In the agri-food industries, particular importance is given to distribution. Indeed, maintaining good relationships with distributors is a necessity for industries seeking sound…
Abstract
In the agri-food industries, particular importance is given to distribution. Indeed, maintaining good relationships with distributors is a necessity for industries seeking sound marketing performance. In this context, Moroccan agri-food companies recognize the importance of developing customer loyalty. They focus on maintaining good relationships based on trust with their distributors. Considerable research has investigated trust in business-to-business (B-to-B) relationships; however, research in the agri-food industry needs further investigation. Indeed, some past research studied the effect of benevolence on loyalty (Chen, 2008; Rampl, Eberhardt, Schütte & Kenning, 2012) but they ignored studying the effect on two types of loyalty – attitudinal and behavioral – in agri-food industries.
The paper here contributes to the literature in a number of meaningful ways. First, we explore loyalty strategies used by agri-food industries to maintain distributors. This enables us to better understand how trust can boost agri-food B-to-B relationships and distributor’s loyalty. We also investigate exactly the trust dimension (benevolence; credibility) that affects more loyalty in the agri-food industry. A better understanding of the trust dimension should provide practical guidelines as to how to facilitate loyalty in B-to-B relationships. In addition, we test the two dimensions of loyalty and the importance of the attitudinal one. Using structural equation modeling to analyze data, our findings confirm the importance of benevolence in relationships between Moroccan agri-food industries and their distributors. Indeed, the results explain that the development of customer loyalty is influenced by the development of benevolence in relationships with distributors, especially on attitudinal loyalty.
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Contextualizes the issues addressed in the “Fossilize or fly” conference hosted by Kent Arts and Libraries and reports on the message delivered by individual speakers and…
Abstract
Contextualizes the issues addressed in the “Fossilize or fly” conference hosted by Kent Arts and Libraries and reports on the message delivered by individual speakers and delegates. Relates the conference concerns, whether theoretical or practical, to the core objectives of change management in the public library sector.
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RESULTS of some very long term investigations into the service testing of transformer oils have recently been published by the A.S.T.M. in two papers as follows : “Evaluation of…
Abstract
RESULTS of some very long term investigations into the service testing of transformer oils have recently been published by the A.S.T.M. in two papers as follows : “Evaluation of Mineral Transformer Oil During Service, Part II.—Correlation of Oil Characteristics with Continued Transformer Operation,” by Frank M. Clark (Division Engineer, General Engineering Laboratory, General Electric Co., Schenectady), “A study of Changes in Oil Characteristics during 4½—6 Years of Service,” by T. A. McConnell (Research Engineer, The Detroit Edison Company, Detroit).
The purpose of this paper is to inform readers who are interested in textbooks, sports and sports economics, but especially professors who teach sports economics, about the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to inform readers who are interested in textbooks, sports and sports economics, but especially professors who teach sports economics, about the coverage of sports in principles of economics textbooks.
Design/methodology/approach
The data in the paper consist of the 130 sections on sports from twenty-one principles of economics textbooks. The paper illuminates the sections using numerous quotations and in-text references. The paper details the number of sections devoted to each sport, economic concepts they illuminate and how the text covers topics such as league rules, broadcast revenues and women in sports.
Findings
The paper finds that the 21 textbook authors devote an average of 934 words in an average of 6.2 sections of text to 11 sports. Sections of text vary from one sentence to lengthy discussions of topics such as increased salaries due to technological advances in broadcasting, antitrust cases, the gender pay gap and bargaining between leagues and players' unions. The authors refer to five published research papers on sports economics, two quantitative books, two quantitative articles in the popular press and one nonquantitative nonfiction book.
Research limitations/implications
This paper provides data to researchers who study sports regarding topics that students are being taught in economics texts. It is a potential tool for connecting their areas of research to the university experience.
Practical implications
Sports economics professors, and other professors, may enhance student interest by a choice of text for their principles classes.
Social implications
Sports coverage in principles texts illuminates topics such as the effect of technology on income distribution, the morality of paying college athletes, the interaction of the legal system and markets and the gender gap.
Originality/value
No other publicly referenced paper details the use of sports in principles textbooks.
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Kat R. McConnell and Rachel Louise Geesa
The purpose of this paper is to investigate mentors' and mentees' perspectives of the mentor role within an education doctoral mentoring program at a mid-sized public institution.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate mentors' and mentees' perspectives of the mentor role within an education doctoral mentoring program at a mid-sized public institution.
Design/methodology/approach
Data from individual interviews with mentors and mentees were collected as part of a larger case study of a doctoral mentoring program. Mentees were doctor of education (EdD) students in their first and second years of the program. Mentors were identified as individuals who graduated from or are further along in the doctoral program. Five (N = 5) mentees and seven (N = 7) mentors participated in interviews, which were then transcribed and coded to identify emergent themes, along with transcripts of presentations given by the mentors.
Findings
Four themes emerged within the data: differentiating support roles, mentoring as a way to identify gaps in doctoral student needs, mentoring as support for doctoral student success and ways to provide suggestions for mentoring program improvement. Results indicated that mentors and mentees viewed the mentor role as being unique from the roles of faculty advisor and dissertation chair. Mentors and mentees alike responded positively to virtual mentoring.
Research limitations/implications
Participation by mentors and mentees was limited to first- and second-year doctoral students; thus, dissertation-stage students' perceptions of mentoring could not be determined. Implications include the value of mentoring in filling the gaps of support for doctoral students and the capability of mentoring programs to be adapted to unexpected circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Originality/value
This study targets scholar-practitioner students in an EdD program, who are often overlooked by mentoring literature, and distinguishes research between faculty mentoring and mentoring performed by other students/recent graduates. Additionally, the pandemic gave the authors an opportunity to explore adapting mentoring to virtual formats.
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Tarek Ibrahim Eldomiaty, Panagiotis Andrikopoulos and Mina K. Bishara
Purpose: In reality, financial decisions are made under conditions of asymmetric information that results in either favorable or adverse selection. As far as financial decisions…
Abstract
Purpose: In reality, financial decisions are made under conditions of asymmetric information that results in either favorable or adverse selection. As far as financial decisions affect growth of the firm, the latter must also be affected by either favorable or adverse selection. Therefore, the core objective of this chapter is to examine the determinants of each financial decision and the effects on growth of the firm under conditions of information asymmetry.
Design/Methodology/Approach: This chapter uses data for the non-financial firms listed in S&P 500. The data cover quarterly periods from 1989 to 2014. The statistical tests include linearity, fixed, and random effects and normality. The generalized method of moments estimation method is employed in order to examine the relative significance and contribution of each financial decision on growth of the firm, respectively. Standard and proposed proxies of information asymmetry are discussed.
Findings: The results conclude that there is a variation in the impact of financial variables on growth of the firm at high and low levels of information asymmetry especially regarding investment and financing decisions. A similar picture emerges in the cases of firm size and industry effects. In addition, corporate dividen d policy has a similar effect on firm growth across all asymmetric levels. These findings prove that information asymmetry plays a vital role in the relationship between corporate financial decisions and growth of the firm. Finally, the results contribute to the vast literature on the estimation of information asymmetry by demonstrating that the classical and standard proxies for information asymmetry are not consistent in terms of the ability to differentiate between favorable or adverse selection (which corresponds to low and high level of information asymmetry).
Originality/Value: This chapter contributes to the related literature in two ways. First, this chapter offers updated empirical evidence on the way that financing, investment, and dividends decisions are made under conditions of favorable and adverse selection. Other related studies deal with each decision separately. Second, the study offers new proxies for measuring information asymmetry in order to reach robust estimates of the effects of financial decisions on growth of the firm under conditions of agency problems.
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There has been virtually no explication of poetry-writing pedagogy in historical accounts of Australian distance education during the 1930s. The purpose of this paper is to…
Abstract
Purpose
There has been virtually no explication of poetry-writing pedagogy in historical accounts of Australian distance education during the 1930s. The purpose of this paper is to satisfy this gap in scholarship.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper concerns a particular episode in the cultural history of education; an episode upon which print media of the 1930s sheds a distinctive light. The paper therefore draws extensively on 1930s press reports to: contextualise the key educational debates and prime-movers inspiring verse-writing pedagogy in Australian education, particularly distance education, in order to; concentrate specific attention on the creation and popular reception of Brave Young Singers (1938), the first and only anthology of children's poetry written entirely by students of the correspondence classes of Western Australia.
Findings
Published under the auspices of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) with funds originating from the Carnegie Corporation, two men in particular proved crucial to the development and culmination of Brave Young Singers. As the end result of a longitudinal study conducted by James Albert Miles with the particular support of Frank Tate, the publication attracted acclaim as a research document promoting ACER's success in educational research investigating the “experiment” of poetry-writing instruction through correspondence schooling.
Originality/value
The paper pays due critical attention to a previously overlooked anthology of Australian children's poetry while simultaneously presenting an original account of the emergence and implementation of verse-writing instruction within the Australian correspondence class curriculum of the 1930s.
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Alfonsina Iona and Leone Leonida
The purpose of this paper is to identify firms in the UK adopting a policy of high cash and low leverage and investigate how executive ownership contributes to this decision.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify firms in the UK adopting a policy of high cash and low leverage and investigate how executive ownership contributes to this decision.
Design/methodology/approach
Firms following this policy are identified both by using a fixed classification approach and the analysis of the distribution of cash and leverage. Logit analysis is then used to estimate the probability of adopting the policy as a function of executive ownership.
Findings
Extreme financial policies are suboptimal as firms adopting these policies tend to undershoot (overshoot) their target leverage (cash holdings) ratios. The impact of the executive ownership on the probability of adopting this policy is U-shaped, in line with the alignment–entrenchment hypothesis.
Practical implications
Despite the substantial presence of non-executive directors in the boards and a significant amount of shareholdings by executive directors, the firms under analysis have adopted suboptimal financial policies possibly because poorly governed or because executive ownership is the range where entrenchment is feasible.
Originality/value
This is the first attempt at recognising policies of high cash and low leverage as being explicitly interdependent. It is also the first study focussing on the UK, a country of interest, because ownership structure is relatively dispersed. Moreover, instead of choosing fixed threshold levels of the variable in defining the extreme financial policy, this paper proposes the analysis of the distribution of cash holdings and leverage and accounts for target levels of cash and leverage.