Search results

Forecasts of demand for innovative, high‐technology products in the 1980s have usually erred on the high side, often by as much as 50 percent or more. Business decisions based on those inflated forecasts have sometimes spelled disaster: empty plants, layoffs, even bankruptcy. This article examines the problem of overoptimistic forecasting in the high‐technology arena, offers reasons for this bias, and suggests some action recommendations which can be applied by high‐tech decision makers to make forecasts more realistic. These recommendations include getting to know your market better, developing forecasting judgment, and finally, applying a “deflator” of up to 30–50 percent to forecasts that involve an abnormally high level of risk.

Effective international marketing requires collection of large amounts of data from diverse sources and sensitive use of such information in marketing strategy. While marketing information systems help managers incorporate some kinds of data into their planning, content analysis offers a different set of insights into cultural concepts, themes and trends not usually captured by traditional data systems. Content analysis has evolved as a research technique since the 1920s, largely in social science applications. Today, aided by new analytical techniques and optical scanners, which can read huge volumes of material inexpensively; and state‐of‐the‐art computer software, which can handle languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic, content analysis has great promise for international marketing applications.

Based on fifteen years of data on the annual Academy of International Business (AIB) best dissertation Farmer Award finalists, we find that these dissertations were done at a range of North American universities. Interestingly, dissertation topics differed from the topics covered in the three top IB journals with five‐sixths of the topics in management, organization, economics, or finance and two‐thirds set in a single country or region (U.S., Japan, North America, and Western Europe). Survey research is the most common methodology but analysis of secondary data is growing. As expected, the finalists are on average an extraordinarily prolific group.

March 4, 1966 Damages — Remoteness — Breach of warranty by sub‐contractors to contractors to provide suitable scaffolding — Concurrent breach of statutory duty by contractors to plaintiff's husband to see that suitable scaffolding provided — Fatal injury to plaintiff's husband — Contractors liable in tort to plaintiff — Whether damages “flowing from breach” — Whether rights under warranty affected.

Sudden crises, known as environmental jolts, can cripple unprepared organizations. In recent years, financial jolts have led many organizations, particularly government organizations, to respond by furloughing employees. Furloughs can engender various responses in employees that can lead to negative work outcomes for both the employees and the organization. Previous research shows that the implementation of strategic human resource management (SHRM) practices, such as commitment-based systems, can mitigate the negative effects of environmental jolts. Utilizing the knowledge-based view and affective events theory, we propose a multilevel model where SHRM practices moderate employee affective responses to furloughs, which, in turn, drive subsequent employee behavioral outcomes.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.