Organizational Performance Consequences of Age Diversity: Inspecting the Role of Diversity‐Friendly HR Policies and Top Managers’ Negative Age Stereotypes

This paper seeks to advance the diversity literature by investigating organizational performance consequences of age diversity. Drawing from social‐identity and social‐categorization theory, we theoretically argue that, in age‐diverse companies, age‐based subgrouping processes occur, favouring a shared perception of a negative age‐discrimination climate. This perceived negative age‐discrimination climate in turn negatively relates to organizational performance. As the main contribution, top managers’ negative age‐related stereotypes and diversity‐friendly HR policies are introduced as organizational‐level moderators that increase and attenuate, respectively, the social categorization processes affecting performance in age‐diverse companies. We utilized structural equation modelling (SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses using a multisource dataset comprising 147 companies. The results supported all hypotheses, indicating that low negative top managers’ age stereotypes as well as high diversity‐friendly HR policies are potential organizational factors that can prevent the negative relation of age diversity with organizational performance transmitted through the negative age‐discrimination climate. These results are discussed in light of their contribution to the diversity literature and social‐categorization theory as well as their implication for practitioners.     

A socio-technical framework for assessing the viability of carbon capture and storage technology

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is seen as a key technology to tackle climate change. The principal idea of CCS is to remove carbon from the flue gases arising from burning fuels for electricity generation or industrial applications and to store the carbon in geological formations to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. Policy makers in several countries are supportive of the technology, but a number of uncertainties hamper its further development and deployment. The paper makes three related contributions to the literatures on socio-technical systems and technology assessment: 1) It systematically develops an interdisciplinary framework to assess the main uncertainties of CCS innovation. These include technical, economic, financial, political and societal issues. 2) It identifies important linkages between these uncertainties. 3) It develops qualitative and quantitative indicators for assessing these uncertainties. This framework aims to help decision making on CCS by private and public actors and is designed to be applicable to a wider range of low carbon technologies. The paper is based on a systematic review of the social science literature on CCS and on insights from innovation studies, as well as on interviews about assessment of new technologies with experts from a range of organisations and sectors.     

Performance impact of middle managers' adaptive strategy implementation: The role of social capital

This article reconciles mixed findings about the performance impact of middle managers' strategy involvement. We propose that the relationship between middle managers' adaptive strategy implementation—through upward and downward influence—and objective business performance can be curvilinear and contingent on formal and informal structures. Applying a multilevel perspective to social networks, we empirically show that reputational social capital enhances the performance impact of middle managers' upward influence while informational social capital elevates the performance impact of their downward influence. The size of a business unit or region has differential moderating effects. The curvilinear effects of middle managers' upward influence and reputational and informational social capital on business unit performance reflect paradoxes. We discuss the implications of these findings for strategy implementation research and practice. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A NOTE ON SELECTION EFFECTS OF THE HAND RULE

The famous Hand rule weighs the burden of precaution against the reduction in expected harm. The burden may be type‐specific, implying different standards of care for different injurer types. We show that this fact may be exploited by principals in their search for minimized individual costs. Principals may hire agents with high cost of care‐taking although other agents are available. This is shown in a unilateral‐care setting either with perfect or with asymmetric information. We therefore highlight a neglected downside of the negligence rule.     

Tractors on eBay: Differences between Internet and In-Person Auctions

We provide a systematic examination of the differences between Internet and in-person auction prices for used tractors. A hedonic model estimated with transactions pooled between eBay and in-person auctions reveals statistically distinct price surfaces for the two auction venues and predicts significantly lower prices for comparable equipment sold on eBay, though this difference is attenuated for tractors fully covered by eBay's buyer protection program and is fully absent for the most frequently traded tractor. An endogenous venue selection model reveals that larger, more valuable tractors from states with more valuable stocks of machinery are more likely to be offered on eBay.     

Investors' Personality Influences Investment Decisions: Experimental Evidence on Extraversion and Neuroticism

The authors analyze the impact of individuals' degree of extraversion and neuroticism on their decision making in an experimental asset market. To establish this link between research on experimental asset markets and social psychology the authors use a unique approach that combines a questionnaire designed to assess individuals' degree of extraversion and neuroticism and an experimental asset market to assess individual financial decision making. The dataset combines 364 undergraduate business students' questionnaire responses and their trading behavior in the asset market. The authors find that extraversion and neuroticism significantly influence individuals' behavior in the experimental asset market. Specifically, more extraverted individuals pay higher prices for financial assets and they buy more financial assets when assets are overpriced than less extraverted individuals do. More neurotic individuals hold less risky assets in their financial portfolios than less neurotic individuals do. Although a large part of the explanatory power appears to be driven by gender differences, the authors still find significant impact of extraversion and neuroticism after controlling for gender effects. The study findings suggest that further research on financial markets could benefit from including personality of market participants as a crucial explanatory factor.     

Thematic portfolio optimization: challenging the core satellite approach

In recent years, thematic exchange-traded funds (ETF) have increased in economic significance. Investors in thematic ETFs have more than just financial objectives and gain a non-monetary added value from a thematic portion in their portfolios. Therefore, traditional portfolio optimization models which target only financial criteria cannot suit these investors’ needs anymore. Nevertheless, to account for their thematic interests, investors adapt a core satellite strategy in which conventional core portfolios and thematic satellite portfolios are combined. Thus, these portfolios are separately optimized without further considering inter-portfolio correlation effects. Since modern portfolio theory has originally been established to, inter alia, optimize these correlation effects, portfolios can only be efficient by chance. Therefore, this study targets the correlation effects between conventional and thematic portfolios and uses a tri-criterion thematic portfolio optimization model as an overall framework. Throughout a two-part analysis with tradable ETFs and a simulation with 250,000 draws and 1,750,000 portfolio optimizations performed, the status quo is compared to the tri-criterion model. Quantifying the suboptimality, simulation results show a mean portfolio improvement of 6.23% measured as relative yield enhancement. Further, our analysis concludes that the more narrowly a theme is defined and the more particular it is, relative yield enhancements can increase up to 46.88%.

     

Japan's demographic revolution? A study of advertising practitioners' views on stereotypes

This article presents results from a survey of advertising practitioners in Japan focusing on their opinions about the communication objectives and stereotypes, specifically the effectiveness of older spokespersons, their general views on older models in advertising and the effectiveness of older models by product category. We find that these opinions are rather positive. The intention to use a larger number of older models is affected by the perceived effectiveness of older spokespersons and the expected increase in older models and client interest. When targeting an older audience, older spokespersons are seen as particularly effective for the product category of health/medical, but for a general audience it is financial services/insurance. Regardless of product category, they are perceived more effective when targeting an older versus a general audience and when targeting aged 50–64 versus 65 plus.