The quest for residential normalcy by older adults: Relocation but one pathway

This paper constructs a holistic emotion-based theoretical model identifying various pathways by which older adults can occupy residential environments that are congruent with their needs and goals. The model equates this individual-environment fittingness or “residential normalcy” with older persons having favorable or positive emotion-based residential experiences that have relevance to them. Older persons are theorized as being in their residential comfort zones when they experience overall pleasurable, hassle-free, and memorable feelings about where they live; and in their residential mastery zones when they occupy places in which they feel overall competent and in control. When older persons are out of either (or both) of these experiential zones, they are expected to initiate accommodative and/or assimilative forms of coping to achieve residential normalcy. The former are mind strategies by which they change their residential goals or assessments, mollify their negative emotional experiences, or engage in denial behaviors; the latter are action strategies, by which they change their activities or modify their residential settings. Moving to a new address is the most studied and prominent assimilative coping strategy, but also the one that requires the most strenuous adaptive efforts. The model theorizes that older persons move only under certain conditions.     

Modeling Reputation as a Time‐Series: Evaluating the Risk of Purchase Decisions on eBay*

Reputation systems based on buyer feedback play an important role in today's online markets. In this article, we provide a rigorous methodology to establish a relationship between a seller's feedback history and risk of default. We validate this method against eBay's reputation system, using a dataset of terminated users (Not‐A‐Registered‐User or NARU) and the feedback left for them by buyers. By treating feedback rating data as a function of time, we characterize the tendency of change in seller feedback ratings in order to predict the behavior of a seller. We find that NARU sellers have significantly more negative feedback in their final weeks. Applying functional principal component analysis and classification tree methods, we find that when projecting the feedback data to an appropriate space, NARU and non‐NARU sellers can be distinguished at better than 92% accuracy. We use this to provide a quantitative mechanism for evaluating the risk of trading with a seller who has less than perfect feedback, and offer advice on how much a buyer should offer to pay, given an asking price on a commodity item and a seller's feedback history.     

Supplier Encroachment as an Enhancement or a Hindrance to Nonlinear Pricing

The objective of this study was to extend existing understanding of supplier encroachment to contexts in which there is information asymmetry and the supplier can use nonlinear pricing. Prior research has shown that supplier encroachment can mitigate double marginalization and thus benefit both the supplier and the reseller. However, under symmetric information, this benefit disappears if the supplier can use nonlinear pricing. In our model, the reseller observes the true market size while the supplier knows only the prior distribution, that is, a seemingly ideal setting for implementing mechanism design through nonlinear pricing. We first show that, because encroachment capability enables the supplier to make an ex post output decision, it fundamentally alters the structure of the optimal nonlinear pricing policy. In addition to the usual downward distortion effect, where the reseller may purchase less than the efficient quantity, we also have the possibility for upward distortion. Thus, under asymmetric information and nonlinear pricing, supplier encroachment has two opposing effects. On one hand, the ability to shift sales to the direct channel allows the supplier to reduce information rents with less sacrifice of efficiency; but on the other hand, by introducing the possibility of her own opportunistic behavior, it can result in upward distortion of the quantities sold through the reselling channel, which is a new source of inefficiency. Depending upon the relative efficiency of the reselling channel and the demand distribution, either of these two effects may dominate and the supplier's ability to encroach may either benefit or hurt both the supplier and the reseller.     

Optimal Per‐Use Rentals and Sales of Durable Products and Their Distinct Roles in Price Discrimination

We consider a setting in which consumers experience distinct instances of need for a durable product at random intervals. Each instance of need is associated with a random utility and the consumers are differentiated according to the frequency with which they experience such instances of need. We use our model of consumer utility to characterize the firm's optimal strategy of whether to sell, rent, or do a combination of both in terms of the transaction costs and consumers' usage characteristics. We find that the two modes of operation serve different roles in allowing the firm to price discriminate. While sales allow the firm to discriminate among consumers of different usage frequencies, rentals allow it to discriminate according to consumers' realized valuations. Consequently, even when transaction costs are negligible, it is often optimal for the firm to simultaneously rent and sell its product. In addition, we find that although sales and rentals are substitutes and that the offering of sales weakly increases rental prices, it is possible that the introduction of rentals to a pure selling operation can either increase or decrease the optimal sales prices.     

服务业中顾客参与对顾客价值创造影响的实证研究

本文从顾客与企业交互层面构建了包含影响顾客参与前因要素和顾客参与结果的整合模型,考察顾客参与活动对顾客价值创造的影响。在此基础上,以个人培训行业为背景,通过对484名中国消费者的问卷调查,运用结构方程模型开展实证研究。结果表明,顾客参与行为显著影响了顾客对实用价值的创造,顾客在参与活动中对实用价值感知与享乐价值感知正相关,实用价值在顾客参与和享乐价值之间起到了完全中介作用。同时,信息交换、情感承诺、交互公平作为顾客参与前因要素效应得到了证实。最后讨论了该研究的管理意义与未来研究方向。     

萨特论审美喜悦

萨特认为与审美快感相比,审美喜悦脱离了感官的刺激,是非个人的和创造生成的过程。审美喜悦的出现是作品成功的标志,其中包含的位置性意识既是作者的观察视角,也是审美世界向人的自由的召唤。而审美价值的实现建立在审美喜悦的基础上,来源于伴随的非位置意识里面的自由。这就需要作为审美对象的艺术品不能还原为观念的集合,而是关注着人类的自由。必须反对两种审美态度：把艺术品当作唯美主义的纯粹形式,以及压垮人的自由的现实主义的决定论。艺术品本身就是目的,可以用意象来超越现实的荒谬,用审美的变更来改变这个荒芜的世界。人是生来自由的,通过审美意识的虚无化,可以超越自在的世界,共同建立审美的意象世界,在实践中走向终极自由。     

Comment on ‘A political economy of accounting standard setting’

This comment raises questions about the appropriateness of the model proposed by Königsgruber (J Manag Gov 14:277–295, 2010) in depicting the politics of the standard-setting process in the context of the very different regulatory contexts in the EU and the US.     

Communities, alliances, networks and knowledge in multinational firms: A micro-analytic framework

We develop a model of the micro-process of knowledge acquisition, dissemination, and application in the networks of alliances that have become important sources of external knowledge for multinational firms. Based on the concept of communities of practice as sources of highly tacit know-how, this model addresses the use of alliances with local partners to acquire tacit knowledge on a sub-unit level and to then share this knowledge throughout the firm via an internal network of community-level alliances. We suggest that the supposed advantage of multinational firms in accessing and reconstituting knowledge from widely spread sources is composed of multiple micro-processes at sub-unit levels, and therefore much more complex than usually presented.     

美国的廉政建设：多管齐下的制约机制

立国二百多年以来,美国已经逐步形成了一套内外结合的制约监督政府权力的机制。在国家机器内对政府官员实施监督的除了政府问责局以外,还有联邦检察长、特别检察官、督察长以及巡视官等。此外,美国社会的一些群体也从官僚体系的外部对政府官员实施监督,这些群体中较为突出的主要是新闻界和非营利组织。美国对政府官员实施监督有多管齐下、制度化和制约机构相对独立等三大特点。     

“桃梨之争”：翻译观差异与意气之争

朱湘、饶孟侃与王宗璠的＂桃梨之争＂,是翻译中＂原作中心论＂与＂读者中心论＂的交锋,给文学作品,尤其是诗歌的＂译学研究＂提供了一个典型的个案。同时,＂桃梨之争＂显现了长期被遗弃、被歧视、被认作低人一等,而又渴望被承认的朱湘对时代与社会的抗争、背离和仇视。