From Privatised to Hybrid Corporatised Higher Education: A Global Financial Management Discourse

Abstract: This study addresses the emerging financial management focus of publicly and privately funded universities in the global marketplace, focusing on their financial management strategies. Despite regional and national differences, both public and private universities are found to exhibit a global trend towards operating as predominantly market funded commercial organisations. In many countries this reflects the insinuation of New Public Management philosophies into university missions and strategies. University objectives show signs of serving an underlying financial imperative often driven by constrained government funding of higher education and the expansion of private higher education institutions. Revenue expansion through mass education and engagement in the education export trade emerge as primary financial management strategies for a self‐generating profit oriented business model of higher education.     

Regional strategies for global leadership

The leaders of such global powerhouses as GE, Wal-Mart, and Toyota seem to have grasped two crucial truths: First, far from becoming submerged by the rising tide of globalization, geographic and other regional distinctions may in fact be increasing in importance. Second, regionally focused strategies, used in conjunction with local and global initiatives, can significantly boost a company's performance. The business and economic data reveal a highly regionalized world. For example, trade within regions, rather than across them, drove the surge of international commerce in the second half of the twentieth century. Regionalization is also apparent in foreign direct investment, companies' international sales, and competition among the world's largest multinationals. Harvard Business School Professor Pankaj Ghemawat says that the most successful companies employ five types of regional strategies in addition to--or even instead of--global ones: home base, portfolio, hub, platform, and mandate. Some companies adopt the strategies in sequence, but the most nimble switch from one to another and combine approaches as their markets and businesses evolve. At Toyota, for example, exports from the home base continue to be substantial even as the company builds up an international manufacturing presence. And as Toyota achieves economies of scale and scope with a strong network of hubs, the company also pursues economies of specialization through interregional mandates. Embracing regional strategies requires flexibility and creativity. A company must decide what constitutes a region, choose the most appropriate strategies, and mesh those strategies with the organization's existing structures. In a world that is neither truly global nor truly local, finding ways of coordinating within and across regions can deliver a powerful competitive advantage.     

Effect of emotion regulation as a de-biasing mechanism on overconfidence in investment behavior

Overconfidence is a bias closely associated with strong positive emotions such as pride. Strong positive emotions can hamper effective decision-making. This paper is predicated on the hypothesis that if investors with a pronounced tendency toward overconfidence can regulate strong positive emotions, they will be able to reduce bias and avoid subpar investment performance. We investigated the relationships among overconfidence, positive emotional reactions, and strategies for regulating emotions after a gain in the stock investment area, where investors succumb to overconfidence and important financial decisions are made. Identifying the differences in cognitive processes and emotion regulation strategies, which more or less overconfident investors exhibit, will in turn provide a de-bias mechanism to reduce overconfidence. The findings of this research will help investors avoid overconfidence by using strategies for emotional regulation reported in this study in order to achieve decision excellence.     

当前国际会计趋同形势和我国企业会计准则国际趋同的策略选择

随着世界经济一体化程度日益加深,国际财务报告准则在全球范围的应用越来越广泛。尤其是在2008年国际金融危机爆发后,为制定一套全球高质量的会计准则,提高会计信息透明度,稳定全球金融体系和资本市场,全球会计准则趋同步伐进一步加快,各国或地区采取的会计准则国际趋同策略倍受国际社会广泛关注。在当前国际金融监管框架正在重新构建,国际会计格局正在发生重大调整,国际会计准则制定机构正在积极推动治理结构改革的新形势下,我国需要审时度势,顺势而为,选择适应国情需要的会计准则国际趋同策略。     

Ten Chinese going global models: emerging patterns and analysis

For the past 10 years, since joining the World Trade Organization, China's global investment has increased 60-fold. Yet this increasingly emerged international business phenomenon has been under-studied. This paper examines the strategies of Chinese companies going global. It initially proposes and describes 10 models most frequently used by Chinese firms going global, and subsequently outlines and analyses the emerging trends and patterns of Chinese companies going global.     

Contemporary University Strategising: The Financial Imperative

This paper examines the financially focused strategies now evident amongst institutions competing for space in the global higher education system. In their search for increasing financial self‐sufficiency, universities and other higher education providers are examined for their primary competitive strategies. The study provides comprehensive evidence of their cost and operating efficiency strategies, facilitated by increasingly pervasive financial performance accountability systems. The primary operational strategies of teaching and research are found to have been transmogrified into strategies of customised education and research that is primarily focused upon and measured in terms of its funds generation. These trends contribute to complex performance management and accountability challenges as universities’ senior managers balance their internal financial ambitions with the expectations of external stakeholders, while simultaneously projecting sanitised imagery through corporate public relations strategies.     

Foreign exchange reserve diversification and the “exorbitant privilege”: Global macroeconomic effects

We assess the macroeconomic implications for the global economy of different strategies of official reserve management by developing a large scale new-Keynesian dynamic general equilibrium model, calibrated to the euro area, the United States, China and the rest of the world. An increase in the global demand for euros would boost euro area aggregate demand because of the reduction in euro area interest rates (the main benefit associated with the “privilege” of being a global currency). If the higher demand for euros is associated with lower demand for US dollars, then US aggregate demand falls because of higher interest rates, while the external balance improves; countries accumulating reserves continue to run a trade surplus, as exports to the euro area increase. We also compute welfare gains/costs for all economies.     

Confronting macrosocial worries: Worry about environmental problems and proactive coping among a group of young volunteers

Studies indicate that young people's interest in and worries about global issues, including environmental problems, often are connected with pessimism and inactivity. The purpose of this interview study, therefore, is to explore whether we can learn how to cope proactively with environmental worries from young people who are already actively engaged in environmental and global justice organizations. How do these young volunteers experience and reflect upon their worry? Which individual and collective coping strategies are used? The results are analyzed in relation to existential and emotion theories, and it is concluded that if we want to promote both an active stance towards the global future and psychological well-being among young people, it is not the ability to get rid of worry that should be sought after but rather the capacity to face worry, to learn from it, and to use it for constructive actions. In this regard, cognitive strategies for activating positive emotions and positive aspects of being actively engaged are important to acknowledge, since they could help the young to take on this difficult task.     

Momentum and mean reversion across national equity markets

Numerous studies have separately identified mean reversion and momentum. This paper considers these effects jointly. Our empirical model assumes that only global equity price index shocks can have permanent components. This is motivated in a production-based asset pricing context, given that production levels converge across developed countries. Combination momentum-contrarian strategies, used to select from among 18 developed equity markets at a monthly frequency, outperform both pure momentum and pure contrarian strategies. The results continue to hold after corrections for factor sensitivities and transaction costs. They reveal the importance of controlling for mean reversion in exploiting momentum and vice versa.     

Return dispersion risk in FX and global equity markets: Does it explain currency momentum?

We investigate the potential link between momentum in currency returns and global economic risk as measured by currency return dispersion (RD). Initial tests contribute to the exchange rate puzzle by showing that a common macroeconomic risk component in currency markets is present in global equity markets. Subsequent tests indicate that the spread on zero-cost currency momentum strategies is larger and highly significant in high RD states compared to low RD states. Also, the relation between these momentum payoffs and global economic risk appears to increase linearly in risk. Based on this evidence, we conclude that global economic risk as proxied by RD helps to explain currency momentum profits.     

Sovereign pension and social security reserve funds: A portfolio analysis

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have been increasing in numbers and in the global reach of their investment activities. At the same time, they seem to experience the adverse consequences of the financial crisis differently than other financial intermediaries. This paper assesses whether and how a retirement-financing purpose has affected their investment strategies since the global financial crisis, as opposed to the strategies of other public pension entities that do not operate as SWFs. We construct a sample of 12 sovereign pension reserve funds (SPRFs) and social security reserve funds (SSRFs) and analyze the effects of size, operational model, country development, the fund's experience, and quality of disclosures on strategic asset allocation for the period 2007–2014. We also investigate the relevance of “home bias.” Our results show that SPRFs invest more aggressively than SSRFs, but are less exposed to domestic investments. We do not find major shifts in asset allocation induced by the financial crisis, except for a recent decrease of home-country exposures.     

Global commodities and African stocks: A ‘market of one?’

Owing to frequent fluctuations in global markets, diversifying across emerging markets is increasingly becoming a necessity. Despite this, a cloud of uncertainty surrounds the relative capacities of emerging markets to provide the required shields for international investors, especially during extreme market conditions. In this paper, we explore the relative potentials of African equities to provide opportunities for hedging and diversification for global commodity investors by using data of daily periodicity on close-to-close basis from January 3, 2003 to December 29, 2014. The findings indicate the presence of non-linear relationships between some African stocks and returns on global commodities. Thus, global commodity market investors react differently towards investment potentials in African stocks during tranquil and crisis periods. Additionally, from the mean–variance stand-point, we observe that including African equities in a diversified portfolio has the effect of lowering risk whiles simultaneously increasing expected returns. However, any such investment strategies may have to be informed by volatility persistence, as well as past and present market conditions.     

Carry

We apply the concept of carry, which has been studied almost exclusively in currency markets, to any asset. A security’s expected return is decomposed into its “carry,” an ex-ante and model-free characteristic, and its expected price appreciation. Carry predicts returns cross-sectionally and in time series for a host of different asset classes, including global equities, global bonds, commodities, US Treasuries, credit, and options. Carry is not explained by known predictors of returns from these asset classes, and it captures many of these predictors, providing a unifying framework for return predictability. We reject a generalized version of Uncovered Interest Parity and the Expectations Hypothesis in favor of models with varying risk premia, in which carry strategies are commonly exposed to global recession, liquidity, and volatility risks, though none fully explains carry’s premium.     

Strategic communication in transnational corporations——A case study of Motorola Solutions

Transnational corporations start from global strategy. Strategic communication is essential to a transnational corporation to develop harmonically in different cultural background. This article is to analyze the organizanonal culture and communicational strategies with a case study of Motorola Solutions     

关于建立企业风险管理体系的思考

随着经济全球化的高速发展,当今的企业面临着前所未有的来自于风险管理的挑战,因此构建适合我国企业的风险管理体系已成为我国企业管理发展的新趋势。文章在阐述企业风险管理内涵的基础上,提出构建具有中国特色的企业风险管理体系策略。     

Does institutional ownership matter for international stock return comovement?

We study the link between international stock return comovements and institutional investment. We test whether the rise of institutional ownership has increased cross-country correlations and decreased cross-industry correlations. Using stock-level institutional holdings across 45 countries during the 2001–2010 period, we find that industry and global factors are relatively more important the country factors in explaining stock return variation among stocks with higher institutional ownership. Industry diversification strategies are more beneficial than country diversification strategies for stocks with high institutional ownership. We show that cross-border portfolio investment is a powerful force of international capital market integration and convergence of asset prices.     

The Impact of Corporate Governance on the Financial Outcomes of Global Diversification

The tenets of agency theory suggest that: 1) managers may pursue investment strategies that are at odds with shareholder value, and 2) effective governance mechanisms can improve the quality of managerial decision-making and enhance the outcomes of corporate investment. Accordingly, using an agency theory lens, we hypothesize that the financial outcomes of global diversification are contingent on the quality of the multinational firm’s corporate governance: high (poor) quality corporate governance is associated with positive (negative) financial consequences attributable to global diversification. Using a sample of 5985 firm-year observations over the period 2002 through 2006, we find support for our hypothesis. The results are robust to using three different measures of global diversification, three different measures of financial outcomes (one accounting-based and two market-based measures), and two econometric methods to control for the endogeneity of the diversification decision.     

INVENTING THE GLOBAL INFORMATION FUTURE

This essay analyses four possible outcomes of the transition to tomorrow's global information society. Using scenario building methods the essay describes and analyses the pathways the transitions may take, in the hopes of guiding pro-active thinking about the most desirable information and communication strategies for developing countries.     

Carry Trades and Global Foreign Exchange Volatility

We investigate the relation between global foreign exchange (FX) volatility risk and the cross section of excess returns arising from popular strategies that borrow in low interest rate currencies and invest in high interest rate currencies, so‐called “carry trades.” We find that high interest rate currencies are negatively related to innovations in global FX volatility, and thus deliver low returns in times of unexpected high volatility, when low interest rate currencies provide a hedge by yielding positive returns. Furthermore, we show that volatility risk dominates liquidity risk and our volatility risk proxy also performs well for pricing returns of other portfolios.