WHEN OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE MATTERS: A REVIEW OF THE EFFECTS OF INVESTOR HORIZON ON CORPORATE POLICIES

This paper surveys the literature on the impact of investor horizon on corporate policies. While the desire to encourage long-term investor ownership is shared among managers, boards and policy makers, how greater long-term investor ownership benefits corporate decisions and ultimately firm performance is still under academic investigation. The contribution of this paper is twofold. The paper's first contribution is providing an up-to-date review of theoretical and empirical findings. This paper introduces the groups of long-term and short-term investors and the related classification methodologies and investor horizon proxies used to form them. It further reviews the determinants of an investor's horizon. Then, this paper organizes the literature on the impact of investor horizon on corporate policies around three main channels: the short-term pressure hypothesis, the monitoring hypothesis, and the catering hypothesis. The paper's second contribution is identifying six major challenges ahead that need to be addressed to improve the understanding of the impact of long-term (short-term) investor ownership on corporates policies. These challenges represent opportunities for further research.     

Customer Lifetime Value: Entwicklungspfade, Einsatzpotenziale und Herausforderungen

Due to an ongoing discussion in the scientific community and in practice about a customer value based corporate management, the valuation and management of customer relationships has gained more and more importance. Thereby a multiplicity of scientific publications emerged, which increasingly dealt with the subject of customer value. In the scientific community the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a widespread and forward-looking valuation concept. For calculating the CLV numerous models have been developed. In addition, the CLV allows companies to answer various corporate issues. In this context, this paper provides an overview about the CLV-research. Extending the existing literature development paths, potential uses, and future challenges of the CLV are illustrated.     

Investor relations on the Internet: a survey of the Euronext zone

This study investigates the investor relations activities on the Internet of companies listed on the Euronext stock exchange. For this purpose, the websites of the fifty largest listed companies in each of the countries Belgium, France and the Netherlands were screened for investor relations items. Results obtained by using a three-stage model show that most companies in the Euronext zone are at the second stage of Internet investor relations, i.e. where information available through other sources is combined to better inform investors. In the third stage companies use the full interactive possibilities of the Internet for investor relations purposes. French and Dutch companies use the Internet for investor relations purposes more widely and more intensely than Belgian companies. The study also revealed a size effect; large companies use the Internet for investor relations purposes more extensively than smaller companies. This conclusion holds for each of the three countries. The leading companies in France and the Netherlands are either at the third stage of Internet investor relations or are ready to move to this stage.     

Trust in the investor relationship marketing of startups: a systematic literature review and research agenda

Management Review Quarterly - An important task of entrepreneurs is the management of investor relations. Past literature has emphasized the role of trust for managing relationships and regulating...     

Politische Ökonomie der Rechnungslegung – Bisherige Forschungsergebnisse und künftige Forschungsperspektiven unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Lobbyingkonzepts

Particularly in the field of German research tradition concerning financial accounting thoughts about interpretation and development of standards are focal points. Along with the appearance of the information economics it became apparent that financial accounting is not only a technical vehicle but a social institution. By making accounting information publicly available it may have an effect on the distribution of economic income. Insofar the presumption is feasible that those players influence standard-setting whose welfare is directly affected by it. The above mentioned view that is rarely noted in the German-speaking countries is followed by the research approach so called ‘‘Political Economy of Accounting’’. Aim of this research approach is to explain the complex standard-setting process by considering the different parties within a society. The article at hand contributes to sum up state-of-the-art advancements in the field of scientific discourse concerned and provides an outlook on perspectives in this research area.     

Measuring user similarity using check-ins from LBSN: a mobile recommendation approach for e-commerce and security services

ABSTRACT

Social friendship and geographical position information often reflects individuals’ personal preferences and other types of knowledge that can be used to extract their similarity for recommendation systems. This paper finds that users are more likely to move around some specific centres or check in at some hotspots; a few individuals check in frequently, whereas most locations are rarely visited. Based on these findings, we propose a multi-centre clustering algorithm to capture users’ mobile patterns and develop a user similarity measurement method. Complexity analysis shows the method’s efficiency in handling large datasets and experimental results demonstrate its good applicability.     

投资者关系管理的博弈分析

本文主要从三个角度论述上市公司投资者关系管理的博弈分析,即投资者与上市公司之间的非合作博弈、机构投资者与个人投资者之间的“智猪博弈”以及投资者与上市公司之间的合作博弈。阐明投资者与上市公司非合作博弈的严重后果,机构投资者在促使上市公司实施投资者关系管理方面的作用,以及上市公司实施有效的投资者关系管理后的“双赢”结果。     

A methodology to rank enterprise application integration platforms from a performance perspective: an analytic hierarchy process-based approach

ABSTRACT

Companies’ software ecosystems comprise applications that support their business processes. Frequently, these applications have been developed with different technologies and with no concern about integration. Integration platforms are tools that facilitate the development and execution of integration solutions. In this article, we propose a methodology to support software engineers in the decision-making process for an integration platform when performance is a central requirement. The proposed methodology adds objective criteria for performance assessment purposes and has been used to rank the five most popular integration platforms in order to prove its feasibility.     

Economic policy uncertainty,investor sentiment and financial stability—an empirical study based on the time varying parameter-vector autoregression model

This paper applies the time varying parameter-vector autoregression model to explore the dynamic relationship between economic policy uncertainty, investor sentiment and financial stability in China in different periods and at different time points. The empirical results show that economic policy uncertainty has an obvious negative impact on investor sentiment before 2012 and financial stability in the short term, and the influence of economic policy uncertainty on investor sentiment is greater than that of economic policy uncertainty on financial stability. These influences were more significant during the period of the global financial crisis in 2008. Moreover, investor sentiment had a positive and gradually increasing effect on financial stability, while after 2010, the positive impact gradually weakened. Furthermore, economic policy uncertainty is negatively affected by financial stability, and the effect of financial stability on investor sentiment is positive. In terms of mediating effects, economic policy uncertainty has an indirect impact on financial stability through investor sentiment and vice versa. This paper provides a new solution to economic problems explored in behavioral finance research. Additionally, Chinese government agencies can achieve the goal of preventing financial crises and maintaining financial stability by monitoring investor sentiment and implementing targeted economic policies.

     

Organisationales Commitment und seine Einflussfaktoren: Eine qualitative Metaanalyse

It is a result from increasing individualism and the ongoing deregulation of formal and psychological work contracts that organizational commitment has become one of the key concepts in management research and practice. There is growing empirical research not only on the effects of commitment on organizational performance, but also on its personal, organizational and contextual antecedents. In this literature review the state of the art in commitment-related research is presented and discussed. We refer to the grounding work of Meyer and Allen (1991) and their distinction between affective, normative, and continuance commitment. The paper is based on three meta-analyses and an additional systematic review of 61 empirical studies. They provide evidence for the fact that there is a shift from demographic to differential personality factors in research. Affective commitment and normative commitment can be explained by individual differences (e.g., self-efficacy and trustfulness), work environment (e.g., transformational leadership and controllability), and organisational characteristics (e.g., supporting human resources policy and interpersonal, distributive, and procedural justice). Continuance commitment has been found negatively correlated with affective and normative commitment. Significant antecedents are the same work-related factors as for the two other forms of commitment, but the coefficients are inverse. Contrary to former results, national culture has no effect neither on the link between other antecedents and commitment, nor on commitment itself.     

The Effects of Conservative Reporting on Investor Disagreement

We examine whether the level of a firm's conditional conservatism affects investor disagreement around earnings announcement dates. Investor disagreement is relevant for its repercussions on stock market efficiency. However, the literature related to the effect of firms’ reporting policies on disagreement is scant. Prior research suggests that conservatism, by requiring higher verifiability of profits, constrains earnings overstatements and encourages more complete revelations of losses, thus improving the information environment. In this paper, we further hypothesize that these effects of conservatism enhance news credibility and decrease information asymmetry, particularly for bad news announcements. This results in a lower disagreement and improved interpretation of earnings news. We consistently find that conservatism measures are negatively associated with proxies of announcement-time investor disagreement and that this effect is stronger when the firm is reporting bad news. Additional analyses indicate that the impact of conservatism is stronger when market surprise to the announcement is greater, while it is weaker in the presence of frequent and precise voluntary disclosure that preempts the earnings announcement. Finally, we show that a higher percentage of institutional investors’ ownership and a higher level of commitment to conservatism reinforce the impact of the latter.     

Building a valuable event log for process mining: an experimental exploration of a guided process

The digitalisation of business processes has led to the new opportunity of investigating process executions by using process mining. The complex preparation step of building an event log is often perceived as a technical task, although business considerations should be involved. In this paper, we examine via an experimental study whether and how a guiding procedure supports the performance of this task. Our findings provide insights into the parts played by business and technical considerations in this task and suggest that procedural guidance positively impacts the process of building an event log and its outcome.     

How much should an investor trust the startup entrepreneur? A network model

Trust is an important determinant of start-up financing. In a simple agent-based model it is determined what the best trusting strategy is for a collective of investors and whether it is rational for an individual investor to deviate from this collective optimum. Trust depends on a measure of social distance and is the precondition for investment. Trust increases and decreases based on whether an investor is satisfied with the interest payments received from an entrepreneur. If an investor is dissatisfied, he terminates the relation with the entrepreneur. For assessing the quality of their own investments, investors communicate with other investors in a network-like structure. I find that, as a collective, it is best for investors to compare their returns critically in order to identify unproductive entrepreneurs, but to be tolerant regarding existing links to entrepreneurs in order not to terminate profitable relations because of minor productivity drops. However, it is optimal for an individual investor to deviate from this strategy and to be less easily disappointed, but to decrease trust in larger steps. In a sense, an individual investor can free ride on the others’ critical assessment. If all investors behave according to this latter strategy, too many unproductive firms remain in the market and the average investor’s return is lower than in the collective optimum.     

On startups and doublethink – resistance and conformity in negotiating the meaning of entrepreneurship

Startup entrepreneurship is – in the literature, in the discourse of those engaging in it, and in cultural representations of the same – presented both as resistance against prevailing corporate logics and as a path towards becoming a corporate entity. Resistance, claimed or otherwise, is not just a reaction to a perceived outrage or a power imbalance, but is in itself a constitutive part of contemporary entrepreneurship, particularly as this is culturally constructed. We study this paradox, where a discourse of resistance becomes a productive part of entrepreneurial culture, by way of a case study of a successful startup. We analyze the manner in which people working in the startup utilize ‘doublethink’ to portray the organization both as resistance to an assumed, more corporate, ‘Other’ and also as a budding corporation unto itself. By doing so, we highlight how a discourse of resistance works as a value in entrepreneurship culture as well as a productive element of the same. In our case, resistance and corporate conformity come together in a way that defies easy classification; one where notions of resistance exist as easy-to-adopt identity positions and where doublethink becomes a productive way of dealing with corporate success.     

Auditor Industry Specialization,Political Economy and Earnings Quality: Some Cross‐Country Evidence

Using cross‐country data, we evaluate the impact of investor protection on the association between earnings quality and audits by industry specialists. Our findings show that the positive association between industry specialist auditors and earnings quality as documented in the literature is affected by the political electoral system, which reflects investor protection rights in a country. We document that audits by industry specialists are associated with higher earnings quality in countries with the proportional electoral system, reflecting weak investor protection. Our results also confirm Kwon et al.'s findings that overall there is a positive association between earnings quality and audits by industry specialists in countries with weak legal enforcement. Our findings, however, indicate that Kwon et al.'s results are valid only for countries with weak investor protection reflected by the proportional electoral system and not for countries with strong investor protection reflected by the majoritarian electoral system. These findings thus suggest that higher earnings quality of firms audited by industry specialists across countries can especially be expected when investor protection is low and legal enforcement is also weak. In addition, our research suggests that future cross‐country studies could explicitly consider the role of the political electoral system of a country in evaluating corporate governance, management and accounting issues.     

完善民办教育立法的建议

民办教育在我国教育事业中有着举足轻重的地位,《民办教育促进法》的颁布,带来了民办教育的快速发展。因民办学校自身问题和教育体制方面的问题,挫伤了投资人投资办学的积极性,影响了民办教育的发展。对此必须在实践中不断完善民办教育立法,规定界定营利性民办学校与非营利性民办学校的条件,制定不同的税收政策;完善民办学校法人财产权的立法,确保民办学校法人财产不受非法侵害;细化民办学校投资人获得合理回报的立法,鼓励投资人投资办学的积极性;细化民办学校联合办学的立法,优化教育资源的使用效率。     

论IRM中的上市公司价值提升

上市公司的会计舞弊、内幕交易行为行为,从不同的角度可将其归结为不同的问题,如信息披露、诚信建设、形象管理及公司治理等。但是,如从战略管理的角度分析,上市公司的隐瞒欺诈行为则在于其投资者关系管理的缺陷。投资者关系管理是资本市场发展的必然要求;它的行之有效,是提升上市公司价值的重要策略,这不仅表现在它对上市公司内在价值的弥补,也在于对上市公司外在价值的彰显。     

上市公司信息披露的博弈分析

本文从不完全信息博弈的角度,对上市公司信息披露的现状及问题进行了分析,揭示了我国信息披露机制存在的问题。发现在市场经济条件下,上市公司、投资者追求利益最大化的博弈行为。根据分析结果提出规范上市公司信息披露的途径,以加深人们对真实披露会计信息重要性的认识。     

Gender and regional employment differences: an industrial relations approach

This paper analyses gender differences in regional employment in Europe. An industrial relations approach is used, which requires that regulations and institutions in the labour market be analysed in regard to power relations in the workplace. Gender relations and working conditions are seldom included when welfare-state arrangements and the functioning of the labour market are discussed at a national level. The results of this study show that welfare-state policies, in a broad sense, support women's opportunities to take part in paid work in the labour market. Women in Europe are beginning to occupy an increasing share of the new jobs that are created as they improve their labour-force participation rates. Women are also moving into higher growth sectors of the economy to a larger extent than men. But in terms of occupations, hierarchies and power relations, the mechanisms of segregation in the workplace are changing very slowly. While considerable literature exists on the segregation processes within organizations, very little deals with how to change segregation patterns and how to balance the differences in power between women and men in the workplace.     

Re‐visiting ‘country of origin’ effects on HRM in multinational corporations

This article builds on the existing literature on ‘country of origin’ effects on the management of human resources in multinational corporations (MNCs). It adopts a relational perspective in order to examine how actors at different levels within multinationals develop identities, and how these interact. Exploring the different sets of relations present within MNCs highlights two major areas in which the existing literature is deficient: first, a more integrated perspective on country effects within MNCs is dependent on an understanding of the potential for firms to strategically segment HR policies; second, more consideration needs to be given to the potential separation, either full or partial, of country of ownership and country of management effects, in order to reach a more realistic analysis of how national business systems shape international HRM.