Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explain restrictions on nonqualified deferred compensation arrangements contained in Section 409A of the Internal Revenue Code.

The study explains the background to Section 409A, how Section 409A applies to hedge funds, how deferral elections may be made, permissible payment events, and back‐to‐back deferral arrangements.

The paper finds that, to avoid current taxation, the penalty tax, and interest, a deferral arrangement must comply with the technical provisions of Section 409A. These provisions generally govern the timing of initial and subsequent deferrals, the form and time of distributions, and the acceleration of distributions under certain circumstances.

Section 409A places specific requirements on certain deferred amounts which, if not followed, will cause the amounts to be subject to current taxation and a 20 percent penalty tax plus interest charges.

The paper is a practical guide written by a team of lawyers with experience in advising hedge funds on the full range of legal issues that affect their business and investments.

In the academic field of business management, several potential theories were established during the last decades to explain companies' decisions, organizational behavior, consumer patterns, and internationalization, among others. As a result, businesses and scholars were able to analyze and decide based on theoretical approaches to explain the current conditions of the market. Secondary research was conducted to collect more than 36 management theories. This chapter aims to develop the most famous theories related to business applied in the international field. The novelty of this chapter relies on the compilation of recognized previous research studies from the academic literature and evidence in international business.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of standardized management systems (ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 22000 and ISO 28000) on minimizing selected aspects of risk in the supply chain.

A questionnaire was used to explore this topic. Respondents were divided into two group regarding organization type – logistic service providers and focal companies. Basic data analysis was based on descriptive statistics and on analysis of variance with organization type as a stratification factor. Deeper data analysis was based on factor analysis with principal component analysis and varimax rotation with Kaiser normalization.

Research shows that standardized management systems turn out to be useful in supply chain risk management (SCRM) regardless of the role that the organization plays in the supply chain. However, the strength of their positive impact varies. There were few respondents among logistic operators who were low in assessing the legitimacy of implementing standardized management systems in the examined context. Having this in mind, especially representatives of logistic operators with a limited budget should consider making the decision to implement standardized management systems.

The obtained research results may be helpful for managers who consider to implement standardized management systems in the context of using obtain guidelines to develop procedures to improve supply chain management and ensure the repeatability of ongoing processes.

Although the number of studies on the SCRM increases, it is worth noting that in the literature there is still a lack of research and studies addressing the impact of standardized management systems on SCRM (especially from the perspective of organizations with various functions in supply chains such as focal companies and logistic service providers). Therefore, there is a need for comprehensive research in this area. According to the authors, the study carried out, at least to some extent, will fill this gap.

Drawing on the technology affordance and affinity theories, this study proposes a framework explaining the antecedents and consequences of customers’ smart experiences (CSEs) in the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot context.

The quantitative approach employing an online survey was adopted to obtain data from chatbot users (N = 761) and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Results from a survey study show that chatbot affordances, including interactivity (two-way communication, active control and synchronicity), selectivity (customization and localization), information (argument quality and source credibility), association (connectivity and sense of safety) and navigation positively affect CSEs (hedonic and cognitive), leading to customer chatbot stickiness through affinity.

Our study provides evidence that supports and extends the affordances and affinity lens by highlighting the roles of specific chatbot affordances that contribute to a positive-smart experience and subsequently enhances customer chatbot stickiness through affinity.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the relative importance of country-of-origin (COO) and its dimensions – country of design (COD), country of technology (COT), and country of manufacture (COM) – in comparison to store image in terms of consumer product evaluation and purchase intention of store brands. The authors also explore consumer regulatory focus effects.

Empirical data were collected from 270 young Korean adults. Two scenarios were given using two high-involvement store brands, an electronic product and clothing product that have hedonic and utilitarian elements. Data analysis was conducted using AMOS structural equation modeling software.

COO affects product evaluation and purchase intention and store image affects purchase intention. By product, store image influences product evaluation and purchase intention (electronics). COO directly influences purchase intention (clothing). By COO dimensions, overall COD weakly affects product evaluation. COT affects electronic product evaluation but directly affects clothing purchase intention. Promotion-focused consumers use COO for product evaluation, with store image directly affecting purchase intention. Promotion-focused consumers consider COD, an affective dimension, and COM in product evaluations. Prevention-focused consumers did not consider COO, but consider store image for product evaluation. Prevention-focused consumers consider utilitarian COT and COM dimensions during product evaluation.

This is the first paper to consider the simultaneous effect of COO (and its dimensions) and store image on product evaluation and purchase intention. It is also the first to consider the regulatory focus theory with regards to COO and store image evaluative and purchase intention criteria.

The purpose of the present study is to examine the effect of organic food certification labels of different third-party verification institutions on consumers' choice of organic food in terms of willingness-to-pay (WTP) using cue utilization theory.

The study conducted an experiment in which organic rice and organic certification labels were presented to 360 valid participants.

With different organic rice labels issued by various third-party verification institutions, including (1) foundations, (2) associations, (3) university certification centers and (4) private businesses, results indicate that consumers had different preferences and WTP for certain labels. The institutions preferred organic food labels issued by non-profit organizations. In addition, consumers showed different WTP as a result of different purchase motivations (e.g. health vs environmental protection).

These results imply that consumers might not have confidence in the organic labels issued by associations and private institutions. Therefore, different types of certification institutions can have significantly different impacts on consumers' WTP. The study further proposes that the extrinsic attributes of food products (i.e. the cues used in making a purchase decision) must be incongruent with the image of third-party certification institutions in order to develop more efficient communication of product information and to encourage consumers to give positive comments regarding organic food.

The purpose of the paper is to propose a semantic model for describing open source software (OSS) in a machine–human understandable format. The model is extracted to support source code reusing and revising as the two primary targets of OSS through a systematic review of related documents.

Conducting a systematic review, all the software reusing criteria are identified and introduced to the web of data by an ontology for OSS (O4OSS). The software semantic model introduced in this paper explores OSS through triple expressions in which the O4OSS properties are predicates.

This model improves the quality of web data by describing software in a structured machine–human readable profile, which is linked to the related data that was previously published on the web. Evaluating the OSS semantic model is accomplished through comparing it with previous approaches, comparing the software structured metadata with profile index of software in some well-known repositories, calculating the software retrieval rank and surveying domain experts.

Considering context-specific information and authority levels, the proposed software model would be applicable to any open and close software. Using this model to publish software provides an infrastructure of connected meaningful data and helps developers overcome some specific challenges. By navigating software data, many questions which can be answered only through reading multiple documents can be automatically responded on the web of data.