Small Capitalization Companies: What Does Financial Analysis Tell Us about Them?

The study considers a broad range of accounting information and ratios for a group of small and large companies from 1965 through 1980. It seeks to answer the following questions: Are the financial ratios of small companies significantly different from those of larger companies? Are these differences commensurate with relative stock market performance? What are the implications for investors who may wish to invest in small companies, either individually or through mutual funds specializing in the stock of small companies?     

Bridging knowledge in ambidextrous HRM systems: empirical evidence from hidden champions

Managing the tension between efficiency and flexibility is one of the core challenges that organizations must tackle in order to survive in the global competitive environment. Ambidexterity has been identified in the literature as a key way of managing this tension. Despite the enormous popularity of the concept of ambidexterity, the questions of how HR practices influence exploration and exploitation and support organizational ambidexterity remain underexplored. Drawing on our empirical case studies of three mid-sized ‘hidden champions’ in different high-tech manufacturing industries, we show how an ambidextrous human resource management (HRM) system works. We demonstrate that ambidextrous HRM systems can be regarded as a special type of high-performance work system (HPWS) that facilitates the continuous integration of exploration and exploitation in the pursuit of flexibility and efficiency. In particular, we elucidate how firms apply integrative employment practices and integrative work practices to facilitate collaboration and to create and strengthen a common frame of reference that fosters knowledge integration. Finally, setting up an ambidextrous HRM system supports the complementary interplay between a common frame of reference and a firm's ability to integrate knowledge in order to manage the conflicting demands of exploration and exploitation.     

Testing rebalancing strategies for stock-bond portfolios across different asset allocations

We compare the risk-adjusted performance of stock–bond portfolios between rebalancing and buy-and-hold across different asset allocations by reporting statistical significance levels. Our investigation is based on a 30-year dataset and incorporates the financial markets of the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. To draw useful recommendations to investment management, we implement a history-based simulation approach which enables us to mimic realistic market conditions. Even if the portfolio weight of stocks is very low, our empirical results show that a frequent rebalancing significantly enhances risk-adjusted portfolio performance for all analysed countries and all risk-adjusted performance measures.     

The Financial Structure of Private Held Belgian Firms

We examine the determinants of the debt-equity choice and the debt maturity choice for a sample of small, privately held firms in a creditor oriented environment. Our results, which are based on 4,706 firm-year observations for 1132 Belgian firms in the period 1996–2000, generally confirm the role of asymmetric information and agency costs of debt as major determinants of the financial structure of privately held firms. High growth firms and firms with less tangible assets have a lower debt ratio. We also find that more profitable firms have less debt. Firms tend to match the maturity of debt with the maturity of their assets. Growth options do not seem to influence debt maturity, which would suggest that the underinvestment problem is resolved by lowering leverage and by bank monitoring, not by reducing debt maturity. Credit risk is also an important determinant of debt maturity: firms with higher credit risk borrow more on the short term. Finally, in contrast to most studies on the financial structure of companies, we find that larger firms tend to have a higher debt ratio and a shorter debt maturity.