ADMINISTRATORS AS MANAGERS OF CHANGE AT THE KAROLINSKA INSTITUTE

As Universities and Institutes of Higher Education increasingly find themselves having to undertake organizational change, so potentially the nature and role of administration itself changes. This paper, in reporting the experiences of the central administrative team at the Karolinska Institute, a Swedish University, indicates how this can result in administrators becoming managers of change.     

Interdependencies, trust and information in relationships, alliances and networks

The last decade has been characterised by the increased development of cross-company relationships, alliances and more complex business networks. This paper examines fundamental concepts that relate to the needs for information, including accounting information, in these interactive structures. It considers, initially, some consequences for accounting when planning and control is to be exercised across organisational boundaries, but the main thrust of the paper is to focus on the fact that all relationships depend to some extent on trust. The interaction between trust and information in personal relationships is explored to serve as a template against which to consider whether the information needs of inter-organisational relationships are similar. Having examined information needs of business relationships in general, the analysis is developed to consider the needs of different forms of corporate alliances and then wider business networks. This paper is an attempt to create a debate on new questions that seem to be fundamental to the design of information and accounting systems. It is not claimed to have provided definitive answers, but it is proposed that the lack of a well-developed theory of the interaction between trust and information has been a fundamental gap in our knowledge.     

Two-way interplays between capital buffers and credit growth: Evidence from French banks

We assess the extent to which bank capital buffers exacerbate the cyclical behavior of credit. We empirically study the relationships between GDP growth, capital buffers and loan growth with firm-level data for French banks over the period 1993–2009. Based on panel data simultaneous equations and Granger causality tests, our findings point to mutually reinforcing mechanisms between capital buffers and loan growth, all the more as better quality capital is considered. Overall, those empirical results lend support to a countercyclical financial regulation focused on high-quality capital and loan growth smoothing.     

The Impact of Corporate Social Performance on a Firm’s Multinationality

Using panel data of 4,244 company years, we examine whether and how corporate social performance (CSP) affects a firm’s capacity to achieve profitable sales in foreign markets. Based on our extension of instrumental stakeholder theory into the international arena, we hypothesized a U-shaped relationship between CSP and multinationality. Results supported our contention that multinational enterprises (MNEs) need to be substantially committed to social performance objectives if they are to recoup the cost of their CSP investments, and improve their capacity to compete in foreign markets. MNEs engaged in intermediate levels of CSP achieve lower levels of multinationality than firms operating at either anchor of the social performance continuum. In addition, this study demonstrates that CSP moderates a well-established relationship in international business literature – the relationship between R&D investment and a firm’s multinationality. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

PRIVATE VERSUS PUBLIC MONEY*

I show that the nature of agents' production determines whether they should issue money. I use a matching model with no commitment and no enforcement. Some agents can produce goods, whereas others are unproductive. All agents can produce at a cost a distinguishable, intrinsically useless but durable good: notes. Productive agents produce red notes whereas unproductive agents produce green notes. I find that green notes are the most efficient means of exchange, as they implement more allocations than red notes and at a lower cost. Therefore, unproductive agents should issue money. I associate unproductive agents to agents producing public goods.