An Empirical Analysis of Analysts' Capital Expenditure Forecasts: Evidence from Corporate Investment Efficiency*

We examine whether the information conveyed in a relatively new analyst research output—capital expenditure (capex) forecasts—affects corporate investment efficiency. We find that firms with analyst capex forecasts exhibit higher investment efficiency. This effect is stronger when the forecasts are issued by analysts with higher ability or greater industry knowledge. Moreover, the effect of capex forecasts on investment efficiency varies with the signals they convey about future growth opportunities—positive-growth signals are more effective in reducing underinvestment, while negative-growth signals are more effective in reducing overinvestment. Cross-sectional tests suggest that these effects operate at least in part through both a financing channel and a monitoring channel. Taken together, our results suggest that analysts' capex forecasts convey useful information about firms' growth opportunities to managers and investors, which can facilitate efficient investment.     

What is digital possession and how to study it: a conversation with Russell Belk,Rebecca Mardon,Giana M. Eckhardt,Varala Maraj,Will Odom,Massimo Airoldi,Alessandro Caliandro,Mike Molesworth and Alessandro Gandini

ABSTRACT

The platformisation of digital consumption, means that increasingly many of the things that we call ours – our messages, photos, music, achievements – are entangled in complex socio-technical arrangements which require ongoing market mediation. In this context, refining our understanding of what digital possessions are and how to study them is vital. This requires refocusing research away from existing comparative analyses between digital and material possessions. To do so, we organised an interdisciplinary roundtable discussion with critical marketers and digital media scholars, consumer researchers, digital sociologists and researchers in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) at the 11^th Interpretive Consumer Research Conference held in Lyon in May 2019. The result of that discussion is this curation of comments which deal with theoretical, methodological and critical issues and a bold agenda for future research.     

Inspirational leadership,positive mood,and team innovation: A moderated mediation investigation into the pivotal role of professional salience

Multidisciplinary teams are increasingly advocated for in healthcare policy consequent to their capacity to develop innovative solutions to seemingly intractable service and care challenges. Recent arguments that inspirational leadership styles may foster innovation in multidisciplinary teams point to their potential value in this effort. However, inconsistency in the capacity of such leaders to engender innovation highlights the need to understand the mechanisms and boundary conditions that determine when such leadership generates positive effects. We argue that follower positive mood acts to mediate the path between inspirational leadership and innovation and may account for its variable effects. By increasing positive team mood, inspirational leaders can potentially bring about more flexible thinking and enhance innovation but can also increase reliance on less effortful information processing, undermining innovative potential. In an effort to address the dilemma posed by these contrasting effects, we propose that professional salience acts as an important boundary condition of this relationship such that only when profession is salient do inspirational leaders enhance multidisciplinary team innovation through positive mood. An analysis of survey data from 60 UK‐based multidisciplinary healthcare teams, investigating the inspirational leadership of practice‐based innovation, supports our moderated mediation model. Finally, the implications for HRM are considered, specifically for leader development and work team design.     

Hoglex Demand Systems and Welfare Policy in Major Asean Developing Countries: A Bayesian Analysis Using Expenditure Unit Records

The HOGLEX demand system (Tran Van Hoa (1983, 1985)) is integrable and flexible in the sense that it is based on utility maximization and encompasses most other well-known demand systems (e.g., LINEX, AIDS) in the literature on consumer behaviour (Laitinen et al. (1983)). HOGLEX studies to date have been based on conventional OLS or MLE methods and panel aggregate income and price data, and restricted to investigating consumption patterns. The paper elaborates on three important subsets of the HOGLEX demand system and, using household expenditure unit records from two major ASEAN developing countries (i.e., Thailand and the Philippines), estimates by the Bayesian method these subsets for 20 socio-demographic cohorts, and discusses their substantial implications in social security and welfare policy analysis. We also estimate the models in the more practical case of measurement errors in total expenditure and compare the results with those without measurement errors.

     

Regional voices talk theatre: audience development for the performing arts

• Audience development is somewhat of a ‘buzz word’ within the Australian performing arts sector at present. However, rather than actually engaging with audiences and with non‐attenders to discover how to best serve the community, most of the performing arts organisations approach audience development from a product‐centred viewpoint.
• In direct contrast to this, the Talking Theatre project (2004–2006) was implemented in regional Queensland and in the Northern Territory in Australia as an audience development initiative focused on the consumer. The project sought to assist performing arts centres (PACs) to better engage with their local communities and to build new audiences for the future. In particular, the research aimed to understand non‐attenders, their reasons for non‐attendance and their reactions to a range of live performances they experienced under study conditions.
• The Talking Theatre project provided the vehicle for introduction, communication and relationship building to occur to assist in attitudinal and behavioural change. The non‐attenders enjoyed their experiences at the PACs and have begun attending performances outside of study conditions. Limited awareness of the performing arts' relevance to their lives combined with a lack of positive peer influence to attend, were the chief deterrents to attendance for the participants in the study.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Managing the “S” in ESG: The Case of Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries

Although a company's “social license to operate” is critical to its long‐run viability and success, the “social” component of corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) problems appears to be taking the longest to be integrated into the corporate business model. The authors make the case that corporate boards must assume a more direct and proactive role in identifying, measuring, and mitigating social risk. Board involvement in the management of social issues, although not a silver bullet by itself, is an important step that can help catalyze the changes needed within upper, middle, and lower management. The absence of board oversight of social performance means that the reporting chain is not reaching the highest level of management. And this in turn creates a lack of attention and accountability to social performance that is likely to permeate the rest of the company. Along with board oversight, companies need more and better information to understand the value that good social performance creates for business, and to equip them for building and maintaining positive relationships with communities. At the individual company level, this means more comprehensive and granular analysis of social risk, the full range of costs of conflicts with local communities, the benefits of having a social license, and quality baseline data for community engagement. At the macro level, these data points must be aggregated to understand their implications across industries.     

Organizational Surveillance of Computer-Mediated Workplace Communication: Employee Privacy Concerns and Responses

Email, social media, and other types of computer-mediated workplace communication tools can enhance flexibility in how employees perform their jobs, expand networking opportunities, increase profits, cut costs, and enable collaboration among diverse groups across the globe. Despite their advantages, these technology tools can also cause security breaches, financial loss, employee distraction, and lawsuits. To prevent such damaging consequences, many companies monitor their employees’ computer-mediated workplace communication. However, this surveillance is often met with resistance from employees as it taps into concerns over workers’ privacy rights, due process, and fairness. We examine these employee concerns through an empirical study of full-time working adults’ beliefs about their computer-mediated workplace communication privacy and their evaluations of organizational justice, trust in upper management, and commitment to the organization. Our results suggest that employees who perceive less computer-mediated workplace communication privacy tend to view their organization’s policies as less fair, trust upper management less, and demonstrate less commitment to their organizations. Furthermore, results indicate that procedural justice mediated the relationship between privacy and organizational commitment and moderated the relationship between privacy and organizational trust.     

A robust house price index using sparse and frugal data

In this article, we describe a house price index algorithm which requires only sparse and frugal data, namely house location, date of sale and sale price, as input data. We aim to show that our algorithm is as effective for predicting price changes as more complex models which require detailed or extensive data. Although various methods are employed for determining house price indexes, such as hedonic regression, mix-adjusted median or repeat sales, there is no consensus on how to determine the robustness of an index, and hence no agreement on which method is the best to use. We formalise an objective criterion for what a house price index should achieve, namely consistency between time periods. Using this criterion, we investigate whether it is possible to achieve strong robustness using frugal data covering only 66 months of transactions on the Irish property market. We develop a simple multi-stage algorithm and show that it is more robust than the complex hedonic regression model currently employed by the Irish Central Statistics Office.     

Consumer substitution decisions: an integrative framework

Substitution decisions have been examined from a variety of perspectives. The economics literature measures cross-price elasticity, operations research models optimal assortments, the psychology literature studies goals in conflict, and marketing research has examined substitution-in-use, brand switching, stockouts, and self-control. We integrate these perspectives into a common framework for understanding consumer substitution decisions; their specific drivers (availability of new alternatives, internal vs. external restrictions on choice); the moderating role of a consumer’s commitment to an initially desired alternative; and the affective, motivational, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes of substitution. We use this framework to recommend new avenues for research.