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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on adoption of certified management standards, specifically public standards. Such standards play an increasingly important role in today’s business environment. However, to generate adoption benefits, they must be first widely accepted – a situation where they have become viewed as the de facto norms. For this state to occur early adopters play a critical role. Past research has argued that early adopters, in exchange for assuming more risk, are rewarded with higher economic returns. Yet, these findings are based on private, not public standards. With public standards, early adopters do not receive such benefits. There is evidence that public standards are becoming more important. This situation leads to a simple but important question addressed in this study – if early adopters assume the risks of embracing a new public standard without economic benefits, then what is their motivation? To resolve this question, this study draws on agency theory and prospect theory. The authors argue that early adopters embrace such standards because of their desire to minimize risk resulting from failure to support the goal at the heart of the public standards. Design/methodology/approach Data were obtained from the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) Partners Cost Benefit Survey and analyzed through structural equation modeling. Findings Early adopters of public standards are not driven by economic benefits but rather by the need to minimize their exposure to the risks associated with failing to satisfy the goals associated with a public standard. In other words, they were motivated by the need to minimize costs. In the case of C-TPAT, these costs are those of failing to provide or improve network security. Research limitations/implications This study has shed new light on the standards adoption process by clarifying the specific motivations that drive early adoption of a public standard. In addition to identifying the loss aversion motives of early adopters and economic benefit motives of later adopters, the authors have also elaborated on the notion that standards have differing levels of precedence, particularly when comparing private with public standards. Practical implications In a world characterized by increasing demands for outcomes such as improved security and where governmental funding is falling, due to growing deficits and governments that are becoming more conservative, the authors expect the use of public standards to increase. Originality/value Different from prior research on private standard, the paper focuses on the organizations involved in the adoption and diffusion of a public standard, with special attention being devoted to the early adopters. The paper provides a theoretical explanation for the actions of early adopters of a public standard through the theoretical lens of prospect theory.

Several recent high‐profile product recalls raise the question of why companies take so long to recall defective products from the market. The recall timing decision is not a simple task, as companies constantly face multiple, often competing goals during the recall process. In this research, we examine variations in large automakers’ recall timing decisions after an initial report of a suspected quality failures. Drawing upon problem‐solving theory, we theorize about how five recall attributes impact discovery‐to‐recall, defined as the time between a defective product's initial discovery and its officially announced recall. To test our hypotheses, we assembled a vehicle recall investigation dataset from recall reports filed by the six largest automakers that sold passenger cars in the United States from 2000 to 2012. Results from event history analysis reveal that discovery‐to‐recall is longer for: (1) recalls that are triggered by external initial reports, rather than internal initial reports; (2) recalls that are attributed to suppliers, rather than automakers; (3) recalls that are associated with design flaws, as opposed to manufacturing flaws; and (4) recalls with more models involved. We also find that cumulative recall experience, measured as the total number of previous recalls, shortens discovery‐to‐recall. These findings improve our understanding of why the timing of vehicle recalls varies considerably at the individual recall level. They also highlight the value of problem‐solving theory in vehicle recall research, as well as quality management research.

Purpose Consumers’ engagement with brands online is increasingly important for marketers for both promotion of their brand’s message and sales. The purpose of this paper is to examine if consumers’ brand schematicity, a generalized consumer disposition to process information using brand schema, influenced their proclivity to engage with brands online through consuming and co-creating brand-related content, and the influence of online brand engagement on actual purchase of brands. Design/methodology/approach Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. Findings Study 1 shows that brand schematicity increases online brand consumption and online brand co-creation and Study 2 shows that this online brand engagement is not always beneficial to brands in terms of sales. Specifically, because of resource depletion, consumers who co-create brand content online may purchase brands less while those that consume online brand content purchase more brands. Originality/value There is a lack of previous research addressing individual differences in consumers’ online brand engagement that this paper investigates. Further, a generalized, dispositional variable such as brand schematicity has not been hitherto investigated in the context of consumers’ online behavior. Finally, this paper shows counter-intuitive effects of online brand engagement on brand purchase.