No such thing as a global manager

With the continuing growth of globalization, companies need to pay careful attention to selecting and managing people who may become their “global managers.” The best way to achieve this is by coming up with a clear concept of what constitutes such a manager. But the examination of a wide set of possible characteristics indicates that there seems to be no distinct set of such individual qualities, so there is no consistent way to point out what a global manager is. What we are left with is the search for good “conventional” managers with a global mindset who could succeed in the international marketplace.     

A two-dimensional problem of revenue maximization

We consider the problem of finding the mechanism that maximizes the revenue of a seller of multiple objects. This problem turns out to be significantly more complex than the case where there is only a single object (which was solved by Myerson, 1981). The analysis is difficult even in the simplest case studied here, where there are two exclusive objects and a single buyer, with valuations uniformly distributed on triangular domains. We show that the optimal mechanisms are piecewise linear with either 2 or 3 pieces, and obtain explicit formulas for most cases of interest.     

An agency theory perspective of the Israeli labor market segmentation: Past,present, and future

In this paper we use agency theory to present a process of the dichotomization of the Israeli workforce into two structures, each representing distinct organizational cultures. The first structure is the private sector, led by the high-tech industry; a model where the principal has strong control over the activities of the agent. The second is the public sector, an opposing model in which the principal has virtually no control over the activities of the agents and as a result, the effectiveness within this sector deteriorates. We argue that such conflicting systems cannot exist side by side without affecting each other and we suggest a role for human resource management (HRM) in future developments. Within the public sector it is the responsibility of the principal, the Israeli government, to gain more control over the agent and employ professional HRM systems for this purpose.     

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.     

分析性叙述:为复杂的历史进程建模

Both research with case and building model are common research ways in social science.They look very different but in deep relation with each other.Unless they integrate together,there isn't a progress of social science.This paper argues the approach systemically,such as content,essence and theoretic shelf,and so on.It also argues that analytic narrative go beyond the old rational choice method and research the special institution in special historic context with game theory.So social science can explain re...     

Monetary policy and multiple equilibria with constrained investment and externalities

This paper focuses on two mechanisms under which interest-rate feed-back rules induce local indeterminacy in a closed economy with capital accumulation: arbitrage activity and the pricing channel. It shows that constrained investment, in the sense that it requires liquidity or that adjustment to the stock of capital is costly, is enough to induce indeterminacy if monetary policy follows a strictly passive interest rate rule. Determinacy of equilibrium is ensured under an active monetary policy stance. These results change when production externalities are introduced into the model so as to mimic the pricing channel in New Keynesian models. In this case, a policy stance that ensures determinacy is either active or strictly passive. In view of the contradicting results for the passive stance and the similar results for the active stance it is recommended that central banks act according to the active stance.     

How far can a dummy go? or,Are we putting too much of a burden upon political dichotomies?

Previous political models of macroeconomic phenomena have been erroneous due to the interpretations researchers have attached to the political dichotomies specified in their models. It is claimed that direct stimuli interpretations of political nominal scaling misrepresent the true nature of the impact political determinants exert upon macroeconomic endogenous outcomes. Furthermore, it is suggested that a proper specification of an economic phenomenon requires the consideration of both political and economic information. The consideration of political content, given its expectational nature, somewhat bridges the gap between substantive global rationality and procedural bounded rationality theories in economics and political science (as well as cognitive psychology). When a fuller specification is brought to bear, economic determinants play a mixed role in macroeconomic modeling. Such determinants are subject to direct stimuli and expectational information. On the other hand political determinants exert a pure expectational impact upon endogenous economic determinants.     

MBTI Personality Types of Project Managers and Their Success: A Field Survey

This paper describes a survey of 280 project managers that reveals both their personality types (via Myers‐Briggs personality inventory) and their success in project management. The results show that a project manager's personality is better suited for functioning with partial data and under ambiguity than the rest of the population. These traits were found for both women and men. The conclusion is that project managers (females and males) have a unique personality‐type distribution that distinguishes them from the general population. The findings can contribute to better understanding the traits that characterize the project management population, and their relationship to project success.     

R&D Reporting Biases and Their Consequences*

The immediate expensing of research and development (R&D) expenditures is often justified by the conservatism principle. However, no accounting procedure consistently applied can be conservative throughout the firm's life. We therefore ask the following questions: (1) When is the expensing of R&D conservative and when is it aggressive, relative to R&D capitaliza‐tion? (2) What are the capital‐market implications of these reporting biases? To address these questions we construct a model of profitability biases (differences between reported profitability under R&D expensing and capitalization) and show that the key drivers of the reporting biases are the differences between R&D growth and earnings growth (momentum), and between R&D growth and return on equity (ROE). Companies with a high R&D growth rate relative to their profitability (typically early life‐cycle companies) report conservatively, while firms with a low R&D growth rate (mature companies) tend to report aggressively under current generally accepted accounting principles. Our empirical analysis, covering the period 1972‐2003, generally supports the analytical predictions. In the valuation analysis we find evidence consistent with investor fixation on the reported profitability measures: we detect undervaluation of conservatively reporting firms and overvaluation of aggressively reporting firms. These misvaluations appear to be corrected when the reporting biases reverse from conservative to aggressive and vice versa. This evidence is consistent with behavioral finance arguments about investor cognitive biases.