The mediating effect of innovation on the relationship between corporate reputation and performance in U.S. firms

In recent years, corporate reputation has gained the attention of many scholars in the strategic management and related fields. There is a general consensus that higher corporate reputation is positively related to firm success or performance. However, the link is not always straightforward; as a result, it calls for researchers to dedicate their efforts to investigate the causes and effects of firm reputation and how it is related to performance. In this doctoral dissertation, innovation is suggested as a mediating variable in this relationship. Innovation is a critical factor for firm success and survival. Highly reputed firms are in a more advantageous position to attract critical resources for innovation such as human and financial capital. These firms face constant pressure from external stakeholders, e.g. the general public, or customers, to achieve and remain at high levels of innovativeness. As a result, firms are in constant search, internally or externally, for new technologies expanding their knowledge base. Consequently, these firms engage in firms acquisitions. In the dissertation, the author assesses the effects of domestic versus international acquisitions as well as related versus unrelated acquisitions on the level of innovativeness and performance. Building upon an established measure of firm-level degree of internationalization (DOI), the dissertation proposes a more detailed and enhanced measure for the firm's DOI. It is modeled as an interaction effect between corporate reputation and resources for innovation. More specifically, firms with higher levels of internationalization will have access to resources for innovation, i.e. human and financial capital, at a global scale. Additionally, the distance between firms and higher education institutions, i.e. universities, is considered as another interaction effect for the human capital attraction. The dissertation is built on two theoretical frameworks, the resource-based view of the firm and institutional theory. It studies 211 U.S. firms using a longitudinal panel data structure from 2006 to 2012. It utilizes a linear dynamic panel data estimation methodology for its hypotheses analyses. Results confirm the hypotheses proposed in the study.

The influence of processing instructions at encoding and retrieval on face recognition accuracy

Whereas previous research has demonstrated that trait ratings of faces at encoding leads to enhanced recognition accuracy as compared to feature ratings, this set of experiments examines whether ratings given after encoding and just prior to recognition influence face recognition accuracy. In Experiment 1 subjects who made feature ratings just prior to recognition were significantly less accurate than subjects who made no ratings or trait ratings. In Experiment 2 ratings were manipulated at both encoding and retrieval. The retrieval effect was smaller and nonsignificant, but a combined probability analysis showed that it was significant when results from both experiments are considered jointly. In a third experiment exposure duration at retrieval, a potentially confounding factor in Experiments 1 and 2, had a nonsignificant effect on recognition accuracy, suggesting that it probably does not explain the results from Experiments 1 and 2. These experiments demonstrate that face recognition accuracy can be influenced by processing instructions at retrieval.