Michael J. Page

• Bentley University

Essentials of Business Research Methods provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to research methods and analytical techniques for business students. The authors offer a straightforward, hands-on approach to the vital managerial process of gathering and using data to make relevant and timely business decisions.

The Karmijn Kapitaal case presented in this chapter is primarily focused on socially responsible decision-making when raising investment capital. It encourages debate around the responsibility that investment professionals have when accept- ing investment commitments from individuals. Readers are invited to consider the extent to which caveat empto...

Increasingly, managers must make decisions based on almost unlimited information. How can they navigate and organize this vast amount of data? Essentials of Business Research Methods provides research techniques for people who aren't data analysts. The authors offer a straightforward, hands-on approach to the vital managerial process of gathering a...

Increasingly, managers must make decisions based on almost unlimited information. How can they navigate and organize this vast amount of data? Essentials of Business Research Methods provides research techniques for people who aren't data analysts. The authors offer a straightforward, hands-on approach to the vital managerial process of gathering a...

In spite of the large body of evidence in favour of capital market efficiency in the semi-strong form, several enigmatic findings persist. As much of the research is based on the theoretical foundation of the Capital Asset Pricing Model, the debate concerning these findings has revolved around whether the market is inefficient or the Capital Asset...

This paper investigates what business schools are saying in their mission statements and whether they provide a meaningful basis for strategic choice, distinction and differentiation from a positioning perspective; or whether they are the equivalent of "table stakes" in the MBA game - undifferentiated signals that connote legitimacy. Content analys...

Summiting the highest mountain on each of the seven continents is the pinnacle of achievement for many mountaineers. This chapter describes the development and successful implemen-tation of an all-women MBA elective at the Rotterdam School of Management that involves participants attempting to sum-mit Mount Kilimanjaro, one of the seven and the hig...

Ardeid birds and pigs are known as major amplifying hosts for Japanese encephalitis virus, and ducklings and chickens have been considered to play at best a minor role in outbreaks because of their low or absent viremia. We hypothesized that viremia of sufficient magnitude would develop in young ducklings (Anas platyrhynchos) and chicks (Gallus gal...

In his classical work, The Tacit Dimension, scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi makes the case that everything we know has a beginning in the unsaid and assumed background information of our culture. Everett (2012) makes a similar case in his book, Language: The Cultural Tool, referring to tacit knowledge as the ‘dark matter of the mind’ This...

Despite knowing how important social capital is and despite the fact that so much time, money, and attention is given to raising the status of women in managerial ranks, women have yet to achieve anything like equal status at the top level of organizational hierarchies. One factor that has received limited attention in the literature is that of dif...

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to consider business schools and to elicit whether, in seeking differentiation, rankings are more desirable than brand personality and whether silver medal winner effects exist in the perceptions of brand personalities. Design/methodology/approach – Literature on reputation, identity, differentiation, brand perso...

‘[V]irtually all public and private enterprises – including most successful corporations - are becoming dominantly repositories and coordinators of intellect’ (Quinn, 1992: 241). University based management schools play a role in harnessing this intellect by supporting the development of leaders with the capacity to think critically, to make choice...

This research note reports on a study using a previously published checklist to assess the brand management practices of business schools. Indications are that the perceptions of a sample of senior administrators regarding how well their institutions manage their brands are not positive, and that there is much room for improvement. While the checkl...

Using written analysis of case studies to assess MBA students in the core marketing course can place severe time restrictions on students and impose harsh grading burdens on instructors. Similarly, providing written feedback to students on their work adds to the instructor's workload without necessarily showing any empathy to the audience. This pap...

The executive MBA qualification is much sought-after as an alternative to either full time or part time study for a postgraduate management qualification. Potential top managers and organizations alike have eagerly embraced it, with the former seeing it as a pathway to corporate success, and the latter as a solution to issues such as management suc...

While customer retention is a critical factor in the success of most companies, proper management of customer defection requires rigorous customer valuation. We propose a financial options approach to achieving this. The model incorporates sequential purchase profitability and probability and recognizes that the probability of every purchase may be...

Gaps are explored between normative perspectives regarding relationship marketing found in the academic literature and the current practices of industrial marketers. The literature is reviewed to ascertain how researchers currently define relationships, their perspectives on the nature and types of relationships that exist, arguments for forming re...

Companies that have listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange by means of a public offering between 1980 and 1991 have subsequently performed poorly. This long run post issue performance is remarkably consistent with the South African evidence for seasoned rights issuing companies and the international evidence for both initial public offerings (IP...

Companies that have listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange by means of a public offering between 1980 and 1991 have subsequently performed poorly. This long run post issue performance is remarkably consistent with the South African evidence for seasoned rights issuing companies and the international evidence for both initial public offerings (IP...

Firms can grow businesses by attracting new customers, losing fewer customers and doing more business with existing customers. Keeping your present customers and doing more business with them is generally a more efficient way of using resources. It requires a detailed analysis of customer defections to assess the effects of losing customers on long...

This paper presents evidence that stocks traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE), which appear to have provided significant abnormal returns following the announcement of stock dividend distributions, provide no such significant abnormal returns when the normal returns are defined in accordance with the Arbitrage Pricing Theory. The findings a...

Each year, organizations spend vast sums of money on promotional efforts, much of which is geared towards acquiring new customers. Most senior marketing executives are acutely aware of the costs of this. Analyses are made of such variables as cost per thousand in advertising budgets, new accounts opened in sales management, and coupons redeemed in...

In spite of Shanken’s (1982) rejection of its testability, a vast body of literature has developed over the last two decades involving empirical tests of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory. The majority of the earlier studies focused on the determination of the number and pricing of the APT factors. The core methodology employed has involved the use of f...

The standard approach used to assess the performance of unit trust managers is based on the premise that the investment strategy is basically stationary. Active management is viewed as being confined to timing - occasional switching between risky and riskless securities - and selectivity - switching between securities of essentially the same system...

Although researchers in the United States report that mutual funds fail to outperform simple buy-and-hold investment strategies, South African studies have found that unit trust shares do outperform the market. This study employs the Arbitrage Pricing Theory model in order to assess the performance of twenty-five unit trusts during the four-year pe...

Positive abnormal returns of stocks which are split and stocks for which stock dividends are distributed have been reported for shares traded in the NYSE. Evidence also exists of an increase in the volatility of returns following the split. This paper provides evidence that stocks traded on the JSE have also provided abnormal returns following spli...

While considerable empirical work has been conducted in the United States concerning excess returns and the relationship of these returns to firm size and E/P ratio, thus far, there have been few similar empirical studies conducted using Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) data. Evidence of firm size or E/P ratio effects has been ascribed by various...

There are two principal theories of commodity futures prices. The theory of storage, which explains the difference between contemporaneous futures and spot prices (the basis) in terms of interest rates, warehousing costs, and convenience yields, and the theory of forecast power and premium, which is based on the assumption that the futures price is...

In this article a bootstrapping routine is used to compare the efficiency of different benchmarks that can be used for measuring security price performance on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Four approaches are compared; three benchmarks based on the theory of the Capital Asset Pricing Model, and one, a two-factor benchmark, based on the theory of...

In 1976 Stephen A. Ross developed a new theory of securities pricing called the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT). According to the APT the return an investor can expect from a share is related to the risk-free rate and numerous other factors rather than just the return on the market as predicted by the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). Although a c...