Publication database

Many companies today believe that corporate social responsibility (CSR) acts as a reservoir of goodwill, insulating the firm from the negative impacts of a crisis. Yet, the impact of CSR on public reaction to corporate crises is more complex. Drawing on research on stakeholder reactions to CSR and—more specifically—corporate crises, we present a contingent framework for understanding the roles of CSR in corporate crises and how to manage it. This framework posits that CSR plays four important roles: it (1) increases stakeholders’ attention to crises, (2) affects blame attributions, (3) raises expectations, and (4) changes stakeholders’ evaluations of crisis situations. Several factors underlying these roles are also discussed. Overall, this article underscores that while CSR may insulate companies and mitigate stakeholders’ negative responses in some cases, in others it may actually lead to the opposite effect, amplifying the negative impact of a crisis. The article ends with a brief discussion of the implications of our framework for effective crisis management strategies in the age of CSR.

With permission of Elsevier

We show that eurozone bank risks during 2007-2013 can be understood as “carry trade” behavior. Bank equity returns load positively on peripheral (Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, or GIIPS) bond returns and negatively on German government bond returns, which generated “carry” until the deteriorating GIIPS bond returns adversely affected bank balance sheets. We find support for risk-shifting and regulatory arbitrage motives at banks in that carry trade behavior is stronger for large banks and banks with low capital ratios and high risk-weighted assets. We also find evidence for home bias and moral suasion in the subsample of GIIPS banks.

With permission of Elsevier

This paper focuses on women leaders’ self-views as women and leaders and explores consequences of positive social identity (i.e., positive evaluation of the social category in question) for women in leadership positions. We hypothesized that holding positive gender and leader identities reduced perceived conflict between women’s gender and leader identities and thereby resulted in favorable psychological and motivational consequences. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that positive gender identity indeed reduced women leaders’ identity conflict. In Study 3, we found that by lessening identity conflict, positive gender identity reduced stress, increased life satisfaction, and caused women to construe leading more as an attractive goal than a duty. In contrast, positive leader identity directly affected women’s motivation to lead, but did not reduce their identity conflict. Overall, these results emphasize the protective role of women’s positive gender identity for their advancement in organizations and leader identity development.

With permission of Elsevier

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.