Methodological problems associated with research on unfair discrimination against racial minorities

Despite the passage of civil rights legislation, racial and ethnic minorities continue to experience unfair discrimination in the workplace. Therefore, considerable research in human resource management and social psychology has examined the factors thought to affect unfair discrimination in organizations [Cox, T. (1993). Cultural diversity in organizations: Theory, research, and practice. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler]. Although research has focused on unfair discrimination, researchers have argued that the construct and external validity of the results have been adversely affected by methodological problems [e.g., Stone, E.F., Stone, D.L., & Dipboye, R.L. (1992). Stigmas in organizations: Race, handicaps, and physical unattractiveness. In Kelly, K. (Ed.). Issues, theory, and research in industrial and organizational psychology (pp. 385–457). Amsterdam: Elsevier]. Given this critique, the present paper (a) examines the degree to which recent research suffered from a number of methodological problems (e.g., obtrusive measures, non-representative samples, and demand characteristics), (b) identifies strategies for overcoming these problems, and (c) offers recommendations for advancing our understanding of unfair discrimination in organizational contexts.     

The environmental and economic costs of sprawling parking lots in the United States

Urban sprawl is considered by most environmental scientists and urban planners to be a serious environmental problem. However, public perception about parking availability often forces planning offices to recommend parking lot sizes that exceed daily demands. The recent trend of increasing the size of stores, churches and even schools comes with increasing the size of parking lots that service these buildings. The objective of this paper is to analyze space allocation of parking lots in a typical midwestern county and to estimate the supply of parking spaces to potential demand. We also estimate the loss of ecosystem services represented by the area of parking lots in this county. We found that parking lots cover 5.65 km² (1 397 acres) of Tippecanoe County, Indiana which implies that 0.44% of the county area is devoted to parking lots. Our results show that there are approximately 2.2 parking spaces per registered vehicle, that parking lots make up more than 6.57% of the total urban footprint in this county, that the area of parking lots exceeded the area of parks in the city limits by a factor of three and that parking lot runoff and pollutants are significant compared to runoff and pollutants from these areas prior to their conversion to parking lots. As other authors have done before us we lament the poor use of land in urban regions of the United States, and encourage planners to think creatively about the use of land for parking.     

The identification of technology regimes in banking: Implications for the market power-fragility nexus

Neglecting the existence of different technologies in banking can contaminate efficiency, market power, and other performance measures. By simultaneously estimating (i) technology regimes conditional on exogenous factors, (ii) efficiency conditional on risk management, and (iii) Lerner indices of German banks, we identify three distinct technology regimes: Public & Retail, Small & Specialized, and Universal & Relationship. System estimation at the regional level reveals that greater bank market power increases bank profitability but also fosters corporate defaults. Corporate defaults, in turn, lead to higher probabilities of bank distress, which supports the market power-fragility hypothesis.     

Financial Restructuring in Fresh‐Start Chapter 11 Reorganizations

We find that firms substantially reduce their debt burden in “fresh‐start” Chapter 11 reorganizations, yet they emerge with higher debt ratios than what is typical in their respective industries. While cross‐sectional regressions reveal that post‐reorganization debt ratios are more in line with the predictions of the static trade‐off theory, they also reveal that pre‐reorganization debt ratios affect post‐reorganization debt ratios. Collectively, these results suggest that impediments in Chapter 11 prevent firms from completely resetting their capital structures. We also find that firms that reported positive operating income leading up to Chapter 11 emerge faster, suggesting that it is quicker to remedy strictly financial distress than economic distress.     

An empirical analysis of European stock repurchases

In this paper, we examine the share price effects and determinants of share repurchase programs for French, German, Italian, and British firms. Like US firms, we find that German and Italian share repurchases are met with a positive and significant share price response. However, British repurchase announcements exhibit small positive abnormal returns, and abnormal returns for French share repurchases are insignificantly different from zero, both results being quite different from results found in studies of US firms. We also investigate the determinants of the size of the share repurchase program.Our results indicate support for the Undervaluation Hypothesis and the Takeover Deterrence Hypothesis, and provide partial support for the National Investment Opportunity Set Hypothesis. Our results from our analysis of cumulative abnormal returns are also consistent with the Undervaluation, Takeover Deterrence, and National Investment Opportunity Set Hypotheses. However, we do not find support for the Excess Capital Hypothesis, the Intangibility Hypothesis or the Optimal Leverage Ratio Hypothesis.     

Overcoming the “recency trap” in customer relationship management

Purchase likelihood typically declines as the length of time since the customer’s previous purchase (“recency”) increases. As a result, firms face a “recency trap,” whereby recency increases for customers who do not purchase in a given period, making it even less likely they will purchase in the next period. Eventually the customer is effectively lost to the firm. We develop and illustrate a modeling approach to target a firm’s marketing efforts, keeping in mind the customer’s recency state. This requires an empirical model that predicts purchase likelihood as a function of recency and marketing, and a dynamic optimization that prescribes the most profitable way to target customers. In our application we find that customers’ purchase likelihoods as well as response to marketing depend on recency. These results are used to show that the targeting of email and direct mail should depend on the customer’s recency and that the optimal decision policy enables the average high recency customer, who currently is virtually worthless to the firm, to become profitable.     

Ranking North American accounting scholars publishing accounting education papers: 1966–2011

This paper ranks accounting’s education authors who teach at institutions located in the United States and Canada. During the 46-year period from 1966 through 2011 that we examined, 13 journals published accounting education papers; the publication period for each journal varies. The data indicate that only 31.4% of accounting’s 4855 doctoral faculty who teach at schools in North America have one or more publications in these 13 journals. For those doctorates still teaching, the research provides rankings of authors by doctoral year and for four periods: 2002–2011 (most recent 10 years), 1992–2001 (next 10-year period), 1966–1991 (last 26 years), and for the entire 46-year period. To acknowledge the contributions of retired and deceased authors, the research lists those authors who would have been included on the overall list had they still been actively teaching. While Urbancic (2009) and Brigham Young University (BYU) provide rankings of authors in accounting education, these rankings are limited in the scope of the journals included – Urbancic includes only six accounting education journals, while BYU includes only Issues in Accounting Education. We found that Urbancic’s (BYU’s) 10-year (20-year) data had a Spearman’s rho of −0.84 (0.39) with our rankings. We believe that data presented herein provides a more comprehensive ranking of accounting’s authors in the area of education.     

Valuation and Performance of Reacquisitions Following Equity Carve‐Outs

While existing literature reports a positive market reaction to parent companies conducting carve‐outs, we find that the response to carve‐outs that are ultimately reacquired is negative or insignificant. Reacquired units perform considerably worse than those that are not reacquired. Thus, parents may perceive that the market does not recognize the potential of these poorly performing units, and reacquires them to capitalize on the parents' private information. The reacquisition announcement results in a favorable market reaction for the parents and the units. However, parents experience negative long‐term buy‐and‐hold abnormal returns when they reacquire less than 100% of units' shares.     

Calculating ROI for training in the lodging industry: Where is the bottom line?

The challenge of measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of training has long been a hurdle for human resource and training professionals in the lodging industry. The reporting of a department's financial performance is a basic expectation of leaders responsible for their share of operational goals of a property. The management of revenue, yield, assets, and total quality are all part of the mix; however, for many leaders in human resource and training experts in the lodging industry, justification for expenditures and financial performance expectations are rarely requested.