Publication database

While much research has been done on how attitudes towards therapy relate to engagement in it, the willingness to engage in coaching has not yet been studied. As coaching continues to grow in popularity and makes its way into curricula of MBA programs, it is worth examining what factors may influence people’s attitudes toward this new type of psychological support. With frequently noticed and discussed similarities between coaching and therapy, this paper examines whether particular antecedents of engagement in therapy, namely mental health stigma and gender, would be equally relevant for engagement in coaching by MBA students.

With permission of Emerald

Previous research has identified customer satisfaction and customer–company identification as two of the most important concepts in relationship marketing. Despite their proclaimed importance, research on their long-term effectiveness is surprisingly scarce. Furthermore, comparative research acknowledging the concepts' different theoretical roots and illuminating the differences in their long-term effectiveness is lacking. Also, little is known about how competitive actions affect the long-term effectiveness of both concepts. This study makes a first attempt to address these research voids and offers a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of customer satisfaction and customer–company identification in driving important customer outcomes over time. Latent growth analyses of rich longitudinal data from customers over nine measurement points spanning 43 weeks (n = 6930) show that customer satisfaction and customer–company identification have positive initial effects on customers' loyalty and willingness to pay, but differ in their ability to maintain these positive effects over time. While the positive effects of customer satisfaction decrease more rapidly, the effects of customer– company identification are significantly more persistent. Analysis of the moderating effects of relative competitive advertising suggests that customer–company identification is more effective at immunizing customers against competitive actions.

With the permission of the American Marketing Association

This paper is the first to empirically examine the effect of customer loyalty in retail price negotiations. Across three field studies and one negotiation experiment, the authors establish what they call the loyalty-discount cycle: in price negotiations with salespeople, loyal customers realize deeper discounts that in turn increase customer loyalty, resulting in a downward spiral of a company’s price enforcement. The reason for the positive effect of customer loyalty on discount is twofold: (1) loyal customers demand a reward for their loyalty and invoke their elevated perceived negotiation power; (2) to retain loyal customers, salespeople grant discounts more willingly. Furthermore, the mechanisms are moderated by the basis of a customer’s loyalty (price vs. quality) and the length of the relationship between the salesperson and the customer. To escape the loyalty-discount cycle, salespeople can use functional and relational customer-oriented behaviors. The study helps managers and salespeople to optimize their price enforcement and servicing of loyal customers.

With the permission of the American Marketing Association

The literature on organizational learning asserts that external learning is often limited geographically and technologically. We scrutinize to what extent organizations acquire external knowledge by accessing external knowledge repositories. We argue that professional service firms (PSFs) grant access to non-localized knowledge repositories and thereby not only facilitate external learning but also help to overcome localization. Focusing on patent law firms, we test our predictions using a unique dataset of 544,820 pairs of EP patent applications. Analyzing patterns of knowledge flows captured in patent citations we find that accessing a PSF’s repository facilitates the acquisition of external knowledge. As the effect is more pronounced for knowledge that is distant to a focal organization we conclude that having access to a knowledge repository compensates for localization disadvantages.

© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Empirical scholarship on the standards-trade relationship has been held up due to methodological challenges: measurement, varied effects, and endogeneity. Considering the trade-effects of one particular standard (ISO 9000), we surmount methodological challenges by measuring standardization via national penetration of ISO 9000, allowing standardization to manifest via multiple (quality-signaling, information/compliance-cost, and common-language) channels, and using instrumental variable, multilateral resistance and panel data techniques to overcome endogeneity. We find evidence of common-language and quality-signaling augmenting country-pair trade. Yet, ISO-rich nations (most notably European) benefit the most from standardization, while ISO-poor nations find ISO 9000 to represent a trade barrier due to compliance-cost effects.

With permission of Elsevier

This paper uses a rich survey of 6446 households in Slovakia to estimate price elasticities of demand for Internet access, and draw implications for market definition. We estimate a mixed logit model, in which households choose between different broadband technologies: DSL, cable modem, fibre, WiFi and mobile. We find that a number of household characteristics influence the technology choices, and there is also significant unobserved heterogeneity. Demand for Internet access is highly price sensitive. The price elasticity of demand for DSL is −3.02, which falls in the middle of the range of elasticities for the other technologies. Furthermore, the price elasticity of demand at the level of all fixed broadband technologies (DSL + cable modem + fibre + WiFi) is equal to −1.98. For a reasonable range of profit margins, this estimate implies that mobile broadband should be included in the relevant antitrust market of fixed broadband. Our findings have implications for competition policy in Central and Eastern European countries where due to poor copper networks mobile broadband is an important alternative to fixed broadband.

This paper draws attention to a new dimension of organization, the semiformal organization, and it reveals how the allocation of different membership forms can render knowledge-intensive organizations more flexible and exploratory in their knowledge creation efforts without sacrificing the functions stably enacted via the formal organization. Most knowledge-intensive organizations seek to create new spaces for collaborations through formally prescribed departments and divisions or through serendipitous, emergent, informal associations (i.e., the formal and informal organization). However, organizations also strategically manage what we call the “semiformal organization” to guide the creation of new work relations and encourage innovation. These secondary memberships are organizationally sponsored and directly related to the organizations’ core research functions, but they are voluntarily joined. As such, they are distinct from formal and informal memberships. On the basis of extensive longitudinal analyses of research initiatives at Stanford University, we find that the semiformal organization provides a compelling channel through which organizations can shape employees’ collaborations and overall productivity.

© 2014 INFORMS