Demand relationships and pricing decisions for related products

This paper presents in terms of price changes the theoretical conditions for optimal pricing when products are demand-related. It then suggests an approach which could be used by companies to provide guidance in the pricing of such products over time.     

Impact of prosocial motivation on organizational citizenship behavior: the mediating role of ethical leadership and leader–member exchange

Quality & Quantity - This study empirically examined how ethical leadership and leader-member exchange mediates the relationship between prosocial motivation and organizational citizenship...     

Opportunities and risks of combining shopping experience and artistic elements in the same store: a contribution to the magical functions of the point of sale

ABSTRACT

This article draws on the construct of store atmospherics to address one of the latest developments in that field, i.e. the strategy of incorporating artistic elements into the store. On the one side, incorporating artistic elements in store atmospherics constitutes an innovative way for retailers to differentiate their shopping experience. Such a hybrid retail strategy seeks to offer maximised hedonic gratification to store visitors, while adding symbolic value to the commercial offering. Store traffic and sales are thus stimulated. Incorporating artistic elements is also a magic way to conceal the store’s transactional purpose; through this association with the art world, the store is viewed as less mercantile. However, there is a risk that consumers will view the store as a ‘museum’ and visit without purchasing. Therefore we conduce a conceptual investigation of that experiential strategy in order to assess its effects on retailer’s commercial and marketing performance.     

China's Foreign Trade: A “New Normal”

Since the global financial crisis of 2007/2008, China's foreign trade has continued to grow faster than international trade, but its drivers are now different from those prevailing before. The participation of the Chinese economy in the global production chains through processing activities is no longer the main driver of its trade performance. The new driving force of change is ordinary trade, based mainly on local inputs and domestic demand. China, which played a major role in the globalization process as an export base for multinational companies, is now shifting to having a “normal” foreign trade system, which is more closely integrated into the domestic economy.     

What a difference a word makes: Understanding threats to performance in a VUCA world

VUCA is an acronym that has recently found its way into the business lexicon. The components it refers to—volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—are words that have been variously used to describe an environment which defies confident diagnosis and befuddles executives. In a ‘VUCA world,’ both pundits and executives have said, core activities essential to driving organizational performance—like strategic planning—are viewed as mere exercises in futility. VUCA conditions render useless any efforts to understand the future and to plan responses. When leaders are left with little to do other than wring their hands, organizational performance quickly falls at risk. In this installment of Organizational Performance, we demonstrate that by overlooking important differences in the conditions that volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity describe, we have disempowered leaders. We show how leaders can appreciate the differences among each of these challenging situations in order to properly allocate scarce resources to preserve and enhance organizational performance.     

Mortality regimes and longevity risk in a life annuity portfolio

This paper explores the presence of changes of trends or jumps in French mortality from 1947 to 2007, and assesses their implications on the longevity risk management of a life annuity portfolio. We accomplish this by extending the Poisson log-bilinear regression developed by Brouhns et al. (2002) with a regime-switching model. Estimation results show that French mortality is characterized by two distinct regimes. One refers to a strong uncertainty state, which corresponds to the longevity conditions observed during the decade following World War II. The second regime is related to the low volatility of longevity improvements observed during the last 30 years. We use these results to analyze the impact of mortality regimes on the longevity risk management of a life annuity portfolio. Simulation results suggest that the changes of trends in the mortality process have some implications for longevity risk management.     

Rise of China and India in International Trade： From Textiles to New Technology

China and India are two demographic giants that have become big developing economic powers. They have maintained their specialization in textiles and developed outward-oriented sectors linked to new technologies, taking advantage of offshoring and outsourcing. Their increasing contribution to international trade is changing the world supply and demand of manufactured goods, primary goods and services. They are new leaders in the international division of labor, but beyond technological catch-up, their challenge is quality upgrading. Both countries are increasingly contributing to global economic growth, but they cannot yet trigger the growth of the rest of the world by themselves.     

Past Successes and New Challenges： China＇s Foreign Trade at a Turning Point

Since 1979, China has recorded a remarkable trade performance, which has been driven by international processing and the offshoring strategies of foreign firms. The diversification of Chinese exports and their technological upgrading have been phenomenal However, there is also inertia, illustrated by the persistent dualism of the trade sector, the unrelenting specialization in downmarket products and the deteriorating terms of trade. These weaknesses have helped its partners to adjust to the rise of this new trade power. In the past decade, China＇s economy has faced the adverse effects o fan export-led growth and the global crisis has revealed its vulnerability. China is now forced to rebalance its economy. This will imply major changes in foreign trade, in favor of ordinary trade and away from processing. In the foreseeable future, China is unlikely to become the driver of international demand but will remain the engine of Asian economic integration.     

Organizational performance with a broader focus: The case for a stakeholder approach to leadership

In 2019, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and the other 179 CEO members of the Business Roundtable argued that the purpose of a corporation must reflect not only the fiduciary interests of owners but also the varied interests of all stakeholders: employees, customers, partners, and broader society. This idea challenges a decades-old norm of shareholder primacy, so it is reasonable for organizational leaders to wonder whether doing so is truly in their firms’ best interests, and if so, how to implement this approach to leadership. To answer these questions, we draw on over 200 peer-reviewed articles covering leadership research to demonstrate how servant leadership, a stakeholder-focused approach to management, outperforms other leadership approaches across both shareholder and stakeholder criteria. We leverage case studies of organizational leaders from SAS, Zappos, Starbucks, and Jason’s Deli, financially successful organizations that exemplify how managers provide value and sustainability to stakeholders and shareholders through servant leadership. We also include practical steps managers can take to begin putting this form of leadership into practice.     

Delphi in the assessment of research and development projects

Used as a means of communication between specialists of different backgrounds concerned with the same r and d project, the Delphi technique allows one to establish the typology of the opinions of sub-groups within the panel; this is often more interesting than simply determining the consensus to which the method generally leads. Factorial analysis treatment of the results of a Delphi study undertaken in 1970–1971 about the prospects for artificial hearts gives an example of such a typology and leads to a definition of some of the less known characteristics of the method : the dynamic character of opinion interaction and not simply the convergence of dissenting viewpoints and the substitution of the individual's logical consistency and coherence by that of the group. As a means of dialogue between decision maker and research specialists, the method favours free circulation and focusing of opinions and motivations towards building the future in a certain way.