Doing more and doing better are two different entities: Different patterns of family control and environmental performance

Family firms bear two types of agency costs, including type I and type II agency problems, in corporate environmental practices: (1) Outside executives at family firms hesitate to engage in environmental strategies, which can lead to drops in profits; (2) Controlling families employ opportunistically environmental management to achieve their interests. We argue that a primary cause for the agency problems lies on ineffective internal corporate governance at family firms, which can cause loss of managerial (or power) balance between outside executives and family executives. Our findings show that family firms with ownership and strategic control (FSC), which family executives and outside executives monitor and constrain each other, can achieve the highest environmental performance. Moreover, external controls, including product market competition and provincial environmental regulations, substitute effective internal control of FSC. The environmental performance premium of FSC is more prevalent when the production market competition is lower. Family firms with ownership, operational, and strategic control (FOSC) can achieve higher environmental performance within a province with more stringent environmental regulations.     

The long overhang of bad decisions in agro-industrial development: Sugar and tomato paste in Ghana

In theory, learning from past mistakes should result in adapted and improved development policy. However policy learning can be difficult to achieve, and the link between learning and policy change is neither direct nor immediate. In this study we look at learning in agro-industrial policy in Ghana, by tracing the interest in sugar production and tomato processing over six decades. Specifically we ask why four failed factories established in the early 1960s have continued to play central roles in both policy and public discourse. Using policy documents, academic material, and the popular press, we show that Ghana’s policy focus on sugar production and tomato processing has endured, despite the fact that the factories were misconceived, poorly sited, ill-equipped and poorly managed. Indeed, the political ideas that underpinned the establishment of these factories in the early days of independence can be seen in the current One District, One Factory policy. We suggest that it is their symbolic and political value, not their economic value, which keeps the discussion around these factories alive. Even when shut down, they are a physical manifestation of historic commitments by the state, and as such they guarantee the attention of politicians, and hold out hope of a next re-launch. Unfortunately as long as the factories continue to be incorporated into each new generation of agro-industrial policy, it is difficult for any alternatives to gain traction. This analysis highlights the very long overhang of bad decisions, particularly when they are associated with physical infrastructure. Learning from past mistakes will only happen if the short-term political cost of turning policy learning into policy action can be overcome.     

The role of the entrepreneurial encounter in the emergence of opportunities: Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to explore the conceptual potential of the Deleuzian notion of the encounter in order to better understand the genealogy of opportunities. We adopt a processual perspective of opportunities. In order to translate this notion to the domain of entrepreneurship, we analysed and interpreted Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club. This film follows the creation of the first club in the United States that illegally allowed HIV-positive people to supply themselves with foreign antiretroviral drugs from Mexico or Japan. The article highlights encounters in this process that disturb the entrepreneur’s belief systems and allow him or her to be open to potential opportunity. It finally explores how the encounter may improve our understanding of the political becoming of opportunities within the entrepreneurial process.     

Are You a Chocolate Lover? An Investigation of the Repurchase Behavior of Chocolate Consumers

This study aimed to understand the factors affecting repurchase behavior of chocolate brands and, consequently, customer retention and acquisition. The study adopted a qualitative, inductive approach using in-depth interviews with 31 Australian consumers. The factors identified in the extant literature as antecedents of customers’ repurchase intention in the chocolate industry, including brand recognition, sales promotion, product price value, variety, taste, texture, size, packaging, and customer satisfaction, were confirmed. The results also indicated that functional value, product selection value, self-gratification value, socialization value, and transactional value were also considered during the consumer decision-making process. Implications for practitioners are provided.     

Twenty-Five Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall: An Empirical Revisit of West German Consumers' Attitudes Toward Products and Brands from Former East Germany

More than 25 years after the German reunification, data show that products/brands from the eastern regions of Germany (“Neue Länder”) still do not have significant shares in the country's western part (“Alte Länder”). To analyze potential reasons for this phenomenon, our current study replicates a previous study that investigated selected attitudes of Alte Länder consumers toward products/brands from the Neue Länder. It is shown that factors such as consumer ethnocentrism, product judgment, willingness to buy, and economic animosity continue to influence consumer behavior and as such our study offers potential explanation for the failure of Neue Länder products/brands in the western regions of Germany.     

A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW FOR GREEN PRODUCT TERM: FROM DEFINITION TO EVALUATION

Nowadays, interest in corporate environmental strategies shifts from cleaner processes to the holistic nature of green products. The relevant literature argues that firms have the opportunity to pioneer through green product innovation, allowing them to differentiate and thus gain competitive advantage. Environmental burden of products during their entire life cycle is undeniable. Due to the weakness of the existing literature that inadequately addresses a commonly accepted green product definition, as well as the thereby caused inconclusive academic empirical results on firms' competitiveness, there are many cases of businesses greenwashing behavior. The overall contribution of this exploratory paper, on determining and evaluating the degree of greenness of a product, is twofold; first, starting with a systematic literature review, authors further contribute by proposing an integrative definition that addresses the so far existing terminological gap. Next, after reviewing the existing environmental assessment tools, authors based on the developed definition and in accordance to its dynamic dimension contribute to the existing methodology, as the paper reveals issues that need to be considered in the evaluation of green products.     

Effects of export product diversification on quality upgrading: an empirical study

This paper empirically examines the effects of export product diversification on overall export quality in a panel data set of 115 countries from 1970 to 2010. It uses the data sets of the overall export quality and three export diversification measures of the International Monetary Fund: the extensive margin (variation in the number of new products exported), the intensive margin (variation in export values among existing exports), and the overall (Theil) index. It finds that export quality has only been increasing with a higher variation in export values among existing exports in low- and lower-middle-income countries. It also observes that export quality has been increasing with both a higher variation in export values among existing exports and new products exported in upper-middle- and high-income countries. The results are robust to the changing measures of controls in the benchmark model, the inclusion of many other controls; i.e. various measures of globalization, country size, factor endowments, macroeconomic stance, etc., and the exclusion of outliers.     

A play-the-winner-type urn design with reduced variability

We propose a new adaptive allocation rule, the drop-the-loser, that randomizes subjects in the course of a trial comparing treatments with dichotomous outcomes. The rule tends to assign more patients to better treatments with the same limiting proportion as the randomized play-the-winner rule. The new design has significantly less variable allocation proportion than the randomized play-the-winner rule. Decrease in variability translates into a gain in statistical power. For some values of success probabilities the drop-the-loser rule has a double advantage over conventional equal allocation in that it has better power and assigns more subjects to the better treatment. Acknowledgments. I thank Stephen Durham, the associate editor, and the referees for their helpful suggestions.