Dupes or Incompetents? An Examination of Management's Impact on Firm Distress

This article examines whether managers impact firm performance. We conservatively define managerial ability as the manager's capacity to deploy the firm's resources. We verify the validity of our metric using a manager–firm matched panel data set that allows us to track managers (CEOs) across different firms over time. We find managerial ability is inversely related to the amount of time a firm spends in distress, the likelihood of a firm's failure, and the cost of failure. These results suggest that the managers of failed firms are less skilled than their counterparts. But even within failed firms there is heterogeneity in the talents of managers.     

Forecasting demands for inpatient services in a large public health care delivery system

This paper studies the use of autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) time-series models for forecasting demands for inpatient services in a large public health care delivery system. Here, demands are measured in terms of monthly admissions and patient days by services and forecasts are made yearly. This paper emphasizes the implementation aspect of ARIMA models when they are used on a large scale basis in an institutional setting, and compares forecasts with actuals. For forecasting patient days, the adequacy of an indirect approach using the formula L = λW is also evaluated. Finally, we briefly describe how the forecasts are used in the context of resource allocation.     

Organizational Restructuring: Impact on Trust and Work Satisfaction

After the Asian financial crisis, companies are now contending with the current global economic slowdown. Whether it is at the national, industry or organizational levels, restructuring has gained currency as a strategic decision to realign internal structure with changing macro environmental factors. Faced with more competitive markets and greater demands on costs controls, organizations and businesses are taking the fast track to cost-cutting by downsizing, reorganizing their divisions, streamlining their operations, and closing down unprofitable divisions.Changes that are introduced in an organizational restructuring will affect the socio-psychological well-being of organization members given the potential for uncertainty that may accompany such changes. There is a need to better understand the consequences of organizational restructuring and consider some of its potential side effects on the work environment. Employees in a post-restructuring context are understandably wary about the future direction of the organization and their roles within it.This study is an attempt to examine the social-psychological impact of organizational restructuring on trust and work satisfaction. Additionally the inter-relationships between trust and work satisfaction, including their antecedents in the work environment are examined.Trust and work satisfaction levels were tracked before and three months after organizational restructuring for varying types of changes that were initiated during the restructuring. Both trust and satisfaction with working in the organization declined significantly when compared to pre-restructuring levels. Independent t-tests analysis indicated that there was a significant decline in trust for the work group which had a newly hired manager and a change in work processes. Results showed that there was a negative relationship between both work satisfaction and trust with the extent of change required of employees.The findings also showed that there was a positive relationship between trust and work satisfaction and that trust contributed to work satisfaction. Perception of colleagues willingness to help solve job-related problems contributed significantly to strengthening of trust relations among colleagues. Additionally, colleagues and supervisors willingness to listen to employee problems contributed significantly to work satisfaction.Results of the study highlighted the need for strategic decision-makers to consider the social impact of organizational restructuring. Top managers must realize that both trust and work satisfaction are important ingredients for the effective functioning of an organization and to actively ensure that support systems or structures are adequate and available to mitigate the negative impact, particularly if the changes to be implemented are extensive.     

Revealed Preference Measures of Quality of Life in Australia's Urban and Regional Areas

Using data from the 2011 Census, we estimate quality of life across Australia. With mobile households, utility will be equalised across regions, so those regions with high real incomes must have a compensating low quality of life and vice versa. There are significant differences in quality of life across the 56 regions we examine. The top‐ranked region in our study is the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, while the Western Australian Outback has the lowest quality of life. The drivers of quality of life are explored, and climate appears to be important as well as certain human‐made cultural amenities.     

Gender disparity in job satisfaction of Western versus Asian managers

This study is to shed more light on gender disparity in job satisfaction in the context of Western versus Asian managers. It addresses the “gender paradox of the female contented worker” and takes a position that the paradox does not apply to female managers in Asia. Data were collected from Thailand as representative of Asian countries and from the U.S. as representative of Western countries. The data show that the gender paradox phenomenon is suspect at best. The results suggest that there is gender disparity in job satisfaction in both countries. There are also significant gender disparities in lower-order quality of work life (QWL) and organizational socialization in Thailand, but not in the U.S. There is no significant gender disparity in higher-order QWL in both countries. These results imply that gender disparity in job satisfaction in Thailand is driven mainly by significant gender disparity in lower-order QWL and organizational socialization.     

Telling tales: online comic and gripe story‐sharing by service workers about difficult customers

The article extends previous research on the storying practices of service workers, workplace humour as resistance, and workers’ autonomous use of social media. Discussion strings from two hairstylist forum storylines, exemplifying comic and tragic story‐sharing about difficult customers, were analysed using Gabriel's notion of story‐work. Processes of coping, entertainment, identity‐construction and learning are clearly evident in the discussion strings and social media is confirmed as a ‘new’ terrain for the enactment of employee agency. Findings emphasize that service workers are engaged in contradictory and ambiguous relations of resistance and accommodation as they learn how to deal with difficult customers. The article's contribution is to show how service workers share their fears and anxieties about difficult customers through storying and humour in generative dialogical poietic processes in social media. Further research is suggested.     

A hybrid selection model for emerging technology

Technology selection, which influences the advantages of an enterprise or a country, is a multi-criteria decision issue that can be improved by integrating different methods. In addition, it is more and more difficult to identify the right technologies because the technologies are increasing in number and complexity. This study proposes a technology selection process integrating fuzzy Delphi method, analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and patent co-citation approach (PCA) for technology selection. The former effectively gathers experts' judgments toward technology selection criteria and conducts the fuzziness existing in their responses. The analytic hierarchy process has the strength of identifying criteria and obtaining their relationship and their weights. The patent co-citation approach identifies the major R&D fields of a specific technology from patent data. Through this proposed process, the key technology fields can be identified in the end. The organic light emitting diode (OLED) technology in Taiwan is used to be an example to illustrate the proposed technology selection process.     

The Influence of Love of Money and Religiosity on Ethical Decision-Making in Marketing

The impact of “love of money” on different aspects of consumers’ ethical beliefs has been investigated by previous research. In this study we investigate the potential impact of “love of money” on a manager’s ethical decision-making in marketing. Another objective of the current study is to investigate the potential impacts of extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity on ethical marketing decision-making. We also include ethical judgments as an element of ethical decision-making. We found “love of money”, both dimensions of religiosity, and ethical judgment to have significant impacts on ethical intentions in a marketing situation. In addition to providing an important contribution to the business ethics literature, the findings also have important managerial implications.