Managing Dispersed Knowledge: Organizational Problems,Managerial Strategies,and Their Effectiveness

While there has been much progress in understanding organizational knowledge and knowledge management practices, some questions still remain unresolved. This paper argues that at least one important driver of knowledge‐related organizational problems has been rather neglected so far: that is, the dispersed nature of organizational knowledge. The paper analyses the organizational problems and managerial responses arising from dispersed knowledge. It identifies three drivers by which the dispersedness of knowledge leads to management problems: namely, it creates large numbers, asymmetries, and uncertainty. A number of managerial strategies for dealing with the different components of the problems created by the dispersedness of knowledge are identified and their effectiveness analysed, thereby informing managers as to how best to deal with dispersed knowledge. The analysis of uncertainty‐related implications of dispersed knowledge uncovers an overlooked distinction that is helpful for understanding dispersed knowledge and its managerial implications. This is the distinction between uncertainty and ambiguity, i.e. a strong form of uncertainty that cannot be remedied by the standard strategy of increasing the information available.     

Managing Ethics in the European Commission Services

Abstract

This article adds to research on the regulation of standards of conduct in public administration. Specifically, it analyses attempts made during Siim Kallas’ mandate (2004–2009), to change the European Commission's approach to managing ethics, from a focus on control (inherited from the Kinnock reforms) to a ‘modern’ style based on guidance and shared values. Findings suggest that administrative practice fell short of delivering the change suggested by official discourse. The case of the Commission illustrates the practical challenges of operating shifts in organizational ethics management, and draws attention to the influence of the historical and political context of the reforms. The article uses a qualitative methodology, combining document analysis and in-depth interviews with ethics experts in the European Commission.     

Managerial Efficiency,Managerial Succession and Organizational Performance

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to create a measure of managerial efficiency in an attempt to reassess the conflicting theories concerning the impact of organizational performance on manager succession, and the counter-theories concerning the impact of manager succession on organizational performance. The analysis uses data for 147 college basketball teams from 1984 to 1991. The results indicate that winning, not efficiency, is the key criterion used in determining managerial retention. Yet when managers of losing teams are dismissed the teams tend to do even worse. If, however, the efficiency of the new manager is greater than that of the former, the disruptive effect of succession is minimized. Because administrators appear to focus on winning, not efficiency, they will often select new managers who are less efficient than departed managers. These results are unique to this literature and indicate promise for the use of DEA in analyses of the internal efficiencies of organizations. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

Managerial intensity,firm size and growth

Thirty years ago Edith Penrose proposed that managerial resources will grow at a rate somewhat faster than that of the size of the firm. With available data, the Penrose Hypothesis and an alternative steady-state hypothesis are tested, using simple econometric models involving managerial intensity, firm (industry) size and growth. The steady-state hypothesis is accepted for the recent data and the Penrose Hypothesis is accepted for the earlier data. Policy issues are then discussed.     

企业扩张、激励不足与管理层在职消费

管理层获取私人收益的动机是影响企业投资决策行为的重要因素。以我国上市公司高管薪酬制度改革为背景,考察了企业扩张行为对管理层在职消费的影响及其可能引发的后果。研究发现,企业扩张与管理层在职消费显著正相关,并且随着企业扩张程度的增大,管理层在职消费占其总收益的比重提高;进一步地,当管理层货币薪酬低于同行业-规模可比公司管理层薪酬水平中位数时,管理层通过企业扩张获得的在职消费越多,并且负向的同行薪酬差距越大,企业扩张与管理层在职消费的正向关系越显著。研究结果表明,管理层通过企业扩张增加了在职消费,改变了自身的报酬结构,在避免引起公众非议及薪酬管制的同时确保了自身收益的增加及持续增长,而薪酬激励不足引发的不公平感知及攀比心理进一步增强了管理层借企业扩张获取在职消费的动机。     

Business Strategy, Human Capital, and Managerial Incentives

We posit that the value of a manager's human capital depends on the firm's business strategy. The resulting interaction between business strategy and managerial incentives affects the organization of business activities. We illustrate the impact of this interaction on firm boundaries in a dynamic agency model. There may be disadvantages in merging two firms even when such a merger allows the internalization of externalities between the two firms. Merging, by making unprofitable certain decisions, increases the cost of inducing managerial effort. This incentive cost is a natural consequence of the manager's business-strategy-specific human capital.     

Implicit Contracts, Managerial Incentives, and Financial Structure

This paper examines how managers may be given incentives to exert effort, and to implement efficient implicit contracts with workers. Under certain assumptions, this can be achieved by tying managerial compensation to shareholder value. However, if reputation effects are weak, it is more efficient to adopt an incentive scheme in which the manager is punished by outside investor intervention when performance falls below a critical level, and otherwise retains control, receiving a fixed reward. The required form of outside intervention can be implemented through a financial structure combining hard debt with a dispersed ownership structure.     

Managerial shareholdings, firm value, and acquired corporations

Prior research on the relationship between managerial shareholdings and firm value provides conflicting evidence. We take a different approach to its analysis and focus on managerial shareholdings in acquired firms. We argue that in a relatively unfettered market for corporate control, prior evidence of a nonlinear relationship between moral hazard costs and managerial shareholdings suggests that acquired corporations can be segmented according to managerial shareholdings, and that these segments will differ according to the source of wealth gains, managerial resistance, who acquires the company, and how target shareholders are paid. We find evidence consistent with these predictions.     

管理股权、会计选择与盈余质量

本文根据异常应计项目框架和修正的Jones模型,以1995—2004年上市公司数据为样本,对上市公司管理股权通过会计选择影响企业的盈余质量进行了分析。实证研究发现,管理股权比例与盈余质量之间呈U型分布,相对集中的管理股权有利于提高盈余质量。     

管理者过度自信、投资偏好与企业竞争力

本文考察了管理者过度自信、投资偏好、企业竞争力三者之间的关系机制。研究发现:管理者过度自信正向影响投资偏好,管理者过度自信的企业对不同类别投资的偏好顺序依次为固定资产投资、无形资产投资、研发投资和长期股权投资;此外不同类别投资之间存在挤占效应。投资偏好正向影响企业竞争力;以无形资产和研发为主的软实力投资偏好对提升企业竞争力的作用最大。管理者过度自信通过投资偏好影响了企业竞争力,通过固定资产投资和软实力投资会提升企业竞争力,通过长期股权投资会降低企业竞争力。     

经理人过度自信、不对称信息与企业投资决策

通过构造二阶段投资模型,本文探讨信息不对称情况下经理人过度自信对企业投资决策的影响.研究结果表明:对于真实融资约束企业和伪融资约束企业,经理人过度自信心理偏误可能引发投资过度或投资不足;过度自信程度时企业投资-现金流敏感度有正向影响;对于过度自信程度轻微的劣质企业,投资对现金流不敏感,经理人心理偏误仅在举债筹资时可能引发过度投资.     

机构投资者异质性、管理层权力与企业绩效

本文选取2012-2016年我国沪深上市企业为研究对象,从公司治理的角度对机构投资者异质性与企业绩效之间关系进行研究,并进一步分析了管理层权力对两者关系的调节作用。本文将机构投资者划分为稳定型与交易型,将企业绩效划分为财务绩效和市场绩效,研究发现,稳定型机构投资者可发挥有效的监督作用,促进企业长期财务绩效的提升,但管理层权力的存在会削弱这种正向作用;交易型机构投资者为了短期目标,会使企业的市场绩效异常增长,此时管理层权力的存在可有效地削弱这种负面影响。     

管理者权力、内部薪酬差距与公司价值

本文针对2006～2010年中国上市公司数据对管理者权力、内部薪酬差距与公司价值之间的关系进行了研究.结果表明:中国上市公司内部的管理者与员工薪酬差距与公司价值正相关,内部薪酬差距具有正面的价值激励效应,支持锦标赛理论,但是管理者权力的存在抑制了内部薪酬差距激励效应的发挥.结合股权性质的研究发现,国有股权性质不仅抑制了内部薪酬差距的正面价值激励效应,并且强化了管理者权力对内部薪酬差距价值激励效应的抑制作用.此外,对管理者权力与内部薪酬差距影响公司价值的内在机理进行研究,结果发现,内部薪酬差距能够提高管理者的薪酬—业绩敏感性,但管理者权力抑制了内部薪酬差距对薪酬—业绩敏感性的提高.本文的结果表明薪酬差距激励效应的发挥需要其他公司治理机制的配合,合理配置公司控制权,对管理者权力设置相应约束机制,薪酬差距的激励效应才能得到更好的体现.     

Corporate Value, Managerial Stockholdings and Investments of Japanese Firms

We use a simultaneous equation model which treats firm value, investments and management ownership as endogenous to the firm. Our results show a feedback relation between corporate value and management ownership, i.e., corporate value is positively impacted by management ownership, which in turn is positively impacted by corporate value. Corporate value also affects investments made by the firm. We also find that the effect of the main bank on corporate value is positive but only up to a certain point; then, it turns negative. Supporting the argument that keiretsu firms have lower agency cost, we find that firms belonging to a keiretsu have higher valuations during the sample period. Finally, we find that management ownership increases as the ownership of the main bank, ownership of institutional holders and cross‐holdings decreases, suggesting a substitution effect among these monitoring forces. Our results indicate that ignoring the web of these relationships leads to incorrect inferences.     

Managerial skill utilization: work environment,gender, and training incentive

Past studies have demonstrated that a supportive work environment can positively influence managerial skill utilization. Adopting the instrumentality-expressiveness perspective, the present study extended the past research by illustrating the moderating effect of gender on this relationship. It found that the relationship between the work environment and managerial skill utilization is stronger among female managers than among male managers and further, that this interactive effect is more pronounced in a low incentive situation than in a high incentive situation in terms of reaching a high level of training performance. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.     

产权异质性、投资者情绪与管理者投资行为

传统投资行为研究是以“理性经济人”假说为前提的,但是在市场环境下,自然人拥有不同的价值观和情感,因而投资决策过程存在诸多不完全理性。本文考虑了中国制度环境,将投资者非理性与企业管理者的非理性纳入同一研究架构,并引入产权因素,采用面板固定效应估计法对2011—2018年1 272家上市公司进行实证研究,讨论投资者情绪是否有塑造管理者乐观的能力,并以管理者过度乐观为中介变量探讨投资者情绪如何影响企业的投资决策行为。     

Managerial Compensation and Capital Structure

We investigate the interaction between financial structure and managerial compensation and show that risky debt affects both the probability of managerial replacement and the manager's wage if he is retained by the firm. Our model yields a rich set of predictions, including the following: (i) The market values of equity and debt decrease if the manager is replaced; moreover, the expected cash flow affirms that retain their managers exceeds that affirms that replace their managers, (ii) Managers affirms with risky debt outstanding are promised lower severance payments (golden parachutes) than managers affirms that do not have risky debt. (Hi) Controlling for firm's size, the leverage, managerial compensation, and cash flow of firms that retain their managers are positively correlated, (iv) Controlling for the firm's size, the probability of managerial turnover and firm value are negatively correlated, (v) Managerial pay-performance sensitivity is positively correlated with leverage, expected compensation, and expected cash flows.     

Managerial economics and operating beta

We model a firm's unlevered beta in terms of elementary microeconomic variables. The source of uncertainty is a shock to demand. A firm decides on capital before the shock, and on labor, output, and price after the shock. Some insights are: (1) with decreasing returns to scale of production, beta has an inverse relation with price elasticity of demand, given the income elasticity of demand; (2) beta has a direct relation with the firm's returns to scale of production; (3) due to the impact of operating leverage, beta has an inverse relation with industry concentration; and (4) for a given returns to scale, beta has a direct relation with the capital–labor ratio that strengthens as industry concentration decreases. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.