Strategic behavior within families of hedge funds

The paper investigates the strategic behavior of hedge fund families. It focuses on decisions to start and liquidate family-member funds. Hedge fund families tend to liquidate funds that underperform compared to other member funds, and to replace them by new ones. By choosing a launch time after a short period of superior performance by their member funds, families extend the spillover to new funds. Hedge fund families seem to be more experienced in promoting their funds and attracting fund inflow than in generating superior performance. This results in higher dollar compensation earned by managers within multi-fund families than in stand-alone funds.     

Interacting with a questionnaire: respondents’ constructions of questionnaire completion

This article explores informants’ constructions of the situation of completing a questionnaire. The data comes from a study qualitatively replicating a quantitative method in which informants were asked to think aloud when completing a questionnaire designed to identify and measure feelings and behaviours in the situation of a job loss. The thinking aloud data showed that the informants constructed the situation of completing the questionnaire as interaction and they engaged themselves in a complex social communication anchored in a local context. The article shows how the informants positioned themselves with regard to the activity of completing a questionnaire, how they constructed their choice of answers and, finally, how they positioned the psychologist who asked for the questionnaire to be completed. The article concludes by discussing potential consequences of the findings for psychological assessment in clinical practice and research.     

Cultural changes,popular creativity and mass communication: the Brazilian carnival over the past two centuries

The article analyses festive activities of central/south Brazilian urban society during the past two centuries examining cultural changes, the role of popular creativity, and the effect of the mass media. The article notes the rise of a dominant sector in society which imposes cultural creations on the lower classes while at the same time appropriating cultural traits of popular origin adapting those to fit into a consume oriented capitalist system.     

HURRICANE KATRINA'S EFFECT ON THE PERCEPTION OF NEW ORLEANS LEISURE TOURISTS

Destination image is a critical factor to potential travelers. Many say that Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. The purpose of this study was to investigate the tourist destination images of leisure travelers to New Orleans before and after the storm. Further, this study assessed the influence of media exposure and geographic point of origin on perceptions. The results of this research provide fundamental implications for strategic image management that can assist in designing and implementing marketing campaigns to enhance tourism destination images and to overcome prevailing negative ones.     

Empirical confidence intervals for USDA commodity price forecasts

Conventional procedures for calculating confidence limits of forecasts generated by statistical models provide little guidance for forecasts based on a combination or a consensus process rather than formal models, as is the case with US Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts. This study applied and compared several procedures for calculating empirical confidence intervals for USDA forecasts of corn, soybean and wheat prices over the 1980/81 through 2006/07 marketing years. Alternative procedures were compared based on out-of-sample performance over 1995/96 through 2006/07. The results of this study demonstrate that kernel density, quantile distribution and best fitting parametric distribution (logistic) methods provided confidence intervals calibrated at the 80% level prior to harvest and 90% level after harvest. The kernel density-based method appears most accurate both before and after harvest with the final value falling inside the forecast interval 77% of the time before harvest and 92% after harvest, followed by quantile regression (73% and 91% before and after harvest, respectively) logistic distribution (73% and 90% before and after harvest, respectively) and histogram (66% and 84% before and after harvest, respectively). Overall, this study demonstrates that empirical approaches may be used to construct more accurate confidence intervals for USDA corn, soybean and wheat price forecasts.     

Mattel,Inc.: Global Manufacturing Principles (GMP) – A Life-Cycle Analysis of a Company-Based Code of Conduct in the Toy Industry

Over the last 20+ years, multinational corporations (MNCs) have been confronted with accusations of abuse of market power and unfair and unethical business conduct especially as it relates to their overseas operations and supply chain management. These accusations include, among others, worker exploitation in terms of unfairly low wages, excessive work hours, and unsafe work environment; pollution and contamination of air, ground water and land resources; and, undermining the ability of natural government to protect the well-being of their citizens. MNCs have responded to these accusations by creating voluntary codes of conduct which commit them to specific standards for addressing these issues. These codes are created at both the industry-wide and the individual company level. Unfortunately, these codes have generated little credibility and public trust because their compliance claims cannot be independently verified, and they lack transparency and full public disclosure. In this article, we present a case study of the voluntary code of conduct by Mattel, Inc., the world’s largest toy company. The code, called the Global Manufacturing Principles (GMP), confronts the general criticism leveled against voluntary codes of conduct by (a) creating detailed standards of compliance, (b) independent external monitoring of the company’s compliance with its code of conduct, and (c) making full, and uncensored public disclosure of the audit findings and company’s response in terms of remedial action. We present a detailed account of how Mattel’s voluntary code of conduct was created, implemented, and ultimately abandoned over 9 years. We provide an evaluative analysis of the company’s GMP compliance throughout its life span, which suggests a bell-shaped curve, where early top management commitments were met with pockets of resistance from operational groups, who were concerned about balancing GMP compliance efforts with traditional performance criteria. The early stage response from Mattel’s top management was quick and supported with the requisite resources. As a result, the compliance process accelerated, becoming increasingly more robust and effective. The success of code compliance and increased transparency in public disclosure energized field managers with a sense of professional satisfaction and publicly recognized accomplishments. The decline in GMP compliance was equally steep. When all the easily attainable targets had been reached at the company-operated plants, addressing vendor plants’ compliance presented a new set of challenges, which taxed corporate resources and management commitment. It would seem that value-based and ethics-oriented considerations, i.e., doing the right thing for the right reason, were no longer the driving force for Mattel’s management. Mattel did not see any economic benefit from its proactive stance, when competitors did not seem to suffer adverse consequences for not following suit. The final contributing factor to the code’s abandonment was a widely publicized series of product recalls which absorbed top management’s attention.     

Toward a Model of Organizational Co-Evolution in Transition Economies

abstract    The paper presents a model of organization–environment co-evolution, which portrays the joint impact of organizational and environmental characteristics on organizational survival. The four organizational characteristics included in the model are: (a) control structure, (b) product strategy, (c) exchange strategy, and (d) distance to the market. The three environmental characteristics are: (a) control structures, (b) competitive structures, and (c) exchange structures. In line with the general co-evolutionary approach, the model highlights the interrelationship between micro and meso level phenomena, specifically, between firm-level adaptation and industry-level selection of organizational forms. The paper focuses on transition economies and uses the empirical evidence from these economies to illustrate the model's potential. The model, however, is sufficiently general to be applied in other organizational environments.     

HRM structures and subsidiary discretion in foreign multinationals in the UK

This article uses a large-scale representative survey to examine a key aspect of control in multinational companies (MNCs): the extent of central influence over human resource (HR) policy formation in subsidiaries. This is a crucial aspect of behaviour, relevant for example for the cross-border diffusion of policies and practices and for the institutional distinctiveness of practice within a given host environment. The article assesses how far policy is determined by corporate headquarters or some other higher-level organizational structure. Its novelty lies primarily in its exploration of the influence of the structure of the HR management (HRM) function on subsidiary discretion. It finds, first, that the degree of central control is influenced for different HR issues by nationality of ownership and by international product/service standardization. Second, there is some variability in the antecedents associated with discretion on different HR issues. Finally, aspects of the structure of the HRM function significantly affect discretion, notably the networking of HR managers across borders and the direct reporting relationships within the function between the UK and higher organizational levels.     

Can religion insure against aggregate shocks to happiness? The case of transition countries

This paper examines the effects of reforms and religion on happiness in transition economies. Earlier literature suggests that religiosity insures happiness against various individual stressful life events. This phenomenon is well-explored in developed countries but rarely studied in post-communist countries, where religion was officially suppressed for a long period. These countries have undergone considerable economic transformations over the past two decades. Using cross-sectional Life in Transition Survey data and historical data on religions, I examine if religion insures against economic reforms. The endogeneity of religion is taken into account. The findings suggest that economic reforms may have both positive and negative effects on happiness. Religiosity indeed insures happiness and perceptions of economic and political situations against economic reforms.