This study of the influence of the marketing department (MD), as well as its relationship with firm performance, includes seven industrialized countries and aims to generalize the conceptual model presented by Verhoef and Leeflang (2009). This investigation considers the antecedents of perceived MD influence, top management respect for the MD, and MD decision influence, as well as the relationships of these three influence variables with market orientation (MO) and business performance (BP). Meta-analytic procedures reveal initial empirical generalizations: Accountability, MD innovativeness, and the customer connection capabilities of the MD relate consistently to all three studied MD influence measures. The generalization also shows that MD influence contributes to BP indirectly through its positive relationship with MO and directly through its positive direct relationship with BP.
The degree of openness in innovation, ranging from closed to multiple levels of openness, is a key strategic decision for managers. Therefore, this study aims to carefully investigate the underlying drivers of openness. A major result of this study is that the degree of openness underlies separate mechanisms for being closed in innovation and higher degrees of openness. The factors that prevent firms from being open are a lack of market and technological knowledge (knowledge gaps), ineffective intellectual property (IP) protection mechanisms, and competitor threats such as market entries and imitation. The most important factors that increase the degree of openness are a firm's need for financial funding in innovation and the effectiveness of a firm's IP protection mechanisms.
Pay-per-bid auctions are a popular new type of Internet auction that is unique because a fee is charged for each bid that is placed. This paper uses a theoretical model and three large empirical data sets with 44,614 ascending and 1,460 descending pay-per-bid auctions to compare the economic effects of different pay-per-bid auction formats, such as different price increments and ascending versus descending auctions. The theoretical model suggests revenue equivalence between different price increments and descending and ascending auctions. The empirical results, however, refute the theoretical predictions: ascending auctions with smaller price increments yield, on average, higher revenues per auction than ascending auctions with higher price increments, but their revenues vary much more strongly. On average, ascending auctions yield higher revenues per auction than descending auctions, but results differ strongly across product categories. Additionally, revenues per ascending auction also vary much more strongly.
Online customer reviews (OCRs) have become a major source of information for customers in the Internet. Understanding the impact of OCRs on customers' decisions is an important challenge for academics and practitioners. We apply a choice-based conjoint experiment that combines all relevant levels of the OCR dimensions (valence, volume, and variance) and that estimates the effect of OCRs on choice. The experimental setting allows us to estimate the direct effects but also the interaction effects of the OCR dimensions, which have been largely neglected in previous research. The impact of the OCR dimensions is evaluated against the results from a control group that did not face OCRs when making their choices. Therefore, our experiment enables us to investigate the extent to which the presence of OCRs affects customers' consideration of brand, price, and technical product attributes. By contrast to previous findings, our results show that volume and variance do not affect customers' choices directly but that they moderate the impact of valence on customers' choices. Moreover, we find that OCRs decrease the importance of brand for customer purchase decisions, indicating that managing OCRs have become a challenge for brand management.
In this article we pursue two objectives. First, we refine the concept of responsible leadership from an upper echelon perspective by exploring two distinct styles (instrumental and integrative) and thereby further developing the understanding of the newly emerging integrative style. Second, we propose a framework that examines the micro-foundations of political corporate social responsibility (CSR). We explicate how the political CSR engagement of organizations (in social innovation and multi-stakeholder initiatives) is influenced by responsible leadership styles and posit that most CEOs tend to espouse either instrumental or integrative responsible leadership approaches, based on perceived moral obligations toward shareholders or stakeholders. We examine the moderating effects of societal- and organizational-level factors (such as power distance and corporate governance), and individual-level influences (such as cognitive and social complexity). We discuss both approaches with respect to their effectiveness in dealing with political CSR challenges in a complex environment and conclude that an instrumental responsible leadership style may be effective in relatively stable settings with strong institutional arrangements, while the complex and unstable context of a post-national constellation with weak institutions calls for an integrative responsible leadership style. The latter can be expected to be more effective in dealing with political CSR challenges in a global world, contributing to closing governance gaps and producing sustainable outcomes for societies.
Mixed methods systematically combine multiple research approaches—either in basic parallel, sequential, or conversion designs or in more complex multilevel or integrated designs. Multilevel mixed designs are among the most valuable and dynamic. Yet current multilevel designs, which are rare in the mixed methods literature, do not strongly integrate qualitative and quantitative approaches for use in one study. This lack of integration is particularly problematic for research in the organization sciences because of the variety of multilevel concepts that researchers study. In this article, we develop a multilevel mixed methods technique that integrates qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) with hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). This technique is among the first of the multilevel ones to integrate qualitative and quantitative methods in a single research design. Using Miles and Snow’s typology of generic strategies as an example of organizational configurations, we both illustrate how researchers may apply this technique and provide recommendations for its application and potential extensions. Our technique offers new opportunities for bridging macro and micro inquiries by developing strong inferences for testing, refining, and extending multilevel theories of organizational configurations.
One of the major potential consequences of climate change is damage to earth’s ecosystems, damage which could manifest itself in the form of tipping risks. We establish an economic growth model of ecosystem tipping risks, set in the context of possible forest dieback. We consider different specifications of impacts arising from the forest dieback tipping point, specifications such as changes in the system dynamics of the forests, changes in the forest mass, and impacts on economic output. We also consider endogenous and exogenous tipping point probabilities. For each specification we compute the optimal policies for forest management and emission control. Our results show qualitative differences in patterns of post-tipping event, optimal forest harvest, and either precautionary or aggressive pre-tipping event harvest patterns, a feature consistent with the findings of the existing literature. Optimal control of deforestation and carbon dioxide emission reduction also exhibits varied patterns of post- and pre-tipping levels depending on the nature of the tipping risk. Still, today’s optimal policy is one of more stringent emissions control in presence of a potential forest dieback tipping point.
