Search results

People’s images of the world and parts of it are important influences on their behaviour in school and elsewhere. Metaphors can be used as tools to enable school leaders and others to gain some insight into these images, and “Images of school through metaphor” (ISM) is a questionnaire, consisting of 26 metaphors, which can be employed to this end. The development of ISM in its actual and ideal forms involved extensive field testing. ISM was used in a large study and the resulting data were subjected to a number of tests to assess further the validity of the instrument. Six clusters of metaphors were identified. ISM is simple, economic, easy to use and is sufficiently valid and reliable for use with teachers in schools, and its potential as a workshop stimulus appears to be considerable.

This paper aims to investigate the phenomenology behind how an idea stock market created employee engagement of 80 per cent+ within the largest telecom company in Portugal. More importantly, this case study investigates the results created using this system, and whether the “investment/betting” process yielded successful and replicable results.

This critical review took the form of an exploratory-grounded theory study. Initial conversations led to creation of questionnaires regarding the internal workings of Sonaecom’s idea market, implementation methods, incentive structures, necessary cultural adjustments, system outcomes and topics related to idea screening, types of users, herd behavior, idea storage, diffusion, implementation and perceptions of the idea market and its success.

The idea market produced engagement outcomes nearly twice that of standard industry engagement methodologies and showed promise for increasing corporate innovation outcomes.

This study was limited to a single idea market within one company. As such, the conclusions from the study are limited in their generalizability to other companies implementing idea markets.

Because the challenges faced by Sonaecom are the same challenges faced by any company implementing an idea market, the findings from the study have important practical implications for any organization implementing an idea market.

There are behavioral, psychological and leadership implications for organizations implementing an idea market.

Based on a thorough literature review, no other study has been made of Sonaecom’s Idea Market system, nor has a study of this depth and breadth been completed with any idea market system. The findings of the study have broad implications for any organization seeking to implement an idea management system.

Like many industrial nations over the last four decades, the Japanese economy has undergone a number of regime shifts, making parameter estimations difficult. One of the most significant shifts occurred in inflation in the mid 1970s as OPEC suddenly raised oil prices. This abrupt change likely caused consumers' expectations of future inflation to deviate significantly from realized (ex‐post) inflation. Using a Markov chain model, inflation forecasts that take into consideration changing regimes are employed to derive a unique set of real stationary variables that are likely to better represent consumers' expectations and are an alternative to the standard approach of adjusting nominal variables with ex‐post inflation. We employ these real variables in the consumption‐based capital asset pricing model (CCAPM). Estimates of the representative investor's coefficient of relative risk aversion (CRRA) are derived within the framework typically used to examine the equity premium puzzle. Our tests confirm that the equity premium puzzle, if it exists in Japan, is not as significant as previously thought.

The purpose of this paper is to develop, test, and validate a model in a specialty retail environment to assess the influence of a salesperson’s sales- or customer-orientation and customer characteristics related to buy/no-buy decisions.

Backward stepwise discriminant analysis was used to identify variables that most differentiated buyers from non-buyers. The discriminant model was estimated with survey data provided by a judgment sample of consumers asked to recall details about a recent in-store purchase experience (n=240). One significant discriminant function emerged. The model correctly classified 87.5 percent of buy/no-buy decisions by consumers in a separate validation sample (n=40).

Customers who believe a salesperson is sales oriented (i.e. only interested in closing) are more likely to make a no-buy decision even when retailer-related attributes – such as positive prior experience with the retailer, susceptibility to normative interpersonal influence, and positive attitude toward retailing – suggest otherwise. Surprisingly, neither customer orientation nor susceptibility to interpersonal informational influence relates significantly to making a buy/no-buy decision.

Specialty retailers should avoid a sales-outcome-based orientation. To add value in a competitive marketplace where buyers can avoid salespeople, the focus of a sales interaction should be on identifying customer needs and characteristics.

Adaptations of sales people’s personas and selling efforts – fostered by new managerial training practices – and the need for specialty retailers to adopt behavior-based control systems are suggested. In addition, sales or customer orientation typically is reported by the salesperson. Here, customers’ belief – which is more germane to modeling buy/no-buy decisions – designates the salesperson’s orientation.

This chapter outlines the academic training and career characteristics of institutional leaders (presidents) in three higher education systems in East Asia. These three systems have a large share of private universities, have experienced rapid massification during the last four decades, achieved a global reputation, and have experienced managerial governance since the 1990s. University presidents are elected through faculty voting in most national universities while it is optional for private universities. This chapter uncovers how these three countries differ and are similar in terms of their institutional leaders' training and career development before they were appointed as university president. We found that university presidents are “old” and “male” in these three countries. In addition, their academic disciplines are balanced between hard and soft disciplines. A large number of university presidents are drawn from alumni members in Korea and Japan while this is a relatively uncommon in Taiwan. Their international experience is relatively high in Korea and Taiwan while it is low in Japan. Most university presidents have prior experience in senior leadership positions in Taiwan but much less so in Japan and Korea. Faculty members in Taiwan perceive their senior managers to be more competent than faculty in Japan and Korea.

This compilation of over 500 United States Government bibliographies is the second annual supplement to BIBLIOGRAPHY OF UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIES 1968–1973 (Pierian Press). Due to the Government Printing Office backlog during 1974, many 1973 and 1974 titles are included in this 1975 Supplement, which should have appeared earlier.

Through a survey of 200 employees working in five of the thirty establishments analysed in previous research about the microeconomic effects of reducing the working time (Cahier 25), the consequences on employees of such a reduction can be assessed; and relevant attitudes and aspirations better known.

Following the Supreme Court’s 1988 decision in Basic, securities class plaintiffs can invoke the “rebuttable presumption of reliance on public, material misrepresentations regarding securities traded in an efficient market” [the “fraud-on-the-market” doctrine] to prove classwide reliance. Although this requires plaintiffs to prove that the security traded in an informationally efficient market throughout the class period, Basic did not identify what constituted adequate proof of efficiency for reliance purposes.

Market efficiency cannot be presumed without proof because even large publicly traded stocks do not always trade in efficient markets, as documented in the economic literature that has grown significantly since Basic. For instance, during the recent global financial crisis, lack of liquidity limited arbitrage (the mechanism that renders markets efficient) and led to significant price distortions in many asset markets. Yet, lower courts following Basic have frequently granted class certification based on a mechanical review of some factors that are considered intuitive “proxies” of market efficiency (albeit incorrectly, according to recent studies and our own analysis). Such factors have little probative value and their review does not constitute the rigorous analysis demanded by the Supreme Court.

Instead, to invoke fraud-on-the-market, plaintiffs must first establish that the security traded in a weak-form efficient market (absent which a security cannot, as a logical matter, trade in a “semi-strong form” efficient market, the standard required for reliance purposes) using well-accepted tests. Only then do event study results, which are commonly used to demonstrate “cause and effect” (i.e., prove that the security’s price reacted quickly to news – a hallmark of a semi-strong form efficient market), have any merit. Even then, to claim classwide reliance, plaintiffs must prove such cause-and-effect relationship throughout the class period, not simply on selected disclosure dates identified in the complaint as plaintiffs often do.

These issues have policy implications because, once a class is certified, defendants frequently settle to avoid the magnified costs and risks associated with a trial, and the merits of the case (including the proper application of legal presumptions) are rarely examined at a trial.