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This study aims to investigate the use of deceptive negotiation tactics to explain why teams can attain higher negotiation profits than individual negotiators. The study distinguishes deception by commission (i.e. active misrepresentation of preferences) from deception by omission (i.e. passive misrepresentation of preferences).

The sample used to test the mediation hypothesis was made up of data from two electronically mediated negotiation simulations encompassing 75 negotiation dyads with 278 participants. The methodology involved coding deceptive negotiation tactics from the log files by counting utterances related to indifference options that enabled negotiation parties to deceive.

The results show that teams do apply deceptive negotiation tactics more frequently than individual negotiators and that this behavior helps them increase their negotiation profits.

The findings are valuable for two reasons. First, the study included controls for other important antecedents of deceptive behavior and negotiation outcome (e.g. negotiators’ nationalities, first bids). Consequently, the empirical results underline the importance of considering team size to understand its impact on profits through the use of deceptive tactics. Second, although this study does show that deception increases negotiation profits, the absolute level of deception is rather small (on average just one deceptive statement per negotiation).

Theories on industrial buying behavior differ fundamentally with regard to motivation and direction of industrial purchasing decisions. This becomes extremely in the case of new institutional economics, highlighting administrative aspects, and market process theory, focusing on entrepreneurial aspects of buying decisions. This paper aims to challenge these approaches by setting up an experimental design. Decisions of sales and purchasing managers were investigated with respect to their motivation of self‐protection or opportunity seeking.

The contribution is based on an experimental design. The design is based on a prospect theory scenario. Prospect theory states that successful economic agents show a stronger tendency towards self‐protection, whereas under‐performing economic agents are willing to bear greater risks in search for opportunities.

The results suggest that indeed out‐performers show a tendency to risk avoidance and under‐performers are willing to bear more risks. The most important implication is that new institutional economics‐based approaches to buying behavior are not universally valid. However, they apply to specific situations. In that respect the contribution shows a direction for the proper application of transaction cost‐based concepts.

Managers are advised to take the economic performance of their customer companies into account. Outperforming companies are more responsive to measures for self‐protection. Under‐performing customers may be more tolerant towards risk if it is compensated with the expectation of better opportunities.

The empirical research is new in so far as it is the first to apply a prospect theory framework to a business market environment. The results show clearly that the methodology, as originally applied in prospect theory, needs refinement when transferred to a business market context.

Customer decision‐making uncertainty (DMU) is a persistent phenomenon in business‐to‐business markets. However, there is substantial variation in the degree to which customers perceive DMU and how suppliers should react to it. The purpose of this paper is to explain variation in customer decision‐making uncertainty.

Based on existing industrial buying typologies, this paper proposes a new classification scheme to explain variance in customer decision‐making uncertainty. Market offering complexity and co‐creation are used as defining dimensions in the construction of four archetypal types of industrial market offerings.

The paper demonstrates on a theoretical level that customer decision‐making uncertainty is especially prevalent in complex offerings characterized by high degrees of co‐creation.

This typology helps to provide a more nuanced understanding of the effects of co‐creation on customer value. Firms should adapt their selling approaches to the degree of complexity and co‐creation that they offer their customers.

The originality of the paper rests in explaining customer decision‐making uncertainty in relation to complexity and co‐creation. Thus, it sheds light on the dark side of co‐creating market offerings.

The purpose of this research is to take into consideration the country effect in online and offline environments and compares price levels and dispersion online v. offline across the two largest Continental European markets, thus adding a new dimension in price comparisons and multichannel pricing strategies.

Based on an empirical analysis of data collected in one product category (CDs), our findings for France and Germany show that price levels ‐including shipping costs – are always higher online than offline in each country and price dispersion is persistent across markets. Calculating mean prices for the two countries, ANOVA tests reveal significant differences among the two sets of data. Using standard deviation as the measurement for price dispersion, Levene statistics reveal a higher degree of online price dispersion than offline and statistically significant differences between the two sample countries.

Even if our approach need to be extended to more product categories and more countries, our article may be interesting for practitioners, policy makers and managers. It clearly shows that the “frictionless capitalism and cost transparency hypothesis” has proven to be wrong most of the time even if many retailers still believe they must sacrifice the possibility of pricing up when they go on the internet. As demonstrated by our findings, retailers can take advantage of online relative indifference to price to capture some margin premium and enjoy excellent results.

Our results also demonstrate that, even if results show some similarities and common trends, differences among France and Germany still remain important. As a consequence, marketers should continue to approach the European marketplace with full awareness of its diversity.

Discussion of scientific progress in science philosophy texts suggests that aggressiveness and selfishness on the part of scientists is associated with high productivity. It is argued that the behaviour that appears to be the most improper actually facilitates the manifest goals of science. This article shows that the making of the 1930s generation of a sample of eminent economists was shaped by a high sense of co‐operation; continuing collaborative contact in the form of dual authorships of books and articles, joint teaching assignments, and review and support of each other′s writings, but very little of the intensive, relentless competition one finds among natural scientists. The difference stems not so much from the fact that economics is a soft science, but rather from the degree of maturity of the discipline. The 1930s generation of economists was fortunate to enter the field at a time when it was ready for its take off.

Depression is a common and chronic illness affecting nearly one in five people in their lifetime. The main responsibility for people suffering from depression falls to their carers. Research indicates that carers find the burden of caring for a family member enormous and often feel isolated with this burden (Highet et al, 2004). This paper presents an evaluation of a six‐week course held in Leeds, based on the principles of cognitive behavioural therapy and specifically aimed for carers. Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is a recognised intervention technique for people with mental distress (Beck, 1976; Beck et al, 1979). The approach was used with carers to help them to become aware of their thoughts, feelings, behaviour and physical reactions to certain stressful situations when caring for a family member. The approach was introduced within the safety of a supportive group situation. Average attendance was 84% and feedback suggested that this approach was beneficial to carers in coping with the stress of the carer role.

Reviews Milton and Rose D. Friedman’s, Two Lucky People: Memoirs, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998, $35 (£24.95), ISBN 0‐226‐26414‐9. Focuses on how the memoirs illuminate the main contributions Friedman has made to political economy and the economics literature.

An interview with Milton Friedman in 1996 ‐ presents his reflections on some of the important issues surrounding the evolution of, and currrent debates within, modern macroeconomics. A world‐renowned economist and prolific author since the 1930s, Milton Friedman has had a considerable impact on macroeconomic theory and policy making. Associated mostly with monetarism and the efficacy of free markets, his work has ranged over a broader area ‐ microeconomics, methodology, consumption function, applied statistics, international economics, monetary theory, history and policy, business cycles and inflation. In the interview discusses Keynes’s General Theory, monetarism, new classical macroeconomics, methodology, economic policy, European union and the monetarist counter‐revolution.