Kimberly Gladden Burke

Unraveling the Academic Productivity of Economists: The Opportunity Costs of Teaching and Service

This study investigates the relationships among research productivity, teaching, and service on the basis of individual-specific information involving approximately 715 academic economists. Responding to an online survey, these economists provided information regarding their teaching and service commitments as well as personal and institutional information. The publication record of each respondent was then obtained from EconLit. Together, these data constitute a rich field for the systematic study of research productivity. Results of a Tobit analysis reveal much about the nature of research productivity, underscoring, for instance, the importance of gender, coauthorship, presentations at conferences, and peers who publish. Among the more important findings from this analysis is that both teaching and service commitments have a significantly negative impact on the research productivity of academic economists. These relations hold across types of academic employer, though to varying degrees. Taken together, the results provide interesting insights into the roles of academic scholars, teachers, and colleagues.

The impact of involvement on satisfaction for new, nontraditional, credence‐based service offerings

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the satisfaction formation process under conditions of varying involvement for new, nontraditional, credence‐based service offerings.Design/methodology/approach – Hypotheses were tested using an on‐line simulation of a service encounter, beginning with perceptions of an advertisement and continuing through satisfaction with the completed service report. ElderCare, an assurance service provided by Certified Public Accountants to the children of an elderly parent, was the context of study.Findings – The findings indicated expectations were not influential in the satisfaction formation process for these services, regardless of involvement. Under conditions of high involvement, performance evaluation was the dominant predictor of satisfaction. Low‐involvement subjects used disconfirmation to assess satisfaction.Research limitations/implications – Limitations of the research stem from the use of a convenience sample in a simulated service encounter. Future rese...

UNDERSTANDING THE SATISFACTION PROCESS FOR NEW ASSURANCE SERVICES: THE ROLE OF ATTITUDES, EXPECTATIONS, DISCONFIRMATION AND PERFORMANCE

Abstract This study examines the consumer satisfaction formation process for new, non-traditional assurance services. Extending Oliver’s (1997) expectancy disconfirmation model, our online survey mirrors the communications and activities in a typical ElderCare engagement. We find that consumers’ attitudes toward advertisements for the new service, attitudes toward CPAs as providers, perceptions of performance, and disconfirmation are all significant determinants of satisfaction while expectations are not significant. Suggesting that consumers may not be able to form strong, stable expectations for new non-traditional services, these results imply that marketing should focus on professional qualifications and indicators of performance quality rather than on managing prepurchase expectations.

UNRAVELING THE EXPECTATIONS GAP: AN ASSURANCE GAPS MODEL AND ILLUSTRATIVE APPLICATION

The importance of alignment between users’ and providers’ expectations of accounting services has long been recognized as paramount in the auditing profession. The importance of expectations, and especially expectations gaps, is even more compelling for new assurance services, where the importance of marketing the service is pronounced. This paper develops the Assurance Gaps Model, which describes expectations gaps in general, defining these holistic differences between users’ and providers’ perceptions of assurance services as assurance gaps. The model suggests that assurance gaps really have a number of components – expectations, evaluations of performance and disconfirmation – all of which impact users’ satisfaction with the service. The magnitude of each of these components, as well as the emphasis placed on each one, is important in describing the nature of the gap. This model is consistent with previous research in auditing as well as a large body of research in marketing studying expectations and the satisfaction process (Oliver, 1997). To illustrate potential applications of the Assurance Gaps Model, hypotheses are developed and tested using an online simulation of the ElderCare assurance service proposed by the AICPA/CICA. Results indicate that users and providers demonstrate similar magnitude of each of the factors in the model, but differ in that users emphasize performance in forming satisfaction judgments while providers emphasize expectations. The study and results illustrate the usefulness of the model for performing detailed analysis of assurance gaps and for suggesting appropriate courses of action to manage the factors that contribute to them.