On the independence of history: experience spill-overs between experiments

A central understanding in experimental economics is that subjects’ decisions in the lab are independent of history. We test whether this assumption of between-experiment independence is indeed justified. We analyze experiments with an allocation decision (like a dictator or ultimatum game) and find that participation in previous experiments tends to increase the amount subjects allocate to themselves. Hence, independence between experiments cannot be presumed if subjects participate repeatedly. The finding has implications for the interpretation of previous allocation decision results and deserves attention when running future experiments.     

An Exploratory Study of Procurement Strategies for Multi‐Item RFQs in B2B Markets: Antecedents and Impact on Performance

This research explores procurement strategies for multi‐item requests for quotation (RFQs) in business‐to‐business (B2B) markets using responses from 825 purchasing professionals. The study first establishes procurement strategies that differ based on their level of strategic emphasis, i.e., the importance that is placed on the pursuit of four strategic objectives. Underlying objectives, which are obtained via factor analysis, include the focus on price, security of supply, internal procurement efficiencies, and bundle building. Next, cluster analysis is used to derive prototypical strategic approaches. The three cluster groups that emerge possess the same relative ranking of the four objectives, but differ based on the intensity with which these objectives are pursued. The clusters are labelled as the three strategic groups of strategists, opportunists, and responders. The research then explores, using an industrial buyer behavior lens, the impact of environmental antecedents in determining a particular strategy. Environmental variables include purchase importance, market uncertainty, supply base availability, buyer bargaining power, item experience, and supply base experience. Finally, the study tests the impact of procurement strategy on the buyer's perceived performance, suggesting that strategists, placing more emphasis on the pursuit of strategic sourcing objectives, achieve better performance than opportunists and responders.     

The Financial Impact of FSC Certification in the United States: A Contingency Perspective

This article focuses on an important and emergent standard for sustainable operations management: the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. Unlike similar certifications, its focus is on the entire upstream supply chain, reflecting the criticality of supply chain management to ensure sustainable products. We investigate the financial impact from FSC certification, offering valuable decision support for managers considering this certification. Taking a contingency perspective, we view a firm's supply chain position and its prior certification to the ISO 14001 standard as influencing the results. Drawing on signaling theory, we suggest that firms farther downstream in the supply chain realize significantly greater abnormal financial performance benefits than firms upstream in the supply chain. We further hypothesize that firms that were not ISO 14001 certified at the time of FSC certification realize significantly greater abnormal financial performance benefits than firms that did have the ISO 14001 certification. To test these hypotheses, we utilize financial data of all publicly traded firms in the United States that have obtained the FSC certification, and assess whether FSC certification leads to abnormal performance benefits considering the above contingencies. Data collected from the FSC Certificate Database and Compustat, employed in an event study, provide support for our hypotheses. Overall, our findings contribute to research on decision making in the context of sustainable operations management, and offer a plausible explanation for contradictory results in prior studies. We highlight the applicability of signaling theory to decision sciences research, and stress the need to consider contingencies in sustainability management research.     

Matching With (Branch‐of‐Choice) Contracts at the United States Military Academy

Branch selection is a key decision in a cadet's military career. Cadets at USMA can increase their branch priorities at a fraction of slots by extending their service agreement. This real‐life matching problem fills an important gap in the market design literature, providing strong empirical legitimacy to a series of elegant theoretical works on matching with contracts. Although priorities fail a key substitutes condition, the agent‐optimal stable mechanism is well defined, and in contrast to the current USMA mechanism it is fair, stable, strategy‐proof, and respects improvements in cadet priorities. Adoption of this mechanism benefits cadets and the Army. This new application shows that the matching with contracts model is practically relevant beyond traditional domains that satisfy the substitutes condition.     

The role of environmental perceptions in migration decision-making: evidence from both migrants and non-migrants in five developing countries

Research has demonstrated that, in a variety of settings, environmental factors influence migration. Yet much of the existing work examines objective indicators of environmental conditions as opposed to the environmental perceptions of potential migrants. This paper examines migration decision-making and individual perceptions of different types of environmental change (sudden vs. gradual environmental events) with a focus on five developing countries: Vietnam, Cambodia, Uganda, Nicaragua, and Peru. The survey data include both migrants and non-migrants, with the results suggesting that individual perceptions of long-term (gradual) environmental events, such as droughts, lower the likelihood of internal migration. However, sudden-onset events, such as floods, increase movement. These findings substantially improve our understanding of perceptions as related to internal migration and also suggest that a more differentiated perspective is needed on environmental migration as a form of adaptation.     

Integrated approach for optimizing quality control in international manufacturing networks

Abstract

This article aims at providing an integrated approach for optimizing quality control in International Manufacturing Networks (IMN) which can be characterized by consisting of numerous plants acting autonomously according to an individual target system. A key challenge is to ensure the overall process quality despite distributed value creation processes and differing target systems in dynamic environments. Hence, the developed approach allows for identifying potentials in the quality control strategy using a value stream-based method to visualize quality characteristics and procedures in the production process chain. Furthermore, the approach contains a framework for identifying possible improvement measures and a simulation-based evaluation concept to evaluate the effects of different measures with respect to individual target systems. The simulation combines elements of a discrete-event simulation in order to depict the value stream with agent-based modelling for realizing different target systems by considering distinctive plant roles. The article concludes with a case study of a globally operating automotive supplier to apply the approach. A forward research agenda is proposed that evaluates the approach in multiple cases, deriving patters across companies or industries.     

Learning effects in coders and their implications for managing content analyses

From the perspective of study management, research is surprisingly lacking on two of the major challenges for planning and performing content analysis: determining the sample size (i.e. number of objects to code) and the required number of coders to hire. The optimization of both of these numbers will ultimately determine how efficiently available resources are used. This study contributes to the methodological discussion on coding by identifying and conceptualizing the role of learning effects with respect to the coding task and by highlighting the importance of considering the coding process when managing a content analysis. We present empirical evidence for the existence and impact of learning effects on coders’ coding speed. Accordingly, study management should take account of learning effects when determining the sample size and number of coders. We also provide an illustrative example of how learning effects can impact the results of pretests.     

Ethnocentrism versus group-specific stereotyping in immigration opinion: cross-national evidence on the distinctiveness of immigrant groups

While widespread resistance to immigration is well established in advanced democracies around the world, the role of group-specific stereotyping in anti-immigration sentiment has received limited attention. We derive a novel measurement model to assess stereotyping in three Anglo-Saxon democracies – the US, Canada, and the UK – of the modal outgroup in each country (Hispanics in the US and South Asians in Canada and the UK) and Middle Easterners/Muslims. We show that considerable variation exists in degree of stereotyping against the two major immigrant groups. In the US case, we additionally document over-time variation in group stereotyping. In a final step, we demonstrate a relationship between group antipathies and immigration policy views, akin to other policy domains in which public support varies by the ethnic characteristics of policy beneficiaries. To our knowledge, this study is the first to map stereotypes of Muslims in the US in a comparative setting and over time after 09/11, and amongst the first to link views on immigration policies to group-based stereotypes.