Short and long translations: Management accounting calculations and innovation management

Management accounting calculations relate innovation to the firm through translations where both can change. Based on examples of the management of innovation from three firms the study shows how management accounting calculations rather than describe the properties of innovation add perspective to them mediating between innovation concerns and firm-wide concerns. This mediation happens through short and long translations. In short translations, management accounting calculations extend or reduce innovation activities via a single calculation. In long translations innovation activities are problematised via multiple calculations. When calculations challenge each other in long translations they problematise not only what innovation should be, but also where it should be located in time and space. In the three examples, calculations mobilised alternative propositions about the relevance of technical artefacts and linked this to innovation strategy and sourcing strategy in the firm’s inter-organisational relations. Tensions between calculations associated with technological, organisational and environmental entities framed considerations about the value of innovation to the firm strategically differently. All this happens because management accounting calculations are partial rather than total calculations of firms’ affairs and value.     

Two centuries of farmland prices in England

The dissemination of robust asset price data can help improve market efficiency, resource allocation and investment analysis. Land prices influence housing affordability, food security and the carbon infrastructure. Yet price and return histories for farmland in England are fragmented. To provide perspective, a long farmland price series is needed to improve transparency and bring the asset class into line with commercial and residential real estate. After reviewing the historical backdrop and considering methodology, this research uses a chain-linking approach to construct a long-term farmland price series for England. It then adjusts the series for inflation to examine real land prices. The resulting two-century English farmland prices series contributes to farmland market analysis. Notwithstanding some concerns with long-run chain component heterogeneity, the combined series helps us to understand English average farmland price dynamics. As measured by the geometric mean, English land price real capital returns have been positive over more than two centuries. Farmland real price growth was 0.33 per cent annually from 1781 to 2013 and 0.71 per cent from 1801 to 2013. The series contributes to an understanding of land price dynamics.     

Which boundaries? How mobility networks across countries and status groups affect the creative performance of organizations

Research summary : Losing key employees to competitors allows an organization to engage in external boundary‐spanning activities. It may benefit the organization through access to external knowledge, but may also increase the risks of leaking knowledge to competitors. We propose that the destination of departed employees is a crucial contingency: benefits or risks only materialize when employees leave for competitors that differ from the focal organization along significant dimensions, such as country or status group. In the context of the global fashion industry, we find that key employees' moves to foreign competitors may increase (albeit at a diminishing rate) their former employers' creative performance. Furthermore, firms may suffer from losing key employees to higher‐ or same‐status competitors, but may benefit from losing them to lower‐status competitors. Managerial summary : Losing key employees to competitors can provide organizations with access to external knowledge, but increase risks of leaking knowledge to competitors. We find that an organization's access to external knowledge and its risks of knowledge leakage through employee mobility may be affected by whether its employees leave for competitors in a foreign country or in a different status group. In the context of the global fashion industry, we show that key employees' moves to foreign competitors increase (up to a point) their former employers' creative performance. Furthermore, firms may suffer from losing key employees to higher‐ or same‐status competitors, but benefit from losing them to lower‐status competitors. Hence, executives in creative industries and possibly beyond could welcome losing employees to competitors in foreign countries or to lower‐status competitors. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

China's booming livestock industry: household income, specialization, and exit

China's production of livestock products has generally kept pace with her rapidly increasing demand. Over-supply and market corrections for various livestock products took place over the latter part of the 1990s and large numbers of householders exited this type of production. Using household survey data, we estimate the relationship between a household's specialization in livestock production and household net income in 1995, and use a logit model to explore some predictors of household exit from livestock production over the following decade of market instability. We conclude that specialist livestock households with access to necessary skills, technologies, and markets increase their incomes from further livestock specialization in the base year, whereas those to whom livestock production is relatively unimportant can increase household incomes by diverting their resources away from animal husbandry. It was specialist rather than diversified livestock households that tended to bear the brunt of the adjustment to unfavorable price movements over the decade post-1995. Policy concerns include the exit of larger-scale specialized producers who tended to earn relatively high household incomes in 1995, barriers to the effective formation and operation of horizontal and vertical integration options to help mitigate market instability, the further development of insurance programs and markets for livestock producers, and development assistance to livestock households that for various reasons cannot increase scale and specialization.     

Do business strategies vary across firms in the banking industry? New perspectives from the bank size–profitability nexus

This study examines the roles of interdependence and policy variations across firms in the causality between bank size and profitability in Nigeria, using second-generation estimators and the Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel Granger non-causality test. The findings support different business strategies and policy variances across banks. Causality is found non-existent in the cases of 11 banks. A unidirectional causality from size to profitability is established in two banks while evidence of a unidirectional causality is established from profitability to bank size in the other two banks. This study concludes that cross-sectional dependence and policy variations across firms matter in the bank size–profitability nexus.     

Model-free portfolio theory: A rough path approach

Based on a rough path foundation, we develop a model-free approach to stochastic portfolio theory (SPT). Our approach allows to handle significantly more general portfolios compared to previous model-free approaches based on Föllmer integration. Without the assumption of any underlying probabilistic model, we prove a pathwise formula for the relative wealth process, which reduces in the special case of functionally generated portfolios to a pathwise version of the so-called master formula of classical SPT. We show that the appropriately scaled asymptotic growth rate of a far reaching generalization of Cover's universal portfolio based on controlled paths coincides with that of the best retrospectively chosen portfolio within this class. We provide several novel results concerning rough integration, and highlight the advantages of the rough path approach by showing that (nonfunctionally generated) log-optimal portfolios in an ergodic Itô diffusion setting have the same asymptotic growth rate as Cover's universal portfolio and the best retrospectively chosen one.     

Clustering and compatibility between tourism attractions

Cumulative attraction or compatibility is a powerful factor in locational decisions of retail outlets, but it has received little attention in the tourism literature. Existing studies largely ignore the impact of spatial and thematic clustering on compatibility between tourism businesses. This research questions whether and how spatial and thematic clustering are related to tourist movements between visitor attractions. The study in Cornwall, England, is based on in‐depth interviews with tourist attraction managers and key informants, complemented by a survey of 435 tourists. It provides insights into the relationship between the nature of the tourism product, spatial clustering and tourism behaviour. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.