Product Lotteries and Loss Aversion

Product lotteries are a sales strategy where companies hide features of differentiated products from consumers until the purchase is complete. I identify loss aversion as an important factor explaining the existence of vertical product lotteries. I consider a profit-maximizing monopolist serving loss-averse consumers with rational expectations about the lottery. I find that the optimal strategy consists of offering a premium product with high and deterministic quality and a lottery with stochastic and lower expected quality. When consumers are reasonably loss averse, I show that the profit increase from adding a quality lottery exceeds 10% compared to the case without a lottery

Optimal pricing strategy for green products under salience theory

Environmental pressures and people’s demands for green consumption have prompted manufacturers to engage in the research and development of green products. Manufacturers need to consider the price and greenness of products when making production decisions. This paper analyzes the level of greenness and price competition of duopoly manufacturers in the consumer market in which both green-sensitive consumers (salience to greenness) and price-sensitive consumers (salience to price) exist simultaneously according to salience theory. We find that the regular manufacturer will enter the green market when all consumers’ average degree of price responsiveness is small or in a moderate part of the region. In addition, this paper also discusses the influence of salience on manufacturers’ level of greenness and pricing strategy choice. We find that the degree of salient thinking of consumers influences optimal pricing, optimal greenness and profits under the uniform pricing and price discrimination mechanisms

How Scenarios Became Corporate Strategies: Alternative Futures and Uncertainty in Strategic Management

How Scenarios Became Corporate Strategies tracks the transformation of scenario planning, a non-calculative technique for imagining alternative futures, from postwar American thermonuclear defence projects to corporate planning efforts beginning in the late 1960s. Drawing on archival research, the dissertation tells a history of how different corporate strategists in the second half of the twentieth century attempted to engage with future uncertainties by drawing heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory rational and intuitive techniques together in their developments of corporate scenario planning. By tracing the heterogeneity of methodologies and intellectual influences in three case studies from corporate scenario planning efforts in the United States and Britain, the dissertation demonstrates how critical and countercultural philosophies that emphasized irrational human capacities like imagination, consciousness, and intuitionoften assumed to be antithetical to the rule-bound, quantitative rationalities of corporate planning effortsbecame crucial tools, rather than enemies, of corporate strategy under uncertainty after 1960. The central argument of the dissertation is that corporate scenario planning projects were non-calculative speculative attempts to augment the calculative techniques of traditional mid-century strategic decision-making with diverse human reasoning tools in order to explore and understand future uncertainties. Consequently, these projects were intertwined with an array of sometimes contradictory genealogies, from technical postwar military planning practices to countercultural intellectual resources that questioned the technological imperatives of modern life. Yet, by the mid-1980s, corporate scenario planning efforts transformed from contemplative strategies for exploring uncertainties into a method associated with the capacities of thought leaders. It was through the rising thought leadership industry of the late-twentieth-century that scenarios gained legitimacy, enabling multinational corporations to rely upon the charismatic authority of scenario practitioners in the face of unknowable futures. In making this argument, the dissertation revises assumptions in the history of postwar science and technology and science studies that pivot on the importance of impersonal, calculative strategies and technical capacities in uncertain conditions

Developing a Resilient Network Ambidexterity Scale

The purpose of this study was to develop a resilient network ambidexterity scale. While numerous research efforts have considered the dimensions of social capital, resilience, and adaptive capacity to evaluate organizations and communities, few have explored social network indicators within organizations that can be used to mobilize ambidextrous strategies during times of disruption. The emphasis here was to understand the tendencies and behaviors that networks possess to sustain or achieve success along the parallel strategies of optimization and exploration. This study progressed in three specific phases toward filling this void in organizational development literature, using a mixed-methods approach. Phase 1 was the development of the item pool and analysis of the scale to establish face and content validity. Phase 2 included administering an online survey to 344 participants. Data collected were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis, followed by a partial confirmatory factor analysis These revealed a two-factor solution central to identifying resilient network ambidexterity: Optimizing Organizational Boundaries and Exploring Novelty. Phase 3 involved getting feedback on the revised scale from organizational leaders and practitioners working in innovative fields to refine the final RNA instrument. This research made connections between resilience and ambidexterity in organizations through ongoing inquiry on ways that fusing distinct paradigms impacts organizational outcomes. The development of this scale can serve as a useful tool for organizations to assess their level of resilience and mobilize the features of optimization and exploration. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and Ohiolink ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu

The End Signs! Are We Getting the Message?

The problem addressed in this dissertation has three dimensions: imminent global catastrophe, the elitist tyranny responsible for it, and Christian detachment from both. The purpose of this dissertation is not to solve the problem in any of those three dimensions. The aim is threefold—to deconstructively demonstrate the reality of the problem; to expose its historical roots in philosophy, science, and theology; and to offer a case-study example of how it the problem may be clearly viewed and understood for the purposes of 21st century Christian life. The case study is not simple or easy, but neither is the problem it addresses. Semiotics—theory of signs—is the philosophical frame of reference, as pioneered by American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). James H. Fetzer provides intensional realism as a Peircean semiotic philosophy of science. Christian realism based on Peirce’s theory of signs is a key theme, drawn from Leonard Sweet’s Christianity. The constructive example that finishes the dissertation it represents an individual’s apologetic Christian realism as a single-case study example, including philosophical and scientific foundations. At the same time, it also represents a viable de-secularized immanent frame and social imaginary for individual as well as relational Christian being and presence in 21st century reality.35 35 Sweet, So Beautiful and Leonard Sweet, Giving Blood: A Fresh Paradigm for Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014), Kindle; James H. Fetzer, Scientific Knowledge: Causation, Explanation, and Corroboration, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 69 (Dordrecht, NL: Springer Netherlands, 1981); James H. Fetzer, Computers and Cognition: Why Minds Are Not Machines, Studies in Cognitive Systems vol. 25 (Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001); .Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009); the works of Charles Sanders Peirce (see APPENDICES: Abbreviations, Citing Charles Sanders Peirce). Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries; Taylor, A Secular Age; Taylor, “Buffered and Porous Selves.

Adaptive Policymaking: Evolving and Applying Emergent Solutions for U.S. Communications Policy

This Article presents some specific ways that U.S. policymakers should use teachings from the latest thinking in economics to create a conceptual framework in order to grapple with current controversies in communications law and regulation. First, it provides a brief overview of Emergence Economics, with an emphasis on the rough formula of emergence and the unique role of technological change in creating and furthering innovation and economic growth. Second, this paper explicates the general concept of Adaptive Policymaking by governments and includes some proposed guiding principles, an outline of the public policy design space, and an adaptive toolkit to be used by policymakers. Third, this Article discusses devising a policy design space specifically for communications policy, with an emphasis on the institutional and organizational challenges facing the FCC as it seeks to fulfill the suggested goal of furthering More Good Ideas. Finally, this paper explores the conceptual framework for the fitness landscape, including a searching critique of the notion of enabling without dictating evolutionary forces in the marketplace