Reference points for measuring social performance: Case study of a social business venture

We present a longitudinal qualitative case study to elaborate on how a social venture forms reference points for social performance. Although organizations increasingly use various social performance targets to direct their operations, the scholarly knowledge on social performance reference points remains limited. We make use of the prior accounting literature and draw on the idea of compromising accounts to discuss how provisional and performative metrics can have a significant role in how organizations develop new ways to evaluate their social performance. Given that the social performance reference point criteria are ambiguous and the corresponding referents malleable, performative accounts are helpful as they can intervene in the organizational life by making particular things visible, providing space for interpretations, and facilitating discussion, thus creating temporary settlements and enabling opportunities for productive compromises between different organizational groups and evaluative principles. The recursive feedback loops between reference point referents, criteria and accounting artefacts help the organization to make sense of its own social performance and interpret the associated performance feedback, and thereby provide ground for organizational decisions on further action. Moreover, we discuss how imperfect accounts can be useful for social businesses in their pursuit of developing their activities and achieving social impact.     

Testing Part of a DSGE Model by Indirect Inference

We propose a way of testing a subset of equations of a DSGE model. The test draws on statistical inference for limited information models and the use of indirect inference to test DSGE models. Using the numerical small sample distribution of our test for two subsets of equations of the Smets–Wouters model we show that the test has accurate size and good power in small samples, and better power than using asymptotic distribution theory. In a test of the Smets–Wouters model on US Great Moderation data, we reject the specification of the wage‐price but not the expenditure sector. This points to the wage‐price sector as the source of overall model rejection.     

Preventives Versus Treatments Redux: Tighter Bounds on Distortions in Innovation Incentives with an Application to the Global Demand for HIV Pharmaceuticals

Kremer and Snyder (Q J Econ 130:1167–1239, 2015) show that demand curves for a preventive and treatment may have different shapes though they target the same disease, biasing the pharmaceutical manufacturer toward developing the lucrative rather than the socially desirable product. This paper tightens the theoretical bounds on the potential deadweight loss from such biases. Using a calibration of the global demand for HIV pharmaceuticals, we demonstrate the dramatically sharper analysis achievable with the new bounds, allowing us to pinpoint potential deadweight loss at 62% of the global gain from curing HIV. We use the calibration to perform policy counterfactuals, assessing welfare effects of government policies such as a subsidy, reference pricing, and price-discrimination ban. The fit of our calibration is good: we find that a hypothetical drug monopolist would price an HIV drug so high that only 4% of the infected population worldwide would purchase, matching actual drug prices and quantities in the early 2000s before subsidies in low-income countries ramped up.     

Does educational diversity of managers matter for the performance of team‐managed funds?

We study the effect of the educational diversity of managers on the performance of team‐managed mutual funds using a large sample of U.S. equity funds from 1994 to 2013. We consider diversity in terms of both final educational degree and field of educational specialisation. We find that, in general, both types of diversity have a positive impact on fund performance, and our results are robust over a wide range of performance metrics and changes in market conditions.     

Nonfinancial Considerations in Eco-Innovation Decisions: The Role of Family Ownership and Reputation Concerns

Societal pressures for greater sustainability can encourage firms to target part of their innovation activities at ecological initiatives (i.e., eco-innovation). Yet, depending on their value function, firms can respond differently to such pressures and exhibit variance in their eco-innovation activities. In this paper, we investigate the idea that a firm’s ownership structure may play a significant role in determining its engagement in eco-innovation. Specifically, we propose that ownership by family blockholders increases the value attached to the company’s reputation and that this, in turn, stimulates higher levels of eco-innovation. In other words, we model the company reputation motive as a key mediator in the relationship between family ownership and firm-level eco-innovation. To account for family firm heterogeneity, we also model the moderating role of owners’ intention to pass the business on to the next family generation (transgenerational intentions) and of the extent to which these owners reside in the firm’s local community (local embeddedness). As theoretical backdrop, our study builds on institutional theory and the mixed gamble logic. To test our hypotheses, we use a large sample of German firms and nonlinear moderated mediation regression analysis. Results reveal that family ownership is positively related to the introduction of eco-innovations by firms, in part because of the stronger emphasis being placed on the company’s reputation. We find that this effect is strongest when the owning-family has transgenerational intentions. As such, this study advances our understanding of firm-level drivers of eco-innovation. In view of the prevalence of family-owned firms and the mounting importance of ecological sustainability, it is valuable to extend knowledge on the contingent and indirect effect of family ownership on eco-innovation.     

Missing the Popular Vote: Pitfalls in US Democracy and Reform Proposals

Intereconomics - Only a few years ago, it was a widespread belief that globalisation would trigger processes of democratisation worldwide. However, even old and established democracies such as the...     

It is not just about paying your dues: Impact of generational cohort on active and passive union participation

The lack of a validated measure of active–passive union participation and a dearth of research into the relationship between generational cohort and union participation challenge union leaders to develop policies and practices to facilitate union renewal. We address these issues by (a) developing a multidimensional measure of union participation that captures both active and passive components, (b) using structural equation modelling to validate the measure within a nomological framework, and (c) investigating the impact of generational cohort on all paths in our framework. Data from members of a large American union confirm that generational cohort influences how union members participate in their union. The two‐factor measure developed in this study facilitates research into antecedents and outcomes of passive and active union participation. Our findings should also prove useful to unions seeking to increase participation within their membership, academics researching unions and generational cohort, and human resource practitioners operating in unionised environments.     

Alternative balanced scorecards built from paradigm models in strategic HRM and employment/industrial relations and used to measure the state of employment relations and HR system performance across U.S. workplaces

This paper constructs alternative balanced scorecards based on high‐performance work system (HPWS) and employment relations system (ERS) models. The models are depicted and compared in diagrams and used as framework skeletons for building separate HPWS and ERS scorecards, intended to provide a detailed data picture of the operational health and performance of an organization's employment/HR system and its operations, processes, and inputs/outputs. The scorecards are filled in with nationally representative data from 2,000+ U.S. workplaces using more than 50 employment/HR indicators, as reported by separate panels of managers and employees. The indicators for each workplace are aggregated into an overall HR/employment system score, ranked from low‐to‐high, and graphed as frequency distributions. These distributions provide a unique snapshot picture of the mean and dispersion of the state of employment relations and HR system performance for companies across the United State. They also reveal that “models matter” since the HPWS and ERS scorecards provide distinctly different evaluation assessments.     

Time series copulas for heteroskedastic data

We propose parametric copulas that capture serial dependence in stationary heteroskedastic time series. We suggest copulas for first‐order Markov series, and then extend them to higher orders and multivariate series. We derive the copula of a volatility proxy, based on which we propose new measures of volatility dependence, including co‐movement and spillover in multivariate series. In general, these depend upon the marginal distributions of the series. Using exchange rate returns, we show that the resulting copula models can capture their marginal distributions more accurately than univariate and multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models, and produce more accurate value‐at‐risk forecasts.