Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among media exposure, general scientific knowledge and the public’s risk perceptions of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Data for this study are based on a survey of 1,001 South Korean adult consumers (502 females and 499 males). The data were analyzed using SPSS 17.0, and multiple linear regression was performed to examine the relationships between risk perceptions and the types of media channel exposure, as well as between risk perceptions and general scientific knowledge.

Results showed that among the measured socio-demographic characteristics, gender was a significant factor. With regard to the variability of media exposure, individuals who were exposed to more internet news were found to have higher risk perceptions in terms of how BSE could affect themselves, while respondents who were more exposed to social networking sites (SNSs) were concerned about how the disease could affect others.

This study provides additional evidence of the third-person effect in risk perceptions of BSE, filling scientific knowledge gaps. Hence, this study suggests that the types of media channels (internet news, television and SNSs) should be considered as significant predictors of risk perceptions about food hazards related to the health of the consumer and others.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the negative impact of an incumbent supplier pushing out a buyer, the positive effect of an alternative supplier pulling a buyer, and the mooring impact that prevents a buyer from switching to a supplier in terms of the push-pull-mooring (PPM) model of migration theory. In this context, this study considers a buyer as the immigrant, an incumbent supplier as the origin, an alternative supplier as the destination, and inertia as the hesitance to migrate.

This study collected survey data from 148 end-product manufacturers and first-tier suppliers. It tested whether the PPM model fit in a supply chain relationship (SCR) using the partial least squares structural equation modelling approach and SmartPLS package version 2.0.M3.

The results support all hypotheses for causal relationships among factors of cognitive, affect, and behavioural intentions of each PPM effect. This study identifies the relative importance of each effect on a buyer’s intention of switching an existing supplier.

This study presents a new perspective that enhances the understanding of a buyer’s behaviour towards a supplier by applying the PPM model of migration to a manufacturing SCR. It promotes interdisciplinary and integrated views as well as broadens the diversity of the results in the business-to-business context.

In the 1950s, a combination of technological and scientific advancement, political competition, and changes in popular opinion about spaceflight generated public policy in favor of an aggressive space program. This and that of 1960s moved forward with a Moon landing and the necessary budgets. Space exploration reached equilibrium in the 1970s, sustained through to the present. The twenty-first-century progresses signals that support for human space exploration is waning and may even begin declining in the coming years. This chapter reviews this history and analyzes five rationales suggested in support of continued human spaceflight: discovery and understanding, national defense, economic competitiveness, human destiny, and geopolitics.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and develop an integrated theoretical relationship by including destination image and attitudes into the quality-value-satisfaction-loyalty paradigm in the context of beach tourism.

A personal-administered survey was conducted using a convenient sampling technique to collect data from 601 tourists who had visited popular beach destinations in Bangladesh. Then, the structural relationships between the factors likely to affect tourist attitudes and loyalty were examined.

The findings reveal that both service quality and perceived values have a direct effect on destination image, tourist attitudes and satisfaction. Additionally, destination image and satisfaction significantly affect tourist attitudes and loyalty.

The direct relationship of perceived service quality and perceived value with tourist loyalty was ignored in the model due to reporting consecutive indirect relationship between them in prior studies.

These findings contribute to the extension of theoretical and managerial knowledge, especially in a beach tourism setting, where little research has been done to investigate the proposed relationships.

The originality of this study lies in providing theoretical and empirical evidence regarding the effect of service quality and perceived value, especially on destination image and tourist attitude to behaviour in the loyalty model, which has been scarcely examined in the prior tourism literature.

We test whether six individual components of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures in the form of environmental, employee, anticorruption, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), health and human rights are converging (global), diverging (regional) or crossverging (hybrid) on a sample of 335 multinational enterprises (MNEs) from 31 countries from three regions of the world: Europe, Anglo-Saxon cluster and Asia and the emerging markets.

We use an analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) analysis to test for differences between the six components of CSR on a sample of 335 MNEs from 310 countries for three regions of the world.

The effect of one-way ANOVA was significant for each of the six dependent variables separately on the differences between MNEs from the three regions. Taken together clearly the MANCOVA analysis indicates that there are signs of crossvergence between MNEs from Asia and the emerging markets and those from the Anglo-Saxon and European subsamples due to the hybrid nature of the findings.

The results of the present study support the regional nature of CSR practices and disclosures and on many of the individual components CSR disclosures are a reflection of their home environments.

The study sheds light on the ongoing debate on whether CSR practices are converging, diverging or crossverging on a sample of 335 MNEs from the three regions of the world. Clear evidence of divergence was seen in that in all six dimensions of CSR, there were differences between MNEs from Europe and those from the Anglo-Saxon region reinforcing the implicit and explicit nature of the phenomena. There were significant differences between MNEs from Asia and emerging markets and Europe on four out of the six dimensions of CSR indicating mostly divergence. There were also significant differences between MNEs from Asia and emerging markets and those from the Anglo-Saxon region on three out of the six dimensions of CSR indicating the presence of divergence.

Building on the enactment perspective and past work on the self‐fulfilling prophecy, this paper explores how organizational decline can be enacted through self‐fulfilling prophecies of decline. We present two self‐fulfilling prophecy‐based models of organizational decline, one in which decline is enacted unintentionally through the predictions of an organization's managers, and a second in which decline is enacted unintentionally through the predictions of external constituencies. We articulate propositions that capture the dynamics of each model and that are intended as a platform for future empirical research. We also discuss the implications of our theoretical framework for future theory development on the causes of organizational decline, and offer suggestions for managers who wish to avoid organizational decline.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

As Earth’s resources decline in the coming centuries, those of other planets will be ever‐more coveted. The commercial exploitation of space will meanwhile continue, with private sector investment in a wide range of leisure and security applications. Is the driving force of this innovation the knowledge that ours is a doomed planet? And if so, can we colonize others in time?

Drawing on agency theory and legitimacy theory perspectives, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of board characteristics on sustainability reporting of listed companies in the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), Sri Lanka.

A sample of 148 listed companies was drawn from the CSE using stratified random sampling method and data were collected from the 2012 annual reports. The proposed hypotheses were tested using a hierarchical binary logistic regression.

This study documents that board size and dual leadership are positively associated with sustainability reporting and boards with female directors are negatively associated with sustainability reporting. This study also found that sustainability reporting is likely to be influenced by firm size and firm growth. Additionally, the study also reveals that younger firms are likely to adopt sustainability reporting.

This is the first study to examine the influence of board characteristics on sustainability reporting in Sri Lanka, considered as a developing economy with an emerging equity market.