Search results

The aim of this study is to find out the effect of pricing on the diffusion of cellular subscriptions in Finland. There is a lack of studies on the effect of (telecommunications) service pricing on its diffusion. In the present study, a modified logistic model is applied for estimating the impact of price on the diffusion. The effect of cellular tariffs and cellular phone prices on the market potential and the diffusion rate are evaluated. Whereas almost all previous studies focusing on durables suggest that price affects either the market potential or the diffusion rate, the results of this study indicate that cellular call tariffs and cellular phone prices are not significant predictors of diffusion of cellular subscriptions. It is thus concluded that the logistic diffusion model might implicitly capture the somewhat constant price decline of cellular communications.

Measuring risk aversion is sensitive to assumptions about the wealth in subjects’ utility functions. Data from the same subjects in low- and high-stake lottery decisions allow estimating the wealth in a pre-specified one-parameter utility function simultaneously with risk aversion. This paper first shows how wealth estimates can be identified assuming constant relative risk aversion (CRRA). Using the data from a recent experiment by Holt and Laury (2002a), it is shown that most subjects’ behavior is consistent with CRRA at some wealth level. However, for realistic wealth levels most subjects’ behavior implies a decreasing relative risk aversion. An alternative explanation is that subjects do not fully integrate their wealth with income from the experiment. Within-subject data do not allow discriminating between the two hypotheses. Using between-subject data, maximum-likelihood estimates of a hybrid utility function indicate that aggregate behavior can be described by expected utility from income rather than expected utility from final wealth and partial relative risk aversion is increasing in the scale of payoffs.

The studies in this book usefully address the micro-social processes involved in the construction of modern institutionalized organization. They do not reach to the explanation of the foundations of this institutional system. Rather, they reflect now-global institutionalized foundations: the empowered, highly schooled, and professionalized individual engaged in highly legitimated and often scripted social action.

Law enforcement agents enforce rules that they might transgress in their private lives. Building from a theory of “hypocrisy aversion” where agents incur psychological costs from imposing a sanction on others for rules that they might break, the authors design a two-player game in which players are simultaneously placed in the roles of enforcer and potential transgressor. In this model, discretionary enforcement is endogenous to the size of the sanction. Conditional on rewards to enforcement and punishment that are both sufficiently small in the status quo, the authors demonstrate that price effects can be dominated by second-order hypocrisy effects, leading to rates of transgression that increase with larger sanctions. The authors test the model within a laboratory experiment where individuals can simultaneously gamble at the expense of a third party and punish those they observe gambling. Examining the comparable testable predictions of models of (i) selfish agents, (ii) pro-social agents, and (iii) pro-social agents who are averse to hypocrisy, the authors find evidence of hypocrisy aversion in the rates of gambling, sanctioning, and the changing composition of agent strategies. Our results suggest that increasing sanctions can backfire in the deterrence of common criminal and non-criminal offenses.

Knowledge of how institutions “work on the ground” is central to understanding how macro-pressures shape organizations and their participants. Four examples of the interplay between micro and macro are provided to give a richer account of institutions, both as process and outcome. One, as wider trends diffuse, they are pulled down locally, but the scripts are utilized in divergent ways. Two, as organizations make sense of social forces, these movements are received differentially, with micro-practices and macro-influences becoming entangled. Three, trends can be opaque to those who seek to follow them, resulting in unintended forms of implementation. Four, sociological miniaturism illustrates how the micro captures the macro as lived experience.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Throughout American industry, there is more evidence now than ever before of the need for change. Many analysts are pointing to the traditional leadership style used in the vast majority of American companies as a major obstacle to growth and improvement. Sixty‐eight per cent of college educated women reported job discrimination, especially at the upper corporate level, because of their sex (The New York Times, 1982). The relationship between what will be required for corporate survival and the innate talents of women managers has not been recognised enough by corporate leadership (Loden, 1985). It seems that women managers possessing certain distinct feminine talents and characteristics may be better prepared to cope with the challenges of the future than many traditional males. The skills they were encouraged to leave behind when they entered the world of management are finally being recognised as critical to their companies' long‐term health and viability.

The significant contribution and relevance of Comparative and International Education (CIE) mainly depends on how closely it studies the interplay between society and education, considering what is dubbed as the global and the local. Many CIE studies including critical reviews seems to dwell on the topic, purpose, conceptual, and methodological aspects of the field, magnifying what appears to be the global. Our understanding of the role particular sociocultural, economic, and political contexts play in education seems inconclusive. Using appropriate analytical frameworks that delineate society–education dynamics, this study further problematizes the comparative and international elements of CIE area studies, with a focus on context analysis. The critical review considers area studies published over the last seven years in leading CIE journals and answers this question: How and to what extent do CIE area studies operationalize context analysis? The aim is not so much to bring consensus but to further highlight tensions and issues in conducting context-sensitive comparative and international education studies. The findings indicate that CIE research over the last seven years does not seem to live up to the expectation of producing meaningfully contextualized knowledge. The role of context analysis in CIE research seems ill defined and practiced. Alternative explanations for this and considerations for further scholarship are discussed.