Do Analysts Strategically Employ Cash Flow Forecast Revisions to Offset Negative Earnings Forecast Revisions?

We investigate whether analysts use cash flow forecasts to reduce the impact of earnings forecast revisions (EFRs) on market participants. In particular, we focus on conflict between an analyst's concurrent cash flow and earnings forecast revisions. We hypothesize and find that analysts are more likely to issue a positive cash flow forecast revision when they issue a negative earnings forecast revision concurrently, but not the opposite, particularly for Fortune 500 firms. Furthermore, our supplementary analyses suggest that (1) some analysts optimistically bias cash flow forecasts when they issue negative earnings forecast revisions; (2) the market pays less attention to the historical accuracy of analyst cash flow forecasts, so analysts have some latitude to present their cash flow forecasts in an optimistic way; and (3) the market reacts mainly to the direction, not the magnitude, of cash flow forecast revisions. Overall, these findings suggest that analysts may strategically use cash flow forecasts in conjunction with earnings forecasts to maintain good management relationships.     

How to prove,how to interpret and what to do? Uncertainty experiences of street-level tax officials

This study examines the kind of uncertainties frontline tax officials working with a trust-based inspection approach experience in interacting with citizen-clients. The classical literature on bureaucracy and the street-level bureaucracy literature suggest frontline officials face two kinds of uncertainties: information and interpretation problems. Analysing stories of Dutch frontline tax officials collected through in-depth interviews, this article shows that these two kinds of uncertainty only explain a part of the uncertainties experienced. Respondents also face action problems requiring improvisational judgements. The study furthermore finds that different sources underlie these uncertainties, pointing to possible explanations.     

Market Expansion and Productivity Growth: Do New Domestic Markets Matter as Much as New International Markets?

This paper asks how market expansion contributes to productivity growth. It investigates whether entry to both new international markets and new domestic markets is associated with greater productivity growth. It also examines whether exit from export markets is necessarily associated with deteriorating performance or whether it too can lead to success if associated with movements to new markets. Finally, the paper drills down into the strategic stance of firms that move to new markets to examine the strategic differences that set them apart from their compatriots that do not find themselves able to adapt.     

How responsive are charities to market needs?

Voluntary organisations have a unique set of stakeholders. Their services are paid for, not by their customers, but by ‘purchasers’ such as social services or grant-making trusts. This separation of customers from purchasers denies voluntary organisations a direct market mechanism for feedback on their services. As a result, charities are in danger of providing outdated poor-quality services for years, while convincing purchasers that they are still doing a good job. This paper examines the extent to which voluntary organisations do in fact respond to market needs, despite their undemanding environment. The paper draws on research from 15 national disability charities to explore the extent to which charities are market orientated, and to identify examples of best practice in the field. The paper concludes by identifying the critical role played by charity chief executives in urging their own organisations to adopt marketing principles. Copyright © 1999 Henry Stewart Publications     

Why Do Mortgage Markets Matter?

1999 saw the return of large scale mortgage equity - ie mortgage borrowing to finance consumption rather than house purchase - for the first time for a decade. Recent developments of the OEF macroeconometric model of the UK economy have focused on the determination of mortgage lending, looking in particular at the impact of downpayment constraints - ie the deposit borrowers have to put down when they buy a house. In this article, Geoffrey Meen uses this model to analyse the effects of mortgages on: (i) the cycle in the UK housing market at a national level; (ii) regional house price differentials; and (iii) aggregate savings and consumer behaviour.     

Green innovation to respond to environmental regulation: How external knowledge adoption and green absorptive capacity matter?

Although environmental regulations have been considered as important forces of conducting green innovation, how and under what conditions they affect green innovation are still unclear. Drawing from institutional theory, this study used survey data from 237 manufacturing firms in China to investigate how two dimensions of environmental regulations (i.e., command and control regulation and market‐based regulation) affect green product innovation and green process innovation. Further, this article examined the mediating role of external knowledge adoption and the moderating role of green absorptive capacity. Our results indicate that both command and control regulation and market‐based regulation have positive influences on external knowledge adoption. External knowledge adoption fully mediates these positive relationships. In addition, green absorptive capacity only strengthens the positive impact of market‐based regulation on external knowledge adoption. Our study contributes to institutional theory and green innovation literature.     

Understanding constant connectivity to work: How and for whom is constant connectivity related to employee well-being?

Over the past few decades, the widespread use of mobile work devices (MWDs: e.g., laptops and smartphones) has enabled constant connectivity to work. This study advances previous work on the effects of constant connectivity for employees by focusing on how and for whom constant connectivity might be related to employee well-being. Additionally, organizational-level antecedents of constant connectivity are investigated. This paper reports on two survey studies that a) operationalize constant connectivity and its organizational antecedents and b) investigate the relationship between constant connectivity and employee well-being. The findings demonstrate that constant connectivity is negatively related to employees' well-being due to the inability to disengage from work. Moreover, this negative association exists independently of employees' boundary preferences. The findings further suggest that perceived alignment between perceived functional, physical, and symbolic connectivity aspects of MWDs and occupational identity, susceptibility to social pressure, and the visibility of co-workers' communication practices all contribute to constant connectivity in the workplace.     

How to state general qualitative facts in psychology?

In what form should qualitative psychological statements have to be in order to be general and falsifiable? I show how basic qualitative measurement systems can be defined that allow for the detection and testing of general relational facts of the if–then form in a well-defined range of potential qualitative, static or dynamic, multivariate observations. The formal framework permits the pointing out of general research problems falling under the scope of empirical investigation.     

How to select a Supply Chain Finance solution?

In the complex picture of Supply Chain Finance (SCF), there is still a need for a model supporting managerial decisions in selecting the most suitable financing solution. The objective of the presented exploratory work is to bring together the relational aspects between buyers and suppliers, and the characteristics of SCF solutions. Based on expert interviews and a focus group, the main result consists of a classification model of buyer-led SCF solutions, according to the characteristics of the relationship between a buyer and its suppliers, in terms of bargaining power and cumulative transaction value. The model thus describes the logics behind the adoption by a buyer firm of one or more SCF solutions to be implemented with different suppliers.     

How to innovate business models for a circular bio-economy?

Shifting from a linear to a circular bio-economy requires new business models. The objective was getting insights into the uncharted research field of business model innovation for a circular and sustainable bio-economy within the agrifood sector. Eight European cases valorising agricultural waste and by-products by closing loops or cascading were studied regarding their innovation drivers and elements, via interviews, on-site visits and secondary data. In this domain, the findings highlight that business model innovations are depending on the (i) macro-environmental institutional-legal conditions and market trends, (ii) driven by internal economic, environmental and/or social objectives, but especially strongly linked to (iii) other actors often from different sectors seeking synergies and (iv) value co-creation via combined organisational and technological innovations. Business models for a circular bio-economy thus depend on various action levels and need radical combined organisational and technological innovations for a most efficient usage of agricultural waste and by-products. This also means new business configurations instead of linear innovation strategies currently still being dominant due to economic viability.     

How is Banking Regulation Changing,and How Could it be Better?

Since the financial crisis there have been some positive moves with regard to bank regulation – especially in relation to ensuring that bank bondholders can lose their capital in the event of a bank failure. However, the increased guarantees to depositors are a retrograde step. The government should remove guarantees of depositors’ capital and, instead, provide some guarantee of their liquidity.     

How and when do prior international experiences lead to global work? A career motivation perspective

While research suggests a link between individuals' prior international experiences and their future participation in global work, we know little about how and the conditions under which this relationship occurs. Drawing on career motivation theory, we conceptualize global identity as a mediator between individuals' density of prior international experiences—defined as the extent to which time spent in culturally novel countries has provided individuals with developmental opportunities—and their global work aspirations, which in turn leads to their global work involvement. Further, this multi-stage mediation model holds mainly when individuals receive positive feedback regarding their intercultural competencies (i.e., cultural intelligence) from their peers. We test our model using a multi-wave multi-source dataset spanning 6 years. We discuss implications for the literatures on prior international experiences and global careers.     

How to train supply managers – Necessary and sufficient purchasing skills leading to success

The success of purchasing and supply management (PSM) largely depends on PSM professionals' skills levels. Past research assumed that one universal PSM professional type exists, and they have proposed one-size-fits-all PSM skillsets. However, PSM professionals have different objectives. Based on the data of an extensive survey conducted amongst European PSM professionals (n = 366), this study presents skillsets for seven objectives (reducing costs and improving delivery, quality, sustainability, strategic competitive advantage, supplier satisfaction and innovation). A differentiation is made between “necessary” and “sufficient” conditions for each objective's effectiveness. Within a new PSM-skills taxonomy, a hierarchy of skills is detected as one of the first categories that provide quantitative evidence that soft skills or personal skills are necessary conditions for carrying out hard skills or professional skills. Based on the proposed skillsets, university educators and firm trainers can draft teaching plans that support the intended outcome, while individual PSM professionals may get an orientation on how to develop their skills further.     

How Does Cooperation and Competition Foster or Inhibit Creativity and Innovation?

The current article provides a brief insight into the relationship between cooperation and competition in organizational settings as they relate to the origination and proliferation of new ideas. Does cooperation stifle creativity? Does competition promote innovation? Or is it likely the answer resides in a more complex process somewhere in the middle? With a vested interest in organizational productivity, leadership should pay special attention to what social processes give rise to these phenomena.     

How does improved forecasting benefit detection? An application to biosurveillance

While many methods have been proposed for detecting disease outbreaks from pre-diagnostic data, their performance is usually not well understood. We argue that most existing temporal detection methods for biosurveillance can be characterized as a forecasting component coupled with a monitoring/detection component.In this paper, we describe the effect of forecast accuracy on detection performance. Quantifying this effect allows one to measure the benefits of improved forecasting and determine when it is worth improving a forecast method’s precision at the cost of robustness or simplicity. We quantify the effect of forecast accuracy on detection metrics under different scenarios and investigate the effect when standard assumptions are violated. We illustrate our results by examining performance on authentic biosurveillance data.     

How Creative Can Leaders Afford to be Without Losing Credibility?

Leaders know in their gut that creativity and innovation are the life blood of their organization. New ideas can lead to programs that are superior to an organization's established or planned programs. Leadership is to engage the right people, at the right times, to the right degree, in creative work. Inspirational leaders will promote employee creativity. On the other hand, the ability of leaders to be creative is an essential quality of leadership. Done well, the change of course looks like a moment of courage. The leader went to the precipice and had the strength to say, Let's turn back. Done badly, the change of course looks like pure opportunism or lack of conviction, and the leader's leadership credibility is undermined. The line between the two is thin. Which side a leader ends up on depends essentially on how the leader takes into account essential strategic factors, and how hard the leader will work to keep others on their side when they make the move.     

Do Landlords Discriminate? The Incidence and Causes of Racial Discrimination in Rental Housing Markets

Discrimination in housing markets occurs when equally qualified people are treated differently because of their membership in a particular group. This study focuses on racial and ethnic discrimination in qualitative actions by landlords, such as making an advertised housing unit available for inspection by a customer. The data come from the Housing Discrimination study, which conducted over 1500 rental housing audits in 25 metropolitan areas in 1989. Each audit consists of a visits to a landlord by a white person and either a black or Hispanic person with similar socio-economic characteristics. Using Chamberlain's fixed-effect logic estimation, we develop a nationally representative measure of the incidence of discrimination in landlord behavior and conduct hypothesis tests on the incidence and causes of discrimination. The results indicate widespread discrimination across several types of landlord behavior and support the hypotheses that landlords discriminate both out of personal prejudice and in response to the prejudice of present and future white clients.