On the Ethics of Psychometric Instruments Used in Leadership Development Programmes

Journal of Business Ethics - The leadership development industry regularly claims to aid in developing effective, ethical leaders, using 360-degree psychometric assessments as key tools for so...     

But are tourists satisfied? Importance-performance analysis of the whale shark tourism industry on Isla Holbox, Mexico

The objective of this paper is to understand the motivations and satisfactions of whale shark tour participants on Isla Holbox, Mexico in order to assess the success of this industry in meeting customer expectations. Whale shark tour participants were provided with a list of environmental and setting features and asked to rate the importance of, and satisfaction with, each feature. Importance-performance (IP) analysis was used to compare these scores and identify areas of management concern. The IP analysis identified key issues with false advertising, lack of educational information, perceived crowding, and tour cost. These factors are representative of larger issues related to the uncontrolled growth of the whale shark tourism industry on Holbox. Management should focus on limiting the growth of the industry, ensuring the equitable distribution of economic benefits within the industry, and developing and implementing effective guide training and interpretation programs.     

Saturation in qualitative research: exploring its conceptualization and operationalization

Quality & Quantity - Saturation has attained widespread acceptance as a methodological principle in qualitative research. It is commonly taken to indicate that, on the basis of the data that...     

Cohort extensions of the Poisson common factor model for modelling both genders jointly

The earlier work on mortality modelling and forecasting has largely focused on the study of a single population. Recently, there is an emerging strand of literature that emphasises the interrelationship between multiple populations. In this paper, we examine some cohort extensions of the Poisson common factor model for modelling both genders jointly. The cohort effect is specified in six alternatives which are applied to data-sets from five developed regions. We find that direct parameterisation of cohort effect could improve model fitting, reduce the need for additional period factors, and produce consistent mortality forecasts for females and males. Furthermore, we find that the cohort effect appears to be gender indifferent for the populations examined and has an interaction effect with age in certain cases.     

Managing supply chain risk and disruption from IT security incidents

Supply chain practices often put companies and their supply chains at risk. One of the most serious risks is disruptions. While many types of disruptions have been considered, little attention has been given to disruptions caused by information technology (IT) security incidents. Partner cooperation can assist in preventing or mitigating damage from IT security breaches in supply chains, where breaches can disrupt production, cause loss of essential data, and compromise confidential information. We develop a generalizable mathematical model that quantifies IT security risk in the supply chain. We then show how to find solutions for optimal risk reduction under several definitions of optimality: minimizing upstream risk, minimizing downstream risk, and minimizing global (supply chain) risk. We show how to develop curves for each of the above scenarios that indicate when extra funds should be spent on security, which security controls should be implemented, and when subsidies among partners are beneficial.     

Institutions and the location strategies of South African firms in Africa

This study explores the influence of institutions on the location strategies of firms in Africa. Specifically, the research examines the effect of governance infrastructure, a country's overall public institutions and policies, on the expansion strategies of three South African firms as they entered selected African countries between 1996 and 2015. These firms include SABMiller, MTN, and Massmart. The study makes use of structured interviews with senior directors of the three firms, mini case studies, and the World Bank's Worldwide Global Governance Indicators, in an effort to understand the impact of institutions, or lack thereof, on these companies’ location choices. Results suggest that by and large, the quality of formal institutions did not have a direct effect on the location decisions of the three firms in this study, and that these firms found ways to mitigate the so‐called institutional voids.     

The optimal rate of decline of an inefficient industry

This paper considers the problem of the optimal time path of contraction of an industry which has been hit by foreign competition, and shows that in general, along the optimal path, a production subsidy is warranted. The optimal subsidy trades off the benefit of unemployment in speeding up the approach to the new long-run equilibrium against the cost of lost output in the ‘inefficient’ industry. The dynamic shadow price of labour in this industry is also derived and shown to be always positive, though below the industry wage rate.     

Optimal taxation and top incomes

In many high-income countries over the past three decades there has been both large growth in inequality of wages and income and a shift in the burden of taxation from the top to the middle of the income distribution. A literature has developed which focuses on optimal tax rates for the top 1 % of the income distribution. In contrast, this paper considers the effect of inequality growth on the structure of a piecewise linear tax system defined over the entire income distribution. Our results suggest that the appropriate response to the increases in inequality would have been a shift towards a tax system with a lower tax rate in the lower half of the distribution together with a highly marginal rate progressive structure in the upper half, a clear differentiation between the top 10 % and the top 1 % and a higher top tax rate. Further inequality growth strengthens these characteristics of the optimal tax structure.     

The stock price effects of changes in dispersion of investor beliefs during earnings announcements

Existing research provides competing theories about how dispersion of investor beliefs might affect stock prices. We measure changes in dispersion of investor beliefs around earnings announcements using changes in the dispersion of individual analysts’ forecasts. We find that the 3-day market response to earnings announcements is negatively associated with changes in dispersion, consistent with the cost of capital hypothesis. The results hold after controlling for the current earnings surprise, forecast revisions of future earnings, and reported earnings relative to various earnings thresholds. Our study provides new insight about the information contained in earnings announcements that is incremental to the magnitude and timing of cash flows.