Group Affiliation and Ownership Concentration as Determinants of Capital Structure Decisions: Contextualizing the Facts for an Emerging Economy

This study considers the firm’s affiliation with business groups and the ownership structure as determinants of leverage decisions in Chilean firms. The major findings show that group-affiliated firms take advantage of internal capital markets and transactions with related parties (e.g., low transference price or loans at competitive interest rates) that reduces the demand for external debt. Majority shareholders in affiliated firms behave as controllers of managers, on the one hand, and avoid the supervisory role of debt, on the other hand. In stand-alone firms, supervision led by majority shareholders is complemented by the monitoring role of debt through higher levels of leverage. We conclude that further developments in capital structure theories adjusted to the particularities of the different institutional contexts are needed.     

When Does University Research Get Commercialized? Creating Ambidexterity in Research Institutions

We examine the tensions that make it difficult for a research‐oriented university to achieve commercial outcomes. Building on the organizational ambidexterity literature, we specify the nature of the tensions (between academic and commercially‐oriented activities) at both organizational and individual levels of analysis, and how these can be resolved. We develop hypotheses linking specific aspects of the organization and the individual researcher to the likelihood of their research projects generating commercial outcomes, and we test them using a novel dataset of 207 Research Council‐funded projects, combining objective data on project outcomes with the perceptions of principal investigators. We show that the tension between academic and commercial demands is more salient at the level of the individual researcher than at the level of the organization. Universities show evidence that they are able to manage the tensions between academic and commercial demands, through for example their creation of ‘dual structures’. At the individual level, on the other hand, the tensions are more acute, so that the people who deliver commercial outcomes tend to be rather different to those who are accustomed to producing academic outcomes.     

Effective extension for increased productivity and a better quality of life

Extension serves as a catalyst for development People must be helped to help themselves and should therefore be involved in their own decision‐making processes. For the participative approach to work. it is imperative that local leaders be trained.

Privatisation is a development phase and not the starting point in development Not all services can be privatised.

It is a mistake to believe that sub‐subsistence farmers are immune to change.     

Corporate Governance When Managers Set Their Own Pay

This paper presents a model of the firm in which the manager has discretion over his own compensation, constrained only by the threat of shareholder intervention. The model addresses two main questions. How does shareholder power affect managers' compensation and their incentives to maximise firm value? And what is the optimal level of shareholder power? Expectedly, the model shows that increasing shareholder power leads to lower managerial pay. Greater shareholder power, however, also weakens the manager's incentives to maximise value and may even lead to lower profits for shareholders. There might, thus, be too much, as well as too little, shareholder power. The model characterises the optimal level of shareholder power and yields predictions about the relation between shareholder power, managerial pay, performance and firm characteristics.     

Technology revenue management system for customer groups in hotels

This paper discusses revenue management; a technique that focuses on decision making that will maximize profit from the sale of perishable inventory units. New technologies management plays an important role in the development of revenue management techniques. Each new advancement in technology management leads to more sophisticated revenue business capabilities. Today decision support revenue management systems and technologies management are crucial factors for the success of businesses in service industries. This paper addresses the specific case of customer groups in hotels. This paper introduces a new decision support system that sets the revenue maximization criteria for a hotel. The aforementioned system includes a set of demand forecasting methods for customers and addresses a general case considering individual guests and customer groups. The system also incorporates deterministic and stochastic mathematical programming models that help to make the best decisions. The actual revenue depends upon which reservation system the hotel uses. A simulation engine makes a comparison between different heuristics of room inventory control: the results include performance indexes such as occupancy rate, efficiency rate, and yield; it compares results and chooses one of them. The system proves its suitability for actual cases by testing against actual data and thus becoming an innovative and efficient tool in the management of hotels' reservation systems.     

WHO WANTS PATERNALISM?

Little is known about the demand side of paternalism. We investigate attitudes towards paternalism among Danish students. The main question is whether demand for paternalism is related to self‐control, either because people with self‐control problems seek commitment devices to overcome these problems, or because people with good self‐control want those who lack it to change their behaviours. We find no evidence linking self‐control to attitudes towards weak forms of paternalism (e.g., nudges or information about health consequences). But respondents with good self‐control are significantly more favourable towards strong paternalism (e.g., restricting choices or sin taxes) than those struggling with self‐control.     

Improving the “Leader–Follower” Relationship: Top Manager or Supervisor? The Ethical Leadership Trickle-Down Effect on Follower Job Response

Since time immemorial, the phenomenon of leadership and its understanding has attracted the attention of the business world because of its important role in human groups. Nevertheless, for years efforts to understand this concept have only been centred on people in leadership roles, thus overlooking an important aspect in its understanding: the necessary moral dimension which is implicit in the relationship between leader and follower. As an illustrative example of the importance of considering good morality in leadership, an empirical study is conducted in which a good performance of the “leader–follower” relationship is reflected when individuals perceive ethical leadership in higher hierarchical managerial levels. To be precise, findings of this study demonstrate that follower job response is improved through an ethics trickle-down partial effect from the Top Manager to the immediate supervisor, and also reveal both key aspects and managerial level on which the practice of ethical leadership should rest upon to have a stronger effect on the follower positive job response. Practical implications of these findings and directions for future research are finally presented.     

Evaluación de la conversión a café orgánico usando la metodología de opciones reales

Since the deregulation of the coffee market in 1989, price crises are proof of the uncertainty and risk around coffee growers’ income, particularly for small producers who, in the case of Mexico, have taken action such as the conversion of their traditional crops into the organic production system which, besides the ecological priority, allows them to get a higher income than from conventional coffee. In this document we model as real investment options (RIO) the possibility of conversion from one system into the other one also including the feasibility of abandoning this strategic decision.