SelectedWorks @ Melbourne Business School (The University of Melbourne)
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713 research outputs found
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Interlocks and Firm Performance: The Role of Uncertainty in the Directorate Interlock-Performance Relationship
No full textWe examine how uncertainty influences the performance effects of directorate interlocks. Our study offers a new perspective of directorate interlocks as mechanisms that enable firms to improve performance when confronted with greater uncertainty, suggesting that uncertainty positively moderates the interlock-performance relationship. This contrasts with the view based on resource dependence theory suggesting networks reduce uncertainty and enhance firm performance, implying that uncertainty mediates the interlock effect upon performance. Using a sample of 3,745 firms across manufacturing industries in U.S. during the period 2001 to 2009, we find support for the moderation argument and less convincing support for mediation, suggesting that firms may not form interlocks necessarily to reduce uncertainty. Instead, firms may create interlocks to enable adaptation and enhance performance when confronted by uncertainty
Importance accelerated Robbins-Monro recursion with applications to parametric confidence limits
No full textMonro (1951) to calculating confidence limits leads to poor efficiency and difficulties in estimating the appropriate governing constants as well as the standard error. We suggest sampling instead from an alternative importance distribu- tion and modifying the Robbins-Monro recursion accordingly. This can reduce the asymptotic variance by the usual importance sampling factor. It also allows the standard error and optimal step length to be estimated from the simulation. The methodology is applied to computing almost exact confidence limits in a generalised linear model
From Amazon to Apple: Modeling Online Retail Sales, Purchase Incidence and Visit Behavior
No full textIn this study we propose a multivariate stochastic model for website visit duration, page views, purchase incidence and the sale amount for online retailers. The model is constructed by composition from carefully selected distributions, and involves copula components. It allows for the strong nonlinear relationships between the sales and visit variables to be explored in detail, and can be used to construct sales predictions. The model is readily estimated using maximum likelihood, making it an attractive choice in practice given the large sample sizes that are commonplace in online retail studies. We examine a number of top-ranked U.S. online retailers, and find that the visit duration and the number of pages viewed are both related to sales, but in very different ways for different products. Using Bayesian methodology we show how the model can be extended to a finite mixture model to account for consumer heterogeneity via latent household segmentation. The model can also be adjusted to accommodate a more accurate analysis of online retailers like apple.com that sell products at a very limited number of price points. In a validation study across a range of different websites, we find that the purchase incidence and sales amount are both forecast more accurately using our model, when compared to regression, probit regression, a popular data-mining method and a survival model employed previously in an online retail study
Institution Building in Nascent Markets: Lessons from the Carbon Offset Market
No full textIn order to compete in nascent markets, an infrastructure of institutions that support economic exchange needs to be built in order. Little is known about whether and to what extent benefits accrue to firms that help develop a nascent market’s institutional infrastructure. To address this gap in the literature, we argue that involvement in building the regulative institutions in a new market—one form of participation on institutional building—helps a firm to build a reputation for as a leader in the market with a firm’s stakeholders. We argue that firms with reputations that are more established and more positive are benefit more greatly from the reputation-building effects of institution building. We test our claims in the context of the nascent carbon offsets market associated with the Kyoto Protocol, which has seen the development of 10,858 carbon offset projects in developing countries between 2003 and 2012. We find that involvement in institution building leads to private benefits to firms and that the benefits from institution building are greater for firms from more highly developed countries and older firms
Socioemotional Wealth as a Mixed Gamble: Revisiting Family Firm R&D Investments with the Behavioral Agency Model
No full textTheoretical explanations for family firm under-investment in R&D relative to non-family firms remain nascent. We revisit this question using a refinement to the behavioral agency model (BAM) – the mixed gamble – that allows us to examine the socioemotional trade-offs that R&D represents for the family firm and how this differentiates their R&D investment decision from non-family firms. We do so in an empirical context where R&D investment is of greatest importance – high technology industries. Moreover, we examine three contingencies that allow us to explore heterogeneity across family firms in their R&D decisions due to their effect upon the family’s socioemotional wealth mixed gamble: institutional investor ownership, related diversification, and performance hazard
Co-creation of the service encounter experience: A customer critic approach
No full textWhilst the body of work around co-creation has grown, co-creation continues to be considered from a value perspective with key questions, such as what is actually being co-created remaining unanswered. This article moves beyond value to experiences and explores co-creation of the consumption experience. The research examines the manifestations and antecedents of co-creation of the consumption experience from a consumer angle and presents a co-creation framework. Customer critic analysis with consumers from two exemplar heritage organisations is used to investigate co-creation. The findings illuminate the prevalence of deliberate consumer co-creation efforts revealing three facets of co-creation: personalisation, engagement and co-production. This paper addresses a gap in S-D logic theory, arts/heritage and broader marketing literature by distinguishing between co-creation of value and co-creation of the consumption experience and proposing a definitive conceptualisation of the latter. The proposed model progresses the co-creation discussion to an empirical level and provides a foundation for future research