Individual Executive Characteristics: Explaining the Divergence Between Perceptual and Financial Measures in Nonprofit Organizations

Significant research has found that corporations have a social responsibility beyond maximizing shareholders' value. This study examines the effect of high-profile corporate bankruptcies on perception of corporate social responsibility. Undergraduate and graduate business students rated the importance of corporate social responsibility on profitability, long-term success and short-term success, before and after high-profile bankruptcies. The results indicated that students in general perceived corporate social responsibility to be more important to profitability and long-term success of the firm and less important to short-term success after media publicity of corporate scandals. Several demographic factors such as gender, age and college major played a role in this perception. These findings have important implications for business education, especially as it relates to corporate social responsibility.     

The dual contributions of information instruments in return models: magnitude and direction predictability

By partitioning asset return prediction errors, we show explicitly the dual role of magnitude and sign prediction of return instruments. We demonstrate analytically that sign prediction directly affects heteroskedasticity in asset returns; increases in precision attenuate the heteroskedasticity. Our findings with monthly asset returns are consistent with earlier evidence and indicate that our proposed analytical model captures the sign predictive component of returns. Our results are supportive of a nonlinear return generating model that can be thought of as the product of a model, perhaps linear, for forecasting return signs and a model for forecasting return magnitudes.     

Neither fish nor fowl? An assessment of teacher capability procedures

There has been an increasing focus on the performance of workers through appraisal, performance-related pay and performance management and this emphasis on measuring performance has extended to the public sector—more specifically, to the teaching profession. This paper uses research commissioned by the DfES to investigate the operation of capability procedures introduced to deal with the perceived problem of incompetent teachers. It revealed that the procedures suffered from a number of defects both in modus operandi and style and there was little evidence that their application resulted in either improved performance or dismissal when satisfactory performance was not achieved.     

Some New Evidence on the Determinants of Large- and Small-Firm Innovation

Empirical analyses presented by Acs and Audretsch suggest differences in the market structure determinants of innovation between large and small firms in U.S. manufacturing. The evidence they offer is ambiguous. By using data for a different country (The Netherlands), a different measure of innovation and a different aggregation level, we offer new evidence, allowing a revaluation of the findings for the U.S. material. Moreover, the influence of the market structure determinants does not appear to differ between a period of sluggish growth (1983) and one of relatively high growth (1989).     

Cultural Political Economy: Logics of Discovery,Epistemic Fallacies,the Complexity of Emergence,and the Potential of the Cultural Turn

As a result of a long-running internal debate there have been notable incremental changes to how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) treats capital controls, particularly those directed at inflows. These changes combine new acceptance of these policy instruments with an older emphasis on their negative consequences and on the desirability of free movement of capital. Policy change of this sort is puzzling from the standpoint of the existing literature on international organisations (IOs), which has thus far paid little attention to transformative incremental change associated with long-term contestation. This article departs from this tendency by drawing on insights from principal–agent theory, constructivism and historical institutionalism to identify the conditions under which such change may originate. I argue that actors within IOs are likely to pursue incremental change by layering new policies on to old ones as a way to build coalitions and to respond to external organisational insecurity imperatives and diverse member state preferences and to internal path-dependent organisational cultural features. Over time the incremental shifts brought by layering can induce transformative rather than reproductive change because they fit with consequentialist and appropriateness behavioural logics. I illustrate this argument by investigating recent changes in IMF policy on capital controls.     

The Influence of Decentralized Bargaining Systems on the Introduction of Continuous Improvement Practices in Australian Automotive Components Companies

The study examines the nature and impact of Japanese idea of continuous improvement (CI) at 14 automobile components companies in Australia. It assesses the extent to which CI practices inform management systems and work organization. The study is focused on the degree to which decentralized bargaining systems, and reforms in the Australian vocational education system have facilitated the adoption of continuous production. The results indicate two patterns of production management in the companies, termed the elaborated commitment, and the basic commitment, respectively. The authors conclude that collective agreements were seen as an important vehicle for the advancement of management strategies on CI, although management preferences in relation to work demarcations and training were not significantly advanced within the agreements. They observe that there is no single Australian production model, and that company effects, as described by MacDuffie (1995) seem to predominate.     

Bibliometric visualisation: an application in tourism crisis and disaster management research

A limited number of studies have applied bibliometric visualisation to explore the network structure of scholarly tourism knowledge. This study uses CiteSpace to analyse and visualise the intellectual structure of the tourism crisis and disaster management (TCDM) field. The use of new bibliometric visualisation techniques makes a methodological contribution to the mapping and presentation of bibliometric data in tourism research. Potentials for using these methods to provide new insights into research patterns and gaps are illustrated with an analysis of the TCDM literature. The study demonstrates how bibliometric visualisation can provide new insights into an area of literature by better communicating key findings, facilitating the exploration of data, and providing rich information to readers. Findings indicate that TCDM research has moved from broader topics to more specific issues, with a more recent focus on resilience and economic crises. The visualisation of co-authorship networks reveals that major collaborative networks are based on geographic and institutional proximity, dominated by scholars in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Seven major research clusters are identified from the visualisation of a co-citation network. The identification of structural holes and bridging papers draws attention to research gaps and future research opportunities in the TCDM field.     

Integration of Financial Services

Abstract

Integration financial services is a term with many meanings. Definitions might include:

• ownership of different segments of financial services,

• the distribution of products of one segment by another, and

• a consumer-centric strategy driven to satisfy the needs of the customer regardless of organizational structures.

For the purposes of my paper, I will define it as the erasing of boundaries leading to consumers receiving value propositions that are not restricted by traditional industry segment barriers.