Workforce diversity and firm performance: Relational coordination as a mediator and structural empowerment and multisource feedback as moderators

Workforce composition in organizations has become increasingly diverse. As an important step in determining how workforce diversity leads to firm performance, we proposed relational coordination as a mediator through which diversity in age and education indirectly affects firm performance. We also highlighted two human resource management practices (structural empowerment and multisource feedback) as critical contingencies that moderate the effects of workforce diversity on relational coordination and firm performance. We conducted hierarchical multiple regression on multisource data (including responses from senior directors, department directors, managers, and employees, as well as financial performance) from 189 Korean firms in the manufacturing sector, which yielded support for our hypotheses. These findings offer novel theoretical and practical insights into the effective management of workforce diversity.     

Employee well-being attribution and job change intentions: The moderating effect of task idiosyncratic deals

We developed and tested a research model in which employee well-being human resource (HR) attribution differentially influences the intention to change jobs across organizations (i.e., external job change intention) versus that within the same organization (i.e., internal job change intention). Furthermore, we posited that task idiosyncratic deals (I-deals) moderated the relationships between employee well-being HR attribution and external and internal job change intentions. Results indicated that employee well-being HR attribution was negatively related to external job change intention, but positively related to internal job change intention. Further, task I-deals significantly moderated the relationships between employee well-being HR attribution and external and internal job change intention. Specifically, employee well-being HR attribution played a less important role in reducing external job change intention when task I-deals were high rather than low. On the other hand, high task I-deals significantly strengthened the positive relationship between employee well-being HR attribution and internal job change intention. Our study extends the careers literature by differentiating the impact of employee well-being HR attribution on job change intentions within an organization compared with that across organizations and the important role of supervisors in enhancing or mitigating these effects.     

Cooperation with a multiproduct corporation in a strategic managerial delegation

We consider an industry composed of a multiproduct corporation that adopts corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a strategic managerial delegation and examine the profit-incentive to form a cooperative group. We find that competition is an equilibrium for any degree of substitutability and yields the highest CSR, which is increasing in the degree of substitutability. We also show that full cooperation is an equilibrium for lower substitutability but induces no CSR, whereas partial cooperation with one uniplant firm is an equilibrium for higher substitutability but yields lower CSR than that under competition. Therefore, cooperation might reduce strategic CSR activities, whereas competition will encourage higher CSR but yield lower industry profits.     

Bertrand versus Cournot competition in a downstream mixed oligopoly with foreign ownership

Focusing on foreign ownership in the private firm, we examine the Cournot-Bertrand comparison in a mixed oligopolistic market with vertical market structure. We have found that if public and private firms were charged with uniform price for their inputs, then Cournot-Bertrand ranking in market outcomes confirms those obtained by Ghosh and Mitra (2010). This implies that under uniform pricing in the upstream sector, the vertical market structure does not have substantial influences on Cournot-Bertrand ranking. However, if discriminatory pricing is adopted, firm's profits, output, and social welfare are often reversed to those obtained from uniform pricing in the upstream sector. Given the closeness of products, if the share of foreign ownership is sufficiently low, social welfare in Cournot competition can exceed that of Bertrand competition, contrasting with the standard welfare ranking that Bertrand welfare is strictly higher than Cournot. This implies that Cournot competition can be more socially desirable than Bertrand in mixed oligopoly with vertical market structure if discriminatory pricing scheme is adopted by foreign upstream monopolists.     

High accruals momentum

We examine the information content of high accruals momentum defined as a string of high discretionary accruals for four consecutive years. We find that firms that consistently report high levels of discretionary accruals experience low subsequent returns. The results are robust after we control for annual levels of discretionary accruals for the estimation period of high accruals momentum. Furthermore, the predictive power of the high accruals momentum for future returns is strongly persistent even after the existing accruals anomaly disappears. Our results also show that the high accruals momentum impact is more pronounced for low growth firms, suggesting that the overpricing of stocks with high accruals momentum is driven by managerial discretion to manage earnings.     

Distress risk,product market competition,and corporate bond yield spreads

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - The purpose of this paper is to examine whether industry-level risk affects corporate bond yield spreads. We use three types of industry risk...     

Financial econometrics,mathematics, statistics,and financial technology: an overall view

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Based upon my experience in research, teaching, writing textbooks, and editing handbooks and journals, this review paper discusses how financial...     

The income inequality,financial depth and economic growth nexus in China

Income inequality has increased in China despite rapid economic growth. Income inequality could impinge on future development, leading to social tension or political instability. Our study investigates the short-run and long-run relationship between three important macroeconomic indicators—income inequality, economic growth and financial depth. We utilise a two-step procedure of ARDL bounds and Granger causality for the analysis. The bounds test indicates the presence of a cointegrating relationship between income inequality, financial depth and economic growth in the long run. In the second step, we utilise the Granger causality approach. Results show a bidirectional causality between financial depth-growth and a unidirectional causality between inequality-growth in the short run. In the long run, results reveal that growth and financial depth determine Gini. Our findings provide support for the inequality-widening effect due to economic growth and higher credit provided to the private sector. We find no evidence of inequality-narrowing or income-equalising effect in the long run for the period of study. It is possible that the government's inclusive growth policies which started less than a decade ago have not taken effect for us to capture the inverted U-shape income equalising effect significantly.     

Poverty in US Lesbian and Gay Couple Households

Poverty is a widely researched topic in economics. However, despite growing research on the economic lives of lesbians and gay men in the United States since the mid 1990s, very little is known about poverty in same-sex couple households. This study uses American Community Survey data from 2010 to 2014 to calculate poverty rates for households headed by different-sex versus same-sex couples. Comparing households with similar characteristics, the results show that those headed by same-sex couples are more likely to be in poverty than those headed by different-sex married couples. Despite that overall disadvantage, a decomposition of the poverty risk shows that same-sex couples are protected from poverty by their higher levels of education and labor force participation, and their lower probability of having a child in the home. Lastly, the role of gender – above and beyond sexual orientation – is clear in the greater vulnerability to poverty for lesbian couples.     

How and when do prior international experiences lead to global work? A career motivation perspective

While research suggests a link between individuals' prior international experiences and their future participation in global work, we know little about how and the conditions under which this relationship occurs. Drawing on career motivation theory, we conceptualize global identity as a mediator between individuals' density of prior international experiences—defined as the extent to which time spent in culturally novel countries has provided individuals with developmental opportunities—and their global work aspirations, which in turn leads to their global work involvement. Further, this multi-stage mediation model holds mainly when individuals receive positive feedback regarding their intercultural competencies (i.e., cultural intelligence) from their peers. We test our model using a multi-wave multi-source dataset spanning 6 years. We discuss implications for the literatures on prior international experiences and global careers.