Mutual fund characteristics, managerial attributes, and fund performance

This study provides a comprehensive examination of recent mutual fund performance by analyzing a large set of both mutual funds and fund attributes in an effort to link performance to fund-specific characteristics. The results indicate that the hypothesized relationships between performance and the explanatory variables are generally upheld. After taking into consideration general market conditions and fund investment objective, the characteristic variables that relate to fund popularity, growth, cost, and management also explain performance. Finally, after controlling for survivorship and benchmark error as well as fund-specific factors, the results refute the performance persistence phenomenon.     

Maximizing your return on people

Though most traditional HR performance metrics don't predict organizational performance, alternatives simply have not existed--until now. During the past ten years, researchers Laurie Bassi and Daniel McMurrer have worked to develop a system that allows executives to assess human capital management (HCM) and to use those metrics both to predict organizational performance and to guide organizations' investments in people. The new framework is based on a core set of HCM drivers that fall into five major categories: leadership practices, employee engagement, knowledge accessibility, workforce optimization, and organizational learning capacity. By employing rigorously designed surveys to score a company on the range of HCM practices across the five categories, it's possible to benchmark organizational HCM capabilities, identify HCM strengths and weaknesses, and link improvements or back-sliding in specific HCM practices with improvements or shortcomings in organizational performance. The process requires determining a "maturity" score for each practice, based on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high). Over time, evolving maturity scores from multiple surveys can reveal progress in each of the HCM practices and help a company decide where to focus improvement efforts that will have a direct impact on performance. The authors draw from their work with American Standard, South Carolina's Beaufort County School District, and a bevy of financial firms to show how improving HCM scores led to increased sales, safety, academic test scores, and stock returns. Bassi and McMurrer urge HR departments to move beyond the usual metrics and begin using HCM measurement tools to gauge how well people are managed and developed throughout the organization. In this new role, according to the authors, HR can take on strategic responsibility and ensure that superior human capital management becomes central to the organization's culture.     

Adam Smith on lotteries: an interpretation and formal restatement

The paper concerns a neglected aspect of the Wealth of Nations (with the notable exception of D. Levy 1999 Levy, D. M. 1999. “Adam Smith’s Katallactic Model of Gambling: Approbation from the Spectator.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 21 (1): 81–91. doi:10.1017/S1053837200002868.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), dealing directly with decision under risk. In a few pages from book I, chapter 10, Adam Smith explicitly named “lotteries” various objects of choice (possible occupations, or investment opportunities, for instance) and provided an analysis which standard expected utility glasses would hardly fit. Taking this into account allows a better understanding of the part played by typical characters like the “projector” or the “sober man”, in such matters as Smith’s conception of entrepreneurship or of the credit market. The use of some modern concepts in decision analysis (inverse stochastic dominance, rank dependent utility, prudence toward risk), is a means to show the existence, in Smith’s work, of an original theory from decision under risk, where his analysis of lotteries in the Wealth of Nations is consistent with statements from his moral philosophy on asymmetric sensitivity to gains and losses and to the regulating part played by the impartial spectator.     

Has Advertising Lost Its Meaning? Views of UK and US Millennials

The findings of a study of Millennials in USA and the UK—an increasingly important and digitally savvy segment of consumers—reveal that they see advertising as Companies promoting a product or service to people through media. Their perception is simple and all-encompassing with no evidence that they distinguish between different types of media or different types of communication. Some variation between the views of Millennials in the two countries is also identified, although this is less than expected. The findings contribute to an important and continuing debate among academics and marketing practitioners over how advertising should be defined in today’s multichannel environment. The findings are also compared with other recent definitions of advertising, and their implications are discussed.     

Do non-profit hospitals provide more charity care when faced with a mandatory minimum standard? Evidence from Texas

Policymakers often question whether not-for-profit (NFP) hospitals provide enough charity care to justify tax advantages. In 1993, Texas enacted legislation requiring NFP hospitals to provide certain community benefits at levels set forth in specific criteria to retain tax-exempt status; this paper focuses on the effect of the legislation’s requirement that NFP hospitals spend a minimum of 4% of net patient revenue on charity care. We also study a modification of the law passed in 1995, which allows the deduction of bad debts expense when calculating net patient revenue. This change effectively lowers required charity care spending, and our study considers whether Texas hospitals responded by reducing charity care spending.     

The Persistence of IPO Mispricing and the Predictive Power of Flipping

This paper examines underwriters' pricing errors and the information content of first-day trading activity in IPOs. We show that first-day winners continue to be winners over the first year, and first-day dogs continue to be relative dogs. Exceptions are "extra-hot" IPOs, which provide the worst future performance. We also demonstrate that large, supposedly informed, traders "flip" IPOs that perform the worst in the future. IPOs with low flipping generate abnormal returns of 1.5 percentage points per month over the first six months beginning on the third day. We show that flipping is predictable and conclude that underwriters' pricing errors are intentional.     

A Perspective‐Based Understanding of Project Success

Answering the call for alternative approaches to researching project management, we explore the evaluation of project success from a subjectivist perspective. An in‐depth, longitudinal case study of information systems development in a large manufacturing company was used to investigate how various project stakeholders subjectively perceived the project outcome and what evaluation criteria they drew on in doing so. A conceptual framework is developed for understanding and analyzing evaluations of project success, both formal and informal. The framework highlights how different stakeholder perspectives influence the perceived outcome(s) of a project, and how project evaluations may differ between stakeholders and across time.     

The Face of Fairness: Self-Awareness as a Means to Promote Fairness among Managers with Low Empathy

Although managing fairness is a critical concern for organizations, not all managers are predisposed to enact high levels of fairness. Emerging empirical evidence suggests that personality characteristics can be an important antecedent of managers’ fair behavior. However, relatively little attention has been devoted to understand how to promote fairness among managers who are naturally predisposed to engage in lower levels of fairness. Building upon self-awareness theory, we argue that increasing managers’ self-awareness can motivate managers with low trait empathy to engage in greater levels of justice. We test the interactive effects of trait empathy and state self-awareness using an experimental study (N = 76) in which individuals were asked to communicate negative news. In support of our hypothesis, our results indicate that increasing self-awareness through self-focusing situations can help promote interactional justice when communicating negative news for individuals with low trait empathy. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.