Recently, the development of ransomware strains and changes in the marketplace for malware have greatly reduced the entry barrier for attackers to conduct large-scale ransomware attacks. In this ...paper, we examine how this mode of cyberattack impacts software vendors and consumer behavior. When victims face an added option to mitigate losses via a ransom payment, both the equilibrium market size and the vendor’s profit under optimal pricing can actually increase in the ransom demand. Profit can also increase in the scale of residual losses following a ransom payment (which reflect the trustworthiness of the ransomware operator). We show that for intermediate levels of risk, the vendor restricts software adoption by substantially hiking up price. This lies in stark contrast to outcomes in a benchmark case involving traditional malware (non-ransomware) where the vendor decreases price as security risk increases. Social welfare is higher under ransomware compared with the benchmark in both sufficiently low- and high-risk settings. However, for intermediate risk, it is better from a social standpoint if consumers do not have an option to pay ransom. We also show that the expected ransom paid is nonmonotone in risk, increasing when risk is moderate despite a decreasing ransom-paying population. For ransomware attacks on other vectors (beyond patchable vulnerabilities), there can still be an incentive to hike price. However, market size and profits instead weakly decrease in the ransom amount. When studying a generalized model that includes both traditional and ransomware attacks, our results remain robust to a wide range of scenarios, including threat landscapes where ransomware has only a small presence.
This paper was accepted by Kartik Hosanagar, information systems.
Funding
: This work has been supported by the Haskayne School of Business' Dean's Research Grant and by an award from the Georgia Institute of Technology Center of International Business Education & Research as part of its funded research program.
Supplemental Material:
The online appendix is available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4300
.
Purpose - Innovation is crucial for attaining a competitive advantage for companies. Innovation, versus imitation, motivates companies to launch new products and become pioneers on markets. Many ...factors have been shown to be determinants for supporting an organizational innovative orientation. One of them is organizational culture. The objective of this paper is to analyze the organizational culture that fosters or inhibits organizational innovation and imitation strategy.Design methodology approach - The paper uses a sample of 471 Spanish companies for examining the hypotheses. Using hierarchical multiple regression analysis, it relates the effect of organizational culture with an innovation strategy.Findings - The results confirm the hypotheses. The paper finds that organizational culture is a clear determinant of innovation strategy. Moreover, adhocracy cultures foster innovation strategies and hierarchical cultures promote imitation cultures.Research limitations implications - The main limitations are that data in the study were collected from one source for the cross-sectional design of this research.Practical implications - Managers should pay more attention to their organization culture if they pursue innovation imitation strategies. Moreover, depending on this orientation (to be the first company to introduce in new markets or develop new products for a market versus to follow a pioneer), companies should promote different values and norms in their organizations.Originality value - The main value of this paper is its analysis and testing of the relation of organizational culture and innovation orientation. The majority of the literature underlines the paper's seeking after organizational culture for innovation. However, this topic has not been studied in depth and requires attention to different organizational cultures and innovation orientations.
The sharing economy has fundamentally changed the way many individuals work. In this paper, we study the impact of the entry of a major ridesharing platform into U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas ...(MSAs), on the supply and demand sides of the labor market. Leveraging the difference-in-differences (DID) research design and a data set combining multiple U.S. Census archival sources, we exploit the variation in labor market metrics before and after Uber's entry into the MSAs. Our empirical findings reveal that the introduction of the ridesharing platform has an empowering effect on workers (the supply side of the labor market) and a competition effect on traditional jobs (the demand side of the labor market). Specifically, Uber's entry into the MSAs increases labor force participation, decreases the unemployment rate of residents living below the poverty level, and improves the employment and financial status of low-income workers. In addition, Uber's entry reduces the employment number and increases wages of conventional low-skill and/or low-wage jobs. This paper provides empirical evidence of the impact of a digital sharing economy platform on the labor market and suggests that policymakers and platform operators should account for this broader impact when they devise policies and make strategic decisions.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
This is an edited transcript of a conversation held to introduce the Symposium that this special issue now publishes. The editing aims to promote clarity without abandoning the informal, ...free-flowing, and speculative quality of the original conversation. The published re-creation also seeks to preserve the full set of observations made in the original conversation rather than to filter or shape them to accommodate all the authors' views. We aspire, throughout our remarks, to raise questions and identify possibilities for further research rather than to report confident conclusions.
Full text
Available for:
IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, PRFLJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Purpose
Brand value is increasingly threatened by fake news stories; the purpose of this paper is to explain how narrative response can be used to mitigate this threat, especially in situations where ...the crisis is severe and consumers are highly involved.
Design/methods
This conceptual paper derives recommendations and guidance for the use of narrative response based on storytelling and brand management literature.
Findings
This paper highlights authenticity and emotional engagement as keys to effective storytelling.
Practical implications
Current managerial approaches to dealing with misinformation are insufficient, as they presuppose an audience that can be convinced based on facts; this paper can be used to help brand managers respond to fake news stories when rational appeals fail.
Originality/value
This paper provides insight into brand management strategies in the era of fake news.
Considerable research has explored international mode choices. However, results regarding the direct influence of the host country institutional context on entry mode choice remain rather ...inconclusive with positive, negative, and mixed empirical findings. This study examines informal institutional distance and formal institutional risk as moderators on the relationship between frequently examined decision‐making criteria and the entry mode decision of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). We demonstrate that the influence of international experience, proprietary know‐how, and strategic importance on SME mode choice is contingent on the institutional context of the host country. Hypotheses are tested on a sample of 227 German SMEs. Our empirical results support our theoretical predictions, which forge a link between institutional and SME entry mode literature.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
We present a new model of multi-product firms (MPFs) and flexible manufacturing, and explore its implications in partial and general oligopolistic equilibrium. Globalization affects the scale and ...scope (or intensive margin and intra-firm extensive margin) of MPFs through a competition effect and a demand effect. The model highlights a new source of gains from trade: productivity increases as firms become "leaner and meaner", concentrating on their core competence; but also a new source of losses from trade: product variety may fall. Our results also hold under free entry, which allows in addition for adjustment along the traditional inter-firm extensive margin.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, INZLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
The recent surge in electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) or electronic cigarette use among both adolescents and adults challenged tobacco regulatory frameworks worldwide. In this article, we ...review recent US Food and Drug Administration regulatory approaches to tobacco products, including attempts to regulate nicotine concentration and address youth use. We examine recent drives to promote a harm reduction approach in other product markets such as opioids, where the use of methadone and related therapies promote the public health. We describe the potential of a harm reduction framework for ENDS regulation based on tiered nicotine exposure standards coupled with risk-based product distribution controls that would enable ENDS products to meet the ‘Appropriate for the Protection of the Public Health’ standard required for tobacco product market entry. A harm reduction approach to ENDS regulation could help countries achieve the laudable public health goals of transitioning existing combustion cigarette users to ENDS products while preventing adolescent ENDS use and subsequent nicotine addiction.
Full text
Available for:
CEKLJ, CMK, NUK, UL, UM, UPUK
PurposeThis study explores the impact of owner chief executive officers' (CEO) narcissism on the exporting small to medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) decision-making on the international market ...expansion speed after their initial entry. Specifically, the authors use the mechanism of firms' international entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) to examine how owner CEO narcissism may influence SMEs' post-entry speed of internationalization (PSI), both directly and indirectly.Design/methodology/approachTo test the hypotheses, the authors draw on data from a two-wave questionnaire and on archival export data from 291 Chinese exporting SMEs in three municipalities and 17 provinces from 2019 to 2020.FindingsThe results support the theoretical predictions that owner CEO narcissism shapes exporting SMEs' decisions on PSI, both directly and indirectly, through the mediation of firm-level IEO.Originality/valueThe study extends emerging research on the role of CEO narcissism in the upper echelons literature into the international marketing (IM) context. It also offers new insights into what drives exporting SMEs' IM decision-making from a psychological microfoundations perspective. Furthermore, the authors theoretically establish and empirically demonstrate the key role of a firm's IEO as a mediator to complement the existing literature's focus on the direct influence of CEO narcissism on firms' internationalization decisions.
Purpose
Research has identified inverted U-shaped relationships between domestic competitive position, often cast in terms of home-country market share or relative profitability, and speed of entry ...into a foreign market. However, in some industries, firms may be especially attentive and responsive to competition between firms in their local-home market (i.e. sub-national). Hence, this study aims to explore the effect of local-home market competitive intensity on the relationship between a firm’s overall competitive position and speed of entry into a foreign market.
Design/methodology/approach
Data from 114 large US corporate law firms from 1992 through 2008 were used for Cox proportional-hazards regression models to estimate the moderating effect of local-home market competitive intensity on the relationship between relative profitability at the national level and speed of entry (i.e. hazard rate) into China.
Findings
Less-dominant firms from highly competitive local-home markets entered China more quickly than less-dominant firms from less-competitive local-home markets. In addition, first-movers from highly competitive local-home markets tended to have more advantageous competitive profiles, as reflected in profitability, than first-movers from less-competitive local-home markets.
Originality/value
This research explores an important contingency in the relationship between a firm’s competitive position at home and timing of entry into a foreign market. Additionally, the results suggest that first-movers from less-competitive local-home markets may face immediate competition from better-positioned first-movers from more competitive locations within the same home market when they enter new markets.
PDF
