partisan bias in economic news evidence on the agenda setting behavior of u s newspapers abstract we study the agenda setting political behavior of a large sample of u s newspapers during the 1996 2005 period our purpose is to examine the intensity of coverage of economic issues as a function of the underlying economic conditions and the political affiliation of the incumbent president focusing on unemployment inflation the federal budget and the trade deficit we investigate whether there is any significant correlation between the endorsement policy of newspapers and the differential coverage of bad good economic news as a function of the president s political affiliation we find evidence that newspapers with pro democratic endorsement pattern systematically give more coverage to high unemployment when the incumbent president is a republican than when the president is democratic compared to newspapers with pro republican endorsement pattern this result is robust to controlling for the partisanship of readers we find similar but less robust results for the trade deficit we also find some evidence that newspapers cater to the partisan tastes of readers in the coverage of the budget deficit we find no evidence of a partisan bias or at least of a bias that is correlated with the endorsement or reader partisanship for stories on inflation

does informative media commentary reduce politicians incentives to pander abstract elections sometimes give policy makers incentives to pander i e to implement a policy that voters think is in their best interest even though the policy maker knows that a different policy is actually better for the voters pandering incentives are typically attenuated when voters learn prior to the election whether the policy chosen by the incumbent truly was in their best interest this suggests that the media can improve accountability by reporting to voters information about whether an incumbent made good policy choices we show that although media monitoring does sometimes eliminate the incumbent s incentive to pander in other cases it makes the problem of pandering worse furthermore in some circumstances incumbent incentives are improved when the media acts as a yes man suppressing some information that indicates the policy maker made the wrong choice we explain these seemingly paradoxical results by focusing on how media commentary affects voters tendency to apply an asymmetric burden of proof to the incumbent based on whether she pursues popular or unpopular policies

corruption in america abstract we use a data set of federal corruption convictions in the u s to investigate the causes and consequences of corruption more educated states and to a smaller degree richer states have less corruption this relationship holds even when we use historical factors like congregationalism in 1890 as an instrument for the level of schooling today the level of corruption is also correlated with the level of income inequality and racial fractionalization and uncorrelated with the size of government there is a weak negative relationship between corruption and economic development in a state these results echo the cross country findings and support the view that the correlation between development and good political outcomes occurs because education improves political institutions

location and the multinational enterprise john dunning s thoughts on receiving the journal of international business studies 2008 decade award a retrospective by john h dunning on location and the mne written in the form of responses to questions posed by rajneesh narula in an interview recorded at the university of reading which was shown at the jibs decade award session at the aib annual meetings in milan june 2008

conceptualizing and measuring cultures and their consequences a comparative review of globe s and hofstede s approaches this paper explains why globe used a set of cultural values and practices to measure national cultures we show why there is no theoretical or empirical basis for hofstede s criticism that globe measures of values are too abstract or for his contention that national and organizational cultures are phenomena of different order we also show why hofstede has a limited understanding of the relationship between national wealth and culture furthermore we explain why hofstede s reanalysis of the globe data is inappropriate and produces incomprehensible results we also show the validity of managerial samples in studying leadership finally we explain why hofstede s claim that globe instruments reflect researchers psycho logic reveals ignorance of psychometric methodologies designed to ensure scale reliability and construct validity

a model of public opinion management abstract policymakers often motivate their decisions using information collected by government agencies while more information can help hold the government to account it may also give policymakers an incentive to meddle with the work of bureaucrats this paper develops a model of biased information gathering to examine how different disclosure rules and the degree of independence of government agencies affect citizen welfare disclosure rules and agency independence interact in subtle ways we find that secrecy is never optimal and yet insulating the agency from political pressure so that its information is always unbiased may also not be socially optimal a biased information gathering process can benefit the government by helping it to shape public opinion but it can also benefit the public by curbing the government s tendency to implement its ex ante favored policy thus mitigating the agency conflict between policymakers and the public

media bias and influence evidence from newspaper endorsements this paper investigates the relationship between media bias and the inuence of the media on voting in the context of newspaper endorsements werst develop a simple econometric model in which voters choose candidates under uncertainty and rely on endorsements from better informed sources newspapers are potentially biased in favor of one of the candidates and voters thus rationally ac count for the credibility of any endorsements our primary empiricalnding is that endorsements are inuential in the sense that voters are more likely to support the recommended candidate after publication of the endorsement the degree of this inuence however depends upon the credibility of the endorsement in this way endorsements for the democratic candidate from left leaning news papers are less inuential than are endorsements from neutral or right leaning or newspapers and likewise for endorsements for the republican thesendings suggest that voters do rely on the media for information during campaigns but that the extent of this reliance depends upon the degree and direction of any bias

determinants of fdi incentive preferences of mnes in this study managers of u s firms with operations in the caribbean region evaluated the attractiveness of twenty host country incentives multivariate analysis of variance was employed to determine whether incentive preferences were a function of investment characteristics the results indicate that incentive preferences depend on the type of investment market orientation size of investment geographic location year of investment and type of product furthermore exporters considered import duty concessions to be more desirable than did investors oriented toward the local markets these results indicate that government programs waiving import duties such as the free trade zones of the dominican republic and the maquiladora program of northern mexico are providing the incentive deemed most important by their targeted investors

foreign entry cultural barriers and learning this paper examines the longevity of foreign entries hypotheses are developed on the mode start ups vs acquisitions and ownership structure wholly owned vs joint ventures in relation to cultural distance the hypotheses are tested within a framework of organizational learning using data on 225 entries that 13 dutch firms carried out from 1966 onwards results show that the presence of cultural barriers punctuates an organization s learning cultural distance is a prominent factor in foreign entry whenever this involves another firm requiring the firm to engage in double layered acculturation we also identify locational paths of learning the longevity of acquisitions is positively influenced by prior entries of the firm in the same country similarly the longevity of foreign entries in which the firm has a majority stake improves whenever the expanding firm engaged in prior entries in the same country and in other countries in the same cultural block

the cross cultural research imperative the need to balance cross national and intra national diversity this paper provides a brief overview of the evolution of comparative management theories paradigms and highlights the contribution of the cross vergence construct despite progress most studies of work values across countries continue to suffer from two primary limitations the first is the fallacious assumption of cultural homogeneity with nations given the growing diversity of the workforce within country intra national variations can often be as significant as cross national differences the second is the fallacious assumption of cultural stability over time since cultures evolve albeit slowly it is important to take these changes over time into consideration and be aware of the paradoxes inherent within any given society hence the paper calls for the need to balance cross national and intra national diversity in order to truly understand cross cultural phenomena and thus further improve the quality of cross cultural research

an interpretive examination of the development of cultural sensitivity in international business cultural sensitivity is assumed to be important in international business yet little empirical work explores how cultural sensitivity actually develops in depth interviews with buyers from the asian pacific rim were conducted and support was found for a four stage model of cross cultural sensitivity in which buyers move through the stages of romantic sojourner foreign worker skilled worker and partner this paper explores the development and evolution of cultural sensitivity as it interacts with trust and development of international business relationships

access based consumption the case of car sharing access based consumption defined as transactions that can be market mediated but where no transfer of ownership takes place is becoming increasingly popular yet it is not well theorized this study examines the nature of access as it contrasts to ownership and sharing specifically the consumer object consumer consumer and consumer marketer relationships six dimensions are identified to distinguish among the range of access based consumptionscapes temporality anonymity market mediation consumer involvement the type of accessed object and political consumerism access based consumption is examined in the context of car sharing via an interpretive study of zipcar consumers four outcomes of these dimensions in the context of car sharing are identified lack of identification varying significance of use and sign value negative reciprocity resulting in a big brother model of governance and a deterrence of brand community the implications of our findings for understanding the nature of exchange consumption and brand community are discussed

cultural industries in international business research progress and prospect cultural industries systems of organizations that produce and distribute cultural goods with substantive symbolic aesthetic or artistic value represent an important exciting and complex context that receives growing scholarly attention as the first review of management research on cultural industries this paper aims to provide a systematic synthesis of current research summarizing distinctive characteristics of cultural industries and highlighting research gaps we also illustrate how the unique nature dynamics and evolution of cultural industries provide opportunities to broaden international business theories in four research themes i e internationalization strategy cross border innovation social inclusion in the global economy and emerging market research

intra cultural variation evidence and implications for international business this paper discusses the methodological and theoretical significance of intra cultural variation icv the population distribution of a characteristic within a culture a monte carlo study shows that icv has substantial influence on the statistical power of cross cultural tests therefore studying icv is methodologically important if we are to understand inconsistent findings and design cross cultural studies with enough statistical power moreover an examination of the cultural means and icvs of 42 cultures shows that icv is as large as the variation of cultural means across cultures and its relationship to cultural means is not definite a model based on multiple disciplines is proposed to cast icv in a nomological net and to illuminate several avenues for future research practical implications are also discussed

market incentives for safe commercial airline operation using a sample of nearly all fatal u s airline accidents between 1960 and 1985 this paper attempts to quantify the costs that airlines incur due to crashes the potential costs include those due to loss of life and equipment tort liability increased regulatory oversight and loss of demand as consumers turn away from products perceived to be unsafe examination of the deviations from expected demand following accidents reveals little or no effect prior to airline deregulation and weak indication of a response to recent crashes these results are consistent with the changes in an airline s equity value following an accident which are statistically significant but quite small relative to the total social cost of the accident

independent auditors bias and political agency abstract this paper analyzes political agency with endogenous information collection and revelation by third party auditors while increasing incentives for auditors to provide information straightforwardly improves political control a small amount of pro incumbent bias can also be useful for maintaining high levels of control when the equilibrium level of control is high most investigations uncover positive information about the incumbent since positive information increases reelection rates mildly pro incumbent auditors are willing to work harder than unbiased auditors in these equilibria for moderate levels of control pro incumbent auditors are again useful due to their extra effort even though they may suppress some negative information in equilibrium only when market incentives are low so equilibrium control is weak are unbiased or anti incumbent biased auditors better for voters than mildly pro incumbent auditors

persistent media bias abstract the news media plays an essential role in society but surveys indicate that the public views the media as biased this paper presents a theory of media bias that originates with private information obtained by journalists through their investigations and persists despite profit maximizing news organizations and rivalry from other news organizations bias has two effects on the demand for news first rational individuals are more skeptical of potentially biased news and thus rely less on it in their decision making this skepticism reduces demand and leads the news organization to set a lower price for its publication the greater is the bias it tolerates lower quality news thus commands a lower price second bias makes certain stories more likely than others given their private information journalists may bias their stories if their career prospects can be advanced by being published on the front page news organizations can control bias by restricting the discretion allowed to journalists but granting discretion and tolerating bias can increase profits if it allows journalists to be hired at a lower wage bias is not driven from the market by a rival news organization nor by a news organization with an opposing bias and the profits of a high bias news organization can be higher than the profits of a low bias one moreover bias can be greater with competition than with a monopoly news organization if individuals collectively choose regulation in place of their individual decision making bias increases the expected stringency of regulation

china s transition and its implications for international business this paper focuses on institutional change as the central and most consequential contextual aspect of china s transition identification of key characteristics of china s emergent institutions leads to propositions on their relevance for international business practice china s transition also raises issues for theory development including the way that transition is modeled the need to draw upon multiple perspectives and the concomitants of a contextual approach

airline passenger fatality and the demand for air travel after the 11 september tragedy 20 of the scheduled us airline flights were cancelled and the passenger load factor was down to 56 from 66 6 a year ago was the high death toll or the nature of the attack itself responsible for this dramatic decline using the us data we find that the demand for air travel did fall in years of relatively high fatality rate but the demand is not sensitive to whether the high fatality rate is due to any terrorist activities our estimation results suggest that even after controlling for the sharp increase in the fatality rate because of the 11 september tragedy a considerable proportion of the decline in demand for air travel that year is still unexplained this evidence could suggest that there has been a fundamental shift in consumers perception of air travel safety in the aftermath of the tragedy

doing business in the 21st century with the new generation of chinese managers a study of generational shifts in work values in china our goal is to develop a profile of chinese managers and in particular a profile of the new generation of chinese managers the purpose for developing this profile is primarily to provide relevant information for non chinese business people especially westerners who plan to engage in business in china this profile is based on measures of individual values individualism collectivism and confucianism relevant to china and business our findings suggest that the new generation manager is more individualistic and more likely to act independently while taking risks in the pursuit of profits however these new managers are likewise not forsaking their confucian values thus they may be viewed as crossverging their eastern and western influences while on the road of modernization

interpreting consumers a hermeneutical framework for deriving marketing insights from the texts of consumers consumption stories the author describes and illustrates a hermeneutically grounded interpretive framework for deriving marketing relevant insights from the texts of consumer stories and gives an overview of the phi

competition and truth in the market for news in this essay we evaluate the case for competition in news markets from the perspective of economics first we consider the simple proposition that when more points of view are heard and defended beliefs will converge to the truth this concept of competition is several steps removed from market competition among actual media firms but it has played a prominent role in the legal arguments for a free press we then explore three mechanisms by which increasing competition or more precisely increasing the number of independently owned firms can limit bias or distortions that originate on the supply side of the media market first when governments attempt to manipulate news competition can increase the likelihood that the media remain independent second when news providers have an interest in manipulating consumers beliefs diversity in such incentives can reduce the risk of information being suppressed or distorted third competition may drive firms to invest in providing timely and accurate coverage overall we argue that there are robust reasons to expect competition to be effective in disciplining supply side bias next we ask how the effect of competition changes when distortions originate on the demand side of the market when consumers themselves demand biased or less socially relevant news we find that increased competition may or may not improve welfare in these cases though we caution against using this as a justification for concentrating media power in the hands of state controlled or regulated firms

a comparative study of the work values of north and south vietnamese managers we examine managerial work values and subsequent behaviors of vietnamese managers that foreign investors may face doing business in vietnam to establish a global reference point we compare the managerial values of vietnamese managers with those of chinese and u s managers the findings from this exploratory study while not always intuitive should help foreign investors to better understand vietnam furthermore the study raises important theoretical issues concerning individualism and collectivism as cross cultural measures

glocal understandings female readers perceptions of the new woman in chinese advertising research in international advertising has often taken a dichotomized approach as exemplified by the global standardization vs localization debate it is assumed under the standardization approach that the globalization process will absorb different national cultures into a global commercial culture such that standardized advertising should be preferred the current research argues that the dichotomization approach may have oversimplified the way consumers read and interpret ad images we postulate that consumers in a transitional economy apply a variety of reading approaches including different cultural interpretive strategies and self referencing to absorb global images into their cultural and consumption schemas this is commonly referred to as glocalization we developed a typology of modern women images in chinese magazine advertising potential interpretive strategies and self referencing responses in this research results of a content analysis and a reader response study support our postulations implications are discussed

the eclectic paradigm of international production a restatement and some possible extensions this article reviews some of the criticisms directed towards the eclectic paradigm of international production over the past decade and restates its main tenets the second part of the article considers a number of possible extensions of the paradigm and concludes by asserting that it remains a robust general framework for explaining and analysing not only the economic rationale of economic production but many organisational and impact issues in relation to mne activity as well

understanding the link between collaborative economy and sustainable behaviour an empirical investigation abstract the collaborative economy is growing at an exponential rate and the accommodation sector is especially affected the relevance of the phenomenon is linked with sustainable consumption that encourages resource efficiency waste reduction development of better products and surplus reutilization due to overproduction and overconsumption this paper aims at investigating the relationship between collaborative consumption and the adoption of sustainable practices from the users perspective after identifying the gaps existing in the literature different research approaches were integrated at first 4 focus groups were conducted to detect the main attributes and benefits attached to collaborative economy in tourism the personal values instrumental and terminal values relevant to p2p accommodation renting were identified through laddering technique as the propensity to put in place sustainable behaviour thereafter a structural model based on the framework of the theory of planned behaviour tpb constructs was set and tested to understand its consistency with the above values an ad hoc questionnaire was projected and administered online based on a sample of 384 respondents quantitative data were analysed through statistical and structural equation modeling software from an academic perspective the paper enhances the current knowledge in identifying the desired end states that users want to achieve by renting a p2p accommodation moreover it exploits and adapts the tpb to an emerging consumption model such as collaborative economy thus disclosing the relation between collaborative consumption and sustainable behaviour moreover the adaptation of tpb model to the newest context of collaborative economy expands the knowledge related to sustainable consumption from a managerial perspective it is necessary to emphasize the importance of defining a new business paradigm considering collaborative consumption to support environmental policy and encouraging sustainable behaviour

touched by tragedy capital market lessons from the crash of valujet flight 592 abstract this study presents an event time analysis of the effects of the crash of valuejet flight 592 the mandated f a a shutdown of valujet and the subsequent restart of the airline on valujet shareholders and two portfolios composed of the stocks of major and low cost competitors the results of the study document immense losses for valujet s shareholders as well as large contagion losses for the holders of other low cost airlines but statistically significant gains for the owners of major airline stocks a cross sectional analysis of the abnormal returns registered at the time of the crash and shutdown suggests that fleet age and low cost status but not an airline s public safety record were significant of the determinants changes in share prices for competitor firms

the role of path dependency and managerial intentionality a perspective on international business research several decades of research in the field of international business have advanced various theories and studies on the internationalization of firms our assessment of the literature on internationalization shows that the focus has been primarily on path dependency and learning based aspects of internationalization while managerial intentionality and the possibility of managers making deliberate strategic choices towards further internationalization have not been very prominent in the ib literature we argue that internationalization paths and processes should be approached as a joint outcome of management intentionality and experience based learning in other words managers are assumed to have the ability and the intention to influence the evolutionary paths of the firm we derive a future research agenda that calls for the pursuit of this promising and emergent research stream moreover we develop a model integrating managerial intentionality knowledge experience and other factors institutional and selection forces to explain heterogeneous outcomes of internationalization positions paths and processes

countervailing market responses to corporate co optation and the ideological recruitment of consumption communities from a conventional theoretical standpoint the corporatization of the organic food movement is an example of co optation co optation theory conceptualizes the commercial marketplace as an ideological force that assimilates the symbols and practices of a counterculture into dominant norms our alternative argument is that co optation can generate a countervailing market response that actively promotes the oppositional aspects of a counterculture attenuated by the process of commercial mainstreaming to develop this theoretical argument we analyze community supported agriculture which has emerged in response to the corporate co optation of the organic food movement we conclude by discussing how tacit political ideologies structure consumption communities

demythologizing consumption practices how consumers protect their field dependent identity investments from devaluing marketplace myths marketplace myths are commonly conceptualized as cultural resources that attract consumers to a consumption activity or brand this theoretical orientation is prone to overstating the extent to which consumers identity investments in a field of consumption are motivated by an associated marketplace myth we provide a theoretical corrective to this tendency by investigating consumers who have become vested in a commercially mythologized consumption field through an incremental process of building social connections and cultural capital for these consumers the prevailing marketplace myth is experienced as a trivialization of their aesthetic interests rather than as a source of identity value in response they employ demythologizing practices to insulate their acquired field dependent social and cultural capital from devaluation our findings advance theorizations concerning marketplace myths and consumer identity work and explicate the sociocultural forces that deter consumers from abandoning a consump

does subculture within a country matter a cross cultural study of motivational domains and business performance in brazil this study examines the effects of within country subcultures on business outcomes we first argue that individuals values vary across subcultures we then suggest that values as expressed through motivational domains influence business performance finally joining these two propositions we posit that business performance will vary by subculture based on data from four regional subcultures in brazil a subculture effect was found for both motivational domains and business performance the results suggest that it is important to consider the cultural variation within a country when examining business outcomes

the impact of inward fdi on the performance of chinese manufacturing firms recent years have witnessed the emergence of china as one of the most important destinations for foreign direct investment fdi which reached us 403 98 billion by the end of 1999 moftec 2000 china is now the largest recipient of fdi in the developing world however the amount of fdi will underestimate its overall consequences if spillover effects are significant murphy 1992 o malley 1994 buckwalter 1995 this study investigates the impact of fdi on the performance of chinese locally owned firms in manufacturing

political polarization and the electoral effects of media bias abstract we develop a model in which profits of media firms depend on their audience ratings and maximizing profits may involve catering to a partisan audience by suppressing information that the partisan audience does not like hearing while voters are rational understand the nature of the news suppression bias and update appropriately important information is lost through bias and can lead to electoral mistakes we characterize those conditions that give rise to electoral mistakes showing that heightened political polarization and asymmetric distributions of voter ideologies make electoral mistakes more likely even if the median ideology is a centrist and centrist voters gain access to unbiased news media bias can generate excessive cross over voting which in turn can lead to the election of the wrong candidate

manipulated news model electoral competition and mass media abstract this paper investigates the relationship between media manipulation the strategic suppression of relevant information by mass media and self mediatization the strategic exploitation of media coverage by candidates in elections in the model a voter cannot directly observe the policies proposed by two office motivated candidates the voter learns this information through media reports before voting takes place while the media outlet suppresses some of this information because the voter s decision making could be incorrect direct distortion the candidates have an incentive to win the election by influencing the media coverage through policy settings indirect distortion as a result policy convergence to the voter s ideal policy occurs if and only if the media bias is sufficiently small we then characterize the set of equilibria in terms of the degree of distortion the results suggest that if either strategic media manipulation or competition among the candidates is omitted then the distortion is nonnegligibly misspecified

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

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

market forces and aircraft safety an extension market forces and aircraft safety an extension gordon v karels recent work by chalk focuses on whether market forces provide safe products via stock market reaction to unanticipated events chalk finds a 200 million decline in mcdonnell douglas stockholder wealth related to the 1979 dc 10 crash in chicago that decline far exceeds reasonable estimates of regulatory and liability costs suggesting a market penalty for unsafe products his results however do not seem consistent with the notion of efficient markets as american airlines maintenance procedures were quickly identified as the likely cause of the crash this study finds no resulting shareholder wealth loss for american airlines or mcdonnell douglas i introduction in a recent article in this journal andrew chalk 1986 attempts to test whether market forces provide safety when products are too complex to permit buyer repurchase inspection to do so he uses the rather ingenious method of examining the abnormal returns to mcdonnell douglas stock prices following the may 25 1979 crash of a dc 10 just outside o hare airport in chicago efficient market theory predicts that perceived safety problems in products will result in a fall in the firm s stock price due primarily to a product demand effect if this is the case market forces would compel producers to invest in product safety even in situations when the technical safety aspects of the product are beyond the comprehension of the average consumer as is the case with large commercial aircraft chalk s study finds large and statistically significant negative abnormal returns to mcdonnell douglas stockholders on the order of 200 million in almost every case where news is released just after the crash both favorable and unfavorable with respect to mcdonnell douglas chalk finds statistically significant abnormal returns to mcdonnell douglas stock what is interesting about this particular event was that faulty maintenance and not a product defect was ultimately blamed as the principal cause of the crash initially the general safety of the dc 10 was questioned but subsequent evidence indicated that the maintenance procedure of an american airlines mechanic who later moved on to continental and taught the technique there of removing the engine and pylon in one step instead of separately caused stress which led to the engine tearing loose american airlines and continental ended up paying fines of 500 000 and 100 000 respectively for this procedure but american did not admit guilt for the crash in paying the fine 1 given that most of the blame for the crash fell on american s maintenance procedure the finding of significant cumulative abnormal returns by chalk are surprising in the context of efficient markets evidence of faulty maintenance procedures became public information within two weeks after the crash because of the initial uncertainty over the cause of the crash significant abnormal returns for particular event days are likely but those negative abnormal returns should be offset in later periods as the true cause becomes known to investors thus the finding of significant cumulative abnormal returns to mcdonnell douglas would not be consistent with the semistrong form of efficient markets the purpose of this note is to replicate and extend the findings of chalk s study by examining the market forces that affected the other major party involved in subsequent litigation american airlines corporation following chalk s argument one would expect to see the market impose substantial costs on american if it is believed that travel on that airline is less safe than previously thought travelers could substitute towards other airlines where possible reducing cash flow and hence the value of the firm the size of the demand effect should have little to do with american s investment in aircraft safety

from servicescape to consumptionscape a photo elicitation study of starbucks in the new china a servicescape can be viewed as the frozen potential of a consumptionscape which is unleashed when consumers twist the resources of its built environment for their own purposes in this paper we explore how young urban chinese consumers transform the iconic global brand starbucks into a consumptionscape through their enactment of personally meaningful experiences roles and identities in the setting we employ the qualitative research methodology of photo elicitation by having consumers record their experience in a starbucks in beijing through photography and later using these images as probes in a depth interview the implications for new global servicescapes in local markets are discussed

exploring the gap between consumers green rhetoric and purchasing behaviour why do consumers who profess to be concerned about the environment choose not to buy greener products more regularly or even at all this study explores how consumers perceptions towards green products consumers and consumption practices termed green perceptions contribute to our understanding of the discrepancy between green attitudes and behaviour this study identified several barriers to ethical consumption behaviour within a green consumption context three key themes emerged from the study it is too hard to be green green stigma and green reservations there is currently a perception based on a number of factors that it is too hard to be green which creates a barrier to purchasing green products furthermore some consumers were reluctant or resistant to participate in green consumption practices due to their unfavourable perceptions of green consumers and green messages this article suggests that green perceptions may influence consumers intention to purchase green products accordingly it discusses the implications and suggests avenues for future research

management style and productivity in two cultures global competition has motivated an increasing number of united states firms to set up production facilities in mexico this study examines productivity and management style differences in a mexican maquiladora operation and its u s parent plant likert s system 4 theory was used as the theoretical basis of comparison as hypothesized significant differences were found in the management systems while productivity at the two facilities was equal

the market for news we investigate the market for news under two assumptions that readers hold beliefs which they like to see confirmed and that newspapers can slant stories toward these beliefs we show that on the topics where readers share common beliefs one should not expect accuracy even from competitive media competition results in lower prices but common slanting toward reader biases on topics where reader beliefs diverge such as politically divisive issues however newspapers segment the market and slant toward extreme positions yet in the aggregate a reader with access to all news sources could get an unbiased perspective generally speaking reader heterogeneity is more important for accuracy in media than competition per se

regaining the edge for international business research the key to international business is that it approaches empirical phenomena at a variety of levels of analysis using a variety of theoretical frameworks the most important levels of analysis are the individual manager the firm the industry and the environment in each category there is vast heterogeneity figure 2 1 illustrates this interaction between issues and theories it has levels of analysis on the vertical axis and the basic social sciences on the horizontal axis as systems of thinking about the phenomena it would also be possible to replace fundamental disciplines by the primary management disciplines marketing finance strategy etc

media freedom political knowledge and participation this paper examines the relationship between media freedom from government control and citizens political knowledge political participation and voter turnout to explore these connections i first examine media freedom and citizens political knowledge in thirteen central and eastern european countries with data from freedom house s freedom of the press report and the european commission s candidate countries eurobarometer survey next i consider media freedom and citizens political participation in 60 countries using data from the world values survey finally i investigate media freedom and voter turnout in these same 60 or so countries with data from the international institute for democracy and electoral assistance i find that where government owns a larger share of media outlets and infrastructure regulates the media industry more and does more to control the content of news citizens are more politically ignorant and apathetic where the media is less regulated and there is greater private ownership in the media industry citizens are more politically knowledgeable and active these results are robust to sample specification and alternative measures of media freedom

a free press is bad news for corruption abstract this paper tests the proposition that a free press may be a powerful control on corruption we find evidence of a significant relationship between more press freedom and less corruption in a large cross section of countries this result is robust to specification and sample and the relationship is not sensitive to the choice of a particular measure of corruption or of press freedom furthermore we present evidence which suggests that the direction of causation runs from higher press freedom to lower corruption

the theoretical evolution and use of the uppsala model of internationalization in the international business ecosystem the uppsala model typically viewed as an internationalization process model an internationalization stages model or a sequential internationalization model has served as a theoretical underpinning in the international business literature since johanson and vahlne s j int bus stud 8 1 23 32 1977 article incorporated thoughts by researchers at uppsala university in one all encompassing model major updates to the model were published in 2009 and 2017 by the original authors our work examines what has now become the time tested and decade award winning 2009 version of the uppsala model relative to the original model in 1977 we also provide an outlook for international business research within the scope of the 2017 version of the model this evaluation and dive across times into the nuances of the uppsala model capture aspects of the model s theoretical and empirical power as well as its limitations within today s international business ecosystem the international business ecosystem is defined as the organisms of the business world including stakeholders organizations and countries involved in exchanges production business functions and cross border trade through both marketplace competition and cooperation in the process we push the theoretical boundaries of the model and provide a unique connection to marketing thought

mass media competition political competition and public policy if better informed voters receive favourable policies then mass media will affect policy because mass media provide most of the information people use in voting this paper models the incentives of the media to deliver news to different groups the increasing returns to scale technology and advertising financing of media firms induce them to provide more news to large groups such as taxpayers and dispersed consumer interests and groups that are valuable to advertisers this news bias alters the tradeoff in political competition and therefore introduces a bias in public policy the paper also discusses the effects of broadcast media replacing newspapers as the main information source about politics the model predicts that this change should raise spending on government programmes used by poor and rural voters

location and the multinational enterprise in the early development of the international business field the focus of attention moved from the country level to the firm level and interest in location issues declined more recently firm based research has itself become increasingly concerned with the study of firm location interactions when examining two way knowledge flows or spillovers between multinational enterprises mnes and other actors in specific locations the diversity or heterogeneity of firms matters as does the diversity of locational environments the localization of knowledge sources depends on mne group level strategies for growth and organizational decentralization on subsidiary level evolution towards local competence creating efforts and on the development of suitable business networks within locations mnes now have a greater potential to benefit from a synergistic locational portfolio of complementary sources of knowledge the locational composition of the international network for knowledge sourcing of a given mne depends upon the extent of institutional compatibility between the locations in which the mne is active this compatibility between locations in turn affects the capacity of the mne to become an insider in local business systems and to influence the local institutional environment

the wrong kind of transparency in a model of career concerns for experts when is a principal hurt from observing more information about her agent this paper introduces a distinction between information on the consequence of the agent s action and information directly on the agent s action when the latter kind of information is available the agent faces an incentive to disregard useful private signals and act according to how an able agent is expected to act a priori this conformist behavior hurts the principal in two ways the decision made by the agent is less likely to be the right one discipline and ex post it is more difficult to evaluate the agent s ability sorting the paper identifies a necessary and sufficient condition on the agent signal structure under which the principal bene ts from committing not to observe the agent s action the paper also shows the existence of strategic complementarities between information on action and information on consequence the results on the distinction between action and consequence are then used to interpret existing disclosure policies in delegated portfolio management in particular they are consistent with hitherto puzzling evidence that mutual funds systematically overperform pension funds

the structure of jibs s social network and the relevance of intra country variation a typology for future research we examine articles published in the journal of international business studies jibs and introduce a typology to support the relevance of intra country variation in international business ib based on social network theory our analysis uses multidimensional scaling to study 53 203 citations from 1158 qualifying jibs articles to determine the journal s social structure the results indicate that three current research clusters multinational enterprise knowledge development foreign entry and cultural effects and the internationalization process and national culture are based on established ib theory then we respond to calls in the literature to improve research concerning intra country variation and propose a typology of three dimensions social demographic and geographic to study the diversity of individual firm and economic activity in a country the social dimension evaluates the importance of modernist and traditionalist values the demographic dimension proposes differences between urban and rural settings and the geographic dimension discusses the relevance of border and interior locations we suggest a nested typology that unifies these three dimensions for continued use in ib future research opportunities related to jibs s social structure and the intra country variation typology are recommended

are biased media bad for democracy this paper assesses the normative and positive claims regarding the consequences of biased media using a political agency framework with a strategic voter polarized politicians and news providers my model predicts that voters are always better informed with unbiased than biased outlets even when the latter have opposite ideological preferences however biased media may improve voter welfare contrary to several scholars fear partisan news providers are not always bad for democracy my theoretical findings also have important implications for empirical analyses of the electoral consequences of changes in the media environment left wing and right wing biased outlets have heterogeneous effects on electoral outcomes which need to be properly accounted for existing empirical studies are unlikely to measure the consequences of biased media as researchers never observe and can rarely approximate the adequate counterfactual elections with unbiased news outlets

reputation concerned policy makers and institutional status quo bias abstract we study the policy choice of an office holding politician who is concerned with the public s perception of his capabilities the politician decides whether to maintain the status quo or to conduct a risky reform the reform s success depends critically on the politician s capabilities which are privately known to the politician the public observes both his policy choice and the outcome of the reform and assesses his competence we show that the politician may engage in socially detrimental reform in order to be perceived as more capable we investigate the institutional remedy that balances the gains and costs when the policy maker is subject to reputation concerns conservative institutions that thwart beneficial reform may potentially improve social welfare