Long-term economic consequences of hedge fund activist interventions

Review of Accounting Studies - We examine the long-term effects of interventions by activist hedge funds. Research documents positive equal-weighted long-term returns and operating performance...     

Understanding Top Management and Organizational Change Through Demographic and Processual Analysis*

abstract Top management theory has been strongly influenced by demographic studies of top management teams (TMTs), but not by research into organizational adaptation to conditions of extreme institutional turbulence. This article analyses the transformation of a post‐socialist enterprise through a combination of demographic and processual methods to develop an enriched account of the micro‐processes through which top management constructed organizational change. Adding layers of narrative data and processual explanation directly addresses the well rehearsed problems in demographic TMT studies. From the findings, we propose a set of theoretical arguments that conceptualizes top management in terms of management regimes, to which TMTs are politically tied and through which they seek to realize their values and strategies in organizational outcomes.     

Consumers engaged in a member-gets-member campaign: an agency perspective

In this article, the use of member-gets-member-campaigns is perceived as an agency problem: the agent (a consumer) is going to take some action on the principal's behalf (a manufacturer). However, before the principal decides to engage the agent in their member-gets-member campaign, the principal needs to know whether a particular agent has the appropriate characteristics and whether the agent will have the proper motivations to behave in accordance with the principal's goals. Moreover, the principal needs to know how the agent's ideas and behaviour can be changed. In this article, concepts from opinion leadership, social network theory and attitude research are used to test and evaluate the characteristics of the agent, who voluntarily participated in a member-gets-member campaign of a large producer of several brands of dog food. The outcomes show that agents that participate in the member-gets-member campaigns have characteristics which might be desirable for the manufacturer: these agents are opinion leaders and have a positive brand attitude. To some extent, these agents also ask permission from the consumer whether they are allowed to make them members and seek membership from people with whom they have close ties. The results also show that the agents positively respond to incentives used by the manufacturer. In general, the agents are not motivated to oversell the membership to the consumers.     

Product Design: Preference for Rounded versus Angular Design Elements

Two experiments tested whether a general relative preference for objects with rounded rather than angular form (Bar & Neta, 2006, 2007) can be applied in the context of the design of consumer products. Images of product packaging—a chocolate product (Experiment 1) and water and bleach bottles (Experiment 2)—were manipulated with regard to the shape of both contour and graphics. There was a preference for rounded designs that extended to self‐report purchase likelihood—with additive effects of contour and graphics shape that could not be accounted for by design typicality or perceived ease of use.     

Human Resource Management In Building Societies: Making the Transformation?

Ed Snape, Tom Redman and Adrian Wilkinson examine the implications of the changing competitive environment for the management of staff in building societies. In particular, they draw on the results of a detailed case study to discuss attempts to introduce policies and practices associated with ‘HRM’. the conclusion is that the competitive pressures which led to the demand for these policies and practices may also make their successful implementation especially dificult. Ed Snape is a Lecturer in the Department of Human Resource Management at the University of Strathclyde, Tom Redman a Lecturer at Teesside Business School, and Adrian Wilkinson a Lecturer at the Manchester School of Management (UMIST).     

A model of (the threat of) counterfeiting

A simple matching-model of money with the potential for counterfeiting is constructed. In contrast to the existing literature, lotteries are included. These provide scope for the operation of the intuitive criterion of Cho and Kreps. The application of that refinement is shown to imply that there is no equilibrium with counterfeiting. If the cost of producing counterfeits is low enough, then there is no monetary equilibrium. Otherwise, there is a monetary equilibrium without counterfeiting. In other words, the threat of counterfeiting can eliminate the monetary equilibrium.