consumer stated purchasing preferences and corporate social responsibility in the wood products industry a conjoint analysis in the u s and china the impacts of disclosed level of corporate social responsibility csr domestic versus imported origin and type of construction on consumers stated wood product purchasing preferences were examined in the u s and china hierarchical logit models based on a bayesian framework were utilized to test the magnitude and statistical significance of each wood product attribute using survey data results indicate that u s and chinese respondents a were more likely to choose products from manufacturing companies with a higher level of csr rating compared with an unknown one b preferred domestically manufactured wood products compared to imported ones and c expressed higher interest in wood products made of solid wood compared with composites in terms of demographics respondents higher education levels corresponded with higher preferences for products from companies with the highest five star csr rating in the u s statistically significant income effects were detected only in the chinese sample when respondents indicated their purchasing preferences for wood products with three star or five star csr levels implications for improving wood products companies managerial performance and suggestions for future studies are provided

household history snap participation and food insecurity abstract food security in an important public policy issue in 2015 approximately 1 in 8 u s households experienced food insecurity at some point in the year low income families are at higher risk for food insecurity than other families and these families may also face higher levels of disruption e g moves loss of income or individuals entering or leaving the household than other families i use data from the survey of income and program participation to explore the relationship between food insecurity the household s history during the previous year and snap participation the results indicate that a number of aspects of the household s recent experience including negative income shocks moves and both increases and decreases in household size increase the probability of being food insecure while snap participation is estimated to reduce the probability of being food insecure

the translation of corporate governance changes across national cultures the case of germany contrasting systems of corporate governance persist internationally but are subject to regulatory and firm level institutional change such changes may be viewed as organisational innovations often imported from the usa in the face of different national cultures this paper analyses the implications of national culture for the translation of innovations and provides case study illustrations of regulatory and firm level governance changes experienced in germany these illustrations demonstrate that the diffusion of both kinds of change has been subject to substantial translation that is consistent with german national culture

the effect of safety net programs on food insecurity we investigate to what extent major safety net program benefits affect food insecurity in families we impute program eligibility and benefits in each state for 2001 2009 accounting for cross program eligibility rules we use simulated eligibility and benefits for a nationally representative sample as instruments for imputed eligibility and potential benefits among nonimmigrant low income single parent families 1 000 in potential cash or food benefits reduces the incidence of food insecurity by 1 1 percentage points on a base of 33 percent cash and food both reduce food insecurity the results highlight the importance of jointly considering a full range of safety net programs

why do people volunteer an experimental analysis of preferences for time donations why do individuals volunteer their time even when recipients receive far less value than the donor s opportunity cost previous models of altruism that focus on the overall impact of a gift cannot rationalize this behavior despite its prevalence we develop a model that allows for differential warm glow depending on the form of the donation in a series of laboratory experiments that control for other aspects of volunteering such as its signaling value subjects demonstrate behavior consistent with the theoretical assumption that gifts of time produce greater utility than the same transfers in the form of money subjects perform an effort task accruing earnings at potentially different wage rates for themselves or a charity of their choice with the ability to transfer any of their personal earnings to charity at the end of the experiment subjects exhibit strong preferences for donating time even when differential wage rates make it costly to do so the results provide new insights on the nature of vo

on the psychology of loss aversion possession valence and reversals of the endowment effect loss aversion states that losses loom larger than gains we consider two types of loss aversion defined by two interpretations of loss a loss can be defined 1 in terms of valence or 2 in terms of possession correspondingly valence loss aversion vla entails greater sensitivity to negative vs positive changes and possession loss aversion pla entails greater sensitivity to items leaving vs entering one s possession both types of loss aversion imply an endowment effect for attractive items but pla implies a reversal of the endowment effect for unattractive items experimental results show endowment effect reversals consistent with pla

planned versus actual betting in sequential gambles abstract anecdotal evidence indicates that in a gambling environment consumers may end up betting more than they had initially planned the authors assess this phenomenon in a series of three experiments in which people are exposed to sequential and fair gambles in a two stage process planned and actual bets the results show that in the planning phase people behave conservatively betting on average less after an anticipated loss and the same amount after an anticipated gain however after experiencing an actual loss in the first gamble people bet in a subsequent gamble significantly more than they had initially planned whereas on average there were no observable differences from the plan after an actual gain the reason for such asymmetry is due in part to people s tendency to underestimate at the planning phase of the gamble the impact of negative emotions in betting decisions during the actual phase of the gamble

assessing the effects of culture on managerial attitudes a three culture test cross cultural studies are inherently difficult because the typical research design fails to differentiate cultural from other environmental influences the present study uses a research design that attempts to isolate the influence of culture japanese chinese and mexican managers their ethnic american counterparts and anglo americans are used to test the model results indicate unique persistent cultural characteristics with the cultural effect varying among the three groups of managers

consequences of cultural practices for entrepreneurial behaviors although national culture is an important regulator of entrepreneurship there is a dearth of studies that 1 explore the effects of national cultural practices on entrepreneurial behaviors by individuals 2 use appropriate multilevel research designs 3 consider the effects of culture on different entrepreneurial behaviors such as entry and post entry growth aspirations we combined global entrepreneurship monitor gem and global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness globe data from 42 countries for 2005 2008 to address these gaps using a multilevel design we found societal institutional collectivism practices negatively associated with entrepreneurial entry but positively associated with entrepreneurial growth aspirations uncertainty avoidance practices were negatively associated with entry but not with growth aspirations and performance orientation practices were positively associated with entry our analysis highlights the differential effects of cultural practices on entrepreneurial entry and growth aspirations and demonstrates the value of multilevel techniques in analyzing the effect of culture on entrepreneurship

lessons in cross vergence restructuring the thai subsidiary corporation this paper explores the impact of indigenous business culture upon the corporate restructuring program initiated in the thai subsidiary of a western multinational defined in terms of behavioral institutionalization change implementation was largely resisted by one of two key strategic departments using a conceptual framework developed from existing cross cultural business research we examine the key determinants of local opposition and trace the emergence of cross vergent business practices acceptable to both thai market and western corporate agendas implications for the management of western corporate subsidiaries in the developing economy of thailand are then discussed

differences in value systems of anglo american and far eastern students effects of american business education this study examined differences in the values patterns of business students from anglo american and far eastern country clusters using allport et al s 1970 study of values differences were noted on five of the six attitudes theoretical economic political social and religious next using multiple comparison method the value patterns of newly arrived far eastern students and far eastern students who had spent considerable time in the u s were compared for changes in value patterns that may be attributable to their stay and study in the united states differences were found in terms of five of the six evaluative attitudes between the two groups value pattern of far eastern students who had lived and studied in the u s for a considerable period of time was also compared with that of anglo american students to examine the degree of convergence in their value systems findings of this study suggest that as a result of frequent and sustained cross cultural contacts in another cultural environment the value profile of individuals tend to get modified so as to include the values preferred and desired in the new social environment

neither principles nor rules making corporate governance work in sub saharan africa corporate governance is often split between rule based and principle based approaches to regulation in different institutional contexts this split is often informed by the types of institutional configurations their strengths and the complementarities within them this approach to corporate governance regulation is mostly discussed in the context of developed economies and their regulatory demands however in developing and weak market economies such as in sub saharan africa there is no such explicit split and the debates on such contexts in the comparative corporate governance literature have been meagre nonetheless there are sparks of good corporate governance practices in the region drawing from institutional theory and a case study of a largest economy we explore the appropriateness or suitability of corporate governance regulatory frameworks in sub saharan africa our findings suggest that nigeria needs an integrated system that combines elements of both rule based and principle based regulation supported by a multi stakeholder co regulation strategy this paper departs from the mainstream rule based and principle based categorisations by forging ahead new perspectives on corporate governance regulation especially in weak market economies

economic performance through time prize lecture to the memory of alfred nobel december 9 1993 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

institutions transaction costs and entry mode choice in eastern europe the process of change from a centrally planned system to a market economy generates an institutional framework that is only partially reformed and therefore inconsistent and unstable this leads to high transaction costs for economic agents multinational enterprises entering transition countries have to adapt their strategies to the local institutions and reduce exposure to highly imperfect markets this paper analyzes how the costs of organizing business in transition environments influence entry mode choice the empirical results show that host country institutions in transition economies have an impact on the choice of entry modes moreover different mechanisms determine the internalization of managerial and technological knowledge

knowledge and competitive advantage the coevolution of firms technology and national institutions this issue of jibs offers reviews of two books that analyse the dynamic interaction between the business environments and business strategies in very different ways the institutional underpinnings for business strategies are a major research topic for comparative management aiming to explain why in different contexts firms pursue different strategies and with different implications for performance j peter murman in knowledge and competitive advantage takes a historical perspective focusing on the co evolutionary processes between national innovation systems business strategies and performance this books thus adds to the industry level longitudinal research reviewed in jibs no 4 2003 tom murtha et al s managing new industry creation and david mckendrick et al s from silicon valley to singapore

keeping your gains close but your money closer the prepayment effect in riskless choices abstract although research on loss aversion now spans more than three decades researchers are still debating whether or in which cases the finding holds true for money we contribute to this debate by exploring how prepayment affects financial decisions in one set of experiments we show that when faced with a tradeoff between post and prepayment participants overvalue prepaid money and sometimes even prefer it over objectively higher gains importantly this effect was more pronounced when prepayment was more distant from its pure representation in dollars and cents experiment 1a as well as when potential losses were directly linked to specific options experiment 1b as far as the processes involved our results suggest that prepayment leads to increased personal commitment to prepaid options experiment 1c in a second set of experiments we show that even when the tradeoff element is eliminated participants are more motivated and engaged in a task that is prepaid rather than post paid experiments 2a and 2b based on our findings we discuss how firms can use prepayment mechanisms to get more out of their agents and how individuals can be motivated to better utilize their money

how much does the supplemental nutrition assistance program reduce food insecurity nearly 15 of all u s households and 40 of near poor households were food insecure in 2009 the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap is the cornerstone of federal food assistance programs and serves as the first line of defense against food related hardship this paper measures the effectiveness of snap in reducing food insecurity using an instrumental variables approach to control for selection our results suggest that receipt of snap benefits reduces the likelihood of being food insecure by roughly 30 and reduces the likelihood of being very food insecure by 20

the boundaries of loss aversion abstract in this article the authors propose some psychological principles to describe the boundaries of loss aversion a key idea is that exchange goods that are given up as intended do not exhibit loss aversion for example the authors propose that money given up in purchases is not generally subject to loss aversion the results of several experiments provide preliminary support for the hypotheses the authors find that consistent with prospect theory loss aversion provides a complete account of risk aversion for risks with equal probability to win or lose the authors propose boundaries for this result and suggest further tests of the model

converging or diverging a comparative analysis of trends in contingent employment practice in europe over a decade this paper makes a unique contribution to the hrm convergence divergence debate by examining whether organisations operating in europe over the 10 year time period preceding 2000 are converging in their adoption of contingent employment practice the susceptibility of contingent employment practice to both convergent and divergent pressures acts as a useful analytical lens data are drawn from organisations operating in germany spain sweden the netherlands and the uk in 1991 2918 organisations 1995 2048 organisations and 2000 1555 organisations the results suggest that convergence is limited by the institutional embeddedness of organisations

differences in managerial values a study of u s hong kong and prc managers in this study of convergence divergence of managerial values four western developed measures machiavellianism locus of control intolerance of ambiguity and dogmatism and the four dimensions of the eastern developed chinese value survey confucian dynamism human heartedness integration and moral discipline were the measures used the findings indicate that often times both culture and the business environment interact to create a unique set of managerial values in a country

food stamps and food insecurity what can be learned in the presence of nonclassical measurement error policymakers have been puzzled to observe that food stamp households appear more likely to be food insecure than observationally similar eligible nonparticipating households we reexamine this issue allowing for nonclassical reporting errors in food stamp participation and food insecurity extending the literature on partially identified parameters we introduce a nonparametric framework that makes transparent what can be known about conditional probabilities when a binary outcome and conditioning variable are both subject to nonclassical measurement error we find that the food insecurity paradox hinges on assumptions about the data that are not supported by the previous food stamp participation literature

political economy of pension plans impact of institutions gender and culture abstract national pension systems are an important part of financial intermediation and worker welfare in most countries but how and why do they differ internationally controlling for important political economic and social institutions we document that international differences in pension progressivity or how pensions reflect lifetime earnings are negatively related to masculinity uncertainty avoidance individualism long term orientation employment rights average pension levels social trust and economic inequality we also find that pension progressivity is positively related to the economic and societal role of women the extent of catholicism as well as political voice and accountability these results provide important insights for both public policy and mnc managers

crossvergence 10 years on impact and further potential the 1997 jibs paper by ralston holt terpstra and yu was instrumental in anchoring and extending the construct of crossvergence in cross cultural research ten years on the paper has lost none of its relevance and continues to offer important opportunities for further theory development and attendant empirical research scope for further work seems to exist especially in three areas the meaning of crossvergence national culture and economic ideology and processes of change

culture meaning and institutions executive rationale in germany and japan this paper contributes rare primary empirical evidence to one of the major research questions in the social sciences today namely the linkage between national cultures and institutional structures of national business systems drawing on the work of redding we explore the thinking or rationale of senior executives of leading german and japanese firms about the ideal structure of the economy we find considerable variation in rationale across the two countries and in comparison with the shape of the business system of the united states our study has implications for our understanding of the meaning of economic activity in different countries and of the evolutionary trajectories of national business systems

developing difference social organization and the rise of the auto industries of south korea taiwan spain and argentina theories of economic development as diverse as modernization dependency world system and market reform take a critical factor view proponents of each theory argue that countries fail to develop because of an obstacle to economic growth we argue instead that neither a critical factor nor a single path leads to economic development viable paths vary economic growth depends on linking a country s historically developed patterns of social organization to the opportunities of global markets we formulate a sociological theory of cross national comparative advantage including not only economic factor endowments but also institutionalized patterns of authority and organization such patterns legitimize certain actors and certain relationships among those actors which facilitate development success in some activities but not in others we illustrate this approach to understanding development outcomes with a comparative analysis of the difficult rise of the automobile assembly and components industries in south korea taiwan spain and argentina

the food stamp program and food insufficiency food stamp participants have higher food insufficiency rates than eligible nonparticipants even after controlling for other factors given the food stamp program s prominent role in the alleviation of hunger this is a counterintuitive result we conjecture that these higher rates are due to adverse selection insofar as households more likely to be food insufficient are also more likely to receive food stamps we establish a theoretical framework to address this adverse selection using a simultaneous equation model with two probits we show that once one controls for this adverse selection food stamp recipients have the same probability of food insufficiency as nonrecipients copyright 2001 oxford university press

cultural stability or change among managers in indonesia in this study we directly measure culture along two of hofstede s 1980 dimensions individualism collectivism and power distance which we argue are potentially more malleable than stable at least within the developing nation of interest indonesia we compare these direct measures from indonesia with those from a developed country the united states to gauge the degree to which the culture of this emerging economy remains stable despite strong foreign influences utilizing english and back translated indonesian language versions of the 1994 values survey module we find statistically significant support for a narrowing of the differences in these two cultural dimensions between indonesian and u s managers compared to earlier findings by hofstede 1991

the thick description and comparison of societal systems of capitalism critiques of international business theory have recently pointed to weaknesses in the handling of context of culture and of policy implications it is contended that the origins of such failings lie in the discipline s commonly accepted methodologies and in turn that they have epistemological roots as a route out of the dilemmas faced a proposal is made to adopt more complete ways of handling determinacy including the influences of history culture and the societal emergence of institutions business systems theory is drawn upon and a model proposed developed from the work of whitley in this culture is seen as underpinning formal institutions which in turn underpin societal business systems the use of the model relies on the ideas of geertz on thick description and of ragin on holistic analysis it is illustrated with a comparison of the american and french socio economic systems seen historically findings in strategy research about the geographically defined nature of firm supremacy in many industries are brought into the account using the business systems literature consistent patterns of determinacy as well as distinct and contrasting trajectories of business system evolution are noted a more complete and multidisciplinary form of explanation grounded in socio economics is advocated as a means of meeting the challenges both of understanding and of policymaking at several levels

the impact of natural culture and economic ideology on managerial work values a study of the united states russia japan and china this study assesses the impact of economic ideology and national culture on the individual work values of managers in the united states russia japan and china the convergence divergence crossvergence cdc framework was used as theoretical framework for the study while the schwartz value survey svs was used to operationalize over investigation of managerial work values across these four countries the findings largely support the crossvergence prospective while also confirming the role of national culture implications from the findings are drawn for the convergence divergence crossvergence of values as well as for the feasibility of multidomestic or global strategies for a corporate culture

economic creativity and innovation implementation the entrepreneurial drivers of growth evidence from 63 countries this paper examines the effect of culture on national innovation and prosperity because culture shapes the way people think about and behave in regard to risk opportunities and rewards it should influence the nature of entrepreneurial activity and by extension economic outcomes using structural equation modeling on a sample of 63 countries we propose and test a comprehensive explanation of how culture as an umbrella construct as opposed to an analysis of its constituent parts affects innovation and national prosperity we propose a two stage model of innovation and find support for our hypothesized relationship that economic creativity influences innovation implementation at the national level we find that culture does indeed influence economic creativity we also find that innovation implementation explained some of the variation in prosperity across countries by establishing that big picture culture matters to innovation the door has opened for researchers to evaluate this relationship using data from any one of a number of rival culture frameworks moreover these empirical finding buttress the theoretical arguments that culture powerfully shapes the character of national innovation

food stamp program participation and food insecurity an instrumental variables approach the relationship between food stamp program fsp participation and household food insecurity fi is investigated using data from the 1996 1997 national food stamp program survey endogeneity of fsp participation is accommodated with an instrumental variables approach in contrast to other findings reported in the literature results suggest participation in the fsp reduces the severity of fi sociodemographic variables play important roles in fsp participation and fi underreporting of fsp participation and limited observations of food insecure households in previous studies may have also been factors copyright 2008 oxford university press

risk preferences and demand drivers of extended warranties we disentangle and study the relative importance of different risk preferences in explaining extended warranty purchases and the high premia paid for them empirical and behavioral research on insurance is at odds with whether diminishing returns curvature of the utility function or loss aversion and nonlinear probability weighting lead to observed consumer behavior this lack of consensus is primarily due to the inability of standard choice data to separate different risk preferences and the consequent need to rely on strong parametric assumptions we design two conjoint studies consistent with simultaneous and sequential decision making with choices about washing machines and extended warranties where subjects are given failure probabilities and repair costs using stated choice data from the surveys we can nonparametrically identify product and risk preferences we find that loss aversion is significantly more important than curvature and probability weights in explaining extended warranty choices importantly failure to decompose risk averse behavior into that arising from curvature loss aversion and probability weighting leads to lower washer prices and profits these findings are robust to alternate reference point assumptions we rationalize the premia paid for warranties by exploring retailer incentives to price discriminate and test the theory on complementary goods pricing finally based on counterfactual analysis forcing separate retailers to sell washers and extended warranties is not necessarily welfare enhancing as cited in the media and previous literature

the cultural relativity of organizational practices and theories this paper summarizes the author s recently published findings about differences in people s work related values among 50 countries in view of these differences ethnocen tric management theories those based on the value system of one particular country have become untenable this concept is illustrated for the fields of leadership organization and motivation a key issue for organization science is the influence of national cultures on introduction management twenty or even 10 years ago the existence of a relationship be management and tween management and national cultures was far from obvious to many and it national cultures may not be obvious to everyone even now in the 1950s and 60s the dominant be lief at least in europe and the u s was that management was something univer sal there were principles of sound management which existed regardless of na tional environments if national or local practice deviated from these principles it was time to change local practice in the future the universality of sound manage ment practices would lead to societies becoming more and more alike this ap plied even to the poor countries of the third world which would become rich as well and would be managed just like the rich countries also the differences be tween management in the first and second world capitalist and socialist would disappear in fact under the surface they were thought to be a lot smaller than was officially recognized this way of thinking which dominated the 1950s and 60s is known as the convergence hypothesis during the 1970s the belief in the unavoidable convergence of management prac tices waned it was too obviously in conflict with the reality we saw around us at the same time supranational organizations like the european common market which were founded very much on the convergence belief had to recognize the stubbornness of national differences even within existing nations regional dif ferences became more rather than less accentuated the welsh the flemish the basques the bangladeshi the quebecois defended their own identity and this was difficult to reconcile with a management philosophy of convergence it slowly became clear that national and even regional cultures do matter for management the national and regional differences are not disappearing they are here to stay in fact these differences may become one of the most crucial problems for man agement in particular for the management of multinational multicultural orga nizations whether public or private

mapping world cultures cluster formation sources and implications this paper extends and builds on ronen and shenkar s synthesized cultural clustering of countries based on similarity and dissimilarity in work related attitudes the new map uses an updated dataset and expands coverage to world areas that were non accessible at the time cluster boundaries are drawn empirically rather than intuitively and the plot obtained is triple nested indicating three levels of similarity across given country pairs also delineated are cluster adjacency and cluster cohesiveness which vary from the highly cohesive arab and anglo clusters to the least cohesive confucian and far eastern clusters exploring predictors of cluster formation we draw on the ecocultural perspective and other inputs and examine the combined role of language religion and geography in generating cluster formation we find that these forces play a prominent yet complex role for instance the religion and language brought by the spanish fail to create a singular cohesive latin american cluster akin to the anglo cluster the role of economic variables is similarly considered finally comparing the current map with that of 1985 we find strong support for the divergence vs convergence argument implications for international business are delineated

institutional cultural and transaction cost influences on entry mode choice and performance in this study we examine foreign market entry mode choice and firm performance for a sample of european union firms examining both financial and non financial performance measures we attempt to determine if firms that select their entry mode based on transaction cost institutional context and cultural context variables perform better than firms that make other mode choices we found that mode choice did matter firms whose mode choice could be predicted by the extended transaction cost model performed significantly better on both financial and non financial measures than did firms whose mode choice could not be predicted by the extended transaction cost model implications for future research are discussed

which model of capitalism best delivers both wealth and equality capitalism is the dominant economic system adopted throughout the global economy but there are many different models of capitalism practiced depending on what the society decides economic effectiveness is in this study we assert that an effective economy simultaneously achieves two seemingly divergent outcomes it 1 creates economic wealth efficiently and 2 shares that wealth equitably employing insights from whitley s national business systems framework and fuzzy set analysis we examine how national institutions collectively configure with respect to the overall level of equitable wealth creation within 48 developed and developing economies we find that three configurations are associated with relatively high levels of equitable wealth creation and another three are associated with relatively low levels as such our analysis supports the notion of equifinality that there is no one optimal model of capitalism furthermore we begin to demonstrate that these models of capitalism are constantly evolving but their evolution is generally slow even when considering the practice of capitalism before and after the 2008 global economic crisis we discuss the implications of these findings for the study of international business with a special emphasis on considering a more holistic context for exploring how multinational enterprises interact with their institutional environment s

australian and japanese value stereotypes a two country study australians and japanese working in australian and japanese organizations in both countries were involved in a research project that estimated stereotypical views of national culture respondents rated the importance of cultural values in australia and japan using the list of values lov instrument the results of a discriminant analysis suggested that potentially detrimental misunderstandings about their respective cultures may exist between australians and japanese engaged in mutual international business

the impact of snap on material hardships evidence from broad based categorical eligibility expansions this article examines whether expanding supplemental nutrition assistance program snap eligibility reduces material hardships of low income households during the great recession many states expanded the income threshold of eligibility for snap i show that expansions in eligibility increased the snap participation rate by 3 5 percentage points i also find that the expansion leads to a modest decrease in nonfood hardships such as rent and utility delinquencies however the increase in snap enrollment does not lead to greater food spending or a reduction in food insecurity except for households with children

adjusting to and learning from institutional diversity toward a capability building perspective this paper identifies two main dimensions institutional diversity and dynamism in the research stream that has substantively engaged with the important contribution of jackson and deeg j int bus stud 39 4 540 561 2008 taking into account their core criticism that institutional analysis in international business research is often de contextualized and building on these two dimensions we present two possible paths for institutional analysis that are sensitive to context the first is a methodological shift towards configurational analyses and specifically the analysis of counterfactual scenarios that could reveal new information about decision alternatives the second is a shift away from a focus on costs and towards the possibility of mnes building capabilities in an exploratory manner when confronted with institutional diversity both approaches build on an understanding of mnes as strategic actors that co evolve with their environments

international marketing ethics from an islamic perspective a value maximization approach international marketing practices embedded in a strong ethical doctrine can play a vital role in raising the standards of business conduct worldwide while in no way compromising the quality of services or products offered to customers or surrendering the profit margins of businesses adherence to such ethical practices can help to elevate the standards of behavior and thus of living of traders and consumers alike against this background this paper endeavors to identify the salient features of the islamic framework of international marketing ethics in particular it highlights the capabilities and strengths of this framework in creating and sustaining a strong ethical international marketing culture at the heart of islamic marketing is the principle of value maximization based on equity and justice constituting just dealing and fair play for the wider welfare of the society selected key international marketing issues are examined from an islamic perspective which it is argued if adhered to can help to create a value loaded global ethical marketing framework for mncs in general and establish harmony and meaningful cooperation between international marketers and muslim target markets in particular

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

cross cultural management research trend and future directions u the historical perspectives on cross cultural studies outlined in the following historical pages are based on negandhi 1975 and england negandhi and wilpert 1979 perspective the emerging field of cross cultural studies on organizational functioning is largely a result of partial integration between the cross cultural comparative management field and organization theory areas although some cross cultural organization studies were conducted prior to the 1950s the large scale projects on industrialization of developing countries at 4 major universities mit chicago california and princeton during the 1950s provided a major impetus to the comparative management area scholars from various social disciplines psychology sociology social and cultural anthropology economics and political sciences contributed toward these efforts the differing backgrounds of these scholars are reflected in their conceptualizations and methodologies as well as in their specific findings harbison and myers 1959 the conceptual and methodological approaches used by the comparative management theorists can be divided roughly into the following groups the economic development orientation the environmental approach and the behavioral approach

building professional discourse in emerging markets language context and the challenge of sensemaking using ethnographic evidence from the former soviet republics this paper examines a relatively new and mainly unobserved concept in international business literature the phenomenon of communication disengagement that manifests itself in many emerging markets we link it to the deficiencies of the local professional business discourse rooted in language limitations which reflects a lack of experience with the market economy this hampers cognitive coherence between foreign and local business entities adding to the liability of foreignness as certain instances of professional experience fail to find adequate linguistic expression and complicates cross cultural adjustments causing multinational companies mncs financial losses we contribute to the ib literature by examining cross border semantic sensemaking through a retrospectively constructed observational study we argue that a relative inadequacy of the national professional idiom is likely to remain a feature of the business environment in post communist economies for some time and therefore should be factored into business strategies of mncs consequently we recommend including discursive hazards in the risk evaluation of international projects

food stamp caseloads over the business cycle 1 introduction the onset of the current economic downturn following the longest expansion in u s history has renewed interest in the role of automatic stabilizers designed to insure households against negative cyclical income shocks this system of income and consumption stabilizers includes among others the individual income tax and the panoply of social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance and the food stamp program while the income tax and unemployment insurance have received recent attention gruber 1997 auerbach and feenberg 2000 kniesner and ziliak 2002a b little is known about the role of food stamps as an automatic stabilizer even though the program served over 27 million americans at its peak in 1994 this gap in the literature is particularly acute in light of passage of the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act of 1996 welfare reform act which introduced new rules on cash assistance recipients and thus the nearly half of food stamp recipients who also receive cash welfare moreover the 1996 welfare reform also had a direct administrative effect on the food stamp program by ending the eligibility of some recipients reducing average benefit levels and requiring states to replace paper coupons with electronic benefit transfer cards importantly the welfare reform act also eliminated the entitlement status of the main cash welfare program aid to families with dependent children afdc thus positioning food stamps as a more prominent countercyclical consumption stabilizer a first task in assessing the possible stabilization role of food stamps in the era of welfare reform is to identify the cyclical sensitivity of food stamp caseloads if food stamp caseloads are acyclical then we would expect no role for food stamps in smoothing consumption over the business cycle if however food stamp caseloads are highly cyclical then food stamps may function as an important antirecessionary tool by the same token the new welfare policies may independently affect food stamp caseload movements and interact with the business cycle thereby altering the possible stabilization role of the program in this paper we specify a dynamic model of food stamp caseloads to estimate the responsiveness of the caseload to the business cycle to welfare policies and to interactions between the business cycle and welfare policies unlike cash welfare there has been scant research on the cyclicality of food stamp caseloads 1 wallace and blank 1999 are a recent exception in their use of both static annual and dynamic monthly food stamp caseload models based on state level panel data for the 1980 to 1998 federal fiscal years with annual data food stamp caseloads were strongly countercyclical and reform of afdc led to weak declines in total caseloads 2 specifically they attribute up to 44 of the 1994 to 1998 food stamp caseload decline to economic conditions and about 6 of the decline to welfare reform they reach broadly similar conclusions with monthly data however wallace and blank calculate that upward of 85 of the post 1996 decline in food stamp caseloads can be attributed to welfare reform if one is willing to ascribe all the unexplained residual to welfare reform which as the authors note is undoubtedly an overestimate of welfare reform s effect on food stamp caseloads p 85 in their static models figlio gundersen and ziliak 2000 reached conclusions similar to wallace and blank s estimates with annual level data in their preferred dynamic models they attribute about 35 of the 1994 to 1998 caseload decline to the macroeconomy and virtually nothing to welfare reform we improve on this previous research on food stamp caseloads along several dimensions first we not only follow other research in estimating the impact of afdc policy changes on food stamp caseloads but also examine the impact of policies that are focused directly on food stamps

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

wage inequality and varieties of capitalism this article draws on a new data set that enables the authors to compare the distribution of income from employment across oecd countries specifically the article conducts a pooled cross sectional time series analysis of the determinants of wage inequality in sixteen countries from 1973 to 1995 the analysis shows that varieties of capitalism matter the authors find that the qualities that distinguish social market economies from liberal market economies shape the way political and institutional variables influence wage inequality of particular interest to political scientists is the finding that the wage distributive effects of government partisanship are contingent on institutional context union density emerges in the analysis as the single most important factor influencing wage inequality in both institutional contexts

change and complementarities in the new competitive landscape a european panel study 1992 1996 this paper addresses three weaknesses in the literature on new organizational forms the limited mapping of the extent of contemporary organizational change confusion about how contemporary changes link together and the lack of systematic testing of the performance consequences of this kind of change drawing on a large scale survey of organizational innovation in european firms the paper finds widespread but not revolutionary change in terms of organization structure processes and boundaries using the economics notion of complementarities the paper develops contingency and configurational approaches to suggest that organizational innovations will tend to cluster in particular ways and that the performance benefits of these innovations depend on their clustering complementarities in performance are explored from both inductive and deductive perspectives consistent with the expectations of complementarity theory high performing firms appeared to be innovating more and differently than low performing firms again consistent with complementarities piecemeal changes with the exception of it were found to deliver little performance benefit while exploitation of the full set of innovations was associated with high performance though few european firms were found to exploit the complementarities of new organizational practices those that did enjoyed high performance premia

cross cultural interaction the international comparison fallacy international management studies have been based primarily on the comparison of managerial behavior in countries around the world often these studies have implied that business people behave similarly with their domestic colleagues as with their foreign counterparts in questioning that assumption this study tests whether intra cultural behavior accurately predicts cross cultural behavior using a negotiation simulation and a sample of 462 japanese american and canadian businesspeople behaviors in cross cultural negotiations were found to differ in some important ways from those in intra cultural negotiations

partial identification methods for evaluating food assistance programs a case study of the causal impact of snap on food insecurity we illustrate how partial identification methods can be used to provide credible inferences on the causal impacts of food assistance programs focusing on the impact that the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap formerly known as the food stamp program has on food insecurity among households with children recent research applies these methods to address two key issues confounding identification missing counterfactuals and nonrandomly misclassified treatment status in this paper we illustrate and extend the recent literature by using data from the survey of income and program participation sipp to study the robustness of prior conclusions the sipp confers important advantages the detailed information about income and eligibility allows us to apply a modified discontinuity design to sharpen inferences and the panel nature allows us to reduce uncertainty about true participation status we find that snap reduces the prevalence of food insecurity in households with children by at least six percentage points

organization and management in the midst of societal transformation the people s republic of china twenty five years of economic reform has propelled china to the center of the world s economic stage based on current trends in the foreseeable future china is likely to become the largest economy in the world china s dramatic growth may be envied by other developing economies but for management scholars it presents an exciting intellectual puzzle in this paper we describe the empirical context of china today review contemporary research on chinese management and organizations and describe the nine papers in this special issue oforganization science the papers provide a close examination of how massive corporate transformation in china has influenced interfirm relationships affected opportunity structures and social processes and modified individual behaviors within firms we identify the many paradoxes in this intellectual terrain and present a guide to the challenging research agenda ahead we recommend that scholars of organizations think deeply about china as a context and consider china as an empirical setting where the boundaries of existing knowledge on organizations can be extended

understanding the differences in korean and u s executives strategic orientations competitive positioning in a global market requires an understanding of the decision processes and behavioral attributes of executives from different countries these attributes reflect the executives cultural background the national policies under which they have worked and their home country s level of economic development institutional context the current research compared strategic decision models of u s and korean executives and the results suggest that criteria employed by the executives from the two countries differ differences in institutional context between korea and the u s a were reflected in the weightings of objective criteria used by the executives korean executives emphasized industry attractiveness sales and market share because of policies that encourage growth and u s executives emphasized projected demand discounted cash flow and roi because of policies and institutions that focus on profitability the results suggest the importance of understanding the strategic orientations of international competitors partners in international strategic alliances and managers of international subsidiaries or divisions 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

deciding for others reduces loss aversion we study risk taking on behalf of others both when choices involve losses and when they do not a large scale incentivized experiment with subjects randomly drawn from the danish population is conducted we find that deciding for others reduces loss aversion when choosing between risky prospects for which losses are ruled out by design subjects make the same choices for themselves as for others in contrast when losses are possible we find that the two types of choices differ in particular we find that subjects who make choices for themselves take less risk than those who decide for others when losses loom this finding is consistent with an interpretation of loss aversion as a bias in decision making driven by emotions and that these emotions are reduced when making decisions for others

the moderating effect of relationship norm salience on consumers loss aversion people are said to be loss averse when their pain of losing something exceeds their joy of gaining it this research proposes and tests a new moderator of loss aversion the type of relationship norms salient at the time the loss or the gain is experienced we suggest that mere salience of the norms of a communal relationship based on concern for the partner relative to those of an exchange relationship based on quid pro quo leads to a greater degree of loss aversion a typical endowment effect study supports our overall thesis and shows that differences across relationship norms are stronger in selling prices willingness to accept than in buying prices willingness to pay

the importance of work goals an international perspective the paper probes into the basic question of what individuals seek from working results from a representative sample of the labor force in seven countries n 8192 showed that the two most dominant work goals are interesting work and good pay these were consistent internationally across different organizational levels between the genders and among different age categories

a clash of capitalisms foreign shareholders and corporate restructuring in 1990s japan this article examines the clash between stakeholder and shareholder based business systems resulting from an increase in foreign portfolio investment in the japanese economy during the 1990s an analysis of 1 108 firms between 1991 and 2000 shows that as foreign institutional investors who were more interested in investment returns than in long term relationships replaced domestic shareholders one fundamental pillar of japan s stakeholder capitalism began to crack japanese firms began to adopt downsizing and asset divestiture practices more characteristic of anglo american shareholder economies the influence of foreigners however was weaker in firms more deeply embedded in the local system through close ties to domestic financial institutions and corporate groups thus foreign investors were influential primarily in firms less embedded in the existing stakeholder system this research contributes to debates on globalization and convergence of business systems institutional change and corporate

union recognition by multinational companies in china a dual institutional pressure perspective over the last decade chinese authorities have pressed foreign multinational companies to recognize official trade unions employing cross classified multilevel modeling on a large data set 10 108 foreign owned firms cross embedded in 32 home countries and 755 chinese cities this study examines the antecedents of the varied positions of foreign owned firms toward union recognition around the midpoint of the first decade of the 2000s a time when the government led union recognition campaign in china was gaining strength drawing on a dual institutional pressure perspective the authors theorize that the likelihood that a foreign owned firm will recognize a union depends on both the industrial relations system in the home country and the location of its operations in the host country specifically a foreign owned firm is more likely to recognize unions if it originated from a nation where the legitimacy of collective representation is high and if it is located in a chinese city where union recognition is prevalent among chinese owned firms

predicting stakeholder orientation in the multinational enterprise a mid range theory as the reach of corporations increasingly extends across borders a key research question is whether overseas subsidiaries adopt a shareholder centric orientation centered on maximizing shareholder wealth or a stakeholder centric orientation centered on creating value for a broader range of stakeholders existing theories addressing the corporate level of analysis focus on forces exogenous to the firm local resource pressures and institutional norms using a combination of induction and fuzzy set analysis i draw on documentary evidence and 298 interviews with managers and stakeholders to build theory about the conditions that shape subsidiaries stakeholder orientations two major findings emerge first although theory emphasizes external stakeholders control over resources internal control through the corporate parent can crowd out the voices of local stakeholders second although institutional theory proposes isomorphism with local norms and standards some corporations are subject to scrutiny by global stakeholders and their subsidiaries face higher requirements for social engagement than their peers these findings are the foundation of a mid range theory that combines conventional explanations focused on environmental factors and an internal stakeholder perspective based around the roles of the parent corporation as owner and resource provider to predict stakeholder orientation

translation in cross language international business research beyond equivalence in this paper we problematise the way translation has been treated in international business ib research we start by conducting an interpretive content analysis of both qualitative and quantitative cross language studies published in four core ib journals over the course of a decade our analysis shows the dominance of a technicist view of translation associated with the equivalence paradigm in contrast we advocate a shift to a more contextualised approach informed by theoretical developments in translation studies more specifically we focus on two theoretical perspectives skopos theory and cultural politics which offer related but distinct approaches to rethinking equivalence we conclude by advocating that the translation process be reframed as a process of intercultural interaction rather than a lexical transfer of meaning this reconceptualisation would we argue open up what is currently a black box in most ib studies the contextualised approach that we offer has the potential not just to enrich the findings of studies but also provide insights that are of multidisciplinary relevance

the organizational choice between evolutionary and revolutionary capability regimes theory and evidence from european air transport resource and capability based models of firm strategy gain in analytical power by incorporating some of the organizational trade offs that firms face in choosing between alternative capability building strategies based on the well documented trade off between flexibility and commitment inherent in social systems this paper argues that firms must choose between evolutionary and revolutionary capability regimes empirical evidence drawn from the race of european airlines to develop critical revenue management capabilities is cited to illustrate the theory and practical relevance of capability regimes copyright 2000 by oxford university press

a dual parent perspective on control and performance in international joint ventures lessons from a developing economy this study compares the control performance relationship for foreign versus local parents in international joint ventures in china transaction cost analysis is found more applicable to foreign than to chinese parents both overall and specific controls are associated with performance for foreign parents while only specific control is for chinese parents under goal incongruity chinese parent control is associated with foreign parent dissatisfaction with venture performance but not vice versa having a majority stake improves performance from a foreign parent perspective but not from that of the chinese parent

in search of appropriate methodology from outside the people s republic of china looking in choosing a methodology determines what we can study as well as the range of possible results and conclusions this study took an instrument that had been developed in the west and used extensively in europe and north america to investigate managerial behavior in the people s republic of china for a number of reasons it failed to produce a valid and reliable description of chinese managerial behavior this paper investigates some of the methodogical issues involved in extending western organizational knowledge to the east it raises some fundamental questions about being outside looking in

food insecurity and public assistance this paper examines if welfare programs reduce the probability that vulnerable households experience food deprivation because of financial constraints although the 1996 welfare reform legislation specifically limited the eligibility of immigrant households to receive assistance many states chose to protect their immigrant populations by offering state funded aid to these groups i exploit these changes in eligibility rules to examine the link between food insecurity and public assistance the evidence indicates that a 10 percentage point cut in the fraction of the population that receives public assistance increases the fraction of food insecure households by about 5 percentage points

rasch analyses of very low food security among households and children in the three city study the longitudinal three city study tcs of low income families with children measures food hardships using fewer and some different questions from the standard u s instrument the household food security survey module hfssm in the current population survey cps we use a rasch measurement model to identify thresholds of very low food security among households and among children in the tcs that are comparable to thresholds from the hfssm we also use the tcs to empirically investigate the determinants of food insecurity and of these specific food insecurity outcomes estimating a multivariate behavioral rasch model that is adapted to address longitudinal data the estimation results indicate that participation in the supplemental nutrition assistance program and the temporary assistance for needy families program reduce food insecurity while poverty and disability among caregivers increase it besides its longitudinal structure the tcs measures many more characteristics about households than the cps our estimates reveal that financial assistance through social networks and a household s own financial assets reduce food insecurity while its outstanding loans increase insecurity

a reference price theory of the endowment effect abstract the common finding that selling prices exceed buying prices the so called endowment effect is typically explained by the assumptions that consumers evaluate potential transactions with respect to their current holdings and that the owners of a good regard its potential loss to be more significant than nonowners regard its potential acquisition in contrast to this pain of losing account the authors propose that the endowment effect reflects a reluctance to trade on terms that appear unfavorable with respect to salient reference prices in six experiments and eight more summarized in appendixes the authors show that manipulations that reduce the gap between valuations and reference prices reduce or eliminate the endowment effect these results suggest that the endowment effect is often best construed as an aversion to bad deals rather than an aversion to losing possessions

country and organizational level adaptation to foreign workplace ideologies a comparative study of distributive justice values in china russia and the united states drawing from concepts of cultural distance and cultural propensity to change we predict the convergence divergence or crossvergence of distributive justice values in china and russia as compared with us managers using institutional theory we predict responses by organizational type joint ventures foreign owned vs state owned enterprises soes lastly we develop predictions based on the interaction of culture and organizational type results indicate divergence in china regardless of organizational type in contrast differences by organizational type were observed among russian managers with convergence among managers in joint ventures but continuing divergence among managers in soes implications for theory are discussed

the manager as mediator of alternative meanings a pilot study from china the usa and u k managers in china the usa and britain were asked to describe the extent to which they used five sources for handling nine managerial events western managers were found to rely more upon their own experience and training while in china rules and procedures were more salient for most events western managers who described themselves as relying on their own experience and training believed that the events had been well handled they reported that events were less well handled to the extent that they referred to their superiors reliance on the superior was associated with role ambiguity among western managers but not in china even though chinese managers relied more upon rules and procedures they too evaluated events more positively when they had relied on their own experience and training the results are discussed in terms of chinese and western cultural values and the prospects for change in managerial practice in china

a perspective on regional and global strategies of multinational enterprises multinational enterprises mnes are the key drivers of globalization as they foster increased economic interdependence among national markets the ultimate test to assess whether these mnes are global themselves is their actual penetration level of markets across the globe especially in the broad triad markets of nafta the european union and asia yet data on the activities of the 500 largest mnes reveal that very few are successful globally for 320 of the 380 firms for which geographic sales data are available an average of 80 3 of total sales are in their home region of the triad this means that many of the world s largest firms are not global but regionally based in terms of breadth and depth of market coverage globalization in terms of a balanced geographic distribution of sales across the triad thus reflects a special and rather unusual outcome of doing international business ib the regional concentration of sales has important implications for various strands of mainstream ib research as well as for the broader managerial debate on the design of optimal strategies and governance structures for mnes journal of international business studies 2004 35 3 18 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400073

in kind benefits and household behavior the impact of snap on food away from home consumption abstract supplemental nutrition assistance program snap formerly known as the food stamp program provides in kind benefits that can generally be utilized for food at home fah only according to economic theory snap benefits are fungible with cash for inframarginal households which may allow participants to spend benefits on non fah items however empirical evidence for this theory is mixed this paper exploits an underutilized source of state level variation the early 2000 s recession to determine the impact of snap participation on household food away from home fafh consumption in a difference in difference framework i compare households in high post recession snap growth states to households in low post recession snap growth states the results show that snap participation causes a significant decrease in fafh expenditure and fafh s share of total food expenditure

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

globalization and household saving is there a link abstractthis article proposes that globalization can affect household saving in the long run in a number of ways social interactions between different cultures can induce value changes which can result in shifts in consumption and saving behaviour international trade allows consumers to have easier access to status goods stimulating consumption and dampening saving extending from veblen s conspicuous consumption theory saving may also decrease when globalization leads to greater population mobility and fosters urbanization thus enhancing the importance of consumption as a way to display wealth in addition financial globalization reduces credit constraints and allows households to save less using cross country data from the united nations un the oecd and other sources this article finds evidence that household saving declines as globalization deepens especially in the social and cultural dimensions

mapping india s regional subcultures implications for international management as india continues to emerge as a global economic player scholars and practitioners increasingly need to understand the cultural heterogeneity within this large and populous nation based on lenartowicz and roth s framework of culture assessment we have identified nine distinct subcultural regions of india and used explanations grounded in functional and neo institutional theories to account for the origin and maintenance of cultural distinctiveness of these regions further we developed seven cultural value dimensions for the indian society and used these to hypothesize and empirically test the existence of cultural differences within india results supported our hypothesized arguments this study advances our knowledge of how global functional and institutional forces have combined with national forces to shape india s overall culture and how more local forces have shaped its regions methodologically it identifies and develops measures that specifically reflect the values of individuals living in india and uses these to assess intra national cultural differences within this nation further it suggests how use of multiple methods can enable us to understand the simultaneous presence of somewhat contradictory values within a society the study also provides applications of the proposed cultural value dimensions and advises implications of regional subcultures for various social and organizational phenomena

comparing capitalisms understanding institutional diversity and its implications for international business this paper examines the role of institutional analysis within the field of international business ib studies within ib institutions matter but the view of institutions tends to be thin utilizing summary indicators rather than detailed description and thus approaches institutions as unidimensional variables that impact on particular facets of business activity this paper argues that ib research would be usefully advanced by greater attention to comparing the topography of institutional landscapes and understanding their diversity a number of alternative case based approaches are outlined that draw on a growing comparative capitalisms literature in sociology and political science the paper develops a number of empirical examples to show the utility and limits of these approaches for ib scholars

conceptions of self and performance related feedback in the u s japan and china effective international management requires knowledge of culturally patterned self concepts and concomitant feedback desires this paper argues that the cultural forces of individualism versus collectivism shape the self concept and by extension individual performance evaluation and feedback seeking we present a comparative study to test the hypotheses that u s respondents desire success feedback whereas japanese and chinese desire feedback show more initiative and perceive more direct workplace feedback than do either japanese or chinese respondents strong support was found for comparisons between the u s and japan but the chinese consistently departed from predictions we interpret these results in terms of recent reforms in the people s republic of china and discuss implications of the study for international management

modeling the psychology of consumer and firm behavior with behavioral economics abstract marketing is an applied science that tries to explain and influence how firms and consumers behave in markets marketing models are usually applications of standard economic theories which rely on strong assumptions of rationality of consumers and firms behavioral economics explores the implications of the limits of rationality with the goal of making economic theories more plausible by explaining and predicting behavior more accurately while maintaining formal power this article reviews six behavioral economics models that are useful to marketing three models generalize standard preference structures to allow for sensitivity to reference points and loss aversion social preferences toward outcomes of others and preference for instant gratification the other three models generalize the concept of game theoretic equilibrium allowing decision makers to make mistakes encounter limits on the depth of strategic thinking and equilibrate by learning from feedback the authors also discuss a sp

the crossvergence perspective reflections and projections in this retrospective i chronicle the development of the crossvergence theory of values evolution which states it is the dynamic interaction of the sociocultural influences with the business ideology influences that provides the driving force to precipitate the development of new and unique values systems in societies crossvergence theory was introduced in our 1993 jibs paper and was the focus of our 1997 decade award paper as well as of a series of subsequent papers thus i discuss the purpose and findings for six papers that have contributed to our present level of knowledge concerning crossvergence theory i conclude my comments with a discussion of the relevance of longitudinal and multilevel research measures found to be useful and methodologies to consider as well as identifying research topics in need of exploration

three cheers psychological theoretical empirical for loss aversion abstract this note emphasizes the special role of prospect theory in drawing psychophysical considerations into theories of decision making with respect to risk an example of such a consideration is the dependence of outcome value on a reference point and the increased sensitivity of loss relative to gain i e loss aversion loss aversion can explain the st petersburg paradox without requiring concave utility it has the correct psychological foundation it is theoretically useful and it is a parsimonious principle that can explain many puzzles a few open questions are whether loss aversion is a stable feature of preference whether it is an expression of fear and what are its properties

empowerment effects across cultures three studies examined cross cultural variations in empowerment effects study 1 investigated whether hofstede s power distance scores moderated the effect of job autonomy on job satisfaction using world values survey data on 33 nations study 2 surveyed frontline hotel employees from canada and prc to investigate the moderating role of power distance at the individual level in study 3 hotel management students from canada and prc were asked to play the role of a frontline employee who had to handle a special customer request in a scenario experiment these studies show consistently that the cultural value of power distance moderates the effect of empowerment on job satisfaction moreover willingness to accept and exercise the discretionary power allowed by management and desire to satisfy customer needs and wants are two employee conditions that are essential for the successful implementation of the empowerment approach

finishing high school and starting college do catholic schools make a difference in this paper we consider two measures of the relative effectiveness of public and catholic schools finishing high school and starting college these measures are potentially more important indicators of school quality than standardized test scores in light of the economic consequences of obtaining more education single equation estimates suggest that for the typical student attending a catholic high school raises the probability of finishing high school or entering a four year college by thirteen percentage points in bivariate probit models we find almost no evidence that our single equation estimates are subject to selection bias