bidding behavior in descending and ascending auctions this research examines how individual differences and institutional practices influence consumer bidding in auctions bidders may be motivated by different goals e g thrill of winning the item with minimal attention to what they pay for it versus prudence winning the item at a price at or below its perceived value also innate or auctioneer induced differences may exist in the precision and salience of bidder cognitions about the item s value we report two studies on how these motivational and cognitive factors influence bids in descending and ascending auctions respectively each study also manipulated a situational variable wait time at each price step the two auctions realized different average prices for the same item set average bids were higher in the descending versus ascending auction in several study conditions in both auction formats bidders primed with thrill versus prudence bid higher but more precise and or salient values attenuated this goal effect among other results in the descending auction longer wait times elicited higher bids from bidders primed with thrill but not prudence in the ascending auction longer wait times produced lower bids for bidders primed with prudence but not thrill these findings on consumer bidding behavior have practical implications for auction design

information processing theory and the multinational enterprise this paper attempts to extend information processing theory so that it can be meaningfully applied to mncs a specific multidimensional framework is developed that can be used to measure the information processing capacities of macro level features of mnc organizational design an applied example transnationalism is used to illustrate how to apply the framework and demonstrate that it can contribute meaningful new insight to this complex organizational problem

loss aversion and price volatility as determinants of attitude towards and preference for variable price in the swedish electricity market the results of a survey of a random sample of 488 swedish residents showed that a positive attitude towards and preference for a variable price agreement with the incumbent electricity supplier was negatively affected by loss aversion and a positive attitude also negatively affected by beliefs about price volatility although correlated with attitude and preference age education and current choice of a variable price agreement had no independent effects income and current electricity costs had no effects

choice proliferation simplicity seeking and asset allocation abstract in settings such as investing for retirement or choosing a drug plan individuals typically face a large number of options in this paper we analyze how the size of the choice set influences which alternative is selected we present both laboratory experiments and field data that suggest larger choice sets induce a stronger preference for simple easy to understand options the first experiment demonstrates that in seeming violation of the weak axiom of revealed preference subjects are more likely to select a given sure bet over non degenerate gambles when choosing from a set of 11 options than when choosing from a subset of 3 the second experiment clarifies that large choice sets induce a preference for simpler rather than less risky options lastly using records of more than 500 000 employees from 638 institutions we demonstrate that the presence of more funds in an individual s 401 k plan is associated with a greater allocation to money market and bond funds at the expense of equity funds

scheduling the production of several items with random demands in a single facility consider the problem of scheduling the production of several items in a single facility that can produce only one item at a time this problem occurs since it is often economic to produce several items in a single facility the objective is to reduce the long run average holding backorder and setup costs we assume that demands are random with constant expected rates we allow backorders and charge holding and backlogging costs at linear time weighted rates items are produced at continuous constant rates setup times and setup costs are item dependent constants these parameters however are independent of the order of setups a real time scheduling tool is developed in three steps first with demands replaced by their expectations we compute an optimal or near optimal target cyclic schedule next we study the problem of scheduling the facility after a single disruption perturbs the inventories the goal is to recover the target cyclic schedule at minimal excess over the average cost of the cyclic schedule we formulate this as a control problem and obtain a linear recovery policy that is optimal for a large configuration of disruptions finally we select safety stocks to minimize the long run average cost of following the target schedule with the recovery policy we show that optimal safety stocks are unique and have the property that in the long run the proportion of time that an item is in stock is the ratio of backorder to holding plus backorder cost we present an example that integrates the cyclic schedule the control policy and the safety stocks

using extremeness aversion to fight obesity policy implications of context dependent demand this article illustrates how the compromise effect alters consumers selection of soft drinks using three within subject studies we show that extremeness aversion and price insensitivity cause consumers to increase their consumption when the smallest drink size is dropped or when a larger drink size is added to a set as a result rational firms find it best to drop the smaller sizes and add a larger size thus increasing overall consumption after estimating each individual s demand as a function of price and drink size availability policy experiments demonstrate how it is possible to reduce soft drink consumption without additional taxation

developing acquired foreign subsidiaries the experience of mnes in transition economies drawing on subsidiary evolution and dynamic capabilities research i test how development and growth of subsidiaries recently acquired in transition economies are affected by multinational enterprise mne and target capabilities these subsidiaries often lack important resources their cross border transfer enhancement and exploitation are problematic however data on 170 acquisitions in central and eastern europe confirmed the importance of the pre acquisition experiences of both target and mne for subsidiary growth although cultural differences moderated the predicted effects notably

control and coordination in multinational corporations the integration of french and british subsidiaries into u s based multinationals is examined a theory linking the use of control and coordination mechanisms to the need for predictability flexibility and the cost of achieving them is investigated by relating organizational structure technology foreign commitment financial performance and nationality to the use of coordination and control

the effects of effort and intrinsic motivation on risky choice people often need to trade off between the probability and magnitude of the rewards that they could earn for investing effort the present paper proposes that the conjunction of two simple assumptions relating effort induced reward expectations to prospect theory s value function provides a parsimonious theory that predicts that the nature of the required effort will have a systematic effect on such trade offs using the case of frequency or loyalty programs a series of five studies involving both real and hypothetical choices demonstrated that a the presence as opposed to absence of effort requirements enhances the preference for sure small rewards over large uncertain rewards b the preference for reward certainty is attenuated when the effort activity is intrinsically motivating and c continuously increasing the effort level leads to an inverted u effect on the preference for sure small over largeuncertain rewards the studies also employ process measures and examine the mechanisms underlying the impact of the effort stream on the trade off between the certainty and magnitude of rewards the final section discusses the theoretical implications of this research as well as the practical implications with respect to frequency programs and other types of incentive systems

responding to public disclosure of corporate social irresponsibility in host countries information control and ownership control we extend the internalization literature by theorizing on how public disclosure of corporate social irresponsibility csi can damage reputation based firm specific advantages of multinational companies mncs and how foreign subsidiary governance can subsequently be used as strategic responses specifically we distinguish between two foreign subsidiary governance mechanisms information control and ownership control that the prior literature has often assumed operate in parallel and posit that they function in divergent directions in this context furthermore we explain how two host country characteristics press freedom and regulatory quality amplify the need for mncs to utilize different governance mechanisms as responses to csi disclosure

determination of safety stocks for cyclic schedules with stochastic demands abstract this paper considers the problem of scheduling the production of multiple items each with random demand on a single facility we show how the variance in demand during lead time can be estimated and present a model for determination of safety stocks and order up to levels for a fixed cyclic sequence both with and without idle time for systems with idle time we present a control model to make the decision to produce next item in sequence or idle the facility the performance of the model is tested in a simulation study

does social capital affect investment in human capital family ties and schooling decisions we analyse whether traditional sharing norms within kinship networks affect education decisions of poor black households in kwazulu natal theory predicts that the size of the kinship network ambiguously impacts on the incentive to invest in human capital due to opposing empathy and free rider effects our empirical analysis based on a range of different estimators suggests the latter effect dominates forced solidarity within the network discourages investments in human capital

a framework for integrated risk management in international business treatments of risk in the international management literature largely focus on particular uncertainties to the exclusion of other interrelated uncertainties this paper develops a framework for categorizing the uncertainties faced by firms operating internationally and outlines both financial and strategic corporate risk management responses

the effect of ordering decisions by choice set size on consumer search consumers frequently engage in sequential decisions this article explores whether the order of these decisions can influence the manner in which consumers search through the possible choice options results from five studies suggest that ordering decisions by increasing vs decreasing choice set size leads to greater search depth measured by both sampling count and decision time initial smaller choice sets in increasing sequences appear to initiate a maximizing mind set which then persists even as participants encounter later larger choice sets these participants report a greater desire to maximize and are less satisfied with their decisions consistent with research on chronic maximizers in addition they continue to exhibit maximizing behavior in subsequent unrelated tasks supporting a mind set account of the differences in search in sum decision makers are proposed to be sticky adapters initial decision strategies seem to constrain the extent to which they adapt to new contexts

when more is less and less is more the role of ideal point availability and assortment in consumer choice contrary to the common wisdom that more choice is always better selections made from large assortments can lead to weaker preferences building on the extant literature this research identifies ideal point availability as a key factor moderating the impact of assortment on choice it is proposed that in the case of large assortments ideal point availability can simplify choice leading to a stronger preference for the selected alternative in contrast for choices made from smaller assortments ideal point availability is proposed to have the opposite effect leading to weaker preferences data obtained from four experiments lend support for the theory and the empirical predictions advanced in this article

managing the mne subsidiary advancing a multi level and dynamic research agenda abstract multinational enterprise mne subsidiaries abroad are important organizations in their own rights they typically hold some of the mne s most critical resources and operate at the forefront of complex international environments in this review we identify and organize theoretical and empirical research on subsidiary management based on over 600 articles in leading academic journals we develop a conceptual framework that integrates complementary streams of theoretical and empirical research with the subsidiary as its focal unit of analysis in particular we review six lines of research on subsidiary scope practices knowledge management engagement with local market and nonmarket actors performance and individuals within subsidiaries we highlight theoretical perspectives that have contributed to and been advanced by research on mne subsidiaries based on the review we explore future research agendas linking the contemporary research themes with two main thrusts first subsidiary management is a multi level phenomenon that would benefit from more microfoundational research second subsidiary management operates at key interfaces of technology paradigm shifts and of disruptions in the political and institutional environment research into the dynamics of subsidiary management would thus enhance our understanding of international business in a volatile global economy

managerial metric use in marketing decisions across 16 countries a cultural perspective research on metrics is consistently designated a priority by academics and practitioners however less is known about how culture and cross national differences can potentially impact metric use which is theoretically and managerially limiting this work develops a model that examines national and organizational cultural antecedents while controlling for the decision setting testing the model on data collected from 4384 managerial decisions from 1637 firms in 16 countries reveals that both levels of culture are associated with metric use but each has varying effects our results enable multinational executives to better understand and increase managerial metric use across different cultures and settings

cyclical schedules vs dynamic sequencing replenishment dynamics and inventory efficiency abstract this paper addresses the efficiency of fixed sequence cyclical scheduling systems relative to that of dynamically sequenced order point methods of production control the criterion for comparison is the aggregate inventory required to achieve a target fill rate taking into account the alternative replenishment dynamics arising under the respective systems a simulation analysis demonstrates that cyclical scheduling may have smaller aggregate inventory requirement when the production process is highly utilized and when this utilization is due to demand for a small number of items having large setup times

configurations of strategy and structure in subsidiaries of multinational corporations a three fold typology of subsidiary roles world mandate specialized contributor local implementer was induced from the literature and its empirical validity was confirmed adopting a configurational approach we then explored the ways in which subsidiary structural context varies across subsidiary role types structural context characteristics were determined through a discussion of the underlying principles of the hierarchy and heterarchy models of multinational organization the key findings were a higher strategic autonomy in world mandates than in local implementers b a more internationally configured value chain in world mandates and specialized contributors than local implementers c lower levels of internal product flows in world mandates than the other two types and d a significantly lower performance in specialized contributors implications for a configurational model of subsidiary management and for heterarchy as a higher level conceptualization are discussed

when more seems like less differential price framing increases the choice share of higher priced options four experiments supported by six supplemental studies show that premium but higher priced products e g direct flights larger capacity data storage devices are more popular when the additional

multinational corporations vs domestic corporations financial performance and characteristics the analysis in this paper is composed of two segments first the financial performance of a sample of multinational corporations mncs is compared with that derived for a control group of domestic corporations dmcs using market based performance measures then the paper presents a comparison of selected financial characteristics of the firms in the two groups the results suggest the dmcs appear to have a significantly superior risk adjusted market based performance are significantly less capitalized and have higher total risk as well as higher systematic risk the fact that mncs are substantially larger than dmcs is not found to be a significant factor in explaining the observed difference between the two groups performance

order in product customization decisions evidence from field experiments differentiated product models are predicated on the belief that a product s utility can be derived from the summation of utilities for its individual attributes in one framed field experiment and two natural field experiments we test this assumption by experimentally manipulating the order of attribute presentation in the product customization process of custom made suits and automobiles we find that order affects the design of a suit that people configure and the design and price of a car that people purchase by influencing the likelihood that they will accept the default option suggested by the firm

constructive consumer choice processes consumer decision making has been a focal interest in consumer research and consideration of current marketplace trends e g technological change an information explosion indicates that this topic will continue to be critically important we argue that consumer choice is inherently constructive due to limited processing capacity consumers often do not have well defined existing preferences but construct them using a variety of strategies contingent on task demands after describing constructive choice consumer decision tasks and decision strategies we provide an integrative framework for understanding constructive choice review evidence for constructive consumer choice in light of that framework and identify knowledge gaps that suggest opportunities for additional research

market boundaries and product choice illustrating attraction and substitution effects what happens to the share of choices each item receives when the choice set boundaries are extended by adding a new item that is extremely good on one dimension but poor on the others first there is a substitution effect whereby the new item takes choice share mainly from similar items in the set second there is an attraction effect resulting in a general shift of preference toward the added item experimental studies show that choice patterns conflict with current theoretical and common sense ideas about the effect of added alternatives on choice

global strategy implementation at the business unit level operational capabilities and administrative mechanisms the study examines the impact of internationally strategy on organizational design and the influence of the organizational design on effectiveness at the business unit level the empirical findings are based on survey responses from eighty two business units competing in global industries the findings are supportive of the contingency notion which suggests that business unit effectiveness is a function of the fit between the international strategy and the organizational design

prominence versus dominance how relationships between alternatives drive decision strategy and choice this article argues that the structure of a choice set can influence the extent to which consumers weight a given attribute the results of seven experiments suggest that the relationship between options under consideration can influence preference ordering by shifting the decision strategy people adopt when constructing their preference in decisions in which people afford greater importance to one attribute versus another preference for an option that scores high on this prominent attribute may decrease when decoy options that are clearly better or worse than the focal options are inserted into the choice set the authors posit that this effect arises because decision makers initially and spontaneously use dominance cues rather than prominence when evaluating options and they continue to use this strategy even when it does not enable them to differentiate the alternatives under consideration the authors moderate this effect by prompting respondents to consider prominence and by manipulating the ord

an empirical analysis of the integration responsiveness framework u s construction equipment industry firms in global competition in this study businesses competing as part of the global u s construction equipment industry were categorized into three subgroups according to the integration responsiveness framework i r in an attempt to further understand industry pressures confronting businesses that compete internationally the results show that three generic strategies suggested by the i r framework do appear in a single industry context globally integrated locally responsive and multifocal beyond providing additional insight into the nature of competition in a single global industry several broad extensions to the integration responsiveness framework are suggested

control changes in multinational corporations adjusting control approaches in practice the issue of control in multinational corporations mncs is central to international business scholarship however prior literature tends to provide a static perspective offering few theoretical insights on control changes especially the practices that enable control adjustments adopting a practice theory perspective we consider control as in the making whereby adjustments emerge through a social accomplishment constituted and reconstituted as headquarters and subsidiaries engage in a co creating process using a longitudinal case study approach we had the rare opportunity to track and compare an unsuccessful and a successful attempt to adjust control in an mnc over time our main theoretical contribution is a model of adjusting control in mncs that details the practices that enable control changes this model offers theoretical implications for organizational control theory in mncs especially in relation to theorizing the subsidiary contribution in the design of control the reconciliation of raised tensions in headquarters subsidiary relationships and the nature of unintended consequences in the adjustment process our study also contributes to theories on mnc change as it details the construction of an ongoing strategy structure alignment for strategic flexibility

search costs and adaptive consumers short time delays do not affect choice quality using online price comparison and shopping platforms makes experiencing slow connections lags and waiting times for information an unfortunate reality however little attention has been paid to analyzing the effects of such delayed display of information on product choice behavior this article explores the effect of time delays in a multi attribute choice laboratory experiment by not providing information immediately when requested but after short time delays increasing these waiting times reduced the amount of information looked up but did not affect choice quality higher time delays made decision makers use more deliberate search processes whereas low time delays induced inefficient over searching

the role of explanations and need for uniqueness in consumer decision making unconventional choices based on reasons this research investigates the interaction between a very common task explaining decisions and an individual difference need for uniqueness nfu on buyer decision making we propose that explaining or providing reasons for decisions shifts the focus from the choice of options to the choice of reasons furthermore buyers who explain their decisions and have high nfu tend to select unconventional reasons and are consequently more likely to make unconventional choices these predictions were supported in a series of studies involving choices between conventional and less conventional options such as whether to switch to a brand on sale whether to select a compromise option and whether to accept a gamble with a possible loss the findings also indicate that the effects of providing reasons are not due to attempts to act rationally or to concerns about being evaluated three boundary conditions on the generalization that high nfu consumers who provide reasons tend to make unconventional choices we

me myself and my choices the influence of private self awareness on choice abstract this article examines the impact of private self awareness on consumer decision making in four studies the authors show that the ease of preference formation accompanying private self awareness makes people more willing and able to rely on their personal preference weights as the authors predict privately self aware consumers are less inclined to opt for a varied choice set study 1 and are less likely to select compromise options studies 2 and 3 unless they find that it is too difficult to construct their personal preferences study 4

who says it s the economy cross national and cross individual variation in the salience of economic performance theories of government approval usually assume that voters care about economic outcomes this assumption frequently does not hold data from the comparative study of electoral systems demonstrate that although the economy is often the most important issue in an election its place on the issue agenda varies across individuals and electoral contexts the economy is more likely to dominate other issue concerns under conditions of economic recession volatility and economic underdevelopment moreover at the individual level the salience of economic performance rises with unemployment and economic vulnerability governance crises related to corruption and human rights reduce attention to the economy as do large scale terrorist attacks if the economy is not perceived as important its effect on government approval is strongly mitigated thus variations in the economy s salience need to be further incorporated into studies linking economic and political outcomes

implementing global strategy characteristics of global subsidiary mandates implementing a global strategy requires coordinating subsidiary activities across country locations the assumption often made is that such coordination must be managed at headquarters however an alternate approach is decentralized centralized responsibilities in which different subsidiaries within the multinational are given worldwide mandates to manage specific products or products lines this study identifies subsidiary characteristics that are associated with receiving a global mandate by examining foreign subsidiaries located in france germany japan u k u s and canada

an empirical analysis of the integration responsiveness framework in global industries in this study businesses competing in global industries were categorized into three groups according to the integration responsiveness framework for conceptualizing industry pressures confronting business competing internationally using this framework contextual conditions associated with each group were examined competitive attributes distinguishing each group were then identified to clarify alternate business level strategies for competing within a global industry context beyond providing additional insight into the nature of competition in global industries several broad extensions to the integration responsiveness framework are suggested

the effect of consumers real world choice sets on inferences from stated preference surveys for stated preference sp studies we develop a model that assesses the influence of choice set misspecification arising from the omission of perceived substitutes among real world alternatives in the same class of goods this problem is most likely to be present when individuals are allowed to select a no purchase option instead of being forced to choose from an explicit set of sp alternatives with hypothetical attribute levels a convenient feature of our model is that researchers do not need to know exactly which omitted real substitute the individual most prefers only the set of real substitutes that exists in our empirical illustration a comparison of rival models suggests researchers who overlook the presence of perceived real alternatives related to an sp experiment can end up with noticeably biased welfare estimates our more general model suggests that it may be prudent for future sp researchers to anticipate then test and possibly correct for distortions in utility parameter estimates that result from this problem

the strategic use of capacity slack in the economic lot scheduling problem with random demand growing interest in designing systems with capacity slack as one form of flexibility raises many questions about its use and its usefulness in the framework of the economic lot scheduling problem with stochastic demand we develop on optimization based model that considers capacity slack safety stock and overtime explicitly and has the objective of minimizing the expected cost per unit time of inventory overtime and where applicable setup costs the solution is a continuous time production plan that consists of a time dependent inventory trajectory for each of the parts including the placement of planned idle time in the schedule we consider schedule stability to be desirable because of potential effects on upstream and downstream operations in multistage production settings thus the plan also has certain characteristics that contribute to achieving stability our results on the relative merits of capacity slack and safety stock indicate that capacity slack in the form of planned idle time is

the effect of national culture on the choice of entry mode characteristics of national cultures have frequently been claimed to influence the selection of entry modes this article investigates this claim by developing a theoretical argument for why culture should influence the choice of entry two hypotheses are derived which relate culture to entry mode choice one focusing on the cultural distance between countries the other on attitudes towards uncertainty avoidance using a multinomial logit model and controlling for other effects the hypotheses are tested by analysing data on 228 entries into the united states market by acquisition wholly owned greenfield and joint venture empirical support for the effect of national culture on entry choice is found

repeated dichotomous choice formats for elicitation of willingness to pay simultaneous estimation and anchoring effect repeated dichotomous choice contingent valuation data are generated from responses to a succession of binary questions regarding alternative prices for an environmental good in this paper we propose a simultaneous equation model that allows for endogeneity and error correlation across the responses at each stage of the bidding process the model allows us to study the evolution of anchoring effects after the second dichotomous choice question estimation involves the bayesian techniques of gibbs sampling and data augmentation and the application focuses on the preservation value of a natural area the results for a data set involving up to four successive dichotomous choice questions show that restricted multiple bounded models are rejected by the data with the general model in addition willingness to pay tends to stabilize after the second stage in the elicitation process for the general unrestricted model when taking anchoring effects into consideration it is revealed that individuals responses in the latter stages are influenced by the sequence of bid prices offered in earlier questions nevertheless they do not have a significant effect on welfare estimates

optimizing service level and relevant cost for a stochastic multi item cyclic production system a multi item make to order production system in a stochastic environment is analyzed assuming a common cycle production approach the impact of safety stock cycle time demand processing time and setup time on service level and total relevant cost holding setup and backorder cost is determined to illustrate this relationship a trajectory for the service level with respect to the relevant cost holding and setup is presented furthermore algorithms to calculate the cycle time which leads to maximum service level at constant safety stock and to calculate the pair cycle time and safety stock which minimize total relevant cost are introduced

centralization in headquarters subsidiary relationships research to date on centralization in mncs has produced many inconsistent findings the present study attempts to add clarity to the situation by re testing many of the existing hypotheses with data from a recent study of centralization in 50 large us uk and european mncs it examines how the degree of centralization inherent in the headquarters foreign subsidiary relationship varies in response to a variety of company wide and subsidiary level conditions the influence of company wide conditions on centralization appears to be much clearer than the influence of subsidiary level conditions the study also identifies several new contingency patterns that appear to be at work in mncs today

transactions cost economics and the multinational enterprise an assessment abstract this paper applies transactions cost principles to the multinational enterprise in order to ascertain its distinctive properties as a mode of economic organization the analysis helps identify just when and where contractual alternatives to the multinational firm are likely to be viable this turns out to depend upon the nature of the technology the regime of appropriability within which the firm operates and the characteristics of the markets in question transactions cost analysis is also extended to the multinational enterprise host country relationship implications for management and public policy are derived

the asymmetric impact of context on advantaged versus disadvantaged options abstractdespite substantial prior research regarding the effect of context on choices uncertainty remains regarding when particular context effects will be observed in this article the authors advance a new perspective on context dependent choices according to which context effects are a function of the relative advantage of one option over another and of the different strategies that decision makers evoke when making a choice they propose that context effects resulting from the addition of a third option to a two option set are more frequently observed when the added option is relatively similar adjacent to the disadvantaged alternative i e the lower share option in the set the authors conduct a series of studies to analyze the occurrence of context effects and find support for predictions related to asymmetric dominance and extremeness aversion

multinational corporations control systems and delegation issues the paper has 2 major objectives first to identify control and delegation issues confronting multinational corporation managers second to develop a conceptual model to assist multinational corporation managers in selecting appropriate control systems and determining the extent of delegation to be provided to subsidiary managers finally the paper suggests directions for future research

product category familiarity and preference construction marketers often base decisions about marketing strategies on the results of research designed to elicit information about consumers preferences a large body of research indicates however that preferences often are labile that is preferences can be reversed depending on factors such as how the preference is elicited in three studies we examine the effect of familiarity in two preference elicitation tasks choice and matching judgments we provide evidence of an interaction between familiarity and response mode choice or matching in each study in study 3 we test the explanation that preference reversals may occur when the interaction of response mode with product category familiarity leads to systematic changes in attribute weighting

how people respond to contingent valuation questions a verbal protocol analysis of willingness to pay for an environmental regulation abstract this paper investigates what a respondent is thinking when answering a willingness to pay question in a contingent valuation using a think aloud technique from psychology called verbal protocol analysis the willingness to pay responses we observed seem to be constructed from a variety of considerations including an obligation to pay a fair share of the cost of the solution and signaling concern for a larger set of environmental issues the finding that respondents seem to construct their values at the time they are asked rather than reporting a more well defined value is seen as consistent with over two decades of research on the psychology of decision making potential uses of verbal protocols in contingent valuation studies are also discussed

adaptive behavior and economic theory the relationship between psychological and economic views of behavior once a subject of heavy dispute is now understood in a very similar way by practitioners of both these disciplines and of our sister social sciences in general terms we view or model an individual as a collection of decision rules rules that dictate the action to be taken in given situations and a set of preferences used to evaluate the outcomes arising from particular situation action combinations these decision rules are continuously under review and revision new decision rules are tried and tested against experience and rules that produce desirable outcomes supplant those that do not i use the term adaptive to refer to this trial anderror process through which our modes of behavior are determined if one is interested in modeling particular decisions in any very explicit way it is obviously necessary to think about rather narrow aspects of an individual s entire set of decision rules his or her personality experimental psychology has traditionally focused on the adaptive process by which decision rules are replaced by others in this tradition the influence of the subject s or as an economist says the agent s preferences this essay uses a series of examples to illustrate the use of rationality and adaptation in economic theory it is argued that these hypotheses are complementary and that stability theories based on adaptive behavior may help to narrow the class of empirically interesting equilibria in certain economic models an experiment is proposed to test this idea

patterns of strategic control within multinational corporations the management of multinational operations is often required to balance conflicting priorities between responsiveness at the national subsidiary level and central coordination for global competitiveness such balancing requires that relevant data be brought to bear on decisions that consensus be created among key managers and that relative power among them be carefully balanced in large complex mncs the balancing process can be institutionalized through the structuring of relationships between headquarters and subsidiaries

a rational reconstruction of the compromise effect using market data to infer utilities this article explores the possibility that consumers use market data to make inferences about product utilities the argument is made by means of an example based on the compromise effect found in extant experimental data this phenomenon is generally looked at as a manifestation of deviations from rationality in choice however assuming full rationality i describe a decision rule that is based on consumers inferences about their personal valuation of alternatives from the portfolio of market offerings and some information about their own relative tastes through a number of examples i will argue that consumers often use this or similar decision rules to make inferences about utility i then show that the decision rule may generate compromise effects in experiments and that it may be sustainable the compromise effect could therefore be seen as preliminary evidence that consumers make such inferences

choice based on reasons the case of attraction and compromise effects building on previous research this article proposes that choice behavior under preference uncertainty may be easier to explain by assuming that consumers select the alternative supported by the best reasons this approach provides an explanation for the so called attraction effect and leads to the prediction of a compromise effect consistent with the hypotheses the results indicate that 1 brands tend to gain share when they become compromise alternatives in a choice set 2 attraction and compromise effects tend to be stronger among subjects who expect to justify their decisions to others and 3 selections of dominating and compromise brands are associated with more elaborate and difficult decisions

market seeking mnes in an emerging market how parent subsidiary links shape overseas success this study extends research on parent subsidiary links applying new theoretical perspectives those of resource dependence and dynamic capability to the new empirical setting of an emerging market we suggest that parent subsidiary links help to mitigate emerging market threats by reducing external dependence and help to capitalize on emerging market opportunities by enhancing local responsiveness

resource security competition for global resources strategic intent and governments as owners we develop a resource security theory by examining the intent of acquisitions of scarce resources by multinational firms results suggest that owners of firms can shape the intent of resource acquisitions specifically state owned enterprises soes tend to acquire and pay more for resources for exploration rather than exploitation this is because soes owners governments are most concerned with securing their country s future we contribute to the literature by suggesting that ownership influences resource acquisitions that resource security is of importance to multinational enterprises and that soes invest abroad to safeguard both their own and their home countries future

brownfield entry in emerging markets this paper focuses on the brown field entry mode as a special case of acquisition in which the resources transferred by the investor dominate over those provided by the acquired firm we see this mode as having particular relevance for entry strategies in emerging markets the choice of entry mode is analyzed on the basis of a framework utilizing both resource based and transaction cost theories the resource requirements have to be matched with resources available to the investor through an acquired firm and the decision has to account for the costs of acquiring and integrating the resources

dyadic compromise effect existing research on the compromise effect has focused exclusively on the individual this paper investigates compromise effects in a setting that involves multiple individuals making a choice we study whether the dyadic compromise effect dce exists the association between dyadic and individual compromise effects and strategies to mitigate the dce we build a statistical model of dyadic choice that formally incorporates dce we conduct two studies to test our proposed models empirically in study 1 we begin with an investigation of the dce with student subjects in study 2 we test for the presence of dce among married couples when making retirement investment choices in both studies model free and model based evidence provides strong support for the presence of dce a model that incorporates dce provides a better fit than models that do not evidence in support of dce is shown to be robust to alternative compromise effect model specifications and utility aggregation methods we find that the indi

effects of payment mechanism on spending behavior the role of rehearsal and immediacy of payments past expenses have been shown to influence future spending behavior by depleting available budgets however a prerequisite for this relationship is the accurate recall of past payments and the experiencing of the full aversive impact associated with them this article shows that the use of different payment mechanisms influences both these factors and hence moderates the effects of past payments on future spending specifically past payments strongly reduce purchase intention when the payment mechanism requires the consumer to write down the amount paid rehearsal and when the consumer s wealth is depleted immediately rather than with a delay immediacy two experiments show support for the proposed theoretical framework

consumer choice strategies for comparing noncomparable alternatives research on consumer choice has focused on easily comparable alternatives a subset of the choices consumers regularly face this paper outlines the problem and two general strategies for comparing noncomparable alternatives a subset of choices that has been overlooked in the literature experiments are reported that support use of the strategies

brand retrieval consideration set composition consumer choice and the pioneering advantage recent research on the pioneering advantage has shown that consumers often prefer pioneering brands to follower brands recent research on consumer choice suggests that information about brands is filtered through a series of sequential cognitive processes this study attempts to integrate these two separate lines of research by investigating the effects of pioneering on each stage of the multistage decision process a within subjects longitudinal experiment was conducted to simulate brand order of entry into a new market we also developed a sequential logit model to isolate the direct impact of pioneering on each stage of the decision process while controlling for indirect effects of pioneering on previous stages the results revealed that the pioneering brand vs followers is more likely to be retrieved considered and selected moreover the results revealed that consumers are more likely to bypass consideration set formation when the choice decision is simple vs complex theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed

developed country mnes investing in developing economies progress and prospect this study reviews research from 1970 through 2016 on developed country multinational enterprises dmnes entering and competing in developing economies to identify the current state of knowledge of this research and push it further we review the literature using bibliometric and qualitative content analyses covering leading journals and books we articulate frontier issues that are understudied yet critical to both theorization and practice of dmnes in developing economies we discuss the findings and conclusions from prior research along five key areas 1 entering developing economies 2 organizing local activities 3 managing alliances and joint ventures 4 competing in dynamic environments and 5 dealing with institutions governments and society we offer prospective insights into future agenda that have important implications for mne strategies and decisions and propose frontier directions that encompass strategic localization reverse transfer and adaptation co evolution with local business ecosystems reorganizing and restructuring and strategic responses to institutional and market complexity

mnc subsidiary channel relationships as extended links implications of global strategies foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations mncs rely on external partners such as channel partners to achieve global objectives we conceptualize the subsidiary s channel partner as an extended link of the mnc s internal network thus the subsidiary s adaptation and execution of the mnc s global strategies should influence the subsidiary s channel relationship and performance building on the strategy environment alignment framework we study the influence of mnc global strategies global efficiency multinational flexibility and worldwide learning on a subsidiary s channel commitment and the moderating influence of the host country environment survey data from german and japanese mncs in the united states indicate the importance of global strategies to a channel relationship for example we find that an emphasis on multinational flexibility is detrimental but worldwide learning benefits the subsidiary s channel commitment we also find that the host country environment plays a contingent role for example a global efficiency strategy is beneficial for channel commitment in a stable environment but detrimental in a dynamic environment our research offers key implications for mncs we suggest that when mncs decide to lay emphases on global strategies the mncs should consider not just their internal subsidiary network but also their extended channel partner links that function in foreign markets

the stochastic economic lot scheduling problem cyclical base stock policies with idle times in this paper we discuss stochastic economic lot scheduling problems elsp i e settings where several items need to be produced in a common facility with limited capacity under significant uncertainty regarding demands production times setup times or combinations thereof we propose a class of production inventory strategies for stochastic elsps and describe how a strategy which minimizes holding backlogging and setup costs within this class can be effectively determined and evaluated the proposed class of strategies is simple but rich and effective when the facility is assigned to a given item production continues until either a specific target inventory level is reached or a specific production batch has been completed the different items are produced in a given sequence or rotation cycle possibly with idle times inserted between the completion of an item s production batch and the setup for the next item an optimal strategy within the class can be determined and all relevant performance measures can be evaluated in just a few cpu seconds using a 486 based pc we also derive a number of easily computable lower bounds for the optimal cost value and establish a comparison with deterministic elsps

strategic alliance based sourcing and market performance evidence from foreign firms operating in china although foreign multinational firms from the triad regions increasingly use mainland china as both a sourcing and a marketing location no study has directly examined the sourcing strategy performance linkage using resource complementarity and resource dependence theory we extend the sourcing literature and apply these perspectives to an important transitional economy china these two theoretical perspectives suggest that product and uncertainty factors moderate the relationship between strategic alliance based sourcing sa sourcing of major components and market performance we find that at low levels of product innovativeness and technological uncertainty the use of sa sourcing is positively related to market performance however the effects of product differentiation and demand uncertainty on the sourcing performance relationship are insignificant journal of international business studies 2005 36 187 208 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400120

building capabilities for international operations through networks a study of indian firms in this study we seek to explain how firms from emerging markets build capabilities to operate in international markets through learning from parental networks the building of these capabilities is of particular interest as firms from emerging markets may not necessarily possess the monopolistic advantages commonly referred to in ib literature which allow a firm to succeed in international markets using lagged cross sectional regression models on a sample of 794 indian firms we found that firms draw on the international experience of their parental and foreign networks to build such capabilities findings also indicate that network scope is beneficial for increasing exposure to international markets only in the case of networks that are either small or medium sized additionally we found that firms lacking market power in their home market benefit through foreign partnerships when internationalizing operations

analysing decision behaviour in stated preference surveys a consumer psychological approach this paper applies a typology adapted from the consumer psychology literature to a contingent valuation method cvm survey we argue that the typology is helpful as a way of identifying responses that contain useful information on preferences for the environmental good in question relative to those which are unlikely to contain such information applying this framework to a cvm study of agri environmental payments in germany we find that some 90 of responses are preference revealing this distribution changes when the framing of the good is changed the typology may be of most use during the design stage of future cvm studies since it enables researchers to increase the fraction of responses that are useful

the use of process and output controls in foreign markets this study builds upon previous control research to propose a model of formal controls used in managing activities performed in foreign markets theoretically derived contingency relationships are also proposed to assess the performance consequences of different formal control types the findings support the importance of internal and external sources of uncertainty in determining the type of control used partial support was also found for the premise that the fit between the type of control used and the type of uncertainty perceived will contribute to superior performance

determination of an order up to policy in the stochastic economic lot scheduling model we consider a production inventory problem with compound renewal item demand the model consists of stockpoints one for each item controlled according to r s policies and one machine which replenishes them the replenishment orders are produced with a fixed rate on the machine with significant setup times and costs which are stochastic and sequence dependent the time between the release and the production of the replenishment order is called the waiting time we develop analytical approximations for the first two moments of this waiting time the order up to levels and the average physical inventory levels for all stockpoints given the target fill rates these analytical approximations allows for a quick evaluation of the waiting time which is important when optimization of the system is considered

learning to compete in a transition economy experience environment and performance does organizational learning as measured by experience in a host country affect international expansion performance if so does such a relationship between experience and performance hold over time how do the environmental forces in the host country affect such a relationship focusing on organizational learning by multinational enterprises mnes operating in a transition economy this study answers these three critical questions by exploring the relationships among experience environment and performance at the subsidiary level based on a recent survey of 108 mne subunits operating in china we find that the intensity and diversity of host country experience is an important predictor of subunit performance while the positive effect of the intensity of experience on performance diminishes over time the impact of the diversity of experience on performance remains unchanged moreover for mnes experiencing greater environmental dynamism complexity and hostility there is a stronger positive relationship between experience and performance

lead time minimization of a multi product single processor system a comparison of cyclic policies abstract the supply chain under consideration is a two echelon system consisting of a retailer and a manufacturer the n different products face stochastic demand at the retailer and are produced using a shared facility at the manufacturer production changeover involves setup time that is significantly higher than the processing time a cyclic polling model with exhaustive limited service policy from the networking literature is applied to the supply chain problem and the service limit values are obtained to minimize the lead time mathematically the exhaustive service policy gives least value but in practice we can set the service limit to values near the stability condition and obtain similar results other cyclic policies that take into consideration either the minimum lot size or the production quantity band or the idle time between cycles are also studied these are tested for different values of plant utilization and a comparison is drawn through simulation limitations of the model are discussed and possible extensions identified