Knowledge that Transforms

The profitability of established products is affected greatly by the extent to which they are meaningfully differentiated from competing alternatives. Maintaining meaningful differentiation, in turn, is facilitated by ongoing development of creative marketing programs. Although marketplace observation reveals a general lack of creativity in the way established products are marketed, some product managers are able to devise creative marketing programs for their products. The authors test hypotheses concerning the effects of individual (i.e., product manager) and situational (i.e., planning process) characteristics on marketing program creativity. The findings reveal that marketing program creativity is a function of individual problem-solving inputs (e.g., knowledge of the marketing environment, diversity of experience, diversity of education), motivational factors (e.g., intrinsic motivation, risk taking), and situational factors (e.g., planning process formalization, interaction with others, time pressure).

This paper is concerned with exploring the degree to which industry structure determines firm performance. Most of the business policy literature follows Porter in arguing that industry structure has an important influence on firm level profit rates. the arguments contained in this paper take a counter position. It is argued that a plausible alternative to the hypothesis that industry structure matters is the hypothesis that (holding demand constant) individual firm differences are the most important determinant of firm profitability.

The potential effects of attrition in longitudinal research are addressed and a procedure for assessing its effects is recommended. We recommend that researchers assess the effects of subject attrition on their data by assessing: (1) the presence of non-random sampling using multiple logistic regression, (2) mean differences on the study’s variables between those who responded and did not respond to the subsequent data collection, (3) the restriction or enhancement of variances, and (4) changes in relationships among variables due to attrition. We demonstrate the procedure using data collected from a random sample of employed adults in the US regarding job satisfaction, job characteristics, demographics, and mood. In our data, subject attrition led to non-random sampling, affected the means and variances of some of the variables, but did not affect the relationships among the variables. The effects of subject attrition may be sample specific, but the procedure recommended for assessing its effects may be used in other data sets and substantive areas.

This paper provides a review of research into the relationships between psychological types, as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and managerial attributes, behaviors and effectiveness. The literature review includes an examination of the psychometric properties of the MBTI and the contributions and limitations of research on psychological types. Next, key findings are discussed and used to advance propositions that relate psychological type to diverse topics such as risk tolerance, problem solving, information systems design, conflict management and leadership. We conclude with a research agenda that advocates: (I) the exploration of potential psychometric refinements of the MBTI, (2) more rigorous research designs, and (3) a broadening of the scope of managerial research into type.

In this article, we attempt to separate myth from reality by reviewing research results pertinent to two questions: are whistle-blowers really crackpots and do most of them suffer retaliation following their actions? Because scholars interested in these questions have come from several different fields, and because integration is lacking among their perspectives, myth is often perpetuated. We try to ameliorate this situation by exploring the phenomenon from a broad interdisciplinary perspective and by reviewing the findings of recent empirical work in the area. Providing a realistic view of the problem is critical at this juncture, as organizations struggle to find mechanisms to deal with whistle-blowers and as legislators attempt to find policies to encourage whistle-blowing, in order to control illegal organizational behavior.