Dynamic Co-Existence of Company-Owned and Franchised Outlets Within a Company: A Framework of the Franchisor\u27s Perspective

Why and how do company-owned and franchised outlets simultaneously exist within the same organization? The purpose of this article is to integrate a variety of theories on this interesting retail phenomenon into a broader theoretical framework based on the political-economy paradigm. This paper attempts to integrate the perspectives of several theories that previously have been considered competing models of a single reality--the access-to-capital viewpoint, transaction cost analysis, the population ecology perspective, and power-dependence-conflict arguments--into a broader perspective that utilizes intra-firmfactors and the internal and external economies and polities of the political-economy paradigm. A model depicting this integration is set forth and nineteen research propositions stemming from this model are proposed

Aid Financing of Global Public Goods: an Update

The paper compares different aggregates of aid financed global public goods and detects the presence, for the period 1995-2006, of the substitution effect between these aggregates and traditional aid that was found by former studies for earlier periods. A second focus of the paper is on the differences in the importance that donors attach to the various types of global public goods, trying to detect regular patterns in their choices of financing. Statistical regularities, representative of common historical, social, cultural factors, for groups of countries (Anglo-Saxon, Northern European and Central European) give rise to the existence of a certain clusterized homogeneity in global public goods financing. Potential explanatory variables are examined in a panel analysis, which reveals the dominance of the donors’ wealth, preferences for public goods and public finance constraints in the decision of aid funding of global public goods. Finally, there is evidence that some global public goods with weakest-link technologies have become increasingly important at the global level. The increase in their financing through aid flows could be explained by the rich countries’ fear of an insufficient provision by poor countries, which, increasingly, cannot afford to pay for them: rich countries are therefore stepping in to avoid sub-optimal levels of provision, as already foreseen by Sandler (1998).Foreign aid, Global public goods

FACTORS THAT AFFECT CUSTOMER INTENTION TO REVISIT GREEN HOTELS: THE CASE OF ABU DHABI

Given the Abu Dhabi 2008 Estidama sustainability initiative and the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030, hospitality is one of the sectors that can contribute most significantly to the long-term economic growth of Abu Dhabi and have the greatest impact on its environmental and natural resources. The results of this study will enable decision-makers to understand why consumers choose green hotels over conventional hotels. The purpose is to expand existing knowledge by investigating the factors that influence customer intention to revisit green hotels from four perspectives: the self-perspective, the prosocial perspective, the business-to-business marketing perspective, and the consumer-to-consumer marketing perspective. The purpose is achieved by developing and testing a framework that integrates the theory of planned behavior (TPB) in an extended form, value belief norm (VBN) theory, corporate identity mix theory (CIMT), and intention to spread word-of-mouth (WOM). This study adopts a positivist research philosophy and uses a quantitative approach to validate the 30 hypotheses empirically. The measurement instrument is a questionnaire distributed to individuals over the age of 18 who have visited an environmentally responsible hotel during the past three years. Data collected from 316 respondents are analyzed using the structural equation modeling package AMOS 28. The results indicate that the integrated framework has good predictive power for consumer intention to revisit green hotels. Environmental concerns, willingness to make a sacrifice for the environment, and willingness to pay more for green hotels are found to have an influence on the TPB constructs, with a willingness to pay more having the greatest impact. Attitude toward green hotels was the key driver behind consumer intention to revisit green hotels in Abu Dhabi, followed by intention to spread WOM about green hotels, perceived behavioral control toward green hotels, subjective norms toward green hotels, a sense of obligation toward green hotels, and hotel corporate image, in that order. These findings contribute to research in the context of the hospitality sector from a green marketing perspective

UNDERSTANDING KENYA’S ELECTORAL MANAGEMENT ARCHITECTURAL CONTEXT: SURVIVING BOTH THE STATE AND A VOLATILE REGION

The article is an attempt to understand Kenya’s electoral management architectural context asks fundamental questions; does elections management architectural context have the ability to survive a state or group of states? How does election management architecture help states function in volatile regions? While answering these, the study asserts; in a deepening regionalism, the security effects of one state extend threats to other communities of states around it/her. In a critical view from the prism of the International Relations (IR) lens, the survival of one state has a spiral survival effect on the other states in such a locality. This causes states to have joint and various effects relationships. The nature of regional security among neighboring states faces paradigmatic limitations common to their adjacency. Security in the era of regionalization is symbiotic thus poor electoral management naturally has an impact on the existing peace and security in a regional network of states. This study discussed Kenya’s electoral management architecture from the constitutional edicts point of view. This encompassed strengths and weaknesses observed and highlight some supportive Acts of law found necessary to the study. It moved further to elaborate on the electoral management architecture context found relevant to the study. Using relevant themes, the study analyzes the region in light of the questions posed and written literature, the research justifiably concludes that indeed EM architectural context has a necessary role in volatile regions

Spatial dependence in dyadic data: the cases of double taxation treaties, official development assistance, and asylum migration

The thesis analyses spatial dependence in dyadic data by the means of three applications. These have in common that they concern bilateral international relations or flows between two countries with a particular focus on the relationship between developing and developed countries. While the first chapter provides a general introduction to spatial dependence with a focus on dyadic datasets, the second chapter looks at double taxation treaties (DTTs) and analyses whether strategic interaction among capital importing countries can explain the widespread conclusion of double taxation treaties between an industrialised and a developing country. This is important since upon entering such a treaty, the net-capital importer can lose a significant amount of tax revenues from foreign direct investment (FDI), while the net-capital exporter is better off. The analysis reveals that a country is more likely to enter a DTT if competitor countries for FDI also negotiated such a DTT, providing evidence for the hypothesis that the group of net-capital importers finds itself in a situation which can be described as a prisoners’ dilemma: individually they would be better off if they refused to negotiate a treaty, but collectively they have an incentive to sign such a tax treaty. The third chapter is on official development assistance and deals with the question whether a specific donor tends to dedicate a larger share of its aid budget to a certain recipient if other donors give money to the same beneficiary. A considerable degree of spatial dependence is found in the form that donors tend to allocate their money to the same recipients. Donors particularly follow the example of the most important aid donors. This behaviour has negative implications for aid effectiveness, contributes to harmful aid volatility and leads to aid darlings and orphans. However, there is no evidence that donors strategically interact with each other in order to pursue their military strategic and economic goals. Spatial dependence in asylum migration is the third application, discussed in the fourth chapter. It is well documented in the literature that personal networks of migrants reduce the risk of migration and facilitate transition to the host country. So far it has always been assumed that these personal networks only exist for fellow countrymen. The empirical analysis, however, shows that the positive effects also operate across borders and that also migrants from other geographically close source countries make asylum migration from a given source country more likely. Furthermore, it is shown that a more restrictive asylum policy in one destination country provides a negative externality for other destinations. This is because asylum seekers are deflected by a tighter asylum regime and encouraged to lodge their application in more liberal target countries

social and self-benefit attributes, two competing rights for the same choice

Consumers’ indecisions about the ethical value of their choices are amongst the highest concerns regarding ethical products’ purchasing. This is especially true for Fair Trade certified products where the ethical attribute information provided by the packaging is often unacknowledged by consumers. While well-informed consumers are likely to generate positive consumer reactions to ethical products and increase its ethical consumption, less knowledgeable buyers show different purchasing patterns. In such circumstances, decisions are often driven by socio-cultural beliefs about the low functional performance of ethical or sustainable attributes. For instance, products more congruent with sustainability (e.g., produce) are considered to be simpler but less tasty than less sustainable products. Less sustainable products instead, are considered to be more sophisticated and to provide consumers with more hedonic pleasures (e.g., chocolate mousse). The extent that ethicality is linked with experiences that provide consumers with more pain than pleasure is also manifested in pro-social social behaviors. More specifically through conspicuous self-sacrificial consumption experiences like running for charity in marathons with wide public exposure. The willingness of consumers to engage in such costly initiatives is moderated by gender differences and further, mediated by the chronic productivity orientation of some individuals to use time in a productive manner. Using experimental design studies, I show that consumers (1) use a set of affective and cognitive associations with on-package elements to interpret ethical attributes, (2) implicitly associate ethicality with simplicity, and that (3) men versus women show different preferences in their forms of contribution to pro-social causes

Cooperation in the Liberalization of Soviet-Western Trade? A Transaction-Cost Analysis of Soviet Joint Ventures With the West.

This study employs the method of transaction-cost analysis--the price of doing business between economic and political agents--to the study of Soviet-Western political economy (particularly Soviet joint ventures with the West). Its purpose is to determine: (1) if Soviet foreign economic policy in the Gorbachev era has reduced the transaction costs to Western firms engaging in joint ventures with the Soviet Union when compared to previous Western business options (e.g., co-production, licensing, turn-key projects), and (2) if the reduction is sufficient to encourage joint ventures to become a mechanism of greater cooperation and liberalization in Soviet-Western political economy and the international political economy (IPE). Survey data collected from 518 Western firms doing business in the Soviet Union supports the theoretical assumptions of the transaction-cost literature. Empirical analysis of the data demonstrates that the decision by a Western firm to engage or not engage in a joint venture is directly influenced by that firm\u27s perception of the level of transaction costs that would be incurred in such a venture. The study demonstrates that transaction-cost analysis provides greater empirical verisimilitude than any other existing IPE model for the study of Soviet-Western political economy