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Ashwin PapersHow Stock Market Listing Changes Firm Innovation BehaviorThe provided text is an excerpt from a 2015 academic article by Simone Wies and Christine Moorman, which explores how going public via an initial public offering (IPO) affects a firm's innovation strategies in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) sector. The authors hypothesize that while public financing increases the level of innovation, stock market pressure and disclosure requirements lead firms to reduce the riskiness of those innovations. Specifically, the study finds that after an IPO, firms introduce more products and greater variety, but fewer breakthrough innovations or products in new categories, confirming the authors' predictions using a sample of 40,000 product...
2025-11-1917 minAshwin PapersInnovation's Effect on Firm Value and Risk - Insights from Consumer Packaged GoodsThe provided text is an excerpt from a 2008 Journal of Marketing article by Alina B. Sorescu and Jelena Spanjol, examining Innovation’s Effect on Firm Value and Risk within the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. The authors differentiate between breakthrough innovation and incremental innovation, analyzing how each type affects three facets of firm performance: normal profits, economic rents, and total firm risk. Based on data from over 20,000 new CPG products, the findings indicate that breakthrough innovation is associated with increases in both normal profits and economic rents, as well as an increase in firm risk, which is compensated for by...
2025-11-1912 minAshwin PapersNew Product Design - Concept, Measurement, and ConsequencesThe provided text, an excerpt from an academic paper, focuses on new product design as a source of competitive advantage and a driver of company performance. The authors define product design as a multidimensional construct comprising aesthetics, functionality, and symbolism after conducting an extensive literature review and consumer interviews. Crucially, they introduce and validate a new, nine-item scale to measure these three dimensions across different product categories and cultural contexts, using data from thousands of U.S. and European consumers. Finally, the research investigates the impact of these design dimensions on key consumer outcomes, including purchase intention, word of...
2025-11-1912 minAshwin PapersThe Impact of Mergers and Acquisitions on the Sales ForceThe academic paper examines the causal effect of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) involving a mismatch of external images on a firm's sales force, drawing on social identity theory. Through two studies—a natural longitudinal experiment and a scenario-based experiment—the researchers found that a merger with a poorer-image firm immediately weakens salespeople's organizational identification (OI), subsequently impairing their performance. This adverse effect is attributed to image uncertainty rather than job uncertainty, with the OI dilution effect being stronger than any OI enhancement from merging with a better-image firm. The study also identifies boundary conditions, noting that longer-tenured salespeople experience...
2025-11-0918 minAshwin PapersThe Threat from WithinThe scholarly article from Management Science explores a paradoxical issue within cross-functional account teams, focusing on how account managers’ transaction-specific investments (TSIs) in customers lead to concern about internal opportunism by their own team specialists. This concern about internal misconduct, referred to as the "threat from within," prompts account managers to engage in internal blocking—restricting specialists' access to customers and information—which ultimately harms overall performance with the customer. The research identifies that the expected duration of the account manager–customer relationship strengthens this concern, while the expected duration of the specialist–customer relationship weakens it. The study concludes that managin...
2025-11-0913 minAshwin PapersDesign and Governance of Multichannel Sales SystemsThe provided text is an excerpt from a 2020 journal article by Homburg et al. titled "Design and Governance of Multichannel Sales Systems: Financial Performance Consequences in Business-to-Business Markets," which examines how the design and management of sales systems affect financial outcomes in B2B markets. Drawing on multiple agency theory and governance value analysis, the authors investigate the impact of direct and indirect channel usage on manufacturer performance, contingent on governance mechanisms like formalization and centralization. The research finds that the effectiveness of governance strategies depends critically on alignment with channel design; for example, formalization benefits indirect channel usage whil...
2025-11-0916 minAshwin PapersCorporate Social Responsibility and Shareholder WealthThe provided academic excerpts examine the relationship between a firm's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts and its shareholder wealth, focusing on the moderating influence of marketing capability. The authors utilize data from 1,725 firms over ten years to argue that while overall CSR efforts alone do not significantly impact stock returns or idiosyncratic risk, they become significant when coupled with a strong marketing capability, defined as a firm's efficiency in converting marketing resources into sales. Furthermore, the study differentiates between six types of CSR, finding that marketing capability positively complements CSR activities with verifiable benefits to stakeholders (like environment and...
2025-11-0313 minAshwin PapersRed, Blue, and Purple FirmsThe academic article, "Red, Blue, and Purple Firms: Organizational Political Ideology and Corporate Social Responsibility," explores the relationship between a company's collective political beliefs and its engagement with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The authors introduce the concept of organizational political ideology to explain why firms vary in their CSR stances, suggesting that the political leanings of the larger employee population, not just the CEO's, influence these corporate actions. Using employee political donations to define firms as "red" (conservative), "blue" (liberal), or "purple" (moderate), the study finds that liberal-leaning companies engage in more CSR advances across measures such as overall...
2025-11-0316 minAshwin PapersThe New Regulator in TownThe academic text examines the effect of Walmart's sustainability mandate on its suppliers' short-term shareholder value, treating the dominant retailer as a private-sector regulator. The authors investigate whether supplier concerns about absorbing investment costs while retailers appropriate potential gains are justified, finding that most suppliers are financially harmed, although a significant minority benefits. The research explores how a supplier's marketing characteristics, such as brand equity and advertising, provide countervailing power to resist Walmart's appropriation attempts. Conversely, the study reveals that a supplier’s operational characteristics, like cost efficiency and R&D investment, surprisingly make them more vulnerable to the re...
2025-11-0318 minAshwin PapersDoes Corporate Social Responsibility Lead to Superior Financial PerformanceThe academic article, published in Management Science in 2015 by Caroline Flammer, examines the causal relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and superior financial performance using a regression discontinuity approach. Specifically, the study analyzes the financial outcomes of companies where shareholder proposals related to CSR pass or fail by a narrow margin of votes, treating these "close calls" as a quasi-random assignment of CSR. The author finds that adopting these close-call CSR proposals leads to positive shareholder value and improved accounting performance, driven by increases in labor productivity and sales growth. However, the study cautions that these findings primarily apply...
2025-11-0315 minAshwin PapersThe Differential Impact of New Product Development “Make/Buy” Choices on Immediate and Future Product QualityThe academic article explores the differentiated consequences of new product development (NPD) "make/buy" decisions on vehicle transmission system quality within the automobile industry. Utilizing data on 173 models from twelve major firms, the authors determine that NPD outsourcing ("buy") is generally associated with higher immediate product quality, while internal development ("make") leads to greater future product quality. This study establishes that the positive immediate quality impact of outsourcing is amplified by greater technological complexity and higher firm NPD capability. Conversely, the positive long-term quality benefit of internal development is strengthened by post-launch adverse feedback and greater firm NPD capability...
2025-10-2413 minAshwin PapersTransaction cost theory: past, present and futureThe academic article provides an extensive overview of Transaction Cost Theory (TCT), tracing its evolution from its inception to potential future applications. It examines the foundational ideas of three major scholars: Ronald Coase (the past), Oliver Williamson (the present), and Yochai Benkler (the future), detailing their respective contributions to the theory. The author explains that TCT posits that conducting economic transactions involves costs, and different organizational structures, such as markets versus firms, entail different costs, which determines the optimal arrangement. The text highlights how each scholar has built upon or significantly modified TCT, with Coase establishing the concept, Williamson...
2025-10-2414 minAshwin PapersTransaction Cost Analysis: Past, Present, and Future ApplicationsThe provided text is an excerpt from the 1997 academic article, "Transaction Cost Analysis: Past, Present, and Future Applications," authored by Aric Rindfleisch and Jan B. Heide and published in the Journal of Marketing. The article offers a comprehensive synthesis and integration of Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA) research, particularly focusing on its application within the marketing discipline and related fields. It outlines the foundational concepts of TCA, including the behavioral assumptions of bounded rationality and opportunism and the transactional dimensions of asset specificity, environmental uncertainty, and behavioral uncertainty. Furthermore, the text reviews a large body of empirical research to assess...
2025-10-2418 minAshwin PapersAdvertising Disclosure, Investor Risk, and Analyst UncertaintyThe academic article examines whether publicly traded firms benefit from voluntarily disclosing their advertising spending in annual reports, finding that this disclosure significantly lowers investor uncertainty (idiosyncratic risk) and reduces the disagreement among financial analysts regarding future firm performance. The authors argue that this occurs because formal disclosure provides more complete and public information compared to external estimates, allowing analysts to better assess managerial actions and future cash flows. Consistent with agency theory, the positive effect of disclosure on reducing analyst uncertainty is stronger for firms with high liquidity or those in more competitive industries, but also for firms...
2025-10-2118 minAshwin PapersAgency Theory: An Assessment and ReviewThe provided text is an academic article titled "Agency Theory: An Assessment and Review" by Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, published in the Academy of Management Review in 1989. This comprehensive review examines the controversial nature and significant contributions of agency theory, which analyzes the relationship between a principal delegating work and an agent performing it, often framed as a contractual problem. The article describes the two main streams of agency theory—positivist and principal-agent research—highlighting their differing focuses but complementary roles in identifying efficient contract types. Eisenhardt concludes that agency theory provides unique insights into information systems, incentives, risk, and outcome unce...
2025-10-2117 minAshwin PapersAgency Relationships in Marketing: A Review and FutureThe academic article provides an extensive overview of Agency Theory and its implications and applications within the field of marketing. The authors establish that agency relationships are pervasive in marketing, despite the theory only recently gaining traction in marketing research, and they clarify the theory's major constructs, including the hidden actionand hidden information models. A significant portion of the text is dedicated to reviewing past and potential agency-based research across various marketing issues, such as salesforce compensation, channel coordination and control, and consumer promotion/signaling. The paper concludes by discussing the limitations of Agency Theory and suggesting ways marketing researcher...
2025-10-2117 minAshwin PapersTheory Building: Review and IntegrationThe article "Theory Building: A Review and Integration" by Shepherd and Suddaby offers a comprehensive systematic review of the literature on theory construction within the field of management. The authors organize their review by structuring the process of theorizing around the five core elements of a compelling story: conflict, character, setting, sequence, and plot and arc. The text explains that theory development is essential for advancing management knowledge, but it is a challenging task due to the numerous, often unintegrated, theorizing tools available. Furthermore, the authors propose an innovative approach called pragmatic empirical theorizing, which transparently uses quantitative empirical find...
2025-09-2619 minAshwin PapersSignaling Theory: State, Future, and Management ApplicationsThe provided text is an excerpt from a 2025 Journal of Management article by Connelly et al., which offers a comprehensive review and future agenda for Signaling Theory in organizational sciences. Signaling theory explains how observable signals convey credible information about unobservable qualities to decision-makers, with the efficacy of a signal resting on its costliness. The review categorizes prior management research into two main groups: organizational-level signaling, often targeting shareholders and customers, and individual-level signaling, frequently aimed at prospective employers and co-workers. Furthermore, the authors call for increased scholarly focus on aspects such as consistently accounting for signal costs (including "reaction cost...
2025-09-2617 minAshwin PapersThe Platformization of BrandsThe academic article "The Platformization of Brands" examines how traditional product brands are responding to the challenge posed by digital aggregation platforms like Amazon and Google Shopping, which have usurped direct access to consumers. The authors propose that brands can counteract this by creating their own brand flagship platforms, which foster versatile and ongoing interactions, moving beyond simple commercial transactions. A key element of this strategy is the concept of consumer crowdsourcing and crowdsending—consumers drawing value from and contributing value to the platform community—which helps define a framework for assembling different platform types. The research introduces a typology o...
2025-09-2617 minAshwin PapersA Theories-in-Use Approach to Building Marketing TheoryThe academic article by Zeithaml et al. champions the theories-in-use (TIU) approach as a vital method for developing novel, organic marketing theories distinct from those borrowed from other fields. It presents the TIU approach as a research methodology that involves cocreating relevant knowledge with practitioners and consumers by examining their mental models of how things work in a specific marketing context. The authors detail the TIU process, including guidance on developing new constructs and theoretical propositions, and compare it with other inductive and deductive research methods like grounded theory and case studies. They conclude by discussing the rigor, limitations, and fut...
2025-09-2620 min