Buyer and seller perceptions of transportation purchasing variables

The study in this article involved the investigation of 15 carrier selection variables over three dimensions by three groups with high involvement in the purchasing decision—traffic managers, sales representatives, and sales managers. The primary focus of the study was the identification of significant differences in the assessment of importance of the technical abilities of a carrier, the service orientation of a carrier and the image of a carrier as perceived by sales managers and sales representatives representing the selling systems, and traffic managers representing the buying systems.     

The interplay of corporate entrepreneurship,environmental orientation,and performance in clean‐tech firms—A double‐edged sword

Clean‐tech innovations are an important driver in solving global issues such as climate change and for the sustainable development of economies around the world. Whereas a large part of the literature focuses on clean‐tech ventures, less is known on corporate entrepreneurship, that is, entrepreneurial behavior in established firms and its relation to sustainability. This paper extends the sustainable entrepreneurship debate to corporate entrepreneurship, which represents a fruitful avenue to further developing clean technologies. We focus particularly on clean‐tech firms' organizational preparedness for corporate entrepreneurship (OPCE), that is, how well a firm's structures and processes are set for entrepreneurial activities. On the basis of contingency theory, this study investigates how the level of OPCE influences the environmental and financial performance of clean‐tech firms and whether their environmental orientation affects these relationships. Building on data from 103 firms, we find support for a positive effect of OPCE on both environmental and financial performance. Both effects are stronger the higher the external environmental orientation. In contrast, the leverage of internal environmental orientation is not equally positive. Our study reveals that the effect of OPCE on financial performance diminishes for firms that are more strongly driven by an internal than an external environmental orientation.     

Remittances as a social status signaling device

Like all human beings, migrants may have a concern about their prestige or social status in the eyes of left-home family and friends. They can remit money in order to signal their economic success and increase their status. We show that if migrants’ income is private information, unsuccessful migrants might accept a worsening of their living conditions and send back home large amounts of remittances only in order to make residents believe that they are successful. In some cases, successful migrants can signal their true favorable economic situation by remitting an even larger amount. The game presents various equilibria that differ with respect to the proportion and nature of the migrants who sacrifice consumption opportunities to status revealing actions.     

Virtually No Effect? Different Uses of Classroom Computers and their Effect on Student Achievement

Most studies find little to no effect of classroom computers on student achievement. We suggest that this null effect may combine positive effects of computer uses without equivalently effective alternative traditional teaching practices and negative effects of uses that substitute more effective teaching practices. Our correlated random effects models exploit within‐student between‐subject variation in different computer uses in the international TIMSS test. We find positive effects of using computers to look up information and negative effects of using computers to practice skills, resulting in overall null effects. Effects are larger for students with high socioeconomic status and mostly confined to developed countries.     

The rest of me

iPhone Siri demonstratively introduced natural language processing. Still a gadget, the idea revived one of the old promises of computers as personal assistants. Does it have the potential of fulfilling the already burgeoning imagination related to this promise? The authors believe that, while still dependent on the evolution of artificial intelligence, the virtual assistant may find support in the already maturing technologies of augmented reality and, more important, in the changing global network with the semantic web, Internet of things and geo-location. Bluntly speaking, its feasibility and acceptability may not even have to wait for the promised IBM computer with human brain capabilities, but rather build on a more friendly interaction with the Google search engine.The article provides a narrative scenario of the deep economic and social transformations and even turbulence that the so called imaginary friend may produce. Not discarding, but creatively integrating some of the archetypes of futuristic literature, the story positions these entities as the foreground of a deep integration of networks, with the added turmoil caused by economic interests that go beyond individuals’ sense-making capacity.This article is one of the follow-ups of the international foresight workshop “Crazy futures” coordinated by Ziauddin Sardar and George Cairns in a small resort on the Danube Delta in July 2011, a workshop organised as part of the project Quality and Leadership for Romanian Higher Education.     

Team Production with Punishment Option: Insights from a Real‐Effort Experiment

This paper analyzes the consequences of allowing for punishment in a real‐effort pair production experiment. The behavior of the best performer in the team differs on whether he or she can impose a sanction on the less performing partner. When sanctions are not allowed, good performers reduce their effort in response to the advantageous difference in scores; when they can impose sanctions, their change in effort is no longer related to the difference in scores. To some extent, a sanction mechanism allows good performers to focus on their own performance. In the case of costless sanctions, not sanctioning a partner who under‐performs, what we refer to as forgiveness, prompts the latter to improve his or her performance, but applying the sanction has a stronger push effect. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effect of Overconfidence and Underconfidence on Consumer Value

Although the effect of knowledge miscalibration (i.e., the inaccuracy in subjective knowledge relative to objective knowledge) on consumer purchase decisions has been investigated, its effect in the usage stage of consumption is little understood. This paper examines the effect of knowledge miscalibration in terms of both overconfidence (i.e., when subjective knowledge is inflated) and underconfidence (i.e., when subjective knowledge is deflated) on the dimensions of consumer value (i.e., efficiency, excellence, play, and aesthetics). The paper makes the case that overconfidence and underconfidence should be treated separately as they trigger different consumption consequences. Several hypotheses are tested through two studies: a covariance‐based study (Study 1) and an experimental study (Study 2). In Study 1, overconfidence and underconfidence are measured, while in Study 2 they are experimentally manipulated. Findings of both studies show that underconfidence negatively influences efficiency, excellence, and aesthetics, and overconfidence negatively influences play. Also, Study 1 finds a negative effect of underconfidence on play and Study 2 finds a negative effect of overconfidence on excellence and aesthetics. Findings reveal that knowledge miscalibration negatively impacts consumers’ usage experiences. This implies that in designing product or service experiences suppliers benefit from ensuring that consumers achieve a reduced level of knowledge miscalibration.