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TAXONOMY DEVELOPMENT FOR COMPLEX EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES – THE CASE OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS ON THE CLOUD
No full textInternational audienceTaxonomies are essential in science. By classifying objects or phenomena, they facilitate understanding and decision making. In this paper, we focus on the development of taxonomies for complex emerging technologies. This development raises specific challenges. More specifically, complex emerging technologies are often at the intersection of several areas, and the conceptual body of knowledge about them is often just emerging, hence the key role of empirical sources of information in taxonomy building. One particular issue is deciding when enough sources have been examined. In this paper, we use Nickerson et al's methodology for taxonomy development. Based on the identified limitations of this method, we extend it for the development of taxonomies for complex emerging technologies. We identify three types of information sources for taxonomies, and present a set of guidelines for selecting the sources, drawing on systematic literature review. The taxonomy development process iteratively examines sources, performing operations on taxonomies (e.g. addition of a dimension, splitting of a dimension…) as required to take new information into account. We characterize operations on taxonomies. We use this characterization, along with the typology of sources, to help decide when the process of source examination may be stopped. We illustrate our extension of Nickerson et al's method to the development of a taxonomy for business intelligence and analytics on the cloud
Because I'm worth it: The impact of given versus perceived status on preferential treatment effectiveness
No full textInternational audiencePrior research shows that preferential treatments offered by companies to their best customers do not always contribute to enhanced satisfaction and may even elicit negative consequences. Most studies link this dissatisfaction to the type or level of benefits offered; this article investigates another cause, namely, a targeting mismatch, such that the wrong customers receive the rewards designed for the best customers. Two quantitative studies involving more than 600 customers (one conducted with a leading European service company and one conducted with an external market research firm panel) demonstrate that better explanations of the perceived legitimacy of preferential treatment and satisfaction stem from the consumer's own perceptions of his or her status rather than from the objective status that the company grants to the consumer. Three antecedents of perceived status (perceived spending level, perceived seniority, and need for distinction) offer insights for companies that seek to refine their efforts to target their best customers with special marketing efforts
Contextualizing Corporate Political Responsibilities: Neoliberal CSR in Historical Perspective
No full textThis article provides a historical analysis of the political role of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) before it was even called CSR. We describe two ideal types of political responsibilities during the eras of 19th century paternalism in Europe and corporate trusteeship in the US. Our historical contextualization of recent scholarly work on a “political turn” of CSR offers a two-pronged critique: 1. Growing discussions on political CSR start from a problematic foundation that does not hold in historical perspective – the taken-for-granted null hypothesis of a separation between business and state responsibilities. 2. The causal relationship of a political turn of CSR with globalization is misconceived and we show strong forms of political CSR well before our contemporary neoliberal globalization. We suggest that business and political responsibilities are structurally and have always been intimately intertwined and are constantly negotiated and re-negotiated. We propose this as an alternative null hypothesis, one that could frame future theorizing on political CSR. Finally, while we show that globalization is not the cause of political CSR, we suggest that it has nevertheless had a consequential impact, shaping the specificities of the contemporary political role of business. We conclude by drawing implications for future theorizing on (political) CSR and stakeholder democracy
Weep and get more : When and why sadness expression is effective innegotiations
No full textInternational audienceAlthough recently some research has been accumulated on emotional expressions in negotiations, there is little research on whether expressing sadness could have any effect in negotiations. We propose that sadness expressions can increase the expressers’ ability to claim value in negotiations because they make recipients experience greater other-concern for the expresser. However, only when the social situation provides recipients with reasons to experience concern for the expresser in the first place, will recipients act on their other-concern and, eventually, concede more to a sad expresser. Three experiments tested this proposition by examining face-to-face, actual negotiations (in which participants interacted with each other). In all 3 experiments, recipients conceded more to a sad expresser when, but only when, features of the social situation provided reasons to experience other-concern for the expresser, namely (a) when recipients perceived the expresser as low power (Experiment 1), (b) when recipients anticipated a future interaction (Experiment 1), (c) when recipients construed the relationship as collaborative in nature (Experiment 2), or (d) when recipients believed that it was inappropriate to blame others (Experiment 3). All 3 experiments showed that the positive effect of sadness expression was mediated by the recipients’ greater other-concern. These findings extend previous research on emotional expressions in negotiations by emphasizing a distinct psychological mechanism. Implications for our understanding of sadness, negotiations, and emotions are discussed.<br /
The Normativity and Legitimacy of CSR Disclosure: Evidence from France
No full textInternational audienceIn 2001, France became one of the few countries to require corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting through its Nouvelles Régulations Économiques #2001-420 (NRE). However, initial compliance with the statute was low, a factor implying the law lacked normativity. In this exploratory study, we attempt to determine whether there is movement toward normativity by examining the change in CSR disclosure from 2004 in comparison to 2010 for a sample of 81 publicly traded French firms. We measure both the space and the quality of CSR disclosures, including in the latter a measure based on informational quality attributes as discussed by the International Accounting Standards Board, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and the Global Reporting Initiative. We find significant increases in the space allocated to CSR disclosure, as well as some evidence of increased quality; although the informational quality of the disclosures remains quite low and fewer firms are including negative performance information in their reports. Finally, we document that differences in disclosure space and quality in 2004 appeared to be associated with legitimacy-based variables and that those relations remain largely unchanged in 2010. As such, it appears that the NRE’s goals of increased transparency remain unmet
Fund Managers under pressure: Rationale and Determinants of Secondary Buyouts
No full textInternational audienceThe fastest growing segment of private equity (PE) deals is secondary buyouts (SBOs)—sales from one PE fund to another. Using a comprehensive sample of leveraged buyouts, we investigate whether SBOs are value-maximizing, or reflect opportunistic behavior. To proxy for adverse incentives, we develop buy and sell pressure indexes based on how close PE funds are to the end of their investment period or lifetime, their unused capital, reputation, deal activity, and fundraising frequency. We report that funds under pressure engage more in SBOs. Pressured buyers pay higher multiples, use less leverage, and syndicate less suggesting that their motive is to spend equity. Pressured sellers exit at lower multiples and have shorter holding periods. When pressured counterparties meet, deal multiples depend on differential bargaining power. Moreover, funds that invested under pressure underperform
Explicit diversification benefit for dependent risks
No full textWe propose a new approach to analyse the effect of diversification on a portfolio of risks. By means of mixing techniques, we provide an explicit formula for the probability density function of the portfolio. These techniques allow to compute analytically risk measures as VaR or TVaR, and consequently the associated diversification benefit. The explicit formulas constitute ideal tools to analyse the properties of risk measures and diversification benefit. We use standard models, which are popular in the reinsurance industry, Archimedean survival copulas and heavy tailed marginals. We explore numerically their behavior and compare them to the aggregation of independent random variables, as well as of linearly dependent ones. Moreover, the numerical convergence of Monte Carlo simulations of various quantities is tested against the analytical result. The speed of convergence appears to depend on the fatness of the tail; the higher the tail index, the faster the convergence
Incremental willingness to pay: a theoretical and empirical exposition
No full textApplications of willingness to pay (WTP) have shown the difficultly to discriminate between various options. This reflects the problem of embedding in both its specific sense, of options being nested within one another, and its more-general sense, whereby respondents cannot discriminate between close substitutes or between more-disparate rivals for the same budget. Furthermore, high proportions of reversals between WTP-value and simple preference based rankings of options are often highlighted. Although an incremental WTP approach was devised to encourage more differentiated answers and a higher degree of consistency among respondents, a theoretical basis for this approach has not been elucidated, and there is little evidence to show that this approach might indeed achieve greater consistency between explicit and implicit rankings inferred from WTP values.We address both these issues. Following our theoretical exposition, standard and incremental approaches were compared with explicit ranking in a study assessing preferences for different French emergency care services. 280 persons, representative of the French adult population, were interviewed. Half received the incremental version, the other half the standard version. Results suggest that the incremental approach provides a ranking of options fully in line with explicit ranking. The standard approach was reasonably consistent with explicit ranking but proved unable to differentiate between the five most preferred providers, as predicted by theory. Our findings suggest that the incremental approach provides results which can be used in priority-setting contexts
Lying about Delegation
No full textThis paper reports results from a three-player variant of the ultimatum game in which the Proposer can delegate to a third party his decision regarding how to share his endowment with a Responder with a standard veto right. However, the Responder cannot verify whether the delegation is effective or the third party merely plays a “scapegoat” role while the decision is made by the Proposer himself. In this imperfect information setting, the Proposer can send an unverifiable message declaring his delegation strategy. The most interesting strategy is “false delegation”, in which the Proposer makes the decision but claims to have delegated it. In our sample, the recourse to false delegation is significant, and a significant number of potential Delegates accept serving in the scapegoat role. However, there are many honest Proposers, and 20% of all Delegates will refuse to be the accomplices of a dishonest Proposer. Responders tend to more readily accept poor offers in a setup that permits lying about delegation; the acceptance rate of the poor offer is the highest when Delegates can refuse the scapegoat role
