Sabotage in dynamic tournaments

This paper studies sabotage in a dynamic tournament. Three players compete in two rounds. In the final round, a player who is leading in the race, but not yet beyond the reach of his competitors, is sabotaged more heavily. As a consequence, if all players start off at the same position, they do not work productively or sabotage at all in the first round. Thus sabotage is not only directly destructive, but also depresses incentives to work productively. If players are heterogeneous ex ante, sabotage activities in the first round may be concentrated against an underdog, contrary to findings from static tournaments.     

Selection Tournaments, Sabotage, and Participation

This paper studies sabotage in tournaments with at least three contestants, where the contestants know each other well. Every contestant has an incentive to direct sabotage specifically against his most dangerous rival. In equilibrium, contestants who choose a higher productive effort are sabotaged more heavily. This might explain findings from psychology, where victims of mobbing are sometimes found to be overachieving. Moreover, sabotage equalizes promotion chances. The effect is most pronounced if the production functions are linear in sabotage, and the cost functions depend only on the sum of all sabotage activities: in an interior equilibrium, who will win is a matter of chance, even when contestants differ a great deal in their abilities. This, in turn, has adverse consequences for who might want to participate in a tournament. Because better contestants anticipate that they will be sabotaged more strongly, it may happen that the most able stay out and the tournament selects one of the less able with probability one. I also study the case where some contestants are easy victims, that is, easier to sabotage than others.     

The effect of mergers and acquisitions on environmental,social and governance performance and market value: Evidence from EU acquirers

This study explores the effect of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance on market value and performance in the context of mergers and acquisitions. We examine whether acquisition of targets with better ESG performance can help acquirers to increase their own ESG performance and whether the market values the increased ESG performance positively. Moreover, we explore whether the acquisition of targets with better ESG performance affects the market value of acquirers. For this study, we utilize a sample of 100 European mergers and acquisitions between 2003 and 2017, for which matching data on the ESG performance of both the target and acquiring firms are available. Our results show that the postmerger ESG performance of the acquirer increases following the acquisition of a target that has higher ESG performance than that of the acquirer in the premerger stage, whereas the postmerger market value of the acquirer increases following an increase in the acquirer's postmerger ESG performance in relation to its premerger ESG performance. Finally, we provide partial evidence of a positive relationship between the postmerger market value of the acquirer and the acquisition of a target with higher ESG performance than itself in the premerger stage.     

企业会选择与竞争对手共享审计师吗?——基于经营范围相似度的分析

在选择最适合自身需求的审计师方面,企业会关注竞争对手的选择,并在享受审计专家服务与保护专有信息外溢之间寻求平衡。以企业的收入排名和经营范围的相似度衡量竞争对手,检验竞争对手间的审计师共享行为。研究发现,当行业内经营范围高度相似的两个企业互为竞争对手时,共享审计师的可能性较低;行业竞争激烈程度会放大竞争对手共享审计师的负向关系;但当外部审计师为审计专家时,会改变同行竞争对手不愿共享审计师的倾向;从经济后果来看,聘用同一会计师事务所的同行企业会有相似的经济决策。从财务层面构建衡量竞争对手的方法,验证竞争对手间的共享审计师问题,发现审计师不仅是财务报表的鉴证者,也是知识与资源丰富的信息中介与来源。     

Flexibility,labour retention and productivity in the EU

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between internal flexibility, the employment of fixed-term contract workers and productivity in 27 European Union countries. Drawing on European Company Survey data, the paper assesses whether establishments that employ on a fixed-term basis experience higher productivity than their competitors and stronger labour productivity improvements over time. These issues are of importance, given the recent weakness of productivity growth in many EU member countries, the steps that governments have taken to relax rules relating to the employment of fixed-term workers and the emphasis placed on contractual flexibility within the European Commission’s flexicurity agenda. The paper finds that establishments that do not use fixed-term contracts enjoy productivity advantages over those that do. Establishments that employ on a fixed-term basis but retain workers once their fixed-term contract has expired perform better than those that do not retain workers. The findings also show that establishments that pursue internal flexibility report both higher productivity than competitors and productivity increases over time. In addition, they are more likely to retain workers who have reached the end of a fixed-term contract.     

On sabotage in collective tournaments

In this paper a tournament between teams (a collective tournament) is considered, where each contestant may spend productive effort in order to increase his team’s performance or sabotage the members of the opponent team. It is shown that each team directs all its sabotage activities at exactly one of the opponent team’s least able members. This is due to two effects, a decreasing-returns effect and a complementarity effect. The result is of particular interest, as findings on individual tournaments indicate that very able players should usually be sabotaged most strongly.     

R&D cooperation and unintended innovation performance: Role of appropriability regimes and sectoral characteristics

This research empirically examines the relation between R&D cooperation and unintended innovation performance. The effects of appropriability and sectoral conditions on the unintended innovation performance in the context of R&D cooperation were also tested. Binary logistic regression was used to analyze the manufacturing firms sampled from the Korea Innovation Survey (KIS) 2012. Our estimation results show that for the high-tech focal firms under strong appropriability regime, cooperation with competitors increases the likelihood of their unintended innovation performance. For the high-tech focal firms under weak appropriability regime, cooperation with customer and user firms and universities increases the likelihood of their unintended innovation performance. For the low-tech firms under strong appropriability regime, cooperation with the customer and user firms and advisory organizations increases the likelihood of unintended innovation performance. For the low-tech firms under weak appropriability regime, cooperation with competitors and government research institutes increases the likelihood of unintended innovation performance. As a whole, the significance of this paper lies in shedding a new light on approaching the innovation performance with the notion of unintended innovation performance, which is shaped by different partner types and environmental conditions.     

The Provision of Relative Performance Feedback: An Analysis of Performance and Satisfaction

This paper studies the effect of providing relative performance feedback on individuals’ performance, under two incentive schemes. In a laboratory setup, agents perform a real‐effort task. We show that relative performance feedback increases performance when performance is related to pay (piece‐rate) but has no effect on performance when pay is independent of performance (flat‐rate). These effects are independent of the agent's relative position. Subjects are also asked to rate their satisfaction during the experiment. We find that under flat‐rate, feedback has no effect on agents’ satisfaction, while under piece‐rate, feedback about relative position affects satisfaction.     

Managerial overconfidence,overinvestment, and R&D spillover

This paper examines whether a firm will select an overoptimistic manager when a cost‐reduction investment has a spillover effect. We consider a Cournot competition model where R&D investment ex ante occurs before the process of product market competition. Our analysis reveals that there exists a unique and symmetric equilibrium for firms to delegate overoptimistic managers. We show that only when the spillover effect is sufficiently high do firms benefit from delegation. Furthermore, the equilibrium confidence level and investment decision first decrease and then increase as the spillover parameter changes. As the initial production cost increases, the equilibrium performance becomes worse.     

When Feedback Interventions Backfire: Why Higher Performance Feedback May Result in Lower Self‐Perceived Competence and Satisfaction with Performance

In relative performance evaluation systems, appraisers may choose to adopt stricter or laxer evaluation criteria. When laxer (vs. stricter) criteria are used, higher absolute performance evaluations become easier (vs. harder) to achieve. Thus, each appraisee's absolute performance feedback and the mean of the distribution of absolute performance feedback are shifted upward (vs. downward). Yet, relative performance remains constant. When evaluation outcomes depend solely on relative performance, can the adoption of laxer (vs. stricter) criteria—leading to higher absolute performance feedback but no change in relative performance—influence appraisees’ satisfaction with performance? Despite the ubiquity of such systems in organizations, research has not addressed this question. This article points to an important gap between practitioners’ beliefs and research findings. We show that while most appraisers believe that higher absolute performance feedback will automatically result in more satisfaction with performance, the opposite may also happen. Specifically, we find that appraisees with a stronger (vs. weaker) chronic or contextual need to engage in social comparison are more satisfied with lower (vs. higher) absolute performance feedback. Overall, we demonstrate why and how feedback interventions in relative performance evaluation systems may backfire, and suggest a set of practical guidelines for maximizing appraisees’ satisfaction with performance in such systems. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The effects of an online inquiry service on gatekeeping systems with heterogeneous patients

An online inquiry service (OIS) is an innovative service designed to make medical resources more accessible, especially in remote areas. An OIS provides patients with an alternative method of consulting a physician. This study develops a game-theoretical queueing model to examine the impact of OISs on gatekeeping systems. In such systems, patients are heterogeneous in terms of their travel costs. Here, we compare the performance of gatekeeping systems with and without an OIS. As such, we show that, owing to physicians’ reduced diagnostic ability when working online, an OIS reduces patients’ travel costs, increases the flow of patients to specialists, increases the total waiting time in the system, and decreases the total health surplus of patients. Moreover, we demonstrate that when patients are not sensitive to delays, introducing an OIS always reduces their total cost. These findings are consistent with the intuition that patients are better off when more options are available. Interestingly, when patients are sensitive to delays, introducing an OIS may increase their total cost. This paradoxical result occurs when patients’ sensitivity to delays is high, because those who consult a physician online impose negative externalities on the system by increasing the waiting cost in both the online and offline channels (which is proportional to patients’ delay sensitivity). Finally, we numerically illustrate that the benefit of introducing an OIS is non-monotonic in the system parameters; thus, caution is required when designing policies to regulate OISs.     

Market share and firms’ patent exploitation

As the current patent policy encourages the early stage of innovation but imposes hardly any regulations on how patent holders use their patents, an understanding of how firms use their patents is largely lacking. In this study, we seek to determine whether differences exist in firms’ strategies for utilizing patents depending on their market share. Using a discrete choice model, the repeated multinomial logit model, we analyzed Korean firms’ choices of patent use. Market share is found to positively influence three patent exploitation modes: own use, simultaneous exploitation of own use and licensing, and blocking. And the blocking use of patents is the most significant mode that is positively associated with market share. Our results provide a basis for understanding the effects of patent policy from the industrial perspective, such as industrial organization or competition policy. We discussed the implications for various actors related to patent systems, including researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners.     

Electronic reverse auction configuration and its impact on buyer price and supplier perceptions of opportunism: A laboratory experiment

Buying organizations are increasingly using electronic reverse auctions (eRAs) to source from suppliers. However, recent quasi-experimental and field research has suggested that the use of this sourcing technique can create perceptions of opportunism among participating suppliers. Yet from the buyer's perspective, online reverse auctions can yield lower purchase prices. Given the many ways in which to configure on-line auctions, we extend existing research by using a laboratory experiment to investigate how different reverse auction configurations jointly influence bid price and suppliers’ perceptions of buyer opportunism.Our findings suggest that supplier bid prices decrease over time as they participate in more eRAs, regardless of the configuration of auction parameters. However, the combination of rank (versus price) visibility, high (versus low) supplier need to win a contract, and six (versus three) competitors was significantly more effective than other combinations of variables in immediately reducing bid prices. The data also indicated that when suppliers’ bids dropped substantially across auctions, their perceptions of opportunism increased. Notably, auction parameter combinations such as price visibility, three competitors, and low need for the contract yielded comparably low bids by the third auction, without any increases in perceived buyer opportunism.     

Globalization,political institutions,financial liberalization,and performance of the insurance industry

This paper investigates the impacts of globalization, political institutions, and financial liberalization on the performance and risk-taking of insurance firms covering 1324 individual firms in 30 selected OECD countries. We find that greater globalization and a stable political institution lead insurance companies to exhibit a better performance—i.e., insurers adjust their strategies while being aware of institutional changes. By contrast, financial liberalization has an inverse impact on insurance company performance. Thus, greater globalization and a stable political environment both drive less risk-taking for insurers. These findings are particularly important to insurance markets’ competitors and national policymakers.     

The Effectiveness of Single‐Sex Schools through Out‐of‐School Activities: Evidence from South Korea

Students’ out‐of‐school activities and time use can play a crucial role in facilitating the effect of schools on students’ achievement. Using data from Seoul, South Korea, where students are randomly assigned into schools, we show that when single‐sex schools improve students’ test performance, their effect is positive on students’ time spent on study‐related out‐of‐school activities. Our results indicate that out‐of‐school activities explain roughly 21%–30% of the effect of single‐sex schooling on test performance.     

International rankings of government performance and source credibility for citizens: experiments about e-government rankings in the UK and the Netherlands

International organizations are an alternative to national governments as a source of information for citizens about governments’ performance. Experiments about high UK e-government performance reported in an international ranking find a United Nations (UN) source increases citizens’ perceptions of the truthfulness of reported performance and increases perceived high performance compared to national government reporting identical information. The UN source also has higher perceived honesty, helpfulness and knowledgeability. A replication experiment in the Netherlands generalizes the finding about perceived higher truthfulness. International sources boost the credibility of information about high performance, improving citizens’ perceptions of national governments.     

Valuing technological synergies in mergers

Technological synergy in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) is achieved when there is an increase in value generated by combining the stock of complementary technologies of acquirers and targets, as well as utilizing target’s patents to initiate or defend lawsuits against competitors. Using U.S. patent data, we provide quantitative measures of these two sources of technological synergy. We find that these measures of technological synergy are important considerations of acquiring firms and capital market in valuing target firms’ innovative assets, as the measures are positive determinants of merger premium and total synergy gain. The expected total gains of acquirers’ and targets’ shareholders from technological synergy decrease with the difficulties of post-merger integration as proxied by geographical distance between acquirer and target. Our technological synergy measures are also good predictors of post-merger realized synergy, i.e., increase in patent outputs in the overlapped technology classes and market share.     

Making Good Things Last Longer: The Role of Savoring on the Relationship Between HRM and Positive Employee Outcomes

This work studies sales managers’ perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices, and the mediating and moderating processes through which these practices are linked with affective commitment. Specifically, we tested whether work engagement mediated the relationship between perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices and affective commitment using a sample of 117 sales managers from one large retail store. Furthermore, we tested whether managers’ savoring strategies would moderate the positive relationship between perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices and work engagement, and if the strength of the hypothesized indirect effects were conditional on the use of savoring strategies. Results showed that the relationship between perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices and affective commitment was mediated by work engagement. In addition, savoring strategies were found to moderate the relationship between perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices and work engagement, so that the highest levels of work engagement were found in individuals who reported high perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices and high use of savoring strategies. Finally, results support a conditional indirect effect of performance‐oriented HR practices on predicting affective commitment via work engagement when levels of savoring strategies were moderate to high, but not when their use was low. Altogether, these results demonstrated that work engagement and savoring strategies represent key elements in explaining how perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices are associated with affective commitment. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

中国技术密集型制造业出口竞争力实证研究

2011年中国技术密集型制造业的国际市场份额位居世界第一,但其细分行业的国际市场份额及排名差异较大,产业发展基础和行业地位是引起这种差异的主要原因。根据劳动生产率构造相对优势指标和绝对优势指标,分析发现中国技术密集型制造业的相对优势指标大于2而绝对优势指标小于1。根据我国1995-20111995 2011年数据通过面板协整回归结果表明,技术密集型制造业绝对优势指标对其国际市场份额有显著的正向影响。本文认为,金融危机以后,中国技术密集型制造业出口竞争力将进一步增强。