Search results

Joint ventures (JVs) are known to create value for their parent firms, in part due to the mutually beneficial sharing of information that occurs at the JV level. Market orientation (MO) is a well-documented strategic orientation that has received little attention in the JV literature, despite considerable research suggesting that MO has a positive effect on performance. This study posits that the MO skills contributed to a new JV by parent firms are likely to play a central role in a shareholder's assessment of the potential for success of a newly announced JV, thereby triggering changes in market value for parent firms.

Computer-Assisted-Text-Analysis (CATA) is used to calculate MO heterogeneity from annual reports, and event-study methodology is used to assess parent firm performance. The authors rely on a US sample of 82 public JV parents involved in 41 new equally-weighted JV formation announcements.

The authors find that heterogeneity on MO's behavioral components (customer orientation, competitor orientation, and coordination) is negatively related to parent performance, while heterogeneity on MO's profitability component is positively related to parent performance. However, the effect of MO's long-term focus heterogeneity on parent performance was not supported.

The results suggest that the benefits of information sharing in partnerships may be of a nuanced nature when it comes to MO. Although heterogeneity in profitability inclination created value for parent firms announcing a new JV; heterogeneity in customer, competitor and coordination market orientations did not appear to be rewarded by shareholders.

The purpose of this study was to develop plant-based babassu milk flavored with grape fruit (GF).

A four mixed beverages formulations containing 15%, 25%, 35% and 45% GF were produced. The pH, titratable acidity (TA), soluble solids (SS), sugar: acid ratio and color analysis were performed. Sensory evaluation was measured by the hedonic scale, just-about-right (JAR) scale and purchase intent. Moreover, a check-all-that-apply (CATA) form was applied to obtain description data on the formulations.

The pH values of mixed beverages decreased (p < 0.05) when the concentration of GF increased, while the TA and the SS increased (p < 0.05). The GF addition provided the product with greater opaque and redness. Sensory evaluation revealed good consumer acceptance. For the hedonic scale, 35% and 45% GF contributed to the higher acceptance of color, appearance, flavor and overall liking attributes. For JAR data, the flavor grape term was highest in the JAR region (51%) with 45% GF. Based on the frequency of terms cited by consumers in the CATA test, the treatment with 15% GF was described by babassu flavor, strange and low astringency terms. For purchase intent, most consumers would buy the product with 35% and 45% GF.

This study demonstrates that babassu, an almond little used industrially, is an alternate to plant-based milk. The higher sensory acceptance occurs when 45% GF is used for its flavoring. The CATA indicated that ideal sweetness, striking, acid and ideal grape flavor described the better beverage.

Past research has generally purported and tested for a positive linear relationship between psychological capital and organizational outcomes such as firm performance. Yet, recent conceptual work has started to recognize that for certain outcomes, too much psychological capital can be as detrimental as too little. In this study, the author hypothesizes that during a major crisis, organizational psychological capital (OPsyCap) may in fact exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship with performance.

T leverages the revelatory power of a recent major crisis (the COVID-19 pandemic) to gather a pre-crisis and post-crisis matching sample of 952 earnings conference calls held by 476 S&P 500 firms with corresponding market performance data and use computer-assisted text analysis (CATA) methodology to assess OPsyCap from call transcripts.

T finds that OPsyCap has a statistically significant inverted U-shaped relationship with market performance after the crisis, but not prior—thereby suggesting that moderate OPsyCap is more beneficial to market performance than either insufficient or excessive OPsyCap in times of crisis.

Top managers should not display overly excessive psychological capital after a major crisis, as shareholders may interpret such cues as unwarranted optimism, overconfidence and an inability to accept the new reality brought about by the crisis.

This study's findings contribute to extant literature by being the first to empirically highlight a curvilinear relationship between psychological capital and an important outcome variable—market performance. Furthermore, this study's lack of results prior to a major crisis, but not after, may suggest a new boundary condition.

Content analysis is a methodology that has been used in many academic disciplines as a means to extract quantitative measures from textual information. The purpose of this paper is to document the use of content analysis in the supply chain literature. The authors also discuss opportunities for future research.

The authors conduct a literature review of 13 leading supply chain journals to assess the state of the content analysis-based literature and identify opportunities for future research. Additionally, the authors provide a general schema for and illustration of the use of content analysis.

The findings suggest that content analysis for quantitative studies and hypothesis testing purposes has rarely been used in the supply chain discipline. The research also suggests that in order to fully realize the potential of content analysis, future content analysis research should conduct more hypothesis testing, employ diverse data sets, utilize state-of-the-art content analysis software programs, and leverage multi-method research designs.

The current research synthesizes the use of content analysis methods in the supply chain domain and promotes the need to capitalize on the advantages offered by this research methodology. The paper also presents several topics for future research that can benefit from the content analysis method.

This paper aims to study how diabetics/pre-diabetics (D) and non-diabetic (regular consumers of sweeteners (C) or not (NC)) perceive and consume sweetened processed food in Brazil.

A cross-sectional study (n = 2,204) was carried out to gather information about: consumption of 14 sweetened food/beverage categories, perception of sugar/sweeteners (check-all-that-apply (CATA) test), understanding of sugar claims and socioeconomic/demographic/consume profile. Chi-square test/Fisher exact tests were used to analyze the contingency tables. CATA test results were evaluated using Cochran Q test, RV coefficient and Kruskal-Wallis test.

Results revealed that although diabetics/pre-diabetics consumed less sugary products than non-diabetics (p < 0.001), >50.0% of them preferred sugary candies, bakeries, ready-to-drink fruit juice, ice cream, chocolate and ready-to-eat desserts. D, NC and C similarly perceived (RV = 0.99) sugar (sensory desirable, but penalized due to its health impact), naturally extracted sweeteners (opposite description of sugar) and chemically synthesized sweeteners (penalized by sensory and health impacts). Regarding the claims, those that mean the absence of sugar were correctly understood for = 90.0% participants, while incorrect interpretations were observed for “containing sugars from own ingredients” (42.7%) and “light on sugar” (21.0%), without differences between consumer groups (p = 0.93).

This study was carried out with a convenience sample.

Results can be applied to support food policies and educational campaigns (improving consumer information on processed sweetened foods) and to guide product development in the food industry.

This is the first study to evaluate the Brazilians’ behavior regarding the perception of sugar and sweeteners, the choice of different sweetened processed food, and understanding of sugar claims.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the link between downsizing cues and market performance prior to and after a major crisis. We use a recent exogenous shock – the COVID-19 pandemic – to test hypotheses on the nature of the relationship between downsizing cues and market performance within two distinct groups: pre and post-crisis. We purport that the sudden increase in uncertainty brought about by a major crisis widens information asymmetry between firms and their shareholders, and that top managers sending downsizing cues to the market with high levels of authenticity may be more likely to trigger positive market reactions.

The authors rely on computer-assisted text analysis (CATA) methodology, event-study methodology and a data set of 952 pre- and post-crisis earnings conference calls held by 476 S&P 500 firms to test the hypotheses in this study.

The authors find that downsizing cues have no effect on market performance in the pre-crisis group, but are negatively related to market performance in the post-crisis group. The authors also find that authenticity cues positively mitigate the relationship between downsizing cues and market performance relationship in the post-crisis group.

This empirical study extends our knowledge of the influence of a major crisis on the relationship between downsizing and market performance by leveraging the revelatory power of an exogenous environmental shock. The authors also explore the role played by managerial authenticity and find that the market is more inclined to accept post-crisis downsizing efforts when top managers are perceived as authentic.

This study updates the discussion on demand-pull attention as a source of radical product innovation. Demand-pull attention shows an ex ante alignment with market characteristics and needs as opposed to pushing resources toward markets. The authors suggest a holistic framework and specify three dimensions of demand-pull attention: anticipated or revealed market demand, market environment, and external economic environment. Based on a large German longitudinal panel consisting of 941 firm-year observations from 2003 to 2013, the authors conceptualized the measurement of demand-pull dimensions’ attention and radical product innovation using computer-aided text analysis of annual reports. The authors analyzed the relationship between the attention that a firm pays to different demand-pull dimensions and the firm’s strategic intention to radically innovate; thus, the authors actually focused on the cognitive sources of radical product innovations. This chapter suggests that radical product innovation activities are positively driven by attention toward the market environment and market demand orientation. However, the hypothesis, which assumed a negative relationship between attention toward the external economic environment and radical innovation, could not be significantly confirmed. This demands a closer look into the underlying decision processes of firms when deciding on radical product innovations. With the theoretical grounding on the attention-based view of the firm, the authors contribute to a better understanding of the role that organizational cognition plays in innovation processes.

This paper aims to investigate whether cues of morality can mitigate stock sell-offs in the face of earnings uncertainty prior to earnings conference calls and draws on moral foundations theory to study the effect of universal moral cues (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity rhetoric) and primarily conservative moral cues (ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity rhetoric) on market performance.

The study relies on a longitudinal data set of 1,920 firm-quarter observations corresponding to calls held by firms listed on the S&P 500 in 2015 and relies on computer-assisted-text-analysis and event-study methodology to test hypotheses.

The results suggest that cues of universal moral foundations have a mitigating effect on stock sell-offs and are able to create firm value; while cues primarily conservative moral foundations are not found to have an effect on market performance.

This investigation highlights why earnings conference calls may serve as a valuable tool for communicating a firm’s moral inclination and why universal morality may appeal to a wider range of shareholders than primarily conservative morality.

The catalogues of printed books of the British Museum, the Bibliothèque Nationale, and, since the War, the Library of Congress, have become such indispensable tools for scholars, librarians and booksellers that it is difficult to imagine the situation before these fundamental works of reference appeared. Although Professor Archer Taylor, in his latest work, Book Catalogues, their Varieties and Uses (the Newberry Library, Chicago) covers the whole range of book catalogues existing in printed form he devotes a generous part of his survey to the catalogues that appeared before the mid‐19th century, most of which are today neglected except by a few specialists. Professor Taylor has convincingly argued that, when treated with due allowance for their limitations, these catalogues can still have much to tell us.

The so-called vividness effect, painting a verbal picture to an audience and a key element of charismatic rhetoric, provides opportunities to make corporate communication more persuasive. The article seeks to provide evidence regarding: (1) the presence of the effect in written, international business communication and (2) whether vivid communication by top-level executives affects perception of their communication effectiveness.

The article employs a qualitative, exploratory setting (focus groups) to examine the attitude of participants towards vivid communication of top-executives. The article also employs a computer-aided-content-analysis (CATA) in two of the most important stock indices (Deutsche Aktienindex and Dow Jones) from 2011 to 2015 to locate the presence of the rhetorical style in annual reports. Lastly, the article studies via a quasi-experimental approach whether this type of communication is perceived differently on the dimensions of communication effectiveness by Segars and Kohut (2001) using unique 485 responses from recruited US-citizens.

The article reveals empirically that companies make use of this type of communication across stock indices. The results of the conformational, quasi-experimental study (Study 3) suggests that vividness is perceived differently by an audience. Therefore, positive attributional effects are not univocally related to communication effectiveness but to the dimensions responsibility and customer commitment. The participants also attribute other desirable characteristics towards the speaker, thereby providing evidence for a partial positive effect of vividness on communication effectiveness.

The article employs an established measure of communication effectiveness and combines it with a key communication style from academia and industry. In addition, the article combines several methods to examine the construct (mixed-models).