Sponsorship programmes and corruption in sport: management responses to a growing threat

Abstract

Sponsorship programmes are increasingly being exposed to the threat of corruption in sport. Several recent notable cases of corruption have exposed sponsors and their investments to significant perceived pressures including negative consumer associations with athletes, teams and officials that have been found guilty of engaging in corrupt activity. How sponsors respond to such instances of corruption in sport forms the basis of this paper. Drawing from an analysis of corruption cases (n = 2089), the paper initially examines the nature of corruption in sport. Through interview data (n = 21), it subsequently identifies key factors that sponsors should take into consideration when deciding upon a course of action to mitigate any potential effects of corrupt activity by a sporting property they are associated with. Finally, the paper discusses those courses of action.     

Evaluating discounts as a dimension of customer behavior analysis

Today, increased competition between organizations has led them to seek a better understanding of customer behavior through identifying valuable customers. Customers’ expectations about the price and quality of products and services play an important role in their selection process. In online businesses, competition and price differences between suppliers is high, so discounts will attract different customers. As a result, discounts and the frequency and amount of purchases can lead to better understanding of customer behavior. Customer segmentation and analysis is essential for identifying groups of customers. Hence, this study uses a model based on RFM called RdFdMd, in which d is the level of discount used to analyze customer purchase behavior and the importance of discounts on customers’ purchasing behavior and organizational profitability. The CRISP-DM and k-mean algorithm were used for clustering. The results indicate that using the R_dF_dM_d model achieves better customer clustering and valuation, and discounts were identified as an important criterion for customer purchases.     

Social media affordances in entry‐level employees’ socialization: employee agency in the management of their professional impressions and vulnerability during early stages of socialization

This study examined how entry‐level employees interacted with social media during three stages of organizational socialization. They navigated between four different media affordances (persistence, editability, visibility, and association) while experiencing them as both enabling and constraining in different socialization stages. Qualitative interview data analysis revealed during anticipatory socialization, job applicants realized visibility and persistence in relation to institutional and individualized socialization. During encounter, new employees managed personal and professional life boundaries carefully against the association and visibility affordances. Although some participants used both public and enterprise social media for obtaining job‐related information and understanding coworkers and company culture, during metamorphosis, most interviewees adopted passive information seeking strategies and experienced a paradoxical tension between the enabling and constraining affordances of social media. Findings are discussed with regards to employees’ exertion of agency in managing their professional impressions and coping with high levels of uncertainty and vulnerability during early stages of socialization.     

Using the Pack‐and‐a‐Half Rule to Eliminate Backroom Inventories in Retail Operations

In the retail industry, backroom inventories are typically associated with higher labor costs and greater operational complexity. Thus, retailers look for ways to eliminate backroom inventories. A heuristic used for this purpose is the pack‐and‐a‐half rule which suggests that the shelf space allocated for a product should be at least 50% larger than the case pack quantity in which the product is delivered. Despite its popularity among retailers, the pack‐and‐a‐half rule has been ignored in the academic literature. We introduce the pack‐and‐a‐half rule, assess its impact on a retailer's profits, identify cost, demand, and product characteristics driving this impact, and propose a modification. Based on an analysis of data obtained from a retailer on 1,986 SKUs in 20 categories, we find that the pack‐and‐a‐half rule decreases a retailer's profits, on average, by 10% when applied uniformly across all SKUs. Further, this decrease is significantly affected by product depth, product width, demand elasticity, case pack quantity, and inventory carrying cost. Finally, we develop a set of modifications based on these variables where the pack‐and‐a‐half rule is applied selectively and in a stepwise fashion. These modifications limit the decrease in a retailer's profits to a range between 6% and 7%.     

CEO internal experience and voluntary disclosure quality: Evidence from management forecasts

Internally‐promoted CEOs should have a deep understanding of their firm's products, supply chain, operations, business climate, corporate culture, and how to navigate among employees to get the information they need. Thus, we argue that internally‐promoted CEOs are likely to produce higher quality disclosure than outsider CEOs. Using a sample of US firms from the S&P1500 index from 2001 to 2011, we hand‐collect whether a CEO is hired from inside the firm and, if so, the number of years they worked at the firm before becoming CEO. We then examine whether managers with more internal experience issue higher quality disclosures and offer three main findings. First, CEOs with more internal experience are more likely to issue voluntary earnings forecasts than those managers with less internal experience as well as those managers hired from outside the firm. Second, CEOs with more internal experience issue more accurate earnings forecasts than those managers with less internal experience as well as those managers hired from outside the firm. Finally, investors react more strongly to forecasts issued by insider CEOs than to those issued by outsider CEOs. In additional analysis, we find no evidence that these results extend to mandatory reporting quality (i.e., accruals quality, restatements, or internal control weaknesses), perhaps because mandatory disclosure is subjected to heavy oversight by the board of directors, auditors, and regulators. Overall, our findings suggest that when managers have work experience with the firm prior to becoming the CEO, the firm's voluntary disclosure is of higher quality.     

Audit Firm Attributes and Auditor Litigation Risk

This study examines the association between auditors' litigation risk and audit firm attributes. Using professional liability insurance premiums as a proxy for auditors' litigation risk, we present evidence that the risk is lower in audit firms having: (1) separate non-audit and audit divisions; (2) a higher proportion of partners; and (3) a higher annual growth in number of CPAs employed. Additionally, we find that the risk is higher in audit firms having: (1) operating losses; and (2) high revenue growth. Our results are consistent with the idea that audit firms' financial condition and organizational structure affect their independence/ expertise, and, in turn, their litigation risk. Our results are broadly supportive of the PCAOB's (2015) and US Department of Treasury's (2008) views that investors, audit committees, management, and other regulators could benefit from having access to financial and organizational information about audit firms.     

Larger,counter-intuitive and lasting – The PSM role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic,exploring opportunities for theoretical and actionable advances

PSM has played an important role in the initial mitigation of risks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore the nature and scope of this role and develop a roadmap for PSM contributions towards greater supply chain resilience. We find that the role of PSM is (1) multidimensional; responding to supply risks but also to demand and logistics risks, (2) counter to game theory; collaboration increased instead of decrease, (3) multi-stage; beyond the initial response the hardest change efforts are still ahead. The pandemic is accelerating the journey towards future-proof PSM but not necessarily revolutionizing the future of PSM.     

Unbiased estimation of expected return using CAPM

Estimation of expected return is required for many financial decisions. For example, an estimate for cost of capital is required for capital budgeting and cost of equity estimates are needed for performance evaluation based on measures such as EVA. Estimates for expected return are often based on the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), which states that expected excess return (expected return minus the risk-free rate) is equal to the asset's sensitivity to the world market portfolio (β) times the risk premium on the “world market portfolio” (the market risk premium). Since the world market portfolio, by definition, contains all assets in the world, it is not observable. As a result, an estimate for expected return is commonly obtained by taking an estimate for β based on some index (as a proxy for the world market portfolio) and an estimate for the market risk premium based on a potentially different index and multiplying them together. In this paper, it is shown that this results in a biased estimate for expected return. This is undesirable since biased estimates lead to misallocation of funds and biased performance measures. It is also shown in this paper that the straightforward procedure suggested by Fama and MacBeth [J. Financ. Econ. 1 (1974) 43] results in an unbiased estimate for expected return. Further from the analysis done, it follows that, for an unbiased estimate, it does not matter what proxy is used, as long as it is used correctly an unbiased estimate for expected return results.     

建筑企业实施供应链管理的关键因素

首先介绍了建筑企业实施供应链管理的必要性，然后分析了建筑供应链的特征，在此基础上论述了建筑企业实施供应链管理的九个关键成功因素，从而为建筑企业有效实施供应链管理提供依据。     

Organizational versus Market Knowledge: From Concrete Embodiment to Abstract Representation

Synopsis In contrast to the neoclassical economic presumption in favor of markets, we argue that organizations, not markets should be taken as our default assumption. We do so on information processing grounds. We distinguish between Zen and market Knowledge. The first is embodied and hard to articulate and the second abstract-symbolic. In human evolution, the first type of knowledge came first, and, on any pragmatic definition of knowledge, it still incorporates most of what we mean by the term. We take codification and abstraction as the two data processing activities that lead to the articulation of knowledge into an abstract-symbolic form. We develop a conceptual framework, the Information-Space (I-Space) to show how far the articulation of knowledge leads to its being shared. Whereas an unlimited sharing of information and knowledge leads to market-oriented outcomes, a more limited sharing leads to organizational outcomes. A market-oriented economics has tended to look to physics for its models; the field of organization theory has tended to look to biology. A more organization-oriented economics would thus look more to biology for its models.