The power of positivity? The influence of positive psychological capital language on crowdfunding performance

We extend the entrepreneurship literature to include positive psychological capital — an individual or organization's level of psychological resources consisting of hope, optimism, resilience, and confidence — as a salient signal in crowdfunding. We draw from the costless signaling literature to argue that positive psychological capital language usage enhances crowdfunding performance. We examine 1726 crowdfunding campaigns from Kickstarter, finding that entrepreneurs conveying positive psychological capital experience superior fundraising performance. Human capital moderates this relationship while social capital does not, suggesting that costly signals may, at times, enhance the influence of costless signals. Post hoc analyses suggest findings generalize across crowdfunding types, but not to IPOs.     

The Decomposition of the Corporate Body: What Kant Cannot Contribute to Business Ethics

Kant is gaining popularity in business ethics because the categorical imperative rules out actions such as deceptive advertising and exploitative working conditions, both of which treat people merely as means to an end. However, those who apply Kant in this way often hold businesses themselves morally accountable, and this conception of collective responsibility contradicts the kind of moral agency that underlies Kant’s ethics. A business has neither inclinations nor the capacity to reason, so it lacks the conditions necessary for constraint by the moral law. Instead, corporate policies ought to be understood as analogous to legal constraints. They may encourage or discourage certain actions, but they cannot determine a person’s maxim – which for Kant is the focus of moral judgment. Because there is no collective intention apart from any intentions of the individual agents who act as members of the corporation, an organization itself has no moral obligations. This poses a dilemma: either apply the categorical imperative to the actions of particular businesspeople and surrender the notion of collective responsibility, or apply a different moral theory to the actions of businesses themselves. Given the diffusion of responsibility in a bureaucracy, the explanatory usefulness of collective responsibility may force business ethicists to abandon Kant’s moral philosophy.     

Consumer behavior in accumulating household financial assets

The acquisition of household financial assets by married couples are examined. Guttman scalogram analysis is used to develop and evaluate the reproducibility of the derived accumulation scales. To test the reliability of the findings, split halves and longitudinal analyses are conducted. In addition, financial asset patterns are examined across three age segments. Finally, some implications for future consumer research on financial assets are suggested.     

An additional approach for interpretation of multiple discriminant analysis in business research

Several useful approaches for interpreting multiple discriminant analysis (MDA), including graph plots, have recently been illustrated for business researchers. This article proposes and illustrates an extension of the traditional plotting procedures in MDA that allows the depiction of both group overlaps and differences among groups. We also discuss several other interpretational approaches in MDA.     

Norman's Lament: The Greek and Euro Area Crisis in Historical Perspective

This article uses original and secondary archival sources to examine the value of the distinction between creditor and debtor states in explaining the behaviour of domestic elites in international and European macroeconomic and monetary cooperation, compared to variables like size and trade. It highlights the paradox and tension between changes in institutional forms and stronger incentives to cooperate (Montagu Norman's ‘new Europe’) and persisting patterns in strategic behaviour across space and over time. Central to this continuity is a fundamental asymmetry of power between creditor and debtor states. The imbalances that underpin creditor–debtor state relations also reveal the structural underpinnings of arguments from economic principle, ‘who argues what’ and receptiveness to economic ideas and thinkers. Not least, the case studies and arguments in the article offer fresh and different insights into British and French attitudes to European coordination.     

诺曼·梅勒作品对极权主义的批判

诺曼.梅勒的作品反映了美国军队中、政治中、文化中和生活中的极权主义,有助于人们理解美国的社会状况、战后美国极权主义的崛起和对美国社会和人民造成的危害。     

Key managerial factors in new venture departments

Two clusters of factors —the “corporate strategic posture” and the New Venture Department (NVD) “political posture” — appear to determine the direction of an NVD's evolution. The “corporate strategic posture” refers to the cycles of diversification and consolidation that typically characterize corporate growth. A corporation's “strategic posture” at any given point in time can be positioned on a continuum, one end of which is a “diversifying” posture, while the other end is a “consolidating” posture.     

Return and price volatility of bonds with different credit risk

This article analyzes the relative price and monthly holding period return volatility of bonds with differing credit risk. The research proceeds by decomposing the causes of price volatility into that due to duration and yield volatility. Lower duration, due to higher coupon rate, and relatively stable yields, due to the behavior of credit risk and risk aversion over the business cycle, may well make lower quality issues such as A and Baa industrials exhibit less volatility than high-quality issues such as Aaa industrials and United States Treasury issues.     

Uncertainty and communication strategy formation

Managers may affect the consumer information search and acquisition process and, thus, consumer preference by designing communications and selecting information channels that are responsive to consumers' uncertainty-associated information needs. However, measures of uncertainty that would be appropriate for general use in measuring product-attribute associated uncertainty have not been developed and assessed. In this paper, two methodologies that may be appropriate are presented and evaluated. Comparison of the methods shows both approaches to be about equal when evaluated with respect to convergent and face validity, test-retest reliability, and the ability of each measure to predict preference. Possible uses of product-attribute uncertainty measures in assisting managers to formulate communications strategy are discussed.