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Allocation of individuals' resources among multiple goals is an increasingly prominent theoretical and practical issue. Despite several theoretical perspectives that highlight the potential role of affect in this resource allocation process, empirical work on the topic is quite limited with little focus on the activation dimension of affect. This study aimed to provide further insight into this issue.

The current research explored the role of the activation dimension of affect in a multiple-goal environment. Specifically, 118 individuals participated in a 21-day longitudinal study in which they reported on affect and resource allocation related to two real-life goals.

Multilevel-modeling analyses indicated that activation positively relates to allocation of resources (effort, intended effort, and intended time devoted to a goal). The results also illustrate that task-related negative valence is a significant predictor for two of the three indicators of resource allocation (intended effort was the exception).

This research informs theory and practice at the intersection of emotion and work motivation by investigating a relatively understudied dimension of affect and provides results that help clarify the role of affect during the pursuit of multiple, competing goals.

The paper analyses the differential effect of alternative fixed‐cost allocations on managerial effort and risk sharing. In doing so, two alternative schemes are considered: (1) the lump‐sum allocation; and (2) the proportional allocation. Analyses are conducted in the context of a principal‐agent relationship where the principal retains the prerogative of fixed input decisions but delegates all other productive actions to the agent. The paper limits its focus to a simple class of linear sharing rules that guarantee the agent a fractional share of payoff and a fixed salary. The following summarises the major results of the paper. First, the lump‐sum allocation is neutral in that it has no impact on the agents' choice of effort and the allocation of risk between the principal and the agent. Second, the proportional allocation is distortionary in that it induces the agent to exert less effort given a sharing rule and causes a shift in risk from the principal to the agent.

The purpose of this paper is to apply customer lifetime value models to assess the overall value of the service encounter and to establish implications that such an assessment has for managing customer relationships under a fixed‐size salesforce.

Using a specific relationship between customer servicing activities and the buying rhythms of customers, an analytical model for assessing the overall value of a service encounter is developed.

A stochastic parameter is identified, characterizing the level of quality to compute the long‐term value of a given customer and stochastic ordering properties to determine the relative value of different customers.

The implications discussed are analytical to help service managers shaping their thought process in decision making. Future research can empirically test the model proposed.

The theorem specifies the optimal solutions to determine: how much capacity should be committed to a given customer; and how to choose a customer in the first place. These are important and useful tools for managers in making their managerial decisions in service marketing.

A general model of resource allocation is provided, under which those seminal models such as CALLPLAN, DETAILER are special cases. This is particularly valuable as key account management has become more important in globally operated businesses.

Research, teaching and service are usually regarded as an academic’s main responsibilities. One of the most hotly debated issues in the international arena is what academics should devote their time to, since time is a limited commodity for academics and tradeoffs are necessary. The aim of this study was to establish the perceptions of South African accounting academics with regard to how they spend their academic time. Managers can use this information in efficiency planning and individuals can use this information to compare their effort allocations to those of their colleagues. A descriptive study was conducted in which a questionnaire was used to test, inter alia, the perception of how South African accounting academics at every SAICA‐accredited university use their academic time. Nine activities were tested that relate to management, teaching, research and service. It was found that South African accounting academics spent 10% of their time on management tasks, 78% on teaching, 5% on research and 7% on service. Half (50%, median) of the respondents spent 5% of their time on management tasks, 65% on tuition and 5% on enhancing their own knowledge. It appears as if excessive time is spent on teaching, whilst inadequate time is allocated to research activities. Time spent on service activities appears to be reasonable. An Accounting academic’s qualification appears to be the best indicator against which to measure time allocation. A clear pattern emerged in a comparison between qualification and time allocation in seven of the nine activities tested. The higher the respondent’s qualification, the more time is spent on management tasks, research for both non‐accredited and accredited journals, acting as external examiner and community work. The inverse is true for subject‐related administration and tuition.

The use of software is overpowering our modern society. Advancement in technology is directly proportional to an increase in user demand which further leads to an increase in the burden on software firms to develop high-quality and reliable software. To meet the demands, software firms need to upgrade existing versions. The upgrade process of software may lead to additional faults in successive versions of the software. The faults that remain undetected in the previous version are passed on to the new release. As this process is complicated and time-consuming, it is important for firms to allocate resources optimally during the testing phase of software development life cycle (SDLC). Resource allocation task becomes more challenging when the testing is carried out in a dynamic nature.

The model presented in this paper explains the methodology to estimate the testing efforts in a dynamic environment with the assumption that debugging cost corresponding to each release follows learning curve phenomenon. We have used optimal control theoretic approach to find the optimal policies and genetic algorithm to estimate the testing effort. Further, numerical illustration has been given to validate the applicability of the proposed model using a real-life software failure data set.

The paper yields several substantive insights for software managers. The study shows that estimated testing efforts as well as the faults detected for both the releases are closer to the real data set.

We have proposed a dynamic resource allocation model for multirelease of software with the objective to minimize the total testing cost using the flexible software reliability growth model (SRGM).

The impact of accounting earnings based compensation contracts an effort allocation is analyzed using an agency‐theoretic model. In this model, the CEO of a publicly traded firm expends effort on operational short‐run activities and strategic long‐run activities. The shareholders desire the CEO to expend more effort in the strategic long‐run activities because the return to shareholders depends more on long‐run than short‐run activities. More specifically, they desire the effort to be allocated between these two activities on the proportion of the sensitivity of stock returns to these two activities. Compensating the CEO based on the stock returns performance measure is shown to induce the CEO to exert the desired proportion of effort in the long‐run activities. Unlike stock returns, accounting earnings are believed to focus more on the short‐run performance of the firm and not reflect the full impact of a CEO's long‐run effort. Compensating the CEO based on accounting earnings, in addition to stock returns, is shown to induce the CEO to expend less than the desired proportion of effort in long‐run activities. As the emphasis placed on accounting earnings relative to stock returns increases, the CEO decreases the proportion of effort expended in long‐run activities. On the positive side, including accounting earnings in the contract increases the total effort that the CEO exerts in short‐run and long‐run activities. The benefit accruing from the increase in total effort more than offsets the dysfunctionality caused by the short‐run focus. More specifically, adding accounting earnings to the incentive contract is shown to increase the expected return to the shareholders. In summary, while accounting earnings cause the CEO to be short‐run focused, their use in the incentive contract improves the firm's performance by motivating the CEO to work harder overall.

The study assesses the significance of environmental uncertainty and its effects on fishing strategies of small-scale fishermen in Ende, Flores, Indonesia. Periodic environmental cycles such as the moon phase can have important effects on fishing strategies by regulating the behavior of stocks and tides. Traditional lunar calendars are used by subsistence fishermen to decide when and where to go fishing. Environmental uncertainty, specifically unprecedented changes in oceanographic and atmospheric conditions, is threatening the predictability of traditional systems of ecological knowledge.

Methods included ethnographic and observational techniques. Interviews (n = 58) and surveys (n = 132) are qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. A combination of standard statistical tests, multilevel models, and cluster analysis is applied to long-term repeated observations of fishing events (n = 2,633).

Endenese fishermen emphasized the importance of the traditional lunar calendar to allocate their effort in interviews and surveys. This belief does not coincide with observed behavior. Contrary to expectations from the traditional calendar, the lowest probability of fishing happens in the intermediate phases, with fishing also occurring during the full moon. Differences between individuals play an important role in explaining variability in returns. Finally, based on the consideration of variability, three different fishing strategies are identified that suggest an effect of environmental uncertainty in effort regulation.

The paper underlines the importance of studies of variability to identify behavioral flexibility and adaptation. Results emphasize the value of considering individual traits in the analysis of subsistence practices.

There is a longstanding debate regarding the effectiveness of financial incentives in improving work performance. This study is motivated by seemingly conflicting theory and mixed research evidence, and advances the management accounting literature on pay-for-performance by examining the separate and joint effects of task attractiveness and monetary incentives on allocation of effort and on performance.

This study uses an online, multi-period, mixed design experiment with two independent groups of participants who receive either incentive pay or flat pay to perform a multidimensional job. The job tasks differ in complexity and participants can choose how to distribute effort between tasks. Observations are taken across two periods.

If the complex task is initially viewed as attractive it becomes less attractive over time, while the attractiveness of the simple task is stable. Participants who receive flat pay and who find the complex task attractive spent more time on working on that task than those compensated with incentives. Incentives caused higher initial performance than flat pay among participants who find the complex task to be attractive, but the differential is transient; dissatisfaction with initial performance seemingly contribute to a decline in attractiveness and deterioration in performance.

The results indicate that task attributes and personal preferences moderate the effects of incentives on performance and that further research is needed to examine strategies to mitigate spillover effects of deficient performance to subsequent periods. However, the findings may not be applicable to extremely complex work environments involving numerous tasks and/or group work.

Showing that incentives may have a positive but transitory effect on performance, because task attributes and personal preferences moderate the incentive-performance relationship, may have practical implications for hiring, job design and compensation systems design.

This paper contributes to the literature on pay-for-performance by using a setting that better represents contemporary work environments than prior studies have and introduces choice over effort allocation. Additionally, we contribute to theory by showing that economics and psychology theories should be viewed as complements in investigating the intricate relationship between incentives and performance.

Introduction Operations research, i.e. the application of scientific methodology to operational problems in the search for improved understanding and control, can be said to have started with the application of mathematical tools to military problems of supply bombing and strategy, during the Second World War. Post‐war these tools were applied to business problems, particularly production scheduling, inventory control and physical distribution because of the acute shortages of goods and the numerical aspects of these problems.

The present research integrates conservation of resources theory (COR) and adaptation theory to investigate the dynamics of entrepreneurs' reactions to obstacles. Furthermore, this research explores whether entrepreneurs' effort allocations following an obstacle influence how entrepreneurs appraise subsequent loss-related events. Finally, this research seeks to understand why some entrepreneurs handle obstacles better than others by considering the role of optimism.

This research utilized a longitudinal survey with 130 nascent entrepreneurs across 4 time periods. This research used a multivariate latent change analysis model to examine the temporal dynamics of new venture effort after exposure to obstacles.

The results indicated that entrepreneurial obstacles at time t were associated with decreased effort in new ventures at time t+1. Furthermore, new venture effort at time t was associated with decreased effort in new ventures at time t+1. The results also demonstrated that the allocation of greater effort may lead to a decrease in subsequent obstacle appraisals, a relationship that also varies as a function of nascent entrepreneurs' optimism.

This research extends the understanding of the dynamic pattern of reactions following exposure to entrepreneurial obstacles. The findings suggest that, rather than being straightforward, reactions are likely to ebb and flow over time.