An Analysis of the Determinants and Shareholder Wealth Effects of Mutual Fund Mergers

This study examines the determinants of mutual fund mergers and their subsequent wealth impact on shareholders of target and acquiring funds. Results indicate significant improvements in postmerger performance and a reduction in expense ratios for target fund shareholders. In contrast, acquiring fund shareholders experience a significant deterioration in postmerger performance. The net asset flows continue to remain negative for the combined fund in the year following the merger. The likelihood of a fund merger is inversely related to fund size for both within- and across-family mutual fund mergers. However, poor past performance is a significant determinant for only within-family mergers.     

National Cultures,Information Search Behaviors and the Attribution Process of Cross-National Managers: A Conceptual Framework

Teaching Business Ethics - Cross-cultural management researchers haveobserved that when presented with similarethical dilemmas and problems, managers raisedin different cultural environments...     

Institutional evolution as an emerging focus in scenario planning

In this paper, we argue that institutional evolution should occupy a center stage in scenario development. During the last two decades, strategy models have neglected the institutional milieu, partly because analytical approaches to link institutional milieus and business contexts were underdeveloped. However, theoretical developments in institutional economics accomplished during this time period make it possible to connect the consequences of institutional evolution to strategy development. Further, with the increasing globalization of commerce, and the attendant complexity and turbulence in institutional evolution, particularly in emerging economies, significant opportunities for strategy related action may reside not in product markets but in institutional arenas. Institution-focused scenarios are therefore increasingly needed. We outline the key linkages between the institutional milieu and business contexts and illustrate how scenarios incorporating institutional parameters can shed light on the strategy context in the case of emerging economies.     

Career Concerns and Resource Allocation in Conglomerates

We investigate resource allocation decisions in conglomerateswhen managers are motivated by career concerns. When divisionalcash flows are differentially informative about managerial ability,we show that it is in the managers' interest to overallocateunobservable intangible resources to the more informative divisions.Anticipating this bias, it is optimal for the firm's ownersto also overallocate observable capital to the more informativedivisions. The model provides rationale for corporate socialismand corporate hedging. It also highlights a cost of segmentreporting and tracking stocks, namely, that they allow managersto distort their perceived ability at the expense of investors.     

A Corporate Social Responsibility Framework for Accounting Research

Over the past two decades, there has been growing interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) among accounting scholars. As a testament to this growing interest, two review papers on CSR were published last year in accounting journals. Implicitly guiding hypothesis development in CSR studies is the notion of a conflict between shareholders and stakeholders. We define CSR in terms of a win-win situation for shareholders and stakeholders: a CSR framework for strategic business purposes. We provide evidence supporting this outlook for CSR using cases pertaining to specific companies and findings from archival empirical studies. According to our CSR framework, resources allocated for CSR activity also help propel business strategy; as such, it is difficult to isolate CSR inputs and/or outputs due to problems of non-separability and multidimensionality. While measurement is a challenge, our framework nonetheless opens up various promising avenues for future research.     

The productivity of agricultural credit in India

This study examines the nature of the relationship between formal agricultural credit and agricultural Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in India, specifically the role of the former in supporting agricultural growth, using state level panel data covering the period 1995–1996 to 2011–2012. The study uses a mediation analysis framework to map the pathways through which institutional credit relates to agricultural GDP relying on a control function approach to tackle the problem of endogeneity. The findings from the analysis suggest that over this period, all the inputs are highly responsive to an increase in institutional credit to agriculture. A 10% increase in credit flow in nominal terms leads to an increase by 1.7% in fertilizers (N, P, K) consumption in physical quantities, 5.1% increase in the tonnes of pesticides, 10.8% increase in tractor purchases. Overall, it seems quite clear that input use is sensitive to credit flow, whereas GDP of agriculture is not. Credit seems therefore to be an enabling input, but one whose effectiveness is undermined by low technical efficiency and productivity.     

Is doing good good for you? how corporate charitable contributions enhance revenue growth

This study examines the impact of corporate philanthropy growth on sales growth using a large sample of charitable contributions made by U.S. public companies from 1989 through 2000. Applying Granger causality tests, we find that charitable contributions are significantly associated with future revenue, whereas the association between revenue and future contributions is marginally significant at best. We then identify the mechanism underlying our findings. Our results are particularly pronounced for firms that are highly sensitive to consumer perception, where individual consumers are the predominant customers. In addition, we document a positive relationship between contributions and customer satisfaction. Overall, our evidence suggests that corporate philanthropy, under certain circumstances, furthers firms' economic objectives. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How social and human capital influence opportunity recognition and resource mobilization in India's handloom industry

Small-scale firms in rural areas play an extremely important role in the development of any country, and especially in developing countries. To understand entrepreneurs who operate in a low-technology industry, we rely on the network perspective on entrepreneurship. In this paper, we investigate how the social and human capital of entrepreneurs (in this case master weavers in the handloom industry) influence their ability to recognize opportunities and mobilize resources. In addition to examining the direct effects, we also explore the possibilities of social capital mediating between human capital, on the one hand, and opportunity recognition and resource mobilization on the other. This paper adds to existing literature in two ways: firstly, we expand the social capital paradigm by including different cultural settings and links to existing studies regarding small enterprises. Secondly, we provide additional evidence to the ongoing debate as to what constitutes a ‘good network’.