institutional differences, can be overcome by developing organizational capabilities for integration and employing mechanisms for appropriate control and justice during the integration process. The study contributes to the ongoing discussions about the relevance of sociocultural influences in the successful integration of international mergers and acquisitions. Our framework proposes initiatives that managers from emerging economies can take to overcome postmerger integration challenges. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Evidence on the use of unverifiable estimates in required goodwill impairment

SFAS 142 requires managers to estimate the current fair value of goodwill to determine goodwill write-offs. In promulgating the standard, the FASB predicted that managers will, on average, use the fair-value estimates to convey private information on future cash flows. The current fair value of goodwill is unverifiable because it depends in part on management??s future actions (including managers?? conceptualization and implementation of firm strategy). Agency theory predicts managers will, on average, use the unverifiable discretion in SFAS 142 consistent with private incentives. We test these hypotheses in a sample of firms with market indications of goodwill impairment. Our evidence, while consistent with some agency-theory based predictions, does not confirm the private information hypothesis.     

Following the breadcrumbs: An analysis of online product review characteristics by online shoppers

Consumer-generated product reviews are a driving force behind online purchases; at the same time, unfavorable reviews can discourage interested online shoppers and eventually hurt the brand. The objective of this exploratory study was to analyze a diverse range of characteristics and the valence of online product reviews that would aid in responding to customer dissatisfaction. Product reviews (N = 1982) from Amazon.com were collected and content analyzed. Some of the key findings include the following: (a) price was the most commonly discussed product feature; (b) online shoppers found two-sided reviews to be most informative, contradicting the commonly held assumption that negative reviews were more informative and diagnostic in nature; and (c) ‘no action’ was the most common end action across two-sided and negative reviews, indicating that varying levels of dissatisfaction might not always lead to a negative end action. Implications for marketers are discussed.