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This paper aims to develop and test a conceptual model of organizational structure design that incorporates some factors influencing strategy implementation. The research also aims to consider inter‐functionality in new product development (NPD) processes and marketing decisions, measured from the dispersion of these activities among functional areas.

The research was conducted across 424 small and medium‐sized furniture manufacturing companies. In total, eight hypotheses were proposed and tested using structural equation modeling.

Most important among the study's findings was that inter‐firm relationships and inter‐functional processes are relevant for the study of organizational structure design. It was found that the dispersion of the new product development process and of marketing decisions exert a positive influence on architectural marketing capabilities. The results showed that the dispersion of NPD processes and marketing decisions influence the development of marketing capabilities only in those companies with inter‐firm relationships. The paper also found that inter‐firm design did not affect the impact of the relationship between the dispersion of marketing decisions and NPD process on specialized capabilities.

The study focuses research on Brazilian small to medium‐sized furniture enterprises and could have single‐source bias in its data collection process.

The findings provide insights into ways of integrating structures. It is observed that a higher integration of areas in marketing decisions is related to the dispersion of the NPD process. Given that dispersion in NPD is a disseminated practice, it is found that higher dispersion in marketing activities has an impact on product development.

The paper's findings confirm the influence of organizational design on the development of planning capabilities and on the implementation of marketing strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of management’s choice of forecast precision on the subsequent dispersion and accuracy of analysts’ earnings forecasts.

Using a sample of 3,584 yearly management earnings per share (EPS) forecasts and 10,287 quarterly management EPS forecasts made during the period of 2002-2007 and collected from the First Call database, the authors controlled for factors previously found to impact analysts’ forecast accuracy and dispersion and investigate the link between management forecast precision and attributes of the analysts’ forecasts.

Results provide empirical evidence that managements’ disclosure precision has a statistically significant impact on both the dispersion and the accuracy of subsequent analysts’ forecasts. It was found that the dispersion in analysts’ forecasts is negatively related to the management forecast precision. In other words, a precise management forecast is associated with a smaller dispersion in the subsequent analysts’ forecasts. Evidence consistent with accuracy in subsequent analysts’ forecasts being positively associated with the precision in the management forecast was also found. When the present analysis focuses on range forecasts provided by management, it was found that lower precision (a larger range) is associated with a larger dispersion among analysts and larger forecast errors.

Evidence suggests a consistency in inferences across both annual and quarterly earnings forecasts by management. Accordingly, recent calls to eliminate earnings guidance through short-term quarterly management forecasts may have failed to consider the linkage between the attributes (precision) of those forecasts and the dispersion and accuracy in subsequent analysts’ forecasts.

This study contributes to the literature on both management earnings forecasts and analysts’ earnings forecasts. The results assist in policy deliberations related to calls to eliminate short-term management earnings guidance.

We investigate how online price dispersion has evolved since the bursting of the Internet bubble by comparing price dispersion levels in years 2000, 2001, and 2003 and between multi-channel and pure play e-tailers. The results show that although online price dispersion declined between 2000 and 2001 when there was a shakeout in Internet retailing, it increased from 2001 to 2003, the post bubble period, in particular, for desktop computers, laptop computers, PDAs, electronics and software. The proportion of items for which price dispersion at multi-channel retailers was higher than that at pure play e-tailers, increased steadily during 2000–2003. These findings suggest that online price dispersion is persistent even as Internet markets mature.

In class action antitrust litigation, the standards for acceptable economic analysis at class certification have continued to evolve. The most recent event in this evolution is the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 133 S. Ct. 1435 (2013). The evolution of pre-Comcast law on this topic is presented, the Comcast decision is thoroughly assessed, as are the standards for developing reliable economic analysis. This article explains how economic evidence of both antitrust liability and damages ought to be developed in light of the teachings of Comcast, and how liability evidence can be used by economists to support a finding of common impact for certification purposes. In addition, the article addresses how statistical techniques such as averaging, price-dispersion analysis, and multiple regressions have and should be employed to establish common proof of damages.

The purpose of this study is to find the role of online informediaries on the perspective of price comparison and information aggregator. Specifically, the author wants to explain how the level of product involvement moderates the effect of price dispersion and product information quality on attitude toward product in online informediaries.

The data for this study are obtained from a three‐way factorial experimental research design. Data were collected from 258 college students who have an experience with an online informediary. Combining ANCOVA and regression analysis enables the study of attitude formation and yields encouraging results.

The study finds that high‐involvement consumers focus on systematic cues (e.g. product attributes) in evaluating product quality. However, when they feel that their initial search yields insufficient results, causing them to perceive more product performance risk, they search for additional cues (e.g. price dispersion). Low‐involvement consumers are mainly affected by price dispersion, which is a heuristic cue, and they evaluate the product more favorably under a high (vs low) level of price dispersion.

This paper is one of the first to consider and empirically test a heuristic‐systematic model for attitude toward product in online informediaries. It also uniquely tests the level of price dispersion to discern the important motivating factors.

The objectives of this paper are the application of sensitivity analysis (SA) methods in atmospheric dispersion modeling to the emission dispersion model (EDM) to study the prediction of atmospheric dispersion of NO₂ generated by an industrial fire, whose results are useful for fire safety applications. The EDM is used to predict the level concentration of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) emitted by an industrial fire in a plant located in an industrial region site in Algeria.

The SA was defined for the following input parameters: wind speed, NO₂ emission rate and viscosity and diffusivity coefficients by simulating the air quality impacts of fire on an industrial area. Two SA methods are used: a local SA by using a one at a time technique and a global SA, for which correlation analysis was conducted on the EDM using the standardized regression coefficient.

The study demonstrates that, under ordinary weather conditions and for the fields near to the fire, the NO₂ initial concentration has the most influence on the predicted NO₂ levels than any other model input. Whereas, for the far field, the initial concentration and the wind speed have the most impact on the NO₂ concentration estimation.

The study shows that an effective decision-making process should not be only based on the mean values, but it should, in particular, consider the upper bound plume concentration.

This study quantifies empirically the induced impact of income distribution and consumption expenditure on the structures of agriculture production of Nigerian economy.

The study calibrates an extended input-output model on a social accounting matrix (SAM) for Nigeria for the year 2010. Moreover, the study conducts a dispersion analysis to identify the key agriculture sectors/subsectors both in exogenous and endogenous setup.

This study presents an empirical analysis of propagation in the structure of production particularly in the structure of agriculture sector. It combines the aggregate and the disaggregated levels of analysis and identifies the key sectors/subsectors both in the exogenous and endogenous setup. The comparison of both findings confirms that the composition of income distribution and consumption expenditure significantly influences the composition and the aggregated and disaggregated order of structure of agriculture production.

Knowledge of interindustry connections is vital in policy implications since the policy makers prefer strongly interconnected sectors to the sectors with poor industry linkages. These connections are estimated as forward and backward linkages, which provide indices to set the criteria for key sectors identification. This study presents an empirical analysis of propagation in the structure of production particularly in the structure of agriculture sector. It combines the aggregate and the disaggregated levels of analysis and identifies the key sectors/subsectors both in the exogenous and endogenous setup.

The impact of paid tax return preparers on the horizontal equity (HE) of the federal tax system has significance for regulatory and tax policy reasons. Using multiple analytical techniques to consider data from the Statistics of Income Division's 2000 Individual Model File (IMF), this study shows that the HE measure is generally greater (implying less HE) for the paid-preparer returns than for the self-prepared returns, even after controlling for complexity and other variables that may differ systematically by tax preparation mode.

Quantitatively detecting surface defects in a circular annulus with high levels of accuracy and efficiency has been paid more attention by researchers. The purpose of this study is to investigate the theoretical dispersion equations for circumferential guided waves and then develop an efficient technique for accurate reconstruction of defects in pipes.

The methodology applied to determine defects in pipelines includes four steps. First, the theoretical work is carried out by developing the appropriate dispersion equations for circumferential guided waves in a pipe. In this phase, formulations of strain-displacement relations are derived in a general equidistant surface coordinate. Following that, a semi-analytical finite element method (SAFEM) is applied to solve the dispersion equations. Then, the scattered fields in a circular annulus are calculated using the developed hybrid finite element method and simulation results are in accord with the law of conservation of energy. Finally, the quantitative detection of Fourier transform (QDFT) approach is further enhanced to efficiently reconstruct the defects in the circular annuli, which have been widely used for engineering applications.

Results obtained from four numerical examples of flaw detection problems demonstrate the correctness of the developed QDFT approach in terms of accuracy and efficiency. Reconstruction of circumferential surface defects using the extended QDFT method can be performed without involving the analytical formulations. Therefore, the streamlined process of inspecting surface defects is well established and this leads to the reduced time in practical engineering tests.

In this paper, the general dispersion equations for circumferential ultrasonic guided waves have been derived using an equidistant surface coordinate and solved by the SAFEM technique to discover the relationship between wavenumber of a wave and its frequency. To reconstruct defects with high levels of accuracy and efficiency, the QDFT approach has been further enhanced to inspect defects in the annular structure.

The purpose of this pilot-scale study was to compare the quality of traditionally manufactured butters from local, small British producers with the quality of butters that are produced industrially.

Butter samples were obtained after supervised site inspections of three traditional-butter manufacturers and one large-scale butter producer. The samples were subject to initial microbiological, chemical and sensory testing, followed by a refrigerated shelf-life study over 24 weeks.

Traditional butters matched or exceeded the sensory quality of industrial butters, but spoilage microorganisms tended to grow faster on traditional butters. This seemed to be related to poorer water droplet dispersion in the manufacture of some of the traditionally made butters. Visible mould appeared on two of the traditional butters after eight weeks, but this occurred well after the nominal “best before” date.

Prolonged lockdowns due to the current coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic pose a threat to the food supply chain, and food produced by local manufacturers may become increasingly important. However, are foods produced by local small-scale manufacturers of a quality comparable to that produced using large-scale production facilities? To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no comparative study of the quality and shelf-life of traditionally-produced and industrially-produced butters. The current work presents such a comparison together with an outline of how the process of traditional butter-making differs from commercial production in Britain.