Boeing Company has been the world's leading producer of large commercial airplanes for several decades. However, in the late 1990s, Europe‐based Airbus Industrie competed with…
Abstract
Boeing Company has been the world's leading producer of large commercial airplanes for several decades. However, in the late 1990s, Europe‐based Airbus Industrie competed with Boeing aggressively and captured almost fifty percent of the over‐100‐seat airplane market. This paper examines the battle between Boeing and Airbus, including a concise report on Airbus' launch of its A380 superjumbo project. The paper also contains the authors' recommendations to Boeing and the U.S. government.
Sam Walton opened his first Wal‐Mart discount store in 1962. Today, Wal‐Mart is not only the world’s largest corporation but also the world’s most admired company, according to a…
Abstract
Sam Walton opened his first Wal‐Mart discount store in 1962. Today, Wal‐Mart is not only the world’s largest corporation but also the world’s most admired company, according to a 2003 Fortune magazine poll. Wal‐Mart is competitive and successful because it has been doing many things right. This article helps shed light on the rise of Wal‐Mart and the roots of its competitiveness. Business practitioners aspiring to succeed can learn a great deal from studying the Wal‐Mart way of doing business.
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Howard W. Combs and Carl H. Tong
The auto industry plays a vitally important role in the U.S. economy. Automotive products account for an estimated sixteen percent of all durable goods shipments in the U.S. and…
Abstract
The auto industry plays a vitally important role in the U.S. economy. Automotive products account for an estimated sixteen percent of all durable goods shipments in the U.S. and affect many other critical industries, such as primary metal, machine tools, plastics, rubber, glass, tire, battery, and electronics industries (Koretz and Treece, 1989). American auto companies together with their suppliers provide good‐paying jobs for several million American workers. A strong U.S. auto industry is essential to a prosperous U.S. economy.
Carl H. Tong, Lee‐Ing Tong and James E. Tong
This paper aims to offer a succinct description of the Vioxx recall in 2004 and discuss the fundamental reasons why Merck got into this trouble.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to offer a succinct description of the Vioxx recall in 2004 and discuss the fundamental reasons why Merck got into this trouble.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of literature has been conducted to provide key facts about the Vioxx disaster and to shed light on the operations of its maker Merck. The Vioxx recall case is analyzed from a perspective including both company profits and public interest.
Findings
Merck aggressively marketed an unsafe drug, under the brand name Vioxx, without properly disclosing its serious side effects to consumers. After the facts were revealed, the company faced costly lawsuits, angry investors and falling profits. This case clearly shows how a disaster can occur when a company becomes greedy and seeks undeserved profits at the expense of ethics and social responsibility.
Practical implications
Building a successful and competitive business requires managers to make decisions that balance profit and social responsibility. When business managers run their business solely for profit, problems will almost certainly occur. Such problems can cause severe damage not only to the company's customers but also to the company itself.
Originality/value
Vioxx is one of the biggest marketing mistakes in recent business history. This paper provides valuable learning insights and should be useful to corporate executives, government regulators and business scholars.
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Yong H. Kim, Bochen Li, Hyun-Han Shin and Wenfeng Wu
It is documented that companies and government agencies in the USA invest more in the fourth fiscal quarter without having higher investment opportunities. While previous studies…
Abstract
Purpose
It is documented that companies and government agencies in the USA invest more in the fourth fiscal quarter without having higher investment opportunities. While previous studies focus on the agency conflicts and information asymmetry within organizations, this study is motivated by Scharfstein and Stein's (2000) two-tiered agency model and aims to examine how firms' external business environment affects the “fourth quarter effect.”
Design/methodology/approach
The authors implement this study in a sample of 41 countries and observe similar seasonality in firm investment as documented in the US market.
Findings
More importantly, using country characteristics, this study finds that firms from countries with better investor rights and protection, and more developed financial markets show less severe over-investment in the fourth fiscal quarter.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature of law and finance, and the internal capital market, by investigating the quarterly investment patterns of firms from 41 countries. The authors find that similar to the results in earlier studies on the US market, firms in the global market increase their capital expenditure in the fourth fiscal quarter, indicating that the internal agency conflicts between the headquarters and divisional managers are widespread across the world. The authors also find that firms that operate in countries with higher investor rights and protection, and more developed financial markets, tend to show less severe “fourth quarter effect”.
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Xifang Ma, Wan Jiang, Linlin Wang and Jing Xiong
This study examined a curvilinear and moderated relationship between transformational leadership and employee creative performance in a real-world setting by drawing from the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examined a curvilinear and moderated relationship between transformational leadership and employee creative performance in a real-world setting by drawing from the too-much-of-a-good-thing effect and the substitutes for leadership perspectives.
Design/methodology/approach
We used multisource data collected from 232 employees and their immediate supervisors to test all hypotheses.
Findings
We found empirical support for an inverted U-shaped relationship between transformational leadership and employee creative performance. Moreover, job factor (i.e. job formalization) and individual differences (i.e. power distance) moderated the curvilinear relationship, such that the curvilinear relationship was more pronounced with lower job formalization or higher power distance of employees.
Originality/value
Our findings shed light on the inconsistent reports of transformational leadership's effects on employee creativity in previous studies. We extended substitutes for leadership perspective by providing a more systematic view for future research on how leadership and its substitutes jointly influence employee outcomes.
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Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some…
Abstract
Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.
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AT Oxford, on October 8th and 9th, was celebrated the tercentenary of the founding of the Bodleian Library by Sir Thomas Bodley, an Exeter man, who early realised the value of…
Abstract
AT Oxford, on October 8th and 9th, was celebrated the tercentenary of the founding of the Bodleian Library by Sir Thomas Bodley, an Exeter man, who early realised the value of books in the work of education. The occasion was made one of great importance, and there were gathered together distinguished representatives of literature and librarianship from all parts of the world. The list of delegates given below will show how extensive this representation was, although it will occur to some, as a somewhat remarkable circumstance, that not a single municipal library in London was represented, while many of the more important English towns were also ignored. Considering that such libraries are doing so much in the cause of popular education, compared to which the work of many of the colleges and institutions represented is microscopical, it does strike the outsider that the gathering would have been much more impressive and representative had there been more “Town” and less “Gown” in the celebration. The following is a full list of all but the Oxford representatives, who included practically every head of a college, professor, or college librarian, together with various local celebrities:—
Hongxia Wang, Hua Zhou, Haitao Niu, Chen Huang, Amir Abbas, Jian Fang and Tong Lin
In this study, superhydrophobic fabric is prepared with a wet-chemical coating technique that uses a coating solution synthesized by the co-hydrolysis and co-condensation of…
Abstract
In this study, superhydrophobic fabric is prepared with a wet-chemical coating technique that uses a coating solution synthesized by the co-hydrolysis and co-condensation of tetraethyl orthosilicate and fluoroalkyl silane (tridecafluorooctyl triethoxysilane) under an alkaline condition. The treated fabric shows stable superhydrophobicity with a water contact angle as high as 171°, and a sliding angle as low as 2°. The coated fabric has higher repellency to saline water, and its repellency increases with increases in the salt content in the solution. The contact angle is reduced with increases in liquid temperature. When the water temperature is 90°C, the contact angle on the superhydrophobic fabric is 153°. The superhydrophobic treatment slightly reduces the air permeability, but increases the water vapor permeability of the fabric. The treatment considerably increases the liquid breakthrough pressure, but has little effect on fabric pore size and thermal conductivity. The air gap membrane distillation process is used to evaluate the desalination performance of the superhydrophobic fabric. When the feed and the condenser are kept at 90°C and 20°C, respectively, the membrane distillation (MD) system with the superhydrophobic fabric yields a permeate flux of water up to 13.8 kg m-2 hour-1, which is slightly higher than that with the use of polymer and inorganic MD membranes reported. Superhydrophobic fabrics may thus be considered as effective MD membranes for water desalination applications.