Measuring regional labour markets in South Africa: How robust are sub-national estimates from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey?

This article explores the limitations of using data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) to estimate robust sub-national labour market indicators in South Africa. The precision of labour market indices in the QLFS is very sensitive to which geographic scale is examined – national, provincial or metro – and in each instance the size of the population of the province or metro. The results show that errors from sampling at regional and city levels may be prohibitively large although in some instances broad patterns between regions can be identified notwithstanding a fairly blunt instrument. The findings highlight the imperative to be transparent about sampling errors and to foster sensitivity within government, business and the public in general. This exercise is instructive for generating other regional socio-economic indicators that are based upon similar household sample surveys such as the General Household Survey, Living Conditions Survey and Income and Expenditure Survey.     

Revealing Corporate Financial Misreporting

This study examines how frequently firms restate when they materially misstate their financial statements using stock option backdating as the setting. Stock option backdating provides a unique opportunity to study this issue because it is possible to estimate misstatements with publicly available information to a high level of confidence, and the extensive media coverage of backdating notified boards of directors of the significant risk of misstatement. After identifying firms that materially misstated earnings due to stock option backdating with 95 percent (99 percent) probability, we find that only 11.5 percent (16.1 percent) of these firms subsequently restated. Restating firms are larger, have greater board independence, higher litigation risk and ROA, a lower market‐to‐book ratio, less discretionary accruals, and are more likely to have a CFO that was not involved in backdating. Restating firms are also more likely to disclose other adverse news, face securities litigation, and turn over the CFO than firms that appear to materially backdate but do not restate. Since nearly 9 of 10 firms failed to restate, our results give pause to researchers who use restatements as an indicator of misreporting, and to regulators who levy penalties on those who do self‐report.     

Organizational slack and firm performance during economic transitions: two studies from an emerging economy

An Erratum has been published for this article in Strategic Management Journal 25(3) 2004, 307. How does organizational slack affect firm performance? Organization theory posits that slack, despite its costs, has a positive impact on firm performance. In contrast, agency theory suggests that slack breeds inefficiency and inhibits performance. The empirical evidence, largely from developed economies, has been inconclusive. Moreover, little effort has been made to empirically test whether such an impact (positive or negative) is linear or curvilinear. This article joins the debate by extending empirical work to the largely unexplored context of economic transitions. Specifically, two studies, based on survey and archival data (N = 57 and 1532 firms, respectively), are undertaken in China's emerging economy. Our results suggest (1) that organization theory generates stronger predictions when dealing with unabsorbed slack, and (2) that agency theory yields stronger validity when focusing on absorbed slack. Furthermore, we also find that the impact of slack on performance is curvilinear, which resembles inverse U‐shaped curves. Overall, our findings call for a contingency perspective to specify the nature of slack when discussing its impact on firm performance. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The economic geography of race in the New World: Brazil, 1500–2000†

Race is a fundamental aspect of historical inequality and institutions, yet it is at times overlooked within the literature on comparative development in the Americas. This article investigates the nature of staple production in Brazil and attendant changes in the racial composition of 20 modern states from its discovery by the Portuguese to the present. The Indigenous population was surpassed by that of African descent in the north‐east, south‐east, and north, respectively, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; not until decades after the abolition of slavery did people of European heritage come to constitute a majority. These transitions were guided by the relative productivity, natural increase, and price of Native and African slaves, contingent on the extent of natural resource wealth (mineral deposits or land suitable for growing cash crops) and supply of free labour. In those areas where slavery was most profitable, a 1 per cent increase in the relative cost of Native labour raised the proportion of people of African ancestry by up to 2 per cent, depending on the measures of slave prices and racial classifications considered. This relationship is robust to changes in output prices or the populace of European descent, and alternative scenarios of aboriginal population decline.     

Consumer ethics: A review and research agenda

Consumer ethics continues to draw the attention of academicians and practitioners as a significant economic and social issue globally. Consumer ethics refers to moral principles that govern a consumer's behaviour. This literature review seeks to enrich the discourse on consumer ethics through a comprehensive and detailed review of 106 articles, covering 21 journals from 2010 to 2020. Through an examination of theories, contexts, characteristics, and methodologies used in consumer ethics research, our review (1) presents a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the research in this field and (2) sets a future research agenda to spur scholarly research. We found studies have primarily relied on a single theoretical lens such as the theory of marketing ethics, planned behaviour, and neutralization theory. Further consumer ethics research focuses on advanced countries, with a narrow focus on developing countries. We have diagnosed the need to examine boundary conditions impacting consumer ethics. Finally, we provide actionable inputs to combat unethical consumer actions as well as promote ethical consumption.     

潮涌现象与发展中国家宏观经济理论的重新构建

现有宏观经济学理论以产业升级时国民经济中每个企业对于下一个有前景的产业存在何处没有共识为暗含前提,但是,由于后发优势的存在,发展中国家的企业很容易对下一个有前景的产业产生共识,投资上出现“潮涌现象”,并伴随此现象出现产能过剩和相关的一系列问题。所以,有必要放松现有的暗含前提,重新构建一套新的宏观经济理论体系,探讨投资的“潮涌现象”对发展中国家的物价、就业、经济增长和周期波动的影响,作为政府制定财政、货币、金融、外贸、产业发展等宏观经济管理政策的参考。     

Fit by adaptation or fit by founding? A comparative study of existing and new entrepreneurial cohorts in China

Extant research provides ambiguous views on the network adaptability of existing ventures and new ventures during environmental change. Applying an institutional perspective, this research aims to provide a clearer picture by comparing the adaptation and network configurations of existing vs. new entrepreneurial cohorts during China's institutional change after 1992. The qualitative and quantitative analyses show that the existing cohort of entrepreneurs displays network inertia, in that they largely maintain strong tie‐based political and market networks; the new cohort instead demonstrates better adaptation by establishing fewer political networks but more weak and diverse market networks. This comparative research unpacks the institutional mechanisms underlying such differences, and serves as a ground for future investigations dealing with the strategic actions of different entrepreneurial cohorts that are largely neglected in previous studies. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Senior Team Attributes and Organizational Ambidexterity: The Moderating Role of Transformational Leadership

abstract    Organizations capable of pursuing exploration and exploitation simultaneously have been suggested to obtain superior performance. Combining both types of activities and achieving organizational ambidexterity, however, leads to the presence of multiple and often conflicting goals, and poses considerable challenges to senior teams in ambidextrous organizations. This study explores the role of senior team attributes and leadership behaviour in reconciling conflicting interests among senior team members and achieving organizational ambidexterity. Findings indicate that a senior team shared vision and contingency rewards are associated with a firm's ability to combine high levels of exploratory and exploitative innovations. In addition, our study shows that an executive director's transformational leadership increases the effectiveness of senior team attributes in ambidextrous organizations and moderates the effectiveness of senior team social integration and contingency rewards. Hence, our study clarifies how senior executives reconcile conflicting demands and facilitate the balancing of seemingly contradictory forces in ambidextrous organizations. Implications for literatures on senior team attributes, transformational leadership and organizational ambidexterity are discussed.     

Ability of accounting and audit quality variables to predict bank failure during the financial crisis

We examine the ability of selected accounting and audit quality variables measured in a period prior to the financial crisis (i.e., the four quarters of 2006), to predict banks that subsequently failed during the financial crisis. We employ two sets of samples from the US: a troubled banks sample that includes banks that failed in or after 2007 as well as banks classified as being troubled based on profitability, loan quality, and balance sheet position in 2007, and a full sample that includes all banks with available required data. Using the troubled banks sample, we identify six reliable predictors of bank failure: auditor type, auditor industry specialization, Tier 1 capital ratio, proportion of securitized loans, growth in loans, and loan mix. For the larger full sample of banks, we identify the following ten predictors of bank failure: auditor type, Tier 1 capital ratio, proportion of securitized loans, nonperforming loans, loan loss provisions, growth in commercial loans, growth in real estate loans, growth in overall loans, loan mix, and whether the bank is a public bank.     

Journal Impact as a Diffusion Process: A Conceptualization and the Case of the Journal of Management Studies

While the question of what makes a journal impactful continues to draw scholarly attention and debate, the lack of conceptual foundation as to what journal impact represents, and how it manifests itself, has impeded efforts to establish a richer understanding. Drawing from the theory of innovation diffusion, we propose journal impact as a multidimensional concept manifested most prominently in the magnitude, prestige, breadth, dispersion, and duration dynamics of citations accruing to a journal. In doing so, we complement extant representations of journal impact as a unidimensional concept with insights into the pattern and profile of a journal impact across space and time. We illustrate the multidimensionality of journal impact as a diffusion process in a longitudinal analysis of citation patterns at the Journal of Management Studies over a 40‐year period.