Ignorance Isn't Bliss: Complaint Experience and Organizational Learning in the California Nursing Home Industry, 1997–2004

Organizational learning theory suggests that complaints about products and services can promote organizational learning and change. However, evidence suggests that potentially valuable forms of experience may be ignored or discounted in organizations, and additional research is needed to determine why this happens. This study contributes to those efforts by examining how multiple forms of complaint experience interactively influence organizational outcomes. An empirical test on a longitudinal panel of Californian nursing homes finds that complaints about other issues may distract attention away from complaints about a focal issue, but only when complaints are provided anonymously. These findings forward organizational learning theories by suggesting that multiple types of experience may detract from rather than supplement each other in some cases. Additional implications and opportunities for further research are also discussed.     

The Determinants of Retail Productivity: A Critical Review of the Evidence

This paper discusses the literature on the established determinants of productivity in the retail sector. It also draws attention to some neglected strands of research which provide useful insights into strategies that could allow productivity enhancements in this area of the economy. To date, very few attempts have been made to integrate different specialisms in order to explain what drives productivity in retail. Here this paper rectifies this omission by putting together studies from economics, geography, knowledge management and employment studies. It is the authors’ view that quantitative studies of retail productivity should focus on total factor productivity in retailing as the result of competition/composition effects, planning regulations, information and communications technology, the multinational operation element and workforce skills. Further, the fact that retail firms possess advantages that are transferable between locations suggests that investment in strategies enhancing the transfer of explicit and tacit knowledge between and within businesses are crucial to achieve productivity gains.     

Taking Stock of Temporary Organizational Forms: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda

This paper brings together the research on temporary organizational forms. Despite a recent surge in publications on this topic, there have been few attempts to integrate knowledge on what we know of such temporary forms of organization. In order to correct this, an integrative framework is proposed around four central themes: time, team, task and context. Within each of these themes, the paper offers an overview of the literature, the gaps in what we know, and what future directions might be taken by scholars hoping to contribute to this important and rapidly growing field.     

Morality and Nuclear Energy: Perceptions of Risks and Benefits,Personal Norms,and Willingness to Take Action Related to Nuclear Energy

We examined factors underlying people's willingness to take action in favor of or against nuclear energy from a moral perspective. We conducted a questionnaire study among a sample of the Dutch population (N = 123). As expected, perceptions of risks and benefits were related to personal norms (PN), that is, feelings of moral obligation toward taking action in favor of or against nuclear energy. In turn, PN predicted willingness to take action. Furthermore, PN mediated the relationships between perceptions of risk and benefits and willingness to take action. In line with our hypothesis, beliefs about the risks and benefits of nuclear energy were less powerful in explaining PN for supporters compared to PN of opponents. Also, beliefs on risks and benefits and PN explained significantly more variance in willingness to take action of opponents than of supporters. Our results suggest that a moral framework is useful to explain willingness to take action in favor of and against nuclear energy, and that people are more likely to protest in favor of or against nuclear energy when PN are strong.     

Analyzing Evacuation Versus Shelter‐in‐Place Strategies After a Terrorist Nuclear Detonation

We superimpose a radiation fallout model onto a traffic flow model to assess the evacuation versus shelter‐in‐place decisions after the daytime ground‐level detonation of a 10‐kt improvised nuclear device in Washington, DC. In our model, ≈80k people are killed by the prompt effects of blast, burn, and radiation. Of the ≈360k survivors without access to a vehicle, 42.6k would die if they immediately self‐evacuated on foot. Sheltering above ground would save several thousand of these lives and sheltering in a basement (or near the middle of a large building) would save of them. Among survivors of the prompt effects with access to a vehicle, the number of deaths depends on the fraction of people who shelter in a basement rather than self‐evacuate in their vehicle: 23.1k people die if 90% shelter in a basement and 54.6k die if 10% shelter. Sheltering above ground saves approximately half as many lives as sheltering in a basement. The details related to delayed (i.e., organized) evacuation, search and rescue, decontamination, and situational awareness (via, e.g., telecommunications) have very little impact on the number of casualties. Although antibiotics and transfusion support have the potential to save ≈10k lives (and the number of lives saved from medical care increases with the fraction of people who shelter in basements), the logistical challenge appears to be well beyond current response capabilities. Taken together, our results suggest that the government should initiate an aggressive outreach program to educate citizens and the private sector about the importance of sheltering in place in a basement for at least 12 hours after a terrorist nuclear detonation.     

Informed Public Preferences for Electricity Portfolios with CCS and Other Low‐Carbon Technologies

Public perceptions of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and other low‐carbon electricity‐generating technologies may affect the feasibility of their widespread deployment. We asked a diverse sample of 60 participants recruited from community groups in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to rank 10 technologies (e.g., coal with CCS, natural gas, nuclear, various renewables, and energy efficiency), and seven realistic low‐carbon portfolios composed of these technologies, after receiving comprehensive and carefully balanced materials that explained the costs and benefits of each technology. Rankings were obtained in small group settings as well as individually before and after the group discussions. The ranking exercise asked participants to assume that the U.S. Congress had mandated a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants to be built in the future. Overall, rankings suggest that participants favored energy efficiency, followed by nuclear power, integrated gasification combined‐cycle coal with CCS and wind. The most preferred portfolio also included these technologies. We find that these informed members of the general public preferred diverse portfolios that contained CCS and nuclear over alternatives once they fully understood the benefits, cost, and limitations of each. The materials and approach developed for this study may also have value in educating members of the general public about the challenges of achieving a low‐carbon energy future.     

The role of human and social board capital in driving CSR reporting

The objective of this paper is to analyze the effect of the professional, technical and relational background (human and social capital) of outside directors on promoting firm CSR disclosure. Following the Hillman et al. (2000) taxonomy of board members, we classify outside directors as business experts, support specialists and community influential, and examine whether business and technical expertise or political ties in the boardroom affect CSR disclosure.This study confirms that not all outside directors are equally effective in improving CSR disclosure and that only certain kinds of outside directors, those classified as support specialists, help promote it. On the other hand, our findings also show that directors with previous experience as politicians affect CSR disclosure negatively, probably due to their interests in safeguarding their reputation within the company, in avoiding public scrutiny and in protecting their political connections. In addition, our set of analysis with interaction effects reveals that powerful CEOs have the incentive to promote CSR-related strategies and to convince business experts and support specialist directors to enhance profitable sustainability strategies and transparency in CSR disclosure. Nevertheless, the powerful CEO effect is not enough to compensate the negative role of political directors on CSR reporting. Therefore, this paper supports the theories in favor of analyzing the multiple configurations of corporate governance mechanisms by adopting a holistic approach, and the need to combine these configurations in order to analyze their impact on CSR behavior.     

Marketing as an Investment in Shareholder Value

We present resource‐based and capability‐based arguments of marketing investment intensity to offer a strategic view of marketing as an investment in shareholder value. We find that marketing investment intensity has a U‐shaped quadratic effect on shareholder value creation (Tobin's q) that calls for marketing investment to be protected and increased, not surrendered. We show how marketing investments interact with investments in R&D, human capital and operations to reveal how strategic co‐investments can alter the shareholder value of marketing. Finally, we show how competitive intensity and failings in the firm's investment productivity (its ability to convert investment expenditure into sales) point to malaise in the firm's own strategic architecture as a fault for perceived poor returns from marketing investments. Our findings suggest that marketing investment should not be scapegoated when its contributions to shareholder value are not as expected. When invested in strategically and in combination with other investments, marketing can unlock exciting improvements in shareholder value.     

Communicating Geographical Risks in Crisis Management: The Need for Research

In any crisis, there is a great deal of uncertainty, often geographical uncertainty or, more precisely, spatiotemporal uncertainty. Examples include the spread of contamination from an industrial accident, drifting volcanic ash, and the path of a hurricane. Estimating spatiotemporal probabilities is usually a difficult task, but that is not our primary concern. Rather, we ask how analysts can communicate spatiotemporal uncertainty to those handling the crisis. We comment on the somewhat limited literature on the representation of spatial uncertainty on maps. We note that many cognitive issues arise and that the potential for confusion is high. We note that in the early stages of handling a crisis, the uncertainties involved may be deep, i.e., difficult or impossible to quantify in the time available. In such circumstance, we suggest the idea of presenting multiple scenarios.