Social aspirations in European banks: peer-influenced risk behaviour

We test a sample of 3,586 banks from 33 European countries to determine whether performances above or below a social aspiration level (median performance of peer banks) influence banks’ aggregate risk levels. Our results are consistent with the behavioural theory of the firm and prospect theory in that we find that bank performance below a bank’s social aspiration level is followed by increased aggregate risk, i.e. risk-taking behaviour in the subsequent year. Although under-performing banks tend to be risk-takers, large banks and banks with high aggregate risk levels tend to limit the increase in their aggregate risk levels.     

Institutions as constraints and resources: Explaining cross‐national divergence in performance management

This article compares performance management practices in call centres from four telecommunications firms in the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, and Germany. Findings show that different combinations of institutional constraints, such as strong job security protections, and participation resources supporting worker voice were influential in shaping choices among policies to motivate and discipline workers. Performance management most closely approached a high‐involvement model where both constraints and resources were high, where worker representatives were able both to restrict management's use of sanctions and to establish procedures that improved the perceived fairness of incentives. Findings contribute to debates concerning the role of contextual factors in the design and effectiveness of HRM.     

Does it pay off for museums to foster creativity? The complementary effect of innovative visitor experiences

This paper aims to explore the link between creativity orientation, investment in visitors’ experience and operating and funding performance in tourist attractions, taking museums as a case study. The empirical work is based on an analysis of the information provided by a sample of Spanish, French, German, British and American museums. The findings highlight the positive impact of creativity orientation on museums’ operating performance, but show a curvilinear effect on funding performance. The use of new technologies and adaptation to the audience proves positive when seeking to attract visitors.     

Challenges of Doing Business in Africa: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a systematic review of challenges to doing business in Africa. It complements the extant literature by answering two critical questions: what are the linkages between the ease of doing business and economic development; and what are the challenges to doing business in Africa? In providing answers to these questions, the nexus between the ease of doing business and economic development is discussed in six main strands, namely: wealth creation and sharing; opportunities of employment; balanced regional and economic development; Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and GDP per capita; standards of living and exports. Moreover, challenges to doing business are articulated along the following lines: (i) issues related to the cost of starting a business and doing business; (ii) shortage of energy and electricity; (iii) lack of access to finance; and (v) high taxes and low cross-border trade.     

Hotel performance: Rigor and relevant research topics

Academic research (rigor) in alignment with practitioners’ challenges (relevancy) has been advocated as a way of overcoming the ivory tower syndrome. Performance measurement is at the heart of strategic management processes, as it provides a mechanism of demonstrating outcomes. Given the importance of this topic for both theory and practice, this article explores the contribution of academic outputs in terms of academic research outputs (rigor) and current practitioners’ needs (relevancy).Using network analysis and cross-citation bibliometric approaches, a sample of 1155 articles is examined and fourteen clusters are identified. The emergent topics and subtopics from the academic literature are compared to ten insights proposed by Ernst Young to the hotel sector. The findings suggest a good fit between the two approaches together with some gaps. Based from empirical results, nine propositions are articulated.     

Managerial optimism: New observations on the unifying theory

Managerial optimism theory is behavioral finance's greatest achievement. It explains two prominent features of corporate financial behavior – over‐investment and pecking‐order capital structure preferences – that otherwise require two different theories with mutually incompatible assumptions about managerial loyalties to shareholder‐value maximization. After reviewing the development of managerial optimism as a unifying theory, I use a simple change of measure to transform risk‐averse optimism to risk‐neutral probabilities that can be pessimistic or optimistic depending on wealth changes. This unexplored feature has implications for, among other things, pay for performance when managers are excessively optimistic.     

The importance of consumer multihoming (joint purchases) for market performance: Mergers and entry in media markets

Consumer “multihoming” (watching two TV channels, or buying two news magazines) has surprisingly important effects on market equilibrium and performance in (two‐sided) media markets. We show this by introducing consumer multihoming and advertising finance into the classic circle model of product differentiation. When consumers multihome (attend more than one platform), media platforms can charge only incremental value prices to advertisers. Entry or merger leaves consumer prices unchanged under consumer multihoming, but leaves advertiser prices unchanged under single‐homing: Multihoming flips the side of the market on which platforms compete. In contrast to standard circle results, equilibrium product variety can be insufficient under multihoming.     

Capital flows and growth dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe

This article assesses the importance of capital flows as measured by the current account balance for the growth dynamics of the EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe. Economic growth in these countries was on average relatively high before the global financial crisis but markedly lower after the crisis. Panel data econometrics using annual data for 1997–2015 point to the contemporaneous current account balance having a sizeable negative effect on annual GDP growth. Estimations using many control variables and instrumental variables suggest that the negative effect is mainly demand driven. Counterfactual simulations show that growth rates in all CEE countries would have been lower in the absence of capital flows, and this applies particularly to the countries with the most disadvantageous starting points.     

In the city: The John Lewis partnership and planned shopping centres

A defining feature of large-scale retailing during the period 1950–1980 was the emergence and evolution of planned shopping centres. During the 1950s, department stores in the United States were in the vanguard of this phenomenon. In contrast, British department stores continued operating from traditional high street sites, and had limited opportunities for expansion within planned shopping centres until the 1970s. This paper addresses the connection between department store retailing and the development of the planned shopping centre in Britain from the perspective of one enterprise: the John Lewis Partnership. The article demonstrates that the Partnership was willing to operate department stores within centrally located shopping centres, but was circumspect about operating stores in non-centrally located shopping centres.     

异常审计费用、审计质量与IPO定价——基于A股市场的分析

以A股市场2006—2012年IPO公司为研究对象，探讨异常审计费用与审计质量的相关性及其在IPO定价中的作用。结果发现：对全样本，异常审计费用与IPO抑价水平显著负相关，与可操纵性应计利润的绝对值和股票上市后的长期市场表现不相关；当考虑异常审计费用的方向时，正的异常审计费用与IPO抑价水平、可操纵性应计利润的绝对值显著负相关，与股票上市后的长期市场表现显著正相关，而负的异常审计费用与三者的相关性均不显著。这表明作为会计师事务所努力程度的体现，正的异常审计费用不会损害审计质量，相反在一定程度上能提升审计质量。因此，监管部门应更多地关注审计收费不足所存在的风险。