Trends in online media relations: Web-based corporate press rooms in leading international companies

An analysis of 120 corporate websites from Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States reveals, for the first time, international results about the implementation and use of virtual press rooms. This article shows the importance that large international companies attribute to Web-based media centers to achieve organizational objectives and to meet journalists’ demands for information and audiovisual resources. The study also shows, however, that most press rooms are far from being complete, efficient, easy-to-use, reliable and updated on a daily basis. In fact, there is not a single country from those analyzed that consistently stands out from the rest. In most of them, good results in certain areas coexist with significant shortcomings in others, resulting in some cases in poor press rooms that may not achieve the desired public relations objectives.     

Combinations of absorptive capacity metaroutines: The role of organizational disruptions and time constraints

This paper explores absorptive capacity metaroutines in a financial organization that experienced a large-scale misappropriation episode. We selected an instrumental case and collected individual semi-structured interviews, on-site nonparticipant observations, and documents to better understand the combination of absorptive capacity in organizational contexts. Findings revealed that the magnitude of organizational disruptions and time constraints influenced absorptive capacity metaroutines. The magnitude of organizational disruptions related to the intensity of required change for innovation adoption and the persistence of outcomes, while time constraints influenced the degree of involvement and cohesiveness of organizational members. In addition, findings showed that the combination of absorptive capacity metaroutines experienced asymmetries and had incremental and cumulative features. This work extends current theorizations of absorptive capacity conceptualized from a micro-foundation perspective as a collection of external and internal metaroutines and provides a means to start understanding potential factors that influence the combination of absorptive capacity metaroutines. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, and suggestions for future research are offered.     

Issues in Estimating New Keynesian Phillips Curves in the Presence of Unknown Structural Change

Many articles which have estimated models with forward looking expectations have reported that the magnitude of the coefficients of the expectations term is very large when compared with the effects coming from past dynamics. This has sometimes been regarded as implausible and led to the feeling that the expectations coefficient is biased upwards. A relatively general argument that has been advanced is that the bias could be due to structural changes in the means of the variables entering the structural equation. An alternative explanation is that the bias comes from weak instruments. In this article, we investigate the issue of upward bias in the estimated coefficients of the expectations variable based on a model where we can see what causes the breaks and how to control for them. We conclude that weak instruments are the most likely cause of any bias and note that structural change can affect the quality of instruments. We also look at some empirical work in Castle et al. (2014 Castle, J. L., Doornik, J. A., Hendry, D. F., Nymoen, R. (2014). Misspecification testing: non-invariance of expectations models of inflation. Econometric Reviews 33:5–6, 553–574, doi:10.1080/07474938.2013.825137[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) on the new Kaynesian Phillips curve (NYPC) in the Euro Area and U.S. assessing whether the smaller coefficient on expectations that Castle et al. (2014 Castle, J. L., Doornik, J. A., Hendry, D. F., Nymoen, R. (2014). Misspecification testing: non-invariance of expectations models of inflation. Econometric Reviews 33:5–6, 553–574, doi:10.1080/07474938.2013.825137[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) highlight is due to structural change. Our conclusion is that it is not. Instead it comes from their addition of variables to the NKPC. After allowing for the fact that there are weak instruments in the estimated re-specified model, it would seem that the forward coefficient estimate is actually quite high rather than low.     

Climate change and population migration in Brazil’s Northeast: scenarios for 2025–2050

This research contributes to an understanding of the relationship between climate change, economic impacts and migration. We model the long-term relationship (up to 45 years of projection) between demographic dynamics—particularly migration—driven by changes in the performance of the economy due to climate changes in the Northeast region of Brazil. The region is of particular relevance to the study of climate change impacts given its large human population (28% of Brazil’s population) and high levels of impoverishment, having an extensive semi-dry area which will be severely impacted by growing temperatures. Ultimately, the integrated model generates state- and municipal-level migration scenarios based on climate change impacts on the primary economic sectors and their articulations with other sectors. Results suggest that the predicted climate changes will impact severely the agriculture sector in the region, acting as a potential migration push factor to other regions in the country. Finally, we discuss how the increased vulnerability of some groups, particularly migrants, can be factored into Brazilian public policy and planning.     

Open innovation and quality management: the moderating role of interorganisational IT infrastructure and complementary learning styles

This study seeks to explain the influence of quality management on the relationship between open innovation and performance. We propose that, to contribute to open innovation performance, an organisation’s commitment to quality improvement must rely on the combination of its own resources and capabilities and its open innovation partners’ resources and capabilities. Specifically, we examine the moderating role of an interorganisational IT infrastructure and the complementarity of learning styles among an organisation committed to quality improvement and its supply network. Using data from 270 managers of European firms, our results show that the negative effects of quality management on open innovation performance can be overcome by complementing the organisation’s learning style with that of its open innovation partner, particularly, its supply network, and, most importantly, obtaining information technologies compatible with those of its supply network members.     

Life Domain Satisfaction: A Portugal–France Comparison

The study was aimed at replicating on a Portuguese sample the seven-factor model of life appraisal (physical autonomy, love life, family life, social life, occupational life, finances, and leisure life) that was suggested by Salvatore and Munoz Sastre Social Indicators Research 53:229–255 (2001). A sample of 1,111 Portuguese participants, aged 17–85, was presented with the Appraisal of Life Questionnaire. The “domain” model of life appraisal satisfactorily accounted for the data gathered on the Portuguese sample. Regarding finances and occupational life, Portuguese scores were lower than French scores. Regarding the occupational score and the leisure score, a clear linear decrease as a function of age was evidenced in the Portuguese sample. Finally, regarding the family score and the financial score, a non-linear relationship with age was found. An increase was observed from young adult age to adult age, and a decrease was observed from adult age to older age. A strong decrease in the physical autonomy scores among Portuguese females was also observed.     

Students Mobility: Assessing the Determinants of Attractiveness Across Competing Territorial Areas

A central question for education authorities has become “which factors make a territory attractive for tertiary students?” Tertiary education is recognised as one of the most important assets for the development of a territory, thus students’ mobility becomes a brain drain issue whenever there are prevalent areas that attract students from other territories. In this paper, we try to identify the most important factors that could affect student mobility in Italy. In doing that we analyse students’ flows across competing territorial areas which supply tertiary education programs. We will consider a wide range of determinants related to the socio-economic characteristics of the areas as well as resources of the universities in the territories in terms of variety and quantity of the degree programs there available, financial endowments provided by Central Government, and services available to students. The Bradley–Terry modelling approach based on pair comparisons has been adopted to define the attractiveness of competing territories and assess how much the detected divergences can be attributed to factors directly related to the considered characteristics of the universities in the territory and how much is ascribable to inherent characteristics of the areas where the universities are located such as the labour market conditions. Furthermore, the adopted approach allows us to consider uncertainty in defining territorial attractiveness and making comparisons. In this way, we would like to provide some evidences to assess if the rules currently used by the Central Government to finance public universities on the basis of their capabilities to attract students really reward the efforts made by the university system in the area to improve their standard of quality or, on the contrary, reward the territorial features.