Supervisors as good coaches: influences of coaching on employees’ in-role behaviors and proactive career behaviors

Coaching as an effective leadership initiative in organizations has gained increasing attention from scholars. This study investigates the effects of coaching on employees’ in-role behaviors (IRBs) and proactive career behaviors (PCBs), while also exploring the mediating role of psychological empowerment. Data were collected from a sample of 324 employee–supervisor pairs from 11 service companies in Taiwan. The results show that coaching was positively related to both IRBs and PCBs. Moreover, psychological empowerment fully mediated the coaching–IRB relationship and partially mediated the coaching–PCB relationship. Implications for managerial practices and future research are derived from these findings.     

The impact of execution delay on the profitability of put‐call‐futures trading strategies—Evidence from Taiwan

This study examines the impact of execution delay on the profitability of put‐call‐futures quasi‐arbitrage strategies using trade and quote data in the Taiwanese market. Assuming order execution at the next immediate price following a mispricing signal, the execution of individual components is traced and a substantial delay resulting from the late execution of an option is reported. A fill‐or‐kill strategy that directly restricts such a delay is unsatisfactory because unwinding already acquired positions involves added transaction costs. Ex ante performance is significantly improved for combined strategies that execute the less liquid asset first, while shortening the time before acquisition of the first position. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 27:361–385, 2007     

Internet Growth and Economic Theory

This paper focuses on economic implications of the Internet. We argue that some effects of the Internet can be understood within the context of traditional economics. Specifically, the Internet has the potential to make market more contestable and hence more competitive. Policy issues are also discussed.     

A Data-Analytic Method for Forecasting Next Record Catastrophe Loss

We develop in this article a data‐analytic method to forecast the severity of next record insured loss to property caused by natural catastrophic events. The method requires and employs the knowledge of an expert and accounts for uncertainty in parameter estimation. Both considerations are essential for the task at hand because the available data are typically scarce in extreme value analysis. In addition, we consider three‐parameter Gamma priors for the parameter in the model and thus provide simple analytical solutions to several key elements of interest, such as the predictive moments of record value. As a result, the model enables practitioners to gain insights into the behavior of such predictive moments without concerning themselves with the computational issues that are often associated with a complex Bayesian analysis. A data set consisting of catastrophe losses occurring in the United States between 1990 and 1999 is analyzed, and the forecasts of next record loss are made under various prior assumptions. We demonstrate that the proposed method provides more reliable and theoretically sound forecasts, whereas the conditional mean approach, which does not account for either prior information or uncertainty in parameter estimation, may provide inadmissible forecasts.     

Analyzing the sustainability of a newly developed service: An activity theory perspective

New service development (NSD) is the process of creating new services to fulfill target customers' needs. It is essential that an NSD project team cooperate across organizational boundaries and various disciplines to achieve the sustainability goal of an NSD project. This study adopted Activity Theory to understand dynamics of complex service innovation system and model the actions taken by different entities in telehealth service projects, in which we identified important contradictions that affect the sustainability of newly developed services. Based on multiple case study findings, this research identified challenges for these new service development projects such as user needs identification, the involvement of emergent technology and collaboration between entities from different industries. This study contributes to the NSD research by proposing five propositions which could be used for guiding stakeholders to effectively manage NSD projects to offer sustainable newly developed services.     

CEO Overconfidence and Earnings Management During Shifting Regulatory Regimes

This study examines the relationship of CEO overconfidence with accrual‐based earnings management, real activities‐based earnings management, and targeting to meet or just beat analyst forecasts. Following, we measure “overconfidence” based on the CEO's tendency to hold in‐the‐money stock options, as rational expected utility maximizers should exercise early to avoid overexposure to company idiosyncratic risks. The results show that before the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), companies of overconfident CEOs were more likely than other CEOs to engage in managing earnings through accelerating the timing of cash flow from operations and achieving analyst forecast benchmarks. After SOX, we find that overconfident CEOs are more likely to have income‐increasing discretionary accruals. They remain more likely to engage in real activities management through abnormally high cash flows, and also have abnormally low discretionary expenses. These results are consistent with overconfident CEOs feeling less constrained by SOX, and suggest that this individual characteristic works against regulators’ attempts to constrain earnings management by corporate executives. In contrast, we find that the tendency of overconfident CEOs to manage to targets decreases after SOX, perhaps due to changes in investor behavior in the new regulatory environment.     

International strategy implementation: Roles of subsidiaries, operational capabilities, and procedural justice

This study develops a framework to propose how the differentiation of operational capabilities (coordination and configuration) and procedural justice fits to different subsidiary roles, and the relationship between the fit and the subsidiary performance. The findings are based on a survey of sixty-two foreign subsidiaries in Taiwan. The results indicate that (1) the operational capabilities and procedural justice of the top-performing subsidiaries can be differentiated according to their distinct strategic roles, and the differentiation exhibits an ideal profile for each role as shown in Fig. 2; (2) the extent to which a subsidiary fits the ideal profile associated with its role is positively related to the subsidiary's performance. The authors discuss the theoretical and managerial implications and provide some suggestions for the future study.     

Do informed option investors predict stock returns? Evidence from the Taiwan stock exchange

In this paper, we set out to investigate the information content of options trading using a unique dataset to examine the predictive power of the put and call positions of different types of traders in the TAIEX option market. We find that options volume, as a whole, carries no information on TAIEX spot index changes. On the other hand, however, although foreign institutional investors do not engage in much trading, there is strong evidence to show that the trading in which they do engage has significant predictive power on the underlying asset returns. We also find that foreign institutional investors have greater predictive power with regard to in near-the-money and middle-horizon options.     

HOW DOES FOREIGN BANK OWNERSHIP IN THE BANKING SECTOR AFFECT DOMESTIC BANK BEHAVIOUR? A DYNAMIC PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how foreign bank ownership in the banking sector affects domestic bank behaviour and whether this relationship depends on the economic and financial conditions of the host country. This paper contains 795 individual banks in 39 countries covering the period 1999–2006. Foreign ownership is calculated using bank level data as a proxy for the degree of foreign bank ownership in the banking sector. First, we find that foreign bank ownership is associated with a decrease in both the profitability and overhead expenses of the domestic bank after applying the system panel Generalized Method of Moments model. Second, a lower level of economic development of the host country enhances the positive effects of foreign bank ownership on the income, profit and cost of domestic banks. Third, financial development plays an important role in determining the effect of foreign bank ownership. Fourth, while the use of aggregate foreign ownership data may provide us with a big picture, it may not explain why individual banks in the same country perform differently, which this study will answer.     

Leisure Constraints,Leisure Satisfaction,Life Satisfaction,and Self-Rated Health in Six Cities in Taiwan

Extensive research shows that individuals in lower socioeconomic statuses experience higher levels of morbidity and mortality than those of higher social status. This disparity remains even after lifestyle changes such as reduced smoking, improved diet, more exercise, and better access to medical care are afforded to those of lower status. According to Fundamental Social Cause Theory (FSCT), access to valued resources, including environmental, social, and psychological factors, mediates the relationship. The purpose of this study is to determine if leisure constraints, leisure satisfaction, and life satisfaction are among the variables that mediate the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and self-rated health in six cities in Taiwan. Results indicated that leisure related variables, including leisure constraints and leisure satisfaction, mediate the relationship between SES and self-rated health. The results suggest the value of FSCT as a framework for examining the relationship of leisure related variables to health.