Multinationals and Unionism in Indonesia

This paper presents a critical analysis of the factors shaping the interaction between multinationals and trade unions in Indonesia, focusing on the recent period of democratization following the downfall of the Suharto regime. It has been suggested that union growth risks undermining Indonesia’s competitive advantages (cheap labour) and could encourage the exit of multinationals to cheaper competitors. In order to test this proposition, two case studies were conducted: one in the automotive industry and the other in the banking industry.The paper first provides an overview of multinational activity and FDI in Indonesia, and their interaction with a nascent union movement. This is followed by presenting the findings of interviews conducted at the multinational enterprises with managers and union officials; to provide empirical insights into the bargaining process. The final part of the paper provides a preliminary assessment of the impact of union behaviour on MNC profitability and competitiveness in Indonesia. In contrast to traditional views of unions as impeding MNC profitability and “encouraging” exit, the paper finds that unions and MNCs can engage in constructive partnerships, but that pressures and contradictions in the relationship remain

Neural coding of naturalistic motion stimuli

We study a wide field motion sensitive neuron in the visual system of the blowfly {\em Calliphora vicina}. By rotating the fly on a stepper motor outside in a wooded area, and along an angular motion trajectory representative of natural flight, we stimulate the fly's visual system with input that approaches the natural situation. The neural response is analyzed in the framework of information theory, using methods that are free from assumptions. We demonstrate that information about the motion trajectory increases as the light level increases over a natural range. This indicates that the fly's brain utilizes the increase in photon flux to extract more information from the photoreceptor array, suggesting that imprecision in neural signals is dominated by photon shot noise in the physical input, rather than by noise generated within the nervous system itself.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

A Walk in Customers' Shoes: How Attentional Bias Modification Affects Ownership of Integrity-violating Social Media Posts

The number of social media posts that expose company integrity violations has increased dramatically. In response, some companies empower employees to respond to customer blogs, which requires employees to recognize the customer's perspective. We show that attentional bias modification can be used to prime employees of two global Fortune 100 companies with a self-sufficiency or empathy bias. The results indicate that narrative transportation, or the extent to which employees mentally enter the world evoked by a customer's story, mediates the effect of attentional bias on two relevant psychological ownership dimensions: acknowledgment of responsibility and willingness to respond. Participants with a self-sufficiency bias neither acknowledge responsibility nor want to respond. However, participants primed with an empathy bias take responsibility for the customer's case and respond to the integrity violation. We find evidence for two boundary conditions of this effect: (1) it strengthens when the employee perceives the customer's financial vulnerability as high and (2) it weakens when the customer is impolite in the blog post

Evolving Roles and Structures of Triadic Engagement in Healthcare

Purpose This study focuses on the changing nature of healthcare service encounters by studying the phenomenon of triadic engagement incorporating interactions between patients, local and virtual networks and healthcare professionals. Design/methodology/approach An 18-month longitudinal ethnographic study documents interactions in naturally occurring healthcare consultations. Professionals (n=13) and patients (n=24) within primary and secondary care units were recruited. Analysis of observations, field notes and interviews provides an integrated picture of triadic engagement. Findings Triadic engagement is conceptualised against a two-level framework. (1) The structure of triadic consultations is identified in terms of the human voice, virtual voice and networked voice. These are related to: companions’ contributions to discussions and the virtual network impact. (2) Evolving roles are mapped to three phases of transformation: enhancement; empowerment; emancipation. Triadic engagement varied across conditions. Research limitations/implications These changing roles and structures evidence an increasing emphasis on the responsible consumer and patients/companions to utilise information/support in making health-related decisions. The nature and role of third voices requires clear delineation. Practical implications Structures of consultations should be rethought around the diversity of patient/companion behaviours and expectations as patients undertake self-service activities. Implications for policy and practice are: the parallel set of local/virtual informational and service activities; a network orientation to healthcare; tailoring of support resources/guides for professionals and third parties to inform support practices. Originality/value Contributions are made to understanding triadic engagement and forwarding the agenda on patient-centred care. Longitudinal illumination of consultations is offered through an exceptional level of access to observe consultations

Me, Myself, and Future Generations: The Role of Affinity and Effectiveness in the Creation of Consumer Environmental Stewardship (CENS)

Policymakers, consumer advocate groups, and researchers agree that consumers need to increase their proenvironmental behaviors if a decent standard of living is to be ensured for future generations. Despite high levels of environmental concern, consumers still refrain from large-scale adoption of proenvironmental behaviors. Social marketers agree that a change in attitudes is not enough to stimulate the necessary behavioral change and are looking for ways to help consumers overcome the costs (e.g., price premiums, inconvenience) that are often associated with proenvironmental behaviors. Currently, consumers often see proenvironmental behavior as a trade-off between short-term personal benefits and longer term collective benefits. The authors contribute to the social marketing literature on proenvironmental behavior by introducing the concept of Consumer Environmental Stewardship (CENS), which centers on the use of intrinsic motivation to stimulate a personal sense of responsibility for the environment. The findings, based on a survey and three experiments, show that the stimulation of consumers’ affinity with future generations (AFGs) and perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE) can help to promote CENS, which in turn raises proenvironmental behaviors. However, this research also shows that increasing levels of AFGs can backfire and result in lower levels of CENS, if consumers experience low levels of PCE

The emotional review–reward effect: how do reviews increase impulsivity?

A growing reliance on customer reviews prompts firms to develop strategies to encourage customers to post online reviews of their products. However, little research investigates the behavioral consequences of writing a review. The act of sharing personal opinions through reviews is a rewarding experience and makes customers feel socially connected. With an application of reverse alliesthesia theory, the current study predicts that such rewarding experiences drive online reviewers to seek other rewards, such as impulsive buying. Three lab-based and two field studies demonstrate such an emotional review–reward effect: sharing emotional inf ormation in the public realm of customer reviews, rather than forming similar opinions privately, drives participants to make more impulsive buying decisions

Universal Statistical Behavior of Neural Spike Trains

We construct a model that predicts the statistical properties of spike trains generated by a sensory neuron. The model describes the combined effects of the neuron's intrinsic properties, the noise in the surrounding, and the external driving stimulus. We show that the spike trains exhibit universal statistical behavior over short times, modulated by a strongly stimulus-dependent behavior over long times. These predictions are confirmed in experiments on H1, a motion-sensitive neuron in the fly visual system.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Communication in the Gig Economy: Buying and Selling in Online Freelance Marketplaces

The proliferating gig economy relies on online freelance marketplaces, which support relatively anonymous interactions by text-based messages. Informational asymmetries thus arise that can lead to exchange uncertainties between buyers and freelancers. Conventional marketing thought recommends reducing such uncertainty. However, uncertainty reduction and uncertainty management theories indicate that buyers and freelancers might benefit more from balancing, rather than reducing, uncertainty, such as by strategically adhering to or deviating from common principles. With dyadic analyses of calls for bids and bids from a leading online freelance marketplace, this study reveals that buyers attract more bids from freelancers when they provide moderate degrees of task information and concreteness, avoid sharing personal information, and limit the affective intensity of their communication. Freelancers’ bid success and price premiums increase when they mimic the degree of task information and affective intensity exhibited by buyers. However, mimicking a lack of personal information and concreteness reduces freelancers’ success, so freelancers should always be more concrete and offer more personal information than buyers do. These contingent perspectives offer insights into buyer–seller communication in two-sided online marketplaces; they clarify that despite, or sometimes due to, communication uncertainty, both sides can achieve success in the online gig economy

Getting Smart: Learning From Technology-Empowered Frontline Interactions

Smart technologies are rapidly transforming frontline employee-customer interactions. However, little academic research has tackled urgent, relevant questions regarding such technology-empowered frontline interactions. The current study conceptualizes (1) smart technology use in frontline employee-customer interactions, (2) smart technology–mediated learning mechanisms that elevate service effectiveness and efficiency performance to empower frontline interactions, and (3) stakeholder interaction goals as antecedents of smart technology–mediated learning. We propose that emerging smart technologies, which can substitute for or complement frontline employees’ (FLEs) efforts to deliver customized service over time, may help resolve the long-standing tension between service efficiency and effectiveness because they can learn or enable learning from and across customers, FLEs, and interactions. Drawing from pragmatic and deliberate learning theories, the authors conceptualize stakeholder learning mechanisms that mediate the effects of frontline interaction goals on FLEs’ and customers’ effectiveness and efficiency outcomes. This study concludes with implications for research and practice