How Corporate Parents Add Value to The Stand-Alone Performance of Their Businesses

Corporate parents have the potential to add value to their businesses through their influence on the stand-alone performance of the businesses, but for a variety of reasons, including what we call the 10% versus 100% paradox, they more often destroy value instead. This article examines four companies, Dover, BTR, Emerson and RTZ, which succeed in creating value through stand-alone parenting influence, and draws out the conditions necessary to do so. These are that (1) there should be a genuine parenting opportunity to improve the performance of the business, (2) the parent should have skills, management processes, and other characteristics that are suitable for realising the opportunity, and (3) the parent should have sufficient feel for the critical success factors in the business to avoid inadvertently destroying value through inappropriate influences.     

VDSL-Netz: zeitlich befristete „Regulierungsfreistellung“?

Die Bundesregierung hat den „Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur ?nderung telekommunikationsrechtlicher Vorschriften“¹ eingebracht. Diese Novelle zum Telekommunikationsgesetz sieht in § 9a vor, da? „neue M?rkte“ nur ausnahmsweise in die Marktregulierung nach dem Zweiten Teil des Telekommunikationsgesetzes einbezogen werden. Wie ist diese Regelung ordnungs- und wettbewerbspolitisch zu bewerten? Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Kirchner, 62, ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für deutsches, europ?isches und internationales Zivil- und Wirtschaftsrecht und Institutionen?konomik an der Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin. ¹ Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur ?nderung telekommunikationsrechtlicher Vorschriften, BT-Drucksache 16/2581 vom 14.9.2006.     

Capital structure of Chinese listed SMEs: an agency theory perspective

Prior work examining the antecedents of capital structure for small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets is limited. This paper sheds light on how the corporate governance mechanisms adopted by firms on the newly established Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) in China influence their use of debt. We find that the financial leverage of GEM firms is positively influenced by executives’ shareholding and their excess cash compensation. Ownership concentration appears to reduce leverage, whereas the percentage of tradable shares increases leverage. In contrast, institutional investors’ shareholding does not influence the level of debt. Traditional factors such as tax and operating cash flow are insignificant in explaining the debt levels among GEM firms.     

Consumer Reactions to Unethical Service Recovery

Ethical business practices have been widely prescribed, but why? Consumer’s views on unethical business practices have been studied, but possibly more important to marketers and researchers are consumer actions and reactions to unethical business practices and the businesses themselves. Do consumers react negatively, or in such a way as to "punish" the unethical business? If so, what is the nature and extent of the punishment? This research seeks answers to these questions by examining consumer reactions, such as complaining and switching, to instances of unethical business practices. Using equity theory, this research proposes that consumers should be willing to tolerate some unethical behavior as long as they feel their investments and outcomes remain proportionately equal. Consumers who perceive that their outcome/investment ratio is proportionately unequal to their comparison other will respond by switching or complaining. In this research consumers were exposed to two types of service failures with different levels of service recovery in vignettes. Costs incurred by the consumer during the service transaction were also manipulated in the vignettes. Significant differences were found for complaint behavior in the failure recovery vignettes tested. Specifically, voice complaint was higher in the high cost service encounters in both types of services tested. The recovery attempt used (ethical, unethical, or none) led to significance differences in the variables of complaint, voice complaint, satisfaction, and quality. Higher satisfaction and quality ratings were found for the ethical recovery attempt and higher intentions to use complaint and voice complaint in the unethical recovery attempts. One significant interaction between cost and recovery attempt was found. Intentions to use voice complaint were higher in the high cost situations of ethical and unethical recovery, while approaching equality at the no recovery attempt.