This study examines the impact of gender at three different positions in a firm’s hierarchy on innovative activities, looking at over 6474 firms in 30 emerging countries. We create a dummy variable for each of the six survey questions on product innovation, process innovation, organizational innovation, marketing innovation, and R&D (Research & Development) spending. Each dummy acts as a dependent variable in a separate logit regression, and the sum of the dummies acts as the dependent variable in another ordered logit regression. We use the female ownership percentage, female top management, and female majority in the workforce as test variables. We use the Heckman two-stage model to address endogeneity concerns with gender. We find that the female ownership percentage is generally positively related to individual innovation measures as well as the composite measure, while female top management is positively associated with marketing innovation only, and a female majority in the workforce is not significantly related to any measure. The results suggest that promoting innovation in emerging countries would involve governments encouraging further market participation by women and supporting female CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) to innovate, and firms fostering innovation among female workers.

This study aims to investigate the effects of product and process innovations on manufacturing firm performance in Southeast Asian emerging markets. To this end, using a cross-national sample of 2324 manufacturing firms from the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) dataset of 2015, we test the effects of product and process innovations on the sales growth of manufacturing firms in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This study finds that product innovation is positively related to sales growth while new operating technologies are negatively associated with sales growth. For high-tech firms, product innovation is positively related to sales growth. The findings imply that in Southeast Asian emerging markets, governments and manufacturing firms can enhance performance by investing in product innovation.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among an individual athlete’s brand equity, overall spectator satisfaction at sporting events and behavioral intentions. Design/methodology/approach: The convenience sampling method was used when approaching potential participants among spectators of the LG Whisen Rhythmic All Stars 2013, a sporting event in which celebrated sports players perform choreographed dance routines. A total of 350 surveys were completed in Go-Yang, South Korea. Of the surveys collected, 20 were discarded due to excessive missing values, resulting in 330 usable surveys. Findings: Using structural equation modeling, this study found that the brand equity of an individual athlete positively and directly affects the overall sporting event satisfaction and behavioral intentions, including re-purchase and word-of-mouth intentions among event attendees, which are factors that are mediated indirectly by satisfaction. Originality/value: This study shows that the brand equity of an individual athlete can increase the spectator satisfaction levels in a similar manner to the brand equity of a sports team or product.

This study was examined the new money generated from Formula One Grand Prix (F1) and the economic impacts of this new money on the host economy using input–output analysis. We find that the impact of the new money from non-local attendees or international attendees is more pronounced compared to that from local attendees. Also, F1 event appears to influence on sports-related industry as well as other industries such as manufacturing industry. Our findings suggest that the host cities should focus on increasing the non-local and international attendees in order to enhance the economic impacts of a sport event.

The effects of listing status on a firm’s lease accounting: Evidence from South Korea

This study examines the effect of capital lease and operating lease options in accounting on credit ratings and the cost of debt using data for 13 years (2001 to 2013) on 6133 listed and unlisted domestic firms in Korea that recognize leases on financial statements. We use the Heckman two-stage model to control for sample selection bias from lease selection. The first stage is the probit regression in which the dependent variable is a dummy variable on the lease selection and the explanatory variables are factors known to affect lease selection. The second stage consists of the ordered probit regression model and the ordinary least square regression model where the dependent variables are credit rating and cost of debt, respectively. The results show that lease selection does not significantly affect corporate credit ratings—however, in terms of the cost of debt, enterprises that adopt operating leases spend considerably less than firms that engage in capital leases. Further analysis suggests that the results for credit ratings do not differ by listing status. However, the cost of debt for listed companies does not seem to differ by lease selection, while unlisted firms see a sharp decline in their cost of debt when they choose operating leases over capital leases.