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Although the literature shows that ethical leadership reduces the risk of burnout, research still lacks a comprehensive understanding of the mediating effects between ethical leadership and burnout. As media reports on working conditions in the academic context often tie the problem of unethical leadership practices to illegitimate tasks, this study focuses on illegitimate tasks as a mediator between ethical leadership and burnout.

The research model is tested using structural equation modeling and data from 1,053 doctoral and postdoctoral students in randomly selected German state universities.

The results significantly support all hypothesized effects, showing direct correlations between (1) ethical leadership and illegitimate tasks, (2) ethical leadership and burnout facets and (3) illegitimate tasks and burnout facets. The relationship between ethical leadership and burnout is thus partially mediated by illegitimate tasks.

The authors recommend three major fields of action for practice. These fields comprise (1) the leadership situation, (2) the leader and (3) the follower.

The presented model is the first that connects the relationship between ethical leadership and burnout with illegitimate tasks and looks at ethical leadership from a stress-as-offense-to-self (SOS) perspective.

Using a meta-regression analysis, we quantitatively review the empirical literature on the relation between effective tax rate (ETR) and firm size. Accounting literature offers two competing theories on this relation: The political cost theory, suggesting a positive size-ETR relation, and the political power theory, suggesting a negative size-ETR relation. Using a unique data set of 56 studies that do not show a clear tendency towards either of the two theories, we contribute to the discussion on the size-ETR relation in three ways: First, applying meta-regression analysis on a US meta-data set, we provide evidence supporting the political cost theory. Second, our analysis reveals factors that are possible sources of variation and bias in previous empirical studies; these findings can improve future empirical and analytical models. Third, we extend our analysis to a cross-country meta-data set; this extension enables us to investigate explanations for the two competing theories in more detail. We find that Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, a transparency index and a corruption index explain variation in the size-ETR relation. Independent of the two theories, we also find that tax planning aspects potentially affect the size-ETR relation. To our knowledge, these explanations have not yet been investigated in our research context.

This article aims to close some research gaps by differentiating between brand types and price tiers. Many consumers perceive high prices as signals of high quality, yet researchers tend to find only low average correlations between price and objective quality. Previous studies do not account for market shares and paid prices though.

A German consumer panel with more than 30,000 households reveals market shares and paid prices. Combining these data with product test ratings, the authors evaluate price-quality relationships with Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients and distinguish food from non-food products, national brands and private labels and three price tiers.

High price-quality correlations for national brands and non-food private labels indicate that a higher price signals greater product quality. For food private labels, negative correlation coefficients inhibit the use of price as a quality indicator. The price-quality relationship for food private labels implies strong competition among brand owners, based on the price and quality of their products.

This article investigates price-quality correlations by accounting for paid prices and product market shares; it also reveals differences across food and non-food products, national brands and private labels and different price tiers against the background of competition strategies. By addressing when consumers use price as a quality indicator, it outlines important managerial implications for manufacturers, retailers and consumers.

No company is safe from low‐cost rivals. Almost overnight, nimble low‐cost competitors can exploit their offshore advantage, partnerships, and inexpensive technologies to break down barriers and rewrite the rules of competition. This paper aims to show how to counterattack.

The paper shows that way to beat low‐cost competitors that have the potential to become serious competitors is to identify and deal with them early, before they get a foothold in a market.

The paper finds that the best way to identify and thwart a low‐cost rival is to adopt its mindset, anticipate its next competitive move and measure your costs against its costs. This best practice analysis requires four steps.

“What to do” to defeat low‐cost competitors involves two separate but related tasks: First, “stop the bleeding”, and second, reposition the company for success in the new market. The paper shows how to break down potential moves into short‐term tactics and long‐term strategies.

The paper shows how to win the battle with a low‐cost competitor by identifying the genuine threats, taking on the serious competition, adapting its tactics quickly and hitting back with a well‐placed blow.

The purpose of this study is to question the undifferentiated treatment of individual traders as “dumb noise traders?”. We question this undifferentiated verdict by conducting an analysis of the cognitive competence of individual investors.

The authors let experts (both experienced researchers as well as practitioners) assess the mathematical and verbal reasoning demands of investment tasks investigated in previous studies.

Based on this assessment, this paper concludes that individual investors are able to perform a number of complex cognitive actions, especially those demanding higher-order verbal reasoning. However, they seem to reach cognitive limitations with tasks demanding greater mathematical reasoning ability. This is especially unfortunate, as tasks requiring higher mathematical reasoning are considered to be more relevant to performance. These findings have important implications for future regulatory measures.

This study has two non-trivial limitations. First, indirect measurement of mental requirements does not allow authors to make definite statements about the cognitive competence of individual investors. To do so, it would be necessary to conduct laboratory experiments which directly measure performance of investors on different investment and other cognitively demanding tasks. However, such data are not available for retail investors on this market to the best of the authors’s knowledge. We therefore think that our approach is a valuable first step toward understanding investors’ cognitive competence using data that are available at this moment. Second, the number of analyzed (and available) tasks is rather low (n = 10) which limits the power of tests and restricts the authors from using more profound (deductive) statistical analyses.

This paper proposes to illustrate information in key investor documents mostly verbally (e.g. as proposed by Rieger, 2009), compel exchanges and issuers of retail derivatives to create awareness for the results of the reviewed studies and our conclusion and to offer online math trainings especially designed for individual investors to better prepare them for different trading activities, as these have been shown to be as effective as face-to-face trainings (Frederickson et al., 2005; Karr et al., 2003).

This study can only be considered as a first step toward understanding the cognitive limitations of individual investors indirectly and could be transferred to other market areas as well.

This study is the first to combine the assessment of outstanding researchers in this field with the results of previous studies. In doing so, this paper provides an overarching framework of interpretation for these studies.

Many companies in many industries find themselves dealing with an over abundance of custom‐designed products, services and IT functions. Such complexity becomes unnecessary and value draining when companies fail to address the trade‐off between customization and complexity – between the costs associated with customization, the value derived from it, and the price that should be charged for it.

The authors show how to build an organization that routinely measures complexity and takes a continuous improvement approach to reducing it. This ensures that complexity is managed and customization that does not contribute to competitive advantage is eliminated.

Good complexity is necessary and adds value for the company and the customer. It is the kind required to customize products and services and help companies increase revenues, profits, and customer loyalty.

Ideally, the initial focus should be on identifying the complexity drivers across the organization and determining where modularization can reduce unnecessary complexity.

The company must obtain an in‐depth understanding of the tradeoffs between customization and complexity, and change its business processes and decision‐making to consider both internal challenges as well as its position in the marketplace. In the end, by weeding out the “bad” complexity, the company should see marked improvement in both its delivery capabilities and bottom‐line performance.

A proposed typology of moral exemplars in business highlights instances selected to illustrate standards for inclusion. The typology distinguishes among champions, heroes, and saints as different kinds of business exemplars. The typology reflects variations in both specific decision conditions and moral value emphases of business actors. The typology also differentiates moral exemplars from moral neutrals (i.e., amoral actors) and moral sinners (i.e., moral value scofflaws). The objective is to advance understanding of moral character and moral courage in business settings.

The methodology combines original conceptual argument and brief case summaries taken from available literature. The chapter is not a systematic survey of literature but cites key works. Construction of the typology involved iteration between conceptual development and case interpretation.

The chapter separates business cases into private business and public business, and applies Adam Smith’s distinction between citizenship and good citizenship. An additional distinction is made between extreme conditions and normal conditions. Moral heroism in business is restricted to life-and-death or strongly analogous situations in extreme conditions such as hazardous whistleblowing. Moral sainthood in business involves extreme maximization of a single value going far beyond simple compliance with legal requirements and typical ethical norms – Smith’s definition of citizenship. Moral championing in business concerns some degree of lesser self-sacrifice in defense of important values reflecting Smith’s definition of good citizenship.

The chapter is a selection of literature undertaken in iteration with the conceptual development effort. The original research aspect of the chapter is thus quite limited. The author is not positioned to judge the accuracy of published information, for or against a particular instance. The classifications thus depend on whether the instance would, if the generally reported facts are basically accurate, serve as a reasonable illustration of standards for inclusion. Criticisms have been made concerning some of the instances discussed here.

The emphasis is on providing standards for defining moral exemplars for business to suggest how much can be accomplished in business through moral influence.

The conceptual contribution is original, although drawing on the philosophical literature debate about saints and heroes. The chapter treats exemplar as the overarching construct, separated into three kinds: heroes, saints, and champions. Sinner is implicit in the notion of saint. The chapter adds moral champions and moral neutrals to isolate moral heroism. The cases exist in the literature, but have been combined together here for the first time.