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Recent developments in accounting for stock options have increased interest in the analytical techniques used to value them. Techniques used to value the options of publicly traded companies have been extensively discussed. In contrast, there has been almost no discussion of the valuation procedures of the options for non‐publicly traded companies. This paper addresses this gap. The paper suggests that a straightforward income capitalization model can be used to develop reasonable surrogates for the variables of the Black‐Scholes option pricing model. The paper also discusses how to adjust the income apitalization model for both lack of marketability and lack of control discounts.

Accounting for stock options is a controversial issue. The FASB recognized that the “intrinsic value” method, which had been used for years, failed to adequately account for the costs involved. To rectify the problem they suggested the use of a “fair value” method. Their proposal met with strong objections from companies, which were concerned with the impact of the proposed standard on their reported profits. Consequently, the board relented and allowed the use of either method. Unfortunately, both the intrinsic value and fair value approaches have deficiencies, particularly in regard to how they measure compensation expense and gains and losses over time. This paper addresses these shortcomings by developing two alternative cost measurement approaches that apply an option‐pricing model on an iterative basis over the life of the option. Both approaches represent specific ways to implement exercise‐date measurement techniques for stock options. The paper argues that both approaches provide more relevant and reliable measures of an option’s cost than either intrinsic or fair value methods.

Because of the dramatic increase in health care costs and the fact that more people are retiring earlier and living longer, the issue of post retirement benefit costs other than pensions has become a topic of great interest to issuers and users of financial statements.The Financial Accounting Standards Board is in the process of requiring corporations to report these expected future post retirement costs as liabilities. This paper examines the proposed treatment of post retirement benefits costs and discusses alternative strategies a company may adopt to prepare for implementation of the standard.

To examine the influence of company‐imposed reward systems on the motivation levels of salespeople.

Data were collected from 214 business‐to‐business salespeople. In order to assure the adequacy of the survey instrument, several salespeople were recruited to “pretest” the questionnaire. To test the potential moderating influence of career stage on pay mix and valence, expectancy, and instrumentality estimates, a split‐group analysis was performed. To test the moderating hypotheses for risk, we used two‐step regression models in which the dependent measures (i.e. valence, expectancy, and instrumentality) were first regressed on the predictor variables as main effects, and then regressed on the multiplicative interaction term along with the main effects.

Support was found for many of the hypotheses. In particular, individual‐level variables such as career stage and risk preferences moderate the relationship between pay mix and valence for the reward, expectancy perceptions, and instrumentality perceptions.

Managers must acknowledge that certain salespeople respond positively to fixed salary plans while others respond positively to incentive. In the past, managers might have relied on the salesperson to select the appropriate job for them. Salespeople are not “weeding” themselves out during the recruitment process. As a result, greater importance must be placed on human resource and sales managers during the time of recruitment.

There already exists a robust stream of literature on person‐organization fit that suggests that employees prefer to work for companies that are compatible with their personalities. There is an increasing amount of work in multi‐level research that suggests bridging the macro (organizational) and micro (individual) perspectives will enable researchers to make linkages between research streams that are commonly viewed as unconnected.

There is growing awareness that careers grow and change in a variety of ways during a person's work life. One change is in people's concerns and goals for their careers. This article discusses how people's career concerns will change over their working lives. The results indicate that the career goals of salespeople have a significant relationship to job attitudes and behavior. Management implications for recruiting and selection, motivating individual salespeople, and strategic sales force analysis are discussed.

The relationship between functional participation and several measures of channel member financial performance are evaluated. Channel theory suggests that greater participation in channel functions should be positively associated with channel member compensation. Support for the theory was found for gross margins and total operating expenses. However, return on assets were not found to be positively related to channel function participation.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

EVERY librarian in his inmost heart dislikes newspapers. He regards them as bad literature; attractors of undesirable readers; a drain upon the limited resources of the library; and a target against which the detractors of public libraries are constantly battering. From the standpoint of the librarian, newspapers are the most expensive and least productive articles stocked by a library, and their lavish provision is, perhaps, the most costly method of purchasing waste‐paper ever devised. Pressure of circumstances and local conditions combine, however, to muzzle the average librarian, and the consequence is that a perfectly honest and outspoken discussion of the newspaper question is very rarely seen. In these circumstances, an attempt to marshal the arguments for and against the newspaper, together with some account of a successful practical experiment at limitation, may prove interesting to readers of this magazine.

Considers the factors which influence Taiwanese decisions to buy Japanese or US refrigerators, basing the conclusions on the results of a survey of 586 respondents drawn from Taiwan’s four largest cities – Taipei, Kaoshiung, Taichung and Tainan. Describes how the questionnaires were constructed and pretested, and explains how the data was recorded (using a 5‐point Likert‐type scale) and analysed (using factor analysis and t‐tests). Tests particularly for cultural values of the Chinese, consumer ethnocentrism, openness to foreign culture, country image, and consumer sophistication. Finds that, despite the longer presence of Japanese goods in Taiwan, Japan’s proximity to Taiwan, and more cultural similarities between the Japanese and Taiwanese, Taiwanese consumers rate the USA’s country image factor higher than Japan’s, with consequent implications regarding intention to buy US goods. Recommends that US marketers build on their advantageous country image when they promote US appliances in foreign markets. Cautions against making too much of this snapshot data but concedes that further research into different foreign markets, different appliances, and with a longitudinal approach, would ascertain if findings are consistent with this survey, which has obvious benefits as new markets, such as China and India, open up to western goods and appliances.