Procurement mechanisms and the emergence of new governance structures in the CEECs: evidence from the Bulgarian wine industry

During transition, Bulgaria witnessed the dismantling of communist agri-food supply channels and a weakening of contract enforcement mechanisms. Wineries have had to establish grape procurement and purchasing relationships with a more diverse set of growers and intermediaries. In an attempt to overcome the weaknesses of procurement via spot markets, they have sought more interdependent contractual forms that secure greater control over the quality of inputs and minimise the possibility of opportunistic behaviour. The desired option by wineries is complete backward integration but attempts to achieve this have been limited by fragmented land ownership, credit constraints and incomplete property rights.     

Exploring resistance in collaborative forms of governance: Meaning negotiations and counter-narratives in a case from the Danish education sector

This paper addresses resistance in studies about collaborative forms of governance. Although the literature discusses collaborative challenges, issues related to resistance are largely unexplored and mostly regarded as destructive. However, we argue for understanding resistance more dynamically – as a co-constructive aspect of collaboration. Drawing on extant resistance studies, we combine concepts of meaning negotiation and counter-narrative to examine power-resistance relations in a case study of collaborative forms of governance in the Danish education sector. The findings elucidate how resistance complicates, yet also co-constructs collaboration in governance processes; discursive struggles over meanings of collaboration and a quality model invoke power-resistance relations that destabilize a dominant narrative and enable counter-narratives, which influence future collaborative processes. Hence, we suggest understanding resistance as a constitutive feature in collaborative forms of governance, rather than a destructive obstacle. This contributes with empirical and theoretical insights into the complex role of resistance in collaboration and governance processes.     

Bargaining power in stationary parallelogram games

A stationary variant of the repeated prisoners dilemma in which the game frontier is a parallelogram is analyzed. By using the probabilistic cheap talk concept of [3], the discount factor becomes fungible, and for a critical value of the discount factor a unique Pareto-optimal and Pareto-dominant solution can be found. The relative bargaining power of the players can be quantified in terms of the shape of the parallelogram. If the parallelogram is asymmetric, the solution results in an asymmetric allocation of payoffs. Players with more bargaining power receive a greater share of the allocation. The solution satisfies some standard bargaining axioms within the class of parallelogram games. A characterization is provided in terms of these axioms and one new axiom, weak-monotonicity, which is in the spirit of, but different from, the Kalai-Smorodinsky restricted-monotonicity axiom.Received: 15 January 2001, Accepted: 4 December 2003, We thank Wayne Shafer for interlocution and helpful comments.     

Corporate governance and pay for performance: evidence from Germany

This paper investigates how two distinctive features of the German corporate governance system—concentrated ownership structure and representation of employees on firm supervisory boards—influence the sensitivity of managerial pay to firm profitability. There is a positive, though very small, link between pay and profitability for widely held firms. The presence of a largest owner seems hardly to affect this link in any economically significant way. However, the link between pay and profitability is smaller and indeed not significantly different from zero in firms whose largest owner is a German financial institution. This suggests that large owners tend to act as a substitute for rather than a complement to performance related pay in Germany. We thank Dennis Leech for allowing us to use his algorithms for computing voting power indices, and Brian Cheffins, Tim Guinnane, Andrew Harvey, Dennis Leech, Hamish Low, Sheilagh Ogilvie, Melvyn Weeks and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. The research reported in this paper was started during a joint visit to CES, University of Munich, and completed during visits of Edwards and Weichenrieder to the University of Konstanz and the ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich. We thank the three institutions for their hospitality, especially Bernd Genser and Hans-Werner Sinn. A previous version of this paper was circulated under the title “The Measurement of Firm Ownership and its Effect on Managerial Pay”.     

Efficiency and stock returns: evidence from the insurance industry

This study investigates whether the capital market values the efficiency of firms. After tracing stock returns and efficiency changes of 399 listed insurance firms in 52 countries during the 2002–2008 period, the paper reports a positive and statistically significant relationship between profit efficiency change and market adjusted stock returns. However, there is no robust evidence that cost efficiency change is associated with stock returns.     

Evolving corporate governance and firms performance: evidence from Japanese firms

This study is an attempt to investigate the implications of the ownership structure and control transfers in the Japanese corporate market, which are attributed mainly to the government’s liberalization policies during 1990s. It appears that institutional shareholdings—either financial or non-financial corporations—are associated with poor performance, whereas the foreign and domestic private ownerships lead to an improvement in the performance of the firms. We observe that unwinding the cross-shareholding between banks and corporations and mutual transfers among non-financial institutions allows for efficiency gain. Furthermore, the ownership transfer to private and foreign individuals is consistently associated with high market value, which implies that individuals’ transfers lead to an increase in efficiency.     

Organisational flexibility and HRM in the hotel industry: evidence from Australia

The hotel industry is renowned for its poor pay and employment conditions and a low take‐up of HR practices. It is generally believed that the industry has relied on a lowcost, numerically flexible and disposable workforce. Recently, however, there has been debate concerning the extent to which managers in the hotel industry are embracing high commitment HRM and functionally flexible work practices. This study seeks to shed light on this question by analysing large‐scale survey and interview data on the hotel industry in Australia. While hotel workplaces in general continue to be associated with high levels of numerical and temporal flexibility and greater informality of HR policies, it was apparent that larger luxury hotels were adopting more systematic employee management techniques and strengthening their internal labour markets through functional flexibility initiatives. Such firms were also pursuing numerical and temporal flexibility strategies, although in rather different ways.     

Investor behavior in the mutual fund industry: evidence from gross flows

Using a large sample of monthly gross flows from 1997 to 2003, we uncover several previously undocumented regularities in investor behavior. First, investor purchases and sales produce fund-level gross flows that are highly persistent. Persistence in fund flows dominates performance as a predictor of future fund flows. More importantly, failing to account for flow persistence leads to incorrect inferences with respect to the relation between performance and flows. Second, we document that investors react differently to performance depending on the type of fund, and that investor trading activity produces meaningful differences in the persistence of fund flows across mutual fund types. Third, at least some investors appear to evaluate and respond to mutual fund performance over much shorter time spans than previously assessed. Additionally, we document differences in the speed and magnitude of investors’ purchase and sales responses to performance.     

Contingent work in the UK and Sweden: evidence from the construction industry

This article explores the use of contingent forms of employment in two diverse country contexts—the UK and Sweden—and investigates the influence of changing regulatory and economic conditions over a period that covers the current economic downturn. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data for the construction sector, the article addresses three questions. How do employers balance their flexibility preferences in the context of regulatory constraints? How has the global recession influenced employer behaviour? And to what extent can the Swedish experience be explained by convergence on other country models? While the UK employment model encourages employers to externalise the risk of unpredictable market conditions through the use of contingent contracts, the more supportive welfare regime in Sweden underpins a resilient preference of employers for open‐ended employment contracts. Ongoing changes in labour market regulation pose challenges to the strongly regulated Swedish model, yet we find only a shared direction of travel with the UK rather than convergence in the use of contingent employment.     

International outsourcing and productivity: evidence from the Irish electronics industry

This paper examines the effect of international outsourcing of intermediate inputs on productivity at the level of the plant, with a focus on the electronics industry in the Republic of Ireland. The effect of international outsourcing on plant-level productivity depends critically on the nature of the outsourced inputs (services or tangibles) and on the plant's export intensity. Outsourcing of materials provides significant productivity gains, but this effect holds only for plants with low export intensities.     

Making sustainable sourcing decisions: practical evidence from the automotive industry

Achieving environmental and sustainable performance within an organisation’s supply chain and manufacturing operations will be feasible if upstream supply partners have the same commitments in performing their operations in a sustainable manner. Given the debate above, we propose a comprehensive framework to address the sustainable supplier selection and order allocation (SSS&OA) problem. The framework developed is practical, that starts by using an audition check-list specific for each sustainability dimension (environmental, economic and social), from which the weighted values of its comprised criteria are obtained. The weighted scores of the selected sustainable suppliers are utilised by a proposed bi-objective order allocation model in order to make sourcing decisions. The strength of the proposed framework is its practical applicability to provide a solution for SSS&OA problems which is validated through a real-world application. Finally, research findings, theoretical and managerial insights and also directions for additional research are presented.     

Corporate governance and firm efficiency: evidence from China's publicly listed firms

This paper applies a two‐stage, double bootstrapping data envelope analysis approach to investigate whether and to what extent various distinctive corporate governance practices affect productive efficiency in a sample of 461 publicly listed manufacturing firms in China between 1999 and 2002. We find that firm efficiency is negatively related to state ownership while positively related to public and employee share ownership. In addition, the relationship between ownership concentration and firm efficiency is U‐shaped, indicating the presence of tunneling activities by the largest shareholder. Among three types of controlling shareholder, state exerts the most negative impact on firm efficiency, followed by state‐owned legal entities. These results provide strong evidence that political interferences have reduced firm efficiency. It shows that the proportion of outside directors and the number of board meetings are positively associated with firm efficiency, suggesting that board of directors can be an effective internal governance mechanism. Furthermore, provincial market development, a proxy for the strength of external governance mechanism, is positively related to firm efficiency. Overall, our findings illustrate that restructuring state‐owned enterprises via improvements in corporate governance has enhanced firm efficiency, but partial privatization without transfer of ownership and control from the state to the public remains a major source of inefficiency in corporate China. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The concepts of power in international business negotiations: An empirical investigation

This article examines the bases of social power, namely individual information power, expert power, legitimate power, and referent power on successful international business negotiations (IBNs). The author conducted an online survey among international business executives working in the UK for multinational corporation subsidiaries who were asked to report on the success of their most recent negotiating experience in terms of cooperative (integrative) and competitive (distributive) outcomes. Information power, expert power, and referent power were supported by these results in terms of significance. Unexpectedly, however, information power was positively correlated with integrative or cooperative outcomes and processes. The correlation related to legitimate power was negative but not statistically significant so this hypothesis was not supported. Our results not only contribute to international negotiation theory, but also can assist in the selection and training of practitioners. The academic contribution of this study also relates to model exploration. It brings causal statistical objectivity to qualitatively developed concepts as an essential step in development of knowledge. These theoretical and managerial implications of the study are examined. Furthermore, directions for future research that build on the findings of the study are indicated.     

Female expatriates in international business: empirical evidence from the German clothing industry

The article empirically analyses the situation of male and female expatriates in the German clothing industry in terms of selection, preparation, support during assignment, job satisfaction, goal attainment and future perspectives. In general, female expatriate managers face more difficulties than male expatriates at each stage of the international transfer cycle. The results of this single sector study demonstrate the importance of the cultural, national and sectoral context for the interpretation of results.     

Flexible working practices in engine plants: evidence from the European automobile industry

A convergent development between European countries can be observed in terms of the extension of functional flexibility, enlarging production workers’ jobs, introducing teamwork arrangements. In the literature, the emphasis has traditionally been on divergence between countries, which was explained in terms of different management strategies and industrial relations systems.     

Insider ownership and dividend signals: Additional evidence from the banking industry

This study investigates the relationship between the concentration of insider ownership and the share-price response to dividend-policy changes implemented by bank holding companies (BHCs). Using a cross-industry sample, previous research (Born 1988) found that there are differences in the magnitude of the share-price response to dividend initiations which may be explained by the concentration of insider ownership of the sampled firms. We hypothesize that the concentration of insider ownership does not play a role in differences in share price for BHCs due to the presence of regulatory monitors. The results of this study support our hypothesis.     

Structuring residual income and decision rights under internal governance: results from the Hungarian trucking industry

The paper offers a property rights and monitoring cost explanation for the allocation of residual income and decision rights between the carriers and truck drivers under internal governance. First, by applying the property rights theory, we argue that the structure of residual income rights depends on the importance of noncontractible (intangible) assets of the truck driver to generate residual surplus. The more important the truck driver's intangible knowledge assets, the more residual income rights should be transferred to him. Second, we controlled for the monitoring costs as an additional explanatory variable of the allocation of residual income rights. According to agency theory, the variable proportion of the driver's income should be higher where monitoring costs are higher. Third, we investigate the relationship between residual income and residual decision rights under internal governance. If the contractual relation is governed by an employment contract, residual decision and residual income rights may be substitutes because, under fiat, a certain incentive effect of the governance structure may result either from the allocation of high‐powered incentives or the transfer of residual decision rights to the driver. These hypotheses were tested by using data from the Hungarian trucking industry. The data provide partial support for the hypotheses. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An analysis of firm-level innovation strategies in the US biotechnology industry

This study examines factors that may affect innovation strategies and performance of firms in the biotechnology industry. Specifically, differences between factors common to firms with high R&D intensity and those to firms with low R&D intensity are investigated. Biotechnology firms with relatively higher levels of R&D intensity attribute their innovation performance to research-based innovation factors and strategies such as strengthening their own research capabilities, entering into research collaborations with universities, industry leaders and other biotech firms, and licensing their technology. These strategies can be summarized as alignment within the industry. Firms with relatively lower R&D intensity have a hybrid focus—they invest in R&D but may also have products on the market. These firms attribute their innovation performance more so to production-based innovation factors and strategies such as gaining market access and maintaining connections with customers. Their strategy focuses on competitiveness, marketing, and distribution channels, while not ignoring the importance of a strong research base and the need to advance technologically. In a sense, strategies employed to achieve successful innovation reflect the stage of innovation in which a firm is operating for a particular product or process.     

Bargaining power and the structure of salaries in major league Baseball

The relationship between bargaining power and the structure of salaries in major league baseball has been a subject of much empirical study. The evidence provided in this paper suggests that eligibility for final-offer arbitration does not result in a ‘fixed’ reduction in monopsonistic exploitation. Rather, the level of exploitation diminishes markedly in the first season of eligibility and continues to decrease in subsequent seasons. By the time the player reaches free agency eligibility, he can expect to earn the same single-season salary that he would as a free agent.     

Disaffection with trade unions in China: some evidence from SOEs in the auto industry

Despite the growing research into China's industrial relations system there is remarkably little research into how China's workers regard their trade union. This article draws on over 500 interviews conducted in three SOEs in the auto industry in Hubei Province to examine this question.