The great intimidators

After Disney's Michael Eisner, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein, and Hewlett-Packard's Carly Fiorina fell from their heights of power, the business media quickly proclaimed thatthe reign of abrasive, intimidating leaders was over. However, it's premature to proclaim their extinction. Many great intimidators have done fine for a long time and continue to thrive. Their modus operandi runs counter to a lot of preconceptions about what it takes to be a good leader. They're rough, loud, and in your face. Their tactics include invading others' personal space, staging tantrums, keeping people guessing, and possessing an indisputable command of facts. But make no mistake--great intimidators are not your typical bullies. They're driven by vision, not by sheer ego or malice. Beneath their tough exteriors and sharp edges are some genuine, deep insights into human motivation and organizational behavior. Indeed, these leaders possess political intelligence, which can make the difference between paralysis and successful--if sometimes wrenching--organizational change. Like socially intelligent leaders, politically intelligent leaders are adept at sizing up others, but they notice different things. Those with social intelligence assess people's strengths and figure out how to leverage them; those with political intelligence exploit people's weaknesses and insecurities. Despite all the obvious drawbacks of working under them, great intimidators often attract the best and brightest. And their appeal goes beyond their ability to inspire high performance. Many accomplished professionals who gravitate toward these leaders want to cultivate a little "inner intimidator" of their own. In the author's research, quite a few individuals reported having positive relationships with intimidating leaders. In fact, some described these relationships as profoundly educational and even transformational. So before we throw out all the great intimidators, the author argues, we should stop to consider what we would lose.     

一场伟大的争吵

教科书上说:管理会计是以企业现在和未来的资金运动为对象,以提高经济效益为目的,为企业内部管理者提供经营管理决策的科学依据为目标而进行的经济管理活动,又称内部报告会计.     

What makes great boards great

In the wake of meltdowns at WorldCom, Tyco, and Enron, enormous attention has been focused on the companies' boards. It seems inconceivable that business disasters of such magnitude could happen without gross or even criminal negligence on the part of board members. And yet a close examination of those boards reveals no broad pattern of incompetence or corruption. In fact, they followed most of the accepted standards for board operations: Members showed up for meetings; they had money invested in the company; audit committees, compensation committees, and codes of ethics were in place; the boards weren't too small or too big, nor were they dominated by insiders. In other words, they passed the tests that would normally be applied to determine whether a board of directors was likely to do a good job. And that's precisely what's so scary, according to corporate governance expert Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who suggests that it's time for some new thinking about how corporate boards operate and are evaluated. He proposes thinking not only about how to structure the board's work but also about how to manage it as a social system. Good boards are, very simply, high-functioning work groups. They're distinguished by a climate of respect, trust, and candor among board members and between the board and management. Information is shared openly and on time; emergent political factions are quickly eliminated. Members feel free to challenge one another's assumptions and conclusions, and management encourages lively discussion of strategic issues. Directors feel a responsibility to contribute meaningfully to the board's performance. In addition, good boards assess their own performance, both collectively and individually.     

品牌营销大误区

一个木桶能装多少水，取决于它最短的那块木板，可以肯定地说，哈药如果继续目前的策略，而不尽快和强对其短边的建设——美誉度、忠诚度的提升以及品牌联想的建设，木捅的水将会慢慢地枯竭，为了扩大销量经常进行促销，我们认为是对品牌的贬值，经常性的促销会给人价格不真实的感觉，消费者更愿意等到促销时才去购买你的产品，一些忠诚的消费者也会因为感到“受欺骗”离你而去。     

The great moderation in micro labor earnings

Between 1980 and the early 1990s the variability of labor earnings growth rates across the prime-age working population fell significantly. This decline and timing are consistent with other macro and micro observations about growth variability that are collectively referred to as the “Great Moderation.” The variability of earnings growth is negatively correlated with age at any point in time, and the U.S. working age population got older during this period because the Baby Boom was aging. However, the decrease in variability was roughly uniform across all age groups, so population aging is not the source of the overall decline. The variance of log changes also declined at multi-year frequencies in such a way as to suggest that both permanent and transitory components of earnings shocks became more moderate. A simple identification strategy for separating age and cohort effects shows a very intuitive pattern of permanent and transitory shocks over the life cycle, and confirms that a shift over time in the stochastic process occurred even after controlling for age effects.     

Insights from history: The next great empire

An analysis of the evolution of the phenomenon of Empire is presented, together with some general observations on the nature of empires. It is concluded that empires are becoming more frequent and larger in size. Extrapolation of the results leads to some intriguing speculations about the future.     

The long-term future of the great barrier reef

Long-term participative regional planning is a relatively new and developing field in Australia. To conduct a futures project that seeks to address the serious matters of reef-related food production, jobs, recreation, cultural heritage and the conservation of the Great Barrier Reef with over 60 organizations participating, is not without its challenges. This futures project—the 25-year Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area Strategic Plan Development Project—has been described by the IUCN (The World Conservation Union) as having established a world model in participative regional planning for ecologically sustainable use of a natural resource. This article deals with the following questions: Why was the futures project needed? What was done? How was it achieved? What else needs to occur now and in the future? And, so what?     

中国崛起与伟大公司的萌芽

只要能够把握经济全球化、产业结构升级以及中国经济大国崛起的机遇,并配套合理的政策,那么中国世界级大企业必将不断涌现。在这个过程中,资本市场将起到重要作用。一个经济体的崛起必然伴随着一批伟大公司的诞生。中国经过近30年的迅速增长,产生了一大批非常优秀的公司,但离伟大公司还有相当的距离。我们所处的这一时期与相对和平的国际环境、经济全球化及国际产业结构转移相耦合,形成了中国经济发     

The great moderation of the term structure of UK interest rates

The conduct of monetary policy, the term structure of interest rates and the structure of the economy in the UK have changed over the post-WWII period. We model the interaction between the macroeconomy and financial markets using a time-varying VAR augmented with the factors from the yield curve. There is evidence of a great moderation in the dynamics of the yield curve, with the factors being persistent and volatile before the introduction of inflation targeting in 1992 but becoming stable afterwards. The introduction of time-variation in the Factor Augmented VAR improves the fit of the model and results in expectation hypothesis consistent yields that are close to actual yields, even at long maturities. Monetary policy shocks had a significant impact on the volatility of inflation, output and the policy rate over the pre-inflation targeting era, but their contribution has been negligible under the current regime. Shocks to the level of the yield curve accounted for a large fraction of inflation variability only before 1992.     

The great increase in relative wage volatility in the United States

Over the past 25 years, real average hourly wages in the United States have become substantially more volatile relative to output. Microdata from the Current Population Survey (CPS) is used to show that this increase in relative volatility is predominantly due to increases in the relative volatility of hourly wages across different groups of workers. Compositional changes of the workforce, by contrast, account for only a small fraction of the increase in relative wage volatility. Simulations with a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model illustrate that the observed increase in relative wage volatility is unlikely to come from changes outside of the labor market (e.g. smaller exogenous shocks or more aggressive monetary policy). By contrast, greater flexibility in wage setting due to deunionization and a shift towards performance-pay contracts as experienced by the U.S. labor market is capable of accounting for a substantial fraction of the observed increase in relative wage volatility. Greater wage flexibility also decreases the magnitude of business cycle fluctuations, suggesting an interesting new explanation for the Great Moderation.     

前转型时期的价值重塑——2011'中国CFO年会报道

十二五规划之下,国家进一步明确了经济转型战略,坚定了转型决心。这两年转型已渐成为国内宏观经济领域和微观经济领域均炙手可热的流行语,但是社会各界对转型本身的门道却往往探讨不足。从宏观经济领域看,高能耗、高资本投入、高社会差异(贫富差异、东西差异、所有制差异等等)是过去30年来的重要经济特征;从微观经济领域看,低管理精细度、低持续发展能力、低资本社会化程度,是本土企业普遍存在的问题。当然少数杰出的企业,已经开始全面突破上述瓶颈。这三高三低的局面,就是我们面临的转型压力。对于微观经济领域而言,财务体系的精益化管理和资本运营的日益专业化,已经成为本土CFO价值创造的主要方向。为此,《首席财务官》杂志于8月19日在上海朗廷杨子精品酒店举办了主题为前转型时期的价值创造的2011’中国CFO年会,同时作为第四届中国CFO年会首次从北京移师在中国经济版图中三分天下的长三角经济带举办。本届年会共有超过120名来自全国各地的大型企业的CFO共聚一堂,会同专家学者们一同讨论如何在大幕拉起的前转型时期且身处高通胀、强紧缩的外部环境下,推动中国企业开创高盈利能力、高持续发展、高社会和谐度的全新局面。本刊特别摘录了现场嘉宾的部分发言内容...     

勇于创新 业绩喜人——访中国农业银行个人金融部副总经理李国峰

一直以来,借记卡为人们提供着方便、快捷、安全的支付方式。中国农业银行（以下简称＂农行＂）不仅是新中国设立的第一家商业银行和改革开放后第一家恢复成立的国家专业银行,     

How to grow great leaders

Few leaders excel at both the unit and enterprise levels. More than ever, though, corporations need people capable of running business units, functions, or regions and focusing on broader company goals. It's up to organizations to develop leaders who can manage the inherent tensions between unit and enterprise priorities. Take the example of RBC Financial Group, one of the largest, most profitable companies in Canada. In the mid-1990's, RBC revamped its competitive strategy in a couple of ways. After the government announced that the Big Six banks in Canada could neither merge with nor acquire one another, RBC decided to grow through cross-border acquisitions. Additionally, because customers were starting to seek bundled products and services, RBC reached across its traditional stand-alone businesses to offer integrated solutions. These changes in strategy didn't elicit immediate companywide support. Instinctively, employees reacted against what would amount to a delicate balancing act: They would have to lift their focus out of their silos while continuing to meet unit goals. However, by communicating extensively with staff members, cross-fertilizing talent across unit boundaries, and targeting rewards to shape performance, RBC was able to cultivate rising leaders with the unit expertise and the enterprise vision to help the company fulfill its new aims. Growing such well-rounded leaders takes sustained effort because unit-enterprise tensions are quite real. Three common conditions reinforce these tensions. First, most organizational structures foster silo thinking and unimaginative career paths. Second, most companies lack venues for airing and resolving conflicts that arise when there are competing priorities. Third, many have misguided reward systems that pit unit performance against enterprise considerations. Such long-established patterns of organizational behavior are tough to break. Fortunately, as RBC discovered, people can be trained to think and work differently.     

The great industry gamble: market structure dynamics as a survival contest

Industry dynamics are studied as an endogenous tournament with infinite horizon and stochastic entry. In each period, firms’ investments determine their probability of surviving into the next period. This generates a survival contest, which fuels market structure dynamics, while the evolution of market structure constantly redefines the contest. More concentrated markets endogenously generate less profit, rivals that are more difficult to outlive, and more entry. The unique steady‐state distribution exhibits ongoing turbulence, correlated exit and entry rates, and shakeouts. The model’s predictions fit empirical findings in markets where firms trade off profits for smaller risk of failure (e.g., banking).     

投资大师吉姆·罗杰斯投资理念

吉姆.罗杰斯,美国华尔街的新一代的投资大师,是继巴非特之后,最令人佩服的金融大师之一. 罗杰斯出生于阿拉巴马洲第莫波利斯的一个普通家庭,家中并没有人从事金融业务,他的父亲是化工厂的工程师.罗杰斯1964年毕业于耶鲁大学,之后得到了一笔奖学金,得以去牛津大学继续深造.在去英国之前,他通过朋友的介绍在多米尼克合伙公司里找到了一份短期工,从事证券业务,从此,他开始迷上了证券.     

The determinants of net interest margin during transition

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - In this paper we examine the banking sector of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries during the transition period 1998–2016 in a...