Price versus Quantity in a Duopolistic Market with Bargaining over Managerial Delegation Contracts

This paper studies the endogenous choices of strategic contracts in a duopoly with bargaining between the owner and manager of each firm over the content of the managerial delegation contract. We show that when the bargaining power of the manager relative to that of the owner within each firm is sufficiently high, quantity competition based on the quantity contracts chosen by the owners of both firms can be uniquely observed in the equilibrium, whereas quantity competition and price competition can be observed in the equilibrium when this relative bargaining power is sufficiently low. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do NPM-Type Reforms Lead to a Cultural Revolution Within Public Sector Organizations?

Abstract

Agencification and granting public sector organizations managerial autonomy in particular is believed to change organizational cultures, away from traditional compliance- and detail-oriented bureaucratic cultures and towards organizational cultures which are more oriented towards external customers. There is however very little empirical information on the relationship between managerial autonomy and organizational culture. Using a unique data set on public agencies in Flanders, we not only test how managerial autonomy affects the strength of a customer-oriented culture within public sectors but also examine whether this culture becomes dominant over traditional public administration culture. Analysis shows that managerial autonomy positively affects a customer-oriented culture; however, it does not make it a dominant culture.     

Effects of performance measurement system inconsistency on managers’ role clarity and well-being

In this paper we explore the impact of PMS inconsistency on managerial role clarity and well-being. In addition, we investigate if problems with PMS inconsistency can be dealt with by convincing superiors to loosen their control reactions to variances, giving managers job autonomy and providing managers with support from superiors, peers and staff functions. Based on survey responses from 799 managers in one public sector organization and 187 managers in one private sector organization we conclude that PMS inconsistency has negative effects on managers’ role clarity and well-being. This situation does not improve if superiors practice loose control; on the contrary, it seems to make managers’ work situation worse. Job autonomy and support appear to be better coping methods since they have direct positive impacts on managers’ role clarity and well-being that counteracts the negative effects of PMS inconsistency.     

Bargaining over Managerial Contracts in Delegation Games: The Generalized Oligopolistic Case

The main purpose of this paper is to disclose the properties of the equilibrium outcomes in the differentiated‐products model with two stages: (i) owner‐shareholders negotiate managerial compensation with their managers that comprises their profits and sales (sales delegation) and (ii) they engage in their market competition. The other purpose of this paper is to study the differentiated goods model in which an owner bargains the managerial compensation with her/his manager that comprises her/his profit and her/his rival's profit (relative performance delegation). We further investigate the situation wherein the firm with sales delegation and the firm with the relative performance delegation coexist. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When is Effort Contagious in New Venture Management Teams? Understanding the Contingencies of Social Motivation Theory

Consistent with social motivation theory, prior research on managerial motivation suggests that effort is contagious across management team members. In this study, we draw on belongingness theory to develop a model on important boundary conditions to social motivation theory in the management team context. The model predicts that new venture managers react to their teammates’ higher effort levels by investing higher effort levels themselves primarily when they are confronted with a threat – namely, low venture performance and high environmental hostility – but that effort is less contagious when managers face little threat. We test our model with a sample of 103 new venture managers nested in 51 management teams in a longitudinal setting capturing managerial effort over 26 weeks. While we do not find a direct relationship between teammates’ effort and a new venture manager’s subsequent effort, we find support for the crucial role of threat in triggering the contagion of managerial effort. We discuss the contributions of our study for research on management teams, performance feedback, and entrepreneurial effort in new ventures.     

Investment and financing choices by time-inconsistent managers

This paper provides an analytically tractable continuous-time model in which a time-inconsistent manager can divert part of the firm’s cash flows as private benefits at the expense of outside shareholders. We endogenously determine the investment scale, investment threshold, optimal coupon and default threshold under managerial discretion. We demonstrate that time-inconsistent managers each have a trade-off between the timing and scale of investment.Among a number of important implications, by exploring agency costs of equity as deviations from the investment and financing policies that maximize equity value, our analysis reveals that a certain degree of time inconsistency in managerial preferences decreases the agency costs of equity. We also find that a naive manager more severely distorts the investment and financing policies than does a sophisticated manager, which leads to higher agency costs of equity. Finally, we document that the impacts of corporate governance variables, such as the managers’ property parameter and/or the level of managers’ ownership, depend on the managers’ beliefs regarding their future time-inconsistent behavior; this prediction provides novel empirical tests.     

Do Managers Matter? Manager Effects on Organization Performance

In this study, we examine how pre‐managerial experience and performance relates to managerial success. Some prior research has documented that managers contribute to organization performance, but the link between specific manager characteristics and performance has been dubious because data about managers' prior work history are typically quite limited. We overcome this limitation by examining our research question in the context of Major League Baseball, where data on pre‐managerial work history are available for a large subset of managers. This allows us to focus on two questions that have not been adequately addressed in prior studies. First, does success prior to becoming a manager translate into success as a manager? Second, what is the relative importance of measurable versus unobservable manager characteristics on performance? Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Managerial Compensation and Capital Structure

We investigate the interaction between financial structure and managerial compensation and show that risky debt affects both the probability of managerial replacement and the manager's wage if he is retained by the firm. Our model yields a rich set of predictions, including the following: (i) The market values of equity and debt decrease if the manager is replaced; moreover, the expected cash flow affirms that retain their managers exceeds that affirms that replace their managers, (ii) Managers affirms with risky debt outstanding are promised lower severance payments (golden parachutes) than managers affirms that do not have risky debt. (Hi) Controlling for firm's size, the leverage, managerial compensation, and cash flow of firms that retain their managers are positively correlated, (iv) Controlling for the firm's size, the probability of managerial turnover and firm value are negatively correlated, (v) Managerial pay-performance sensitivity is positively correlated with leverage, expected compensation, and expected cash flows.     

Managerial Altruism and Governance in Charitable Donations

We describe a double agency problem in firms' charitable donations. When managers have better knowledge about the effectiveness of donations and their altruistic preferences, it is difficult for shareholders to tell whether charitable donations are made for a strategic purpose or due to managerial altruism. We characterize the equilibrium donations in a heterogeneous competition model. We show that managerial altruism is a substitute for the effectiveness of donations, and excess donations cannot be prevented by a compensation scheme that reduces the interest conflicts between ownership and management. Under board authorization, the board will tolerate donations with high effectiveness and low altruism as well as donations corresponding to low effectiveness and high altruism. Under a penalty scheme, the altruistic manager will increase donations, in order to increase donation's strategic benefit to compensate for the loss from the penalty. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Giving a voice to managers: forging the desire line through the creation of informal employee voice channels and productive resistance

Abstract

Within the extensive body of employee voice literature, the voice of the ordinary shopfloor employee has resonated loudly. The important role that line managers play in encouraging or inhibiting that voice has also been well documented. However, within the voice literature there has been silence with respect to line managers themselves being considered as voicers. In this paper, these missing managerial voices are amplified through the presentation of a case study of front and middle line manager voice within a university setting. Within this hierarchical organisation subject to increased managerialism, semi-structured interviews with 26 participants were conducted and it was found that line managers’ voice was thwarted due to relational and structural blockages in their formal voice channels. In some cases, this led to suppressed voice and a sense that line managers had no one to voice to. However, some managers were able to be creative and their actions led to productive resistance. While for others, these blockages motivated line managers to use covert ‘underground channels’ where their voice was raised informally and their interests could be advanced. The paper extends our knowledge by considering the line manager as a voicer, and not merely a manager of voice.     

The impact of the presence of biased managers as strategic commitment on endogenous market structures

We consider the endogenous selection of strategic contracts in an asymmetric duopoly with substitutable goods. The market includes a biased manager, in terms of the market size the manager expects, in a managerial duopoly with separation between ownership and management. In particular, we focus on how the types of managers selected by owners affect the equilibrium market structures. Furthermore, by considering that each manager's expectation of market size depends on their own type and the type of the rival manager, we examine a situation in which the owner is less certain of the type of manager.     

高校管理人员管理策略研究

管理人员是高校管理工作的核心力量。高校应真正重视管理人员和管理工作,与时俱进,推进高校管理人员职员制改革;加强激励,建立以发展性评价为主导的高校管理人员考评机制;加强高校管理人员的岗位培训与在职进修;管理人员应加强自律,及时反思,在知行统一中不断成长。这些策略,都将有利于高校管理人员的有效管理。     

Discriminatory input pricing and strategic delegation

This paper examines how discriminatory input pricing by an upstream monopolist affects the incentives that owners of downstream duopolists offer their managers. Regardless of the mode of competition (quantity or price), owners of downstream firms induce their managers to be more profit‐oriented and to behave less aggressively when the monopolist is allowed to price‐discriminate than when he charges a uniform price. If the monopolist price‐discriminates, managerial downstream firms always earn more than owner‐managed profit‐maximizing firms. However, if the monopolist charges a uniform price, managerial downstream firms earn more than profit‐maximizing counterparts under price competition and earn less under quantity competition. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Manager replacement,employee protest,and corporate control

When faced with the replacement threat, incumbent managers look for support from employees by investing in a non-contractible employee–friendly relationship. Enjoying the relationship, employees help managers preserve their job by protesting against shareholders. When the benefits from the good employee–manager relationship are large enough to cover the loss of managerial inefficiency, shareholders prefer to share the influential power at the firm with employees.     

Management Changes,Reputation, and “Big Bath”—Earnings Management

We study the effects of managerial turnover on earnings management activities in a model in which managers care about their external reputation. We develop an overlapping generations model showing that both outgoing and incoming managers bias reported earnings such that typically very low returns are reported in the first period after a manager has been replaced. Outgoing managers shift earnings forward to their last period in office as they will not benefit from earnings realized after that. Incoming managers can have an incentive to shift earnings to the second period in office as reported earnings will, immediately after a management change, only be partly attributed to their own ability. Deferred compensation can reduce incentives for earnings management.     

对外报告变化对管理决策行为影响的试验分析

本文主要验证在我国现行报告制度下,公司对外报告次数变化导致公司管理当局进行决策的选择行为。由于外部报告产生的资本市场压力会直接或间接影响管理人员的决策行为和决策动机,当决策项目产生的会计盈余时与公司未来长期盈余之间存在矛盾,管理者在进行项目决策时,面临外部报告的资本市场压力,内部代理问题和财务分析师的盈利预测相关因素影响,管理者通常选择短期利润最大化的项目而不是选择长期盈余最大项目,从而导致公司管理层的决策短期化。     

Multinationals and human resource practices in Ireland: a rejection of the 'new conformance thesis': a reply

This paper reports on a study of 398 people employed in two UK service organizations: a hospital and two divisions of a high street bank. The main purpose of the study was to determine the degree to which dispositional factors (predisposition to trust and trait anxiety) and situational factors (seven aspects of the job environment) predicted a person's reported trust in their managers. Two types of managers were investigated: a person's immediate line manager and ‘senior managers in their industry’. It was hypothesized that the dispositional factors would have a greater influence on trust in managers in the industry and that situational factors would have a greater influence on trust in one's immediate line manager. The first hypothesis was supported, but the second was not. It was found that trust in both types of managers was best predicted by a combination of general disposition to trust (not trait anxiety) and situational factors: five of the seven situational factors had a role in predicting intention to trust. This reflects the complexity involved in predicting trust at work and the managerial challenge of creating a trusting culture.     

Organisational Decentralisation and Budgetary Devolution In Local Government: A Case of Middle Management Autonomy?

Linda Keen, who is Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the Canterbury Business School, uses a case study investigation of a local authority well advanced in its adoption of the ‘new’ devolved management systems, to identify the views of middle managers themselves about the extent to which devolved budgeting had brought about a real increase in their managerial autonomy, focusing on key elements of budgetary devolution identified in the literature, including the roles of devolved finance staff. She concludes that increases in these managers’ budgetary responsibilities were generally not accompanied by corresponding increases in their autonomy over budgetary management decisions, and identifies a number of human resource management issues, arising from this non-alignment, in relation to management control systems, and training, motivation and reward management strategies.     

Multiple banking relationships,managerial ownership concentration and firm value: A simultaneous equations approach

This paper examines how the number of banking relationships affects the interaction between managerial ownership and firm performance, and sheds light on the conditions under which banking relationships play a role in alleviating shareholder–manager conflicts. Our results provide several interesting insights. We document that bank monitoring has substantial value when managers are improperly incentivized, but that it becomes less important when managers are properly incentivized. There is a substitution effect between the value-increasing benefits of managerial ownership and bank monitoring. We also find that any existing free-riding concerns from having too many banking relationships are problematical only when Tobin's Q is high and managerial ownership is high.     

Combining the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process and the fuzzy Delphi method for developing critical competences of electronic commerce professional managers

This study proposes a novel approach that integrates the qualitative approach, the quantitative approach, and fuzzy set theory for developing a framework of critical managerial competences of electronic commerce (EC) professional managers. The approach combines a focus group, a fuzzy Delphi method and the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy AHP) for identifying competences via experts’ opinions and questionnaires for developing the framework of managerial EC professional managers. Comparing the competences of traditional managers and EC managers reveals main differences in the emphasis on EC manager professional skills. Furthermore, competency weights for EC managers lie particularly in domain knowledge and information management skills. Research results reveal that our proposed EC competence framework not only help firms in selecting/hiring high quality EC professional managers more objectively, but also in evaluating the performance of EC managers.