A unified framework for robust modelling of financial markets in discrete time

Finance and Stochastics - We unify and establish equivalence between the pathwise and the quasi-sure approaches to robust modelling of financial markets in finite discrete time. In particular, we...     

Customer Orientation and Management Control in the Public Sector: A Garbage Can Analysis

Recent public sector reforms have increasingly tended to re-cast citizens as ‘customers’. This paper explores the implications of such customer orientation efforts for management control based on a field study in a Swedish central government agency. We extend prior research on this topic, informed by critical and institutional theories, with insights from the garbage can literature and focus on a key decision-making process involved in making extant management control practices more customer-focused. Our analysis nuances the predictions of critical scholars, suggesting that customer orientation initiatives will commodify public services and narrow the interests served by public sector organizations. In doing so, we draw attention to how conflicting institutional arrangements fostered a garbage can situation hampering radical change in management control practices. Our garbage can analysis provides a bridge between critical and institutional perspectives by re-instating a focus on decision-making. We show how the intricacies of decision-making may moderate the power embedded in novel management control practices and foster inertia and unintended outcomes. Our analysis also raises important policy implications pertaining to the possibilities of combining customer orientation efforts with rationing of public services.     

Consumerism and control: evidence from Swedish central government agencies

This article examines whether the control practices associated with public sector consumerism, such as devolved performance management and accountability, enhance organizations' responsiveness to customer needs and preferences. The research highlighted the need for trade-offs between resource allocation and customer needs and how this affects rationing of services. This is a serious dilemma as the public sector comes under the dual pressures of the consumerist movement and a tightening funding situation.     

Marketization and Performance Measurement in Swedish Central Government: A Comparative Institutionalist Study

Public sector organizations have increasingly been subject to varying forms of marketization, ranging from competitive contracting to a more general conception of citizens or users as customers or consumers regardless of whether such economic factors prevail. Drawing on neo-institutional sociology (NIS) and other advances in economic sociology, we examine such marketization efforts as an institutionally embedded phenomenon with particular reference to how it is implicated in the performance measurement practices (PMPs) of two state agencies in Sweden. This reveals how PMPs are embedded in only partly consistent institutional logics and under what circumstances such practices can be reconciled. Some PMPs, especially those grounded in efficiency concerns, tend to play an important constitutive role in operating-level practices, partly as a result of also being embedded in regulatory pressures. Other PMPs, imbued with symbolic meanings signifying a more customer-oriented rationale, only seem to approach such a status if they are dis-embedded from the 'global' practices in which they originate and re-embedded in evolving PMPs dominated by efficiency concerns. We discuss the implications of these findings for emerging research into practice variations embedded in competing logics in institutional fields and for policy development.     

From New Public Management to New Public Governance? Hybridization and Implications for Public Sector Consumerism

This paper examines how variations in the notion of public sector consumerism become embedded in diverse governance practices. To this end, we extend the literature on public governance logics with insights from research on public sector consumerism and hybridization in public sector management reforms. Through a comparative, multi‐level analysis we trace the development of two governance logics largely corresponding to the distinction between New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG) in Swedish transport infrastructure policy. In contrast to research predicting or prescribing a relatively radical shift between such governance logics we show how they partly co‐evolved along two reform paths entailing notable variations in the degree of hybridization and the embedding of consumerist notions in emerging governance practices. In doing so, we draw attention to how the hybridization of governance logics is contingent on the alignment of diverse interests and differences in the process through which such logics are brought together. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research into public sector consumerism and hybridization in public sector management reforms.     

The effects of customer equity drivers on loyalty across services industries and firms

Customer equity drivers (CEDs)—value equity, brand equity, and relationship equity—positively affect loyalty intentions, but this effect varies across industries and firms. We empirically examine potential industry and firm characteristics that explain why the CEDs–loyalty link varies across services industries and firms in the Netherlands. The results show that (1) some previously assumed industry and firm characteristics have moderating effects while others do not and (2) firm-level advertising expenditures constitute the most crucial moderator because they influence all three loyalty strategies (significant for value equity and brand equity; marginally significant for relationship equity), while three industry contexts (i.e., innovative markets, visibility to others, and complexity of purchase decisions) each influence two of the three loyalty strategies. Our results clearly show that specific industry and firm characteristics affect the effectiveness of specific loyalty strategies.     

A process (re)turn?: Path dependencies,institutions and performance management in Swedish central government

Recent central government reforms have signalled a transition away from output-based governance and control to a more citizen-orientated and outcome-focused performance management ethos. Prior research suggests that this may give rise to institutional inconsistencies related to conflicting performance management logics. In this paper, we argue that rather than resulting in growing pre-occupation with outcomes and effectiveness, the emerging reform agenda may somewhat paradoxically reinforce managerial concerns with the operating processes underpinning public service delivery. Drawing on policy studies and management accounting research informed by new institutional sociology, we theorise these developments by invoking the notion of path dependency. We provide an empirical illustration based on field work in Swedish central government and adopt a multi-level approach in examining the evolution of performance management practices. While evidence of strongly constraining path dependencies is found at the overall policy level a case study in the Swedish Tax Agency shows that these may also embody an element of flexibility such that the meaning of inconsistent performance management logics is re-constructed over time. This illustrates how individual government agencies may link outcomes to operating process concerns and manage implementation problems related to conflicting and uncoordinated reform initiatives.     

Limits of semistatic trading strategies

We show that pointwise limits of semistatic trading strategies in discrete time are again semistatic strategies. The analysis is carried out in full generality for a two-period model, and under a probabilistic condition for multiperiod, multistock models. Our result contrasts with a counterexample of Acciaio, Larsson, and Schachermayer, and shows that their observation is due to a failure of integrability rather than instability of the semistatic form. Mathematically, our results relate to the decomposability of functions as studied in the context of Schrödinger bridges.     

Martingale Schrödinger bridges and optimal semistatic portfolios

Finance and Stochastics - In a two-period financial market where a stock is traded dynamically and European options at maturity are traded statically, we study the so-called martingale...