Emotional intelligence and its relationship to transformational leadership and key project manager competences

Key dimensions of project manager behaviors considered to be associated with successful project outcomes have included both appropriate collaborative behaviors and transformational leadership. More recently, emotional intelligence has been suggested as a unique area of individual differences that is likely to underpin sets of behaviors in this area. Based on a sample of 67 UK project managers, it was found that emotional intelligence ability measures and empathy explained additional variance in the project manager competences of teamwork, attentiveness, and managing conflict, and the transformational leadership behaviors of idealized influence and individualized consideration, after controlling for cognitive ability and personality.     

Sustainable Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces: Creating Educational Initiatives in Radically Different Contexts*

Developing products and business processes to serve subsistence marketplaces (or the roughly 4 billion poor around the world referred to as the bottom of the pyramid) is a significant challenge for businesses. Despite the importance of subsistence marketplaces, most product development educational curricula have been focused on relatively resource‐rich and literate consumers and markets. We teach an innovative year‐long product development course which includes an international immersion experience and which covers a broad spectrum of learning from understanding poverty, to consumer behavior, to product development and engineering design specifically for subsistence consumers. This unique course represents a pioneering effort to focus attention and create knowledge about product development, marketing, management, and engineering practices for subsistence marketplaces. Our two‐semester course sequence for graduate‐level students in a variety of business and engineering disciplines and industrial design combines in‐class pedagogy with experiential learning and results in useful and marketable product concepts and prototypes. Working on projects with multinational companies or startups, students identify an opportunity of general need, conduct field market research to better understand subsistence consumer needs and contexts through an international immersion experience, develop a product concept, convert the concept to a workable prototype, and develop a manufacturing plan, marketing strategy, and overall business plan for the product. Overlaying the content found in a typical new product development lab course we develop a contextual understanding of subsistence marketplaces, setting the stage for new product development. A central aspect of the learning experience is travel to subsistence markets for actual immersion in the context and to conduct market research. Our course is at the confluence of two of the most important issues facing humanity, subsistence and sustainability. Lessons learned here can also be extended to other radically different contexts, such as future scenarios involving severe energy shortages or climate change consequences. Such educational initiatives provide challenging learning experiences in preparing students for the unique demands of the 21st century.     

MUTUAL FUND TRADES: ASYMMETRIC LIQUIDITY PREFERENCES AND FUND PERFORMANCE

We investigate the role of the liquidity of stocks traded by mutual funds on the performance of funds experiencing substantial and sustained redemptions (outflows) or inflows. Accordingly, we identify 770 redeeming fund‐periods and 1,757 inflow fund‐periods and find a statistically significant relation between the liquidity of the stocks they trade and the quantity of the stock traded. Notably, when funds experience redemptions, those with low portfolio liquidity have an elevated preference for selling more‐liquid stocks. In the following period, such funds statistically and economically underperform funds that sell less‐liquid stocks. This is consistent with redemptions detrimentally affecting shareholders that remain in a fund.     

Local sustainability initiatives in English National Parks: What role for adaptive governance?

Adaptive governance has assumed growing importance in natural resource management literatures, emphasising learning and adaptation among actors at different political administrative levels and geographic scales as a precondition for the emergence of sustainable development. Here we assess this claim by examining five case studies of ‘good practice’ in sustainability, drawn from a national survey conducted in English National Parks. Specifically, we evaluate whether (1) adaptive governance characteristics are present in these ‘good practice’ initiatives, and (2) what governance role, if any, National Park Authorities have played in mediating individual and collective activities and behaviours within these projects at different levels and scales. We conclude with a critical assessment of the capacity of the adaptive governance approach to furnish new understandings of sustainable development initiatives in English NPs.