DO STRATEGY AND MANAGEMENT MATTER IN MUNICIPAL ORGANISATIONS?

In Sweden, a large share of public services are organised, produced and delivered by municipalities, large and small, rich and poor. Contextual conditions (size and location) and economic conditions (efficiency and wealth) differ considerably among these service‐providing organisations. The question raised in this paper is whether a municipality's economic situation is a direct consequence of the contextual situation or the organisation's strategy and management – that is: Do strategy and management matter? Our analysis rests on a resource‐based view of organisation strategy. Both quantitative and qualitative observations have been made. First, cost savings data from 50 municipalities were examined for patterns and relationships between contextual and economic conditions. Second, about 100 representatives – municipal executive board members and leading officials – from 20 municipalities with different characteristics were interviewed. In this paper we outline an analytical framework and propose that sound and sustainable provision of municipal service depends on whether organisational decision‐making is in harmony with work methods and objectives. The results indicate that strategy and management do matter. Among the municipalities included in our study, we identify four prevalent basic strategies. Strategy tends to coincide with the economic situation rather than the contextual situation. A low‐performing municipality tends to have a predominantly outward orientation in its decision‐making, whereas a higher‐performing municipality makes decisions with both inward and outward orientation.     

The sky is the limit? The determinants and constraints of European airports commercial revenues

This study investigates the determinants of commercial and retail airport revenues from real estate operations. Aviation revenues per passenger are mainly determined by the national income per capita in the area where the airport is located, the percentage of leisure travelers and the size of the airport. Main drivers of commercial revenues per passenger include the number of passengers passing through the airport, the ratio of commercial to total revenues, national income, the share of domestic and leisure travelers and the number of flights. These results are in line with previous findings of a negative influence of business travelers on commercial revenues per passenger. We also find that a large amount of retail space per passenger is generally associated with lower commercial revenues per square meter confirming decreasing marginal revenue effects. Real estate revenues per passenger are positively associated with national income per capita at airport location, share of intra-EU passengers and percent delayed flights.     

Liberal Thought in Reasoning on CSR

In this article, I argue that conventional reasoning on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is based on the assumption of a liberal market economy in the context of a nation state. I build on the study of Scherer and Palazzo (Acad Manage Rev 32(4):1096–1120, 2007), developing a number of criteria to identify elements of liberal philosophy in the ongoing CSR debate. I discuss their occurrence in the CSR literature in detail and reflect on the implications, taking into account the emerging political reading of the firm. I conclude that the apolitical framework in the mainstream CSR literature has to be overcome since it does not reflect recent changes in the socio-economic conditions for economic actors in a globalizing world.     

Assessing the profitability of intraday opening range breakout strategies

Is it possible to beat the market by mechanical trading rules based on historical and publicly known information? Such rules have long been used by investors and in this paper, we test the success rate of trades and profitability of the Open Range Breakout (ORB) strategy. An investor that trades on the ORB strategy seeks to identify large intraday price movements and trades only when the price moves beyond some predetermined threshold. We present an ORB strategy based on normally distributed returns to identify such days and find that our ORB trading strategy result in significantly higher returns than zero as well as an increased success rate in relation to a fair game. The characteristics of such an approach over conventional statistical tests is that it involves the joint distribution of low, high, open and close over a given time horizon.     

Modern variety adoption and risk management in drought prone areas: insights from the sorghum farmers of eastern Ethiopia

Adoption rates of improved or modern varieties (MV) of sorghum in eastern Ethiopia are generally low. Although these MV may represent an effective means of coping with droughts, given their early maturing traits, landraces could prove to be more drought‐tolerant and better adapted to marginal production conditions. Whether MV adoption is a risk reducing technology is very much an empirical question which this article investigates using a unique dataset from eastern Ethiopia in a year of extreme weather conditions. Results show that risk‐factors coupled with access to markets and social capital drive farmers’ decisions to adopt MVs. On the one hand, it appears that farmers use MVs to mitigate moderate risks. On the other hand, farmers who have been most vulnerable to extreme weather events are less likely to use MVs suggesting that MV adoption does not necessarily represent an effective means of coping with drought. Finally, findings show that MV growers are more likely to be affected by sorghum failure once controlling for exogenous production factors.     

The IB/ IHRM interface: Exploring the potential of intersectional theorizing

Although the core concepts underlying IB and IHRM provide a common lexicon and epistemology, this commonality is often more implicit than explicit. We highlight not only the common ground but also the lack of critical dialogue between the two fields. This paper asks: What can each field learn from the other? What do scholars from IB learn from IHRM and vice versa? We identify a possible agenda and concerns regarding theory building as a basis for dialogue between the two fields.     

Effect of type 1 diabetes on school performance in a dynamic world: new analysis exploring Swedish register data

This paper investigates if the effect of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) on school performance, documented in prior research, has changed in more recent birth cohorts of children using national Swedish population register data. The issue is of interest because management and treatment of the disease have improved over the last decades and, furthermore, because of changes in the educational grading system. Despite these changes, data indicate a persistent negative effect of T1DM on compulsory and upper secondary school grades with a standardized effect size of ?0.109 and ?0.070, respectively, and the results appear only marginally smaller compared to earlier findings in cohorts completing school under the previous grading system. Moreover, the results are consistent for alternative model specifications and econometric estimation strategies. Whereas access to new treatment technologies and improved diabetes management strategies has reduced the burden of diabetes in daily life, the results from this study indicate that continued efforts are needed to improve the situation in school for children with T1DM to prevent potential long-term socio-economic consequences.     

Interpersonal similarity and knowledge sharing within multinational organizations

Previous research has established that interpersonal similarity can influence knowledge sharing in such a way that similar people are more likely to share knowledge than those who are dissimilar. We contribute to the literature by showing that in the MNC context, cultural and functional similarity can become more powerful sources of bias than more commonly assumed demographic characteristics such as gender or seniority. This may be driven by the salience of such boundaries in the MNC: while demographic characteristics are more broadly distributed, cultural and functional barriers create more defined and observable faultlines, often coinciding with unit boundaries. We further argue that it may not be similarity as such that matters but rather its positive impact on different dimensions of social capital, which mediate the relationship between similarity and knowledge sharing. These microfoundations of inter-unit knowledge exchange point to important theoretical and practical implications for international management.     

Testing structural equation models: the impact of error variances in the data generating process

Yet another paper on fit measures? To our knowledge, very few papers discuss how fit measures are affected by error variance in the Data Generating Process (DGP). The present paper deals with this. Based upon an extensive simulation study, this paper shows that the effects of increased error variance differ significantly for various fit measures. In addition to error variance the effects depend on sample size and severity of misspecification. The findings confirm the general notion that good fit as measured by the chi-square, RMSEA and GFI etc. does not necessarily mean that the model is correctly specified and reliable. One finding is that the chi square test may give support to misspecified models in situations with a high level of error variance in the DGP, for small sample sizes. Another finding is that the chi-square test looses power also for large sample sizes when the model is negligible misspecified. Other results include incremental fit indices as NFI and RFI which prove to be more informative indicators under these circumstances. At the end of the paper we formulate some guidelines for use of different fit measures.