Choosing two business degrees versus choosing one: What does it tell about mutual fund managers' investment behavior?

We analyze what a second business degree reveals about the investment behavior of mutual fund managers. Specifically, we compare the investment risk and style of managers with both a CFA designation and an MBA degree to managers with only one of these qualifications. We document that managers with both degrees take fewer risks, follow less extreme investment styles, and achieve less extreme performance outcomes. Our results are consistent with the explanation that managers with a certain personal attitude that makes them take fewer risks and invest more conventionally choose to gain both qualifications. We rule out several alternative explanations: our results are not driven by the respective contents of the MBA and the CFA program, by the manager's skill, or by the fund family's investment policy.     

管理者如何应对企业危机

危机事件有损于企业形象甚至影响企业的发展与生存,提升管理者的危机处理能力是企业应对危机的重要技能。应对企业危机,要求管理者有突出的信息收集、处理能力和管理沟通能力。管理者更应积极主动承担应有的责任,及时采取补救措施,积极做好预防及评估工作,完善企业管理机制,使企业走可持续性发展道路。     

Teaching Managers to Respond Ethically to Organizational Crises: an inquiry into the case method

Many managers now routinely receive training in business ethics using the case method. However the efficacy of this training has not been studied. Organizational crises, in the form of cases which present managers with ethical dilemmas, are commonly used to illustrate principles in business ethics courses. As illustrated in the classroom, these organizational ethical crises often result in severe financial consequences for the organization involved such as litigation or bankruptcy. The present study assessed the potential of the case method for teaching managers to respond ethically to organizational crisis. The author also assessed the role of organizational and ideographic factors in determining which managers would choose to act. Managers who had received classroom training in ethical case analysis were compared to those who had not. The majority in both groups of managers chose to take action when confronted with ethical dilemmas. However, managers who had received ethical training were more likely to act in some ethical situations than managers who had not. The ethical culture of an organization and the gender of the managers was also found to influence managerial action in response to ethical dilemmas.     

Managers' Perception of Proper Ethical Conduct: The Effect of Sex, Age, and Level of Education

This study examined the impact of sex, age, and level of education on the perception of various business practices by managers of a large non-profit organization. Female managers perceived the acceptance of gifts and favors in exchange for preferential treatment significantly more unethical than male managers. Older managers (40 plus) perceived five practices significantly more unethical than younger managers (giving gifts/favors in exchange for preferential treatment, divulging confidential information, concealing ones error, falsifying reports, and calling in sick to take a day off). The practice of padding expense account by over 10% was reported to be significantly more unethical by managers with a graduate degree.     

Perceptions of Proper Ethical Conduct of Male and Female Russian Managers

This study examined the impact of gender on perceptions of various business practices by male and female Russian managers. Female managers considered various activities such as doing personal business on company time, falsifying time/quality/quantity reports, padding an expense account more than 10 percent, calling in sick to take a day off, and pilfering organization materials and supplies more unethical than male managers. Female managers also perceived the acceptance of gifts and favors in exchange for preferential treatment more unethical than male managers.     

Managerial assessments of export performance: What do they reflect?

Export performance is often measured by managers’ subjective assessments, but little is known about what such assessments reflect. This article addresses this gap in the literature by analyzing the association between subjective and objective measures of export performance. We examined which aspects managers take into consideration when subjectively assessing the export performance of their firm. We also examined whether managers’ assessments had any predictive power concerning the future development of their firm’s export sales.Our empirical evidence is based on Norwegian small and medium-sized enterprises operating mainly in business-to business markets. Our analyses show that managers’ subjective assessment of export performance at the firm level is significantly associated with the percentage of the total firm sales that are exported. This is true for assessments of economic as well as non-economic performance. Subjective assessments, however, were not associated with actual export sales levels or with export growth.     

What is Business For? Ethics and the Aim of Business

In an attempt to give business a better image after the recent scandals, managers should not make the mistake of presenting business as having primarily moral, spiritual or social aims. Business's purpose is not to make people better moral agents; Business Ethics must take as its starting point the aim of business itself. This is not to say that business is immoral, or that managers can afford to ignore the interests of constituencies wider than simply their shareholders. It is, however, to say that Business Ethics should be less concerned with fanciful social agenda than with good conduct in business, which must itself be informed by the answer to the question "What is business for?"     

Modern management accounting for modern purchasing

In this article, the development of management accounting is connected to purchasing and supply management. The accounting system can act as a strong enabler as well as a barrier to the development of purchasing. A number of measures are identified and discussed leading to the conclusion that there are some highly interesting and relevant new techniques available. Using these, it should be possible to foster a stronger relationship focus in the purchasing function, which would enable managers to carry out a segmented approach to purchasing and supply management. Today, however, it would appear that managers largely fail to take advantage of these techniques.     

Introducing E-MARKPLAN: A practical methodology to plan e-marketing activities

Although e-marketing is highly prevalent, no template currently exists for managers who wish to use the Internet/Web and related information technologies to market their products and services. This paper provides managers with a comprehensive, actionable, and practical methodology (E-MARKPLAN) to plan, enact, and analyze e-marketing activities. Five case studies are used to illustrate the diversity of e-marketing actions. E-MARKPLAN consists of five parts: goals, actors (i.e., those who take e-marketing actions), spaces (i.e., theaters of engagement), actions, and outcomes. The E-MARKPLAN methodology is versatile, and is not limited to companies which have e-commerce operations.     

Competitive edge: A strategic management model

To assess a firm's strategic position, its managers must collect and interpret data regarding the firm itself, its competitors, its stakeholders, and the industry. Having implement a strategy based on that information, the managers further must measure that strategy's effect. The “competitive-edge model” presented in this article provides a series of questions to guide the strategic decision-making and data-collection process so that managers gain an explicit picture of what is happening with their firm, their competitors, and the industry. Equipped with the requisite information, managers can develop marker and non-marker strategies by matching internal resources with external opportunities. Market-based strategies seek to provide an advantage for the firm over its competitors by appealing to specific customer attributes. Non-market strategies take into account aspects of the environment not directly related to customers, including the actions of government, shareholders, and special interest groups.     

Cultural effects in East Asian strategic decision-making

This article asks whether Asian businesses take strategic decisions in distinctively Asian ways. It develops hypotheses about Asian decisionmaking from a consideration of theoretical cultural dimensions and empirical data in the literature. Contrary to expectations, an analysis of data from a survey of top Asian managers indicates that East Asian managers take decisions in a more rational manner relative to their Western counterparts. A distinction between social and cognitive dimensions of decision-making processes is suggested to explain some of these findings. Important unresolved questions are raised about the interpretation of cultural dimensions and about potential biases in empirical reports of East Asian decision-making characteristics. Implications for cultural differences research are discussed.     

Anticipating,preventing, and surviving secondary boycotts

Even the best stakeholder-managed firms can suffer when they become targets of a secondary boycott, as recent headlines attest. By definition, a secondary boycott is a group's refusal to engage a target firm with which the group has no direct dispute, in an attempt to sway public opinion, draw attention to an issue, or influence the actions of a disputant. This article provides a new perspective and tools for both scholars and managers concerned with this phenomenon. Building on a stakeholder theory foundation, we examine possible actions managers can take to avoid being surprised by a secondary boycott, propose conditions that raise the probability of becoming the target of a secondary boycott, and develop four alternative approaches for managing stakeholder relationships in a world of secondary boycotts.     

Multiple stakeholders and middle managers: the role of the hotel financial controller

This article explores the key characteristics of the specific stakeholders for one type of middle manager, the hotel financial controller. Eleven semi-structured interviews among financial personnel showed that although some owners require on-going profits and have high expectations of middle managers, others may take a more long-term view and be less demanding. Head offices provide systems and services for the unit, but a lack of efficiency and strategic planning affects the ability of managers to do their job. The middle manager must take a proactive intrapreneurial approach in communicating and implementing corporate strategic decisions within the unit and in managing the multiple stakeholders, but in return requires more guidance, resources and support from senior management.     

企业专用性人力资本与企业绩效——基于我国上市公司的实证研究

文章利用我国上市公司的数据,以总经理为研究对象,以总经理的企业任期作为企业专用性人力资本的替代变量,研究企业专用性人力资本与企业绩效之间的关系,结果表明：企业专用性人力资本与企业绩效之间呈U型关系,即随着企业专用性人力资本的增加,企业绩效呈现出先下降后上升的态势。因此,为了提高企业的绩效水平,企业应对新雇佣的总经理进行在职培训,采取各种措施激励其进行企业专用性人力资本投资,并保护其投资的准租不被侵占;搭建良好的信息交流平台,减少企业内部的交易成本,以有效缩短总经理与企业之间的磨合期,促进隐性知识的转化与学习。     

Performance failure: Executive response to self-serving bias

Are your employees happy to take credit for their successes and just as happy to blame outside factors for their failures? This phenomenon, called self-serving bias, has several causes, but managers can learn how to deal with it.     

Ethics and Law: Guiding the Invisible Hand to Correct Corporate Social Responsibility Externalities

Tokenistic short-term economic success is not good indicia of long-term success. Sustainable business success requires sustained existence in a corporation’s political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental contexts. Far beyond the traditional economic focus, consumers, governments and public interest groups alike increasingly expect the business sector to take on more social and environmental responsibilities. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the model in which economic, social and environmental responsibilities are fulfilled simultaneously. However, there is insufficient empirical evidence that demonstrates genuine widespread adoption of CSR in practice, and its underlying reasons. Though research in CSR has been rapidly growing, its commercial reality and implications need to be further improved if it is to inspire corporations to voluntarily adopt CSR. In the literature, Carroll’s four-dimensional (economic, legal, ethical and discretionary) CSR framework offers a theoretical basis for developing an empirically based model to explain why and how profit-motivated managers take up CSR voluntarily. Our study has developed a structural equation model to identify the key factors and their interactions that influence economically motivated managers to take on voluntary CSR, and validate Carroll’s four-dimensional construct. The results support Carroll’s four-dimensional CSR framework, with the exception of the link pertaining to the relationship between economic and discretionary/voluntary responsibility. This characterises the economic reality that financial market-driven economic responsibility does not automatically translate into social responsibility. Nevertheless, the empirical results demonstrate that corporations can be led to engage in more voluntary CSR activities to achieve social good when appropriate legal and ethical controls are in place.     

Multinational decision-making: Reconciling international norms

How should highly-placed multinational managers, typically schooled in home country moral traditions, reconcile conflicts between those traditions and ones of the host country? When host country standards for pollution, discrimination, and salary schedules appear substandard from the perspective of the home country, should the manager take the high road and implement home country standards? Or does the high road imply a failure to respect cultural diversity and national integrity? In this paper, I construct and defend an ethical algorithm for multinational managers to use in reconciling such international normative conflicts.     

European and U.S. managers: breaking down the wall

Here, the author describes some key differences between European and U.S. managers and provides a strategy for successful collaboration. These differences could prove crucial for U.S. companies seeking to take advantage of the newly emerging opportunities in Europe.     

不确定性环境下的战略变革模型

在一个不确定性环境里,如何发现企业的战略老化并及时变革使之生存下去是摆在企业管理者面前的一道难题。在不确定性环境中,要降低不确定性,形成战略时就要做到在任何单位时间内均拥有大量的战略假设;拥有范围较宽的战略假设且是从正确的来源获得战略假设。形成战略后可采用使机会最大化的否证法进行战略选择。战略实施实际上也是对战略假设的再检验过程。在一定的时间间隔上对战略进行评估,如果出现战略老化的迹象或支持所选择战略的任何假设改变了,那么就转向另一种战略。     

The era of #MeToo and what managers should do about it

#MeToo has become a global phenomenon since 2017, when many famous women came forward with allegations of sexual harassment (SH) against many famous men. Our purpose here is to help managers of both sexes understand their role in the wake of the #MeToo movement. We reviewed recent research on SH and #MeToo from both academic and practitioner outlets to get a pulse on what is currently being written on these topics. We also studied data we collected on current attitudes and behaviors men and women are experiencing in the wake of #MeToo, as well as examined one of the newer forms of harassment, namely online SH. We use our data and research to explore actions managers can take to prevent SH and respond to it when it occurs. In doing so, we provide new insights for business practice that both managers and scholars need to be aware of, and act upon, in the wake #MeToo.