Business relatedness and performance: a study of managerial perceptions

Understanding of business relatedness and performance effects is the foundation of any diversification decision, but we have limited knowledge of how managers consider relatedness. This study identified relatedness classes and performance effects using perceptual survey data from top industrial executives. Four classes with significant variable differences were found: high, technology, customer, and low relatedness. Technology relatedness had a strong positive performance effect and high relatedness had a negative effect. The findings confirm that perceptions are multidimensional, but may include five key factors rather than the previously identified attribute categories of product–markets, resources, and value chains. Contributions to diversification literature are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Performance of Actively Managed International Mutual Funds

International mutual funds allow individual investors to diversify abroad at a reasonable cost. This paper tests whether international funds that actively engage in country and security selection outperform passive global benchmarks. We apply a mean-variance efficiency test that incorporates the practical prohibition against short sales of open-end mutual funds. Our tests reject the efficiency of the world equity market portfolio over the sample period, and our funds as a group outperform the inefficient world index. However, we find no evidence of security selectivity ability using a 12-country benchmark. We do find that active international funds provide global diversification benefits. Tests using the Positive Period Weight (PPW) measure of Grinblatt and Titman (1989), which is robust to nonlinearity in fund and benchmark returns, yield similar results.     

Consistency of UK Pension Fund Investment Performance

Transition matrix techniques are used to relate the past and present performance of pension fund portfolios. In particular, funds are ranked to study the tendency of portfolios to remain in the same quartile of the ranking as they were in the previous period. For raw returns, funds in both of the top quartiles are found to be more likely to remain in the same quartile than would be expected by chance. This result can be taken as limited evidence for the consistency of performance. Similar systemic effects are observed on a risk-adjusted basis. There appears to be clear evidence that some fund managers can offer a degree of consistent good performance.     

Measuring Hospital Performance in the Presence of Quasi-Fixed Inputs: An Analysis of Québec Hospitals

This research proposes an approach to measure hospital performance based on a generalization of Banker and Morey (1986) and Førsund (1996). This approach considers quasi-fixed inputs explicitly, calculates their implicit cost, and quantifies returns to scale. The performance measure is decomposed into allocative and technical inefficiencies. Based on a very complete data set of Québec hospitals, we find that significant inefficiencies of up to 17% ($700 CAN million) could have been saved through improved performance. Postestimation analyses that include qualitative measures of care suggest that differences in performance are attributable to differences in management or unobservable quality of care rather than patient case mix.     

The Impact of Survey Methodology and Context on Central Tendency,Nonresponse and Associations of Subjective Indicators of Government Performance

A comparison is given of (ordinal) measures of trust in government institutions that were collected with the aim of facilitating comparisons between different modes and contexts of data collection. Statistical analyses reveal that the mode effect could amount upto a 10% change of item nonresponse and a 9% change of the level of trust, whereas the context effect could lead upto a 19% change of the bivariate associations of trust. The observed changes of both measures of central tendency and of associations affect conclusions of social scientific research in isolated studies, which implies that comparative studies are seriously hampered by bias related to mode and context, two sources of obscurity adding to the two other threats which are differences of sample source and differences of question phrasing.     

Party alternation,divided government,and fiscal performance within US States

The literature on US state government fiscal performance has examined the role of institutional factors such as budget rules and divided government, but has largely ignored the impact of party alternation. This paper primarily focuses on whether party alternation in the governor’s office affects fiscal performance. Our hypothesis is that frequent party changes create a political environment that impacts fiscal performance. To further assess the impact of party alternation on fiscal performance, we consider our primary hypothesis in conjunction with the degree of division that exists between the governor’s office and the legislature. Using panel data from 37 states between 1971 and 2000 we test the hypothesis that frequent party alternation can be expected to affect fiscal performance and find strong support for the hypothesis. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 Public Choice Society Meetings. The authors would like to thank the conference participants, William Shughart, Charles Register, Jocelyn Evans, John D. Jackson, Amihai Glazer, and two anonymous referees for their comments. We would also like to thank Craig R. Stiller for his help in the collection of data. Any remaining errors remain the responsibility of the authors.     

基于径向基神经网络的物流绩效评价方法

在分析物流绩效关键影响因素基础上,提出采用径向基神经网络模型应用于物流绩效评价测试。以多个主要影响因子为网络的输入信息,建立物流绩效综评遗传神经网络模型,采用正交最小二乘法进行学习训练,进行不同综合评价方法对比。     

库存周期计算的价值方法和实物方法研究

研究比较了库存周期计算的价值方法和实践中常常使用的实物方法,并以钢铁制造企业的钢卷产品为例加以说明。     

析环境审计对ISO14000的借鉴

ISO14000环境系列标准和环境审计的关系如何，尤其是环境审计中如何借鉴ISO14000的问题，尽管受到广泛关注但始终未得到认真的研究和解决。本文以近年来对该问题研究的结果为背景，对环境审核与环境绩效审计之间的关系进行辨析，在此基础上提出环境审计应该从评价标准和最佳实务支持两方面对ISO14000进行借鉴。     

企业评价创新——从绩效评估到基于战略聚焦的价值管理

新经济时代的企业环境促使企业管理战略发生了巨大变化,同时又为企业组织与运营模式的创新提供了先进手段。在这种环境下,传统绩效评价模式呈现出诸多方面的缺陷和不适,因此必然要求相应的改变。本文分析了企业绩效评价的研究现状,探讨绩效管理的发展趋势,最后就两种面向战略聚焦的价值管理模式进行评述。