Comparing managerial careers,management development and management education in the UK and the USA: some theoretical and practical considerations

This article explores some of the issues surrounding changing patterns of managerial careers, management development and management education in the UK and the USA. It addresses three lines of questioning: the new rhetoric of careers in the new economy, the evidence on changing organisational forms and the implications for careers and management development and education, and the future of management education and the role of business schools. The article is intended as a ‘think piece’ and acts as a backdrop for a comparative study of management development in Scotland and California currently being undertaken by the authors.     

Buyer perceptions of supply disruption risk: A behavioral view and empirical assessment

As supply chains become more complex, firms face increasing risks of supply disruptions. The process through which buyers make decisions in the face of these risks, however, has not been explored. Despite research highlighting the importance of behavioral approaches to risk, there is limited research that applies these views of risk in the supply chain literature. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on behavioral risk theory to investigate the causal relationships amongst situation, representations of risk, and decision-making within the purchasing domain. We operationalize and explore the relationship between three representations of supply disruption risk: magnitude of supply disruption, probability of supply disruption, and overall supply disruption risk. Additionally, we draw on exchange theories to identify product and market factors that impact buyers’ perceptions of the probability and magnitude of supply disruption. Finally, we look at how representations of risk affect the decision to seek alternative sources of supply. We test our model using data collected from 223 purchasing managers and buyers of direct materials. Our results show that both the probability and the magnitude of supply disruption are important to buyers’ overall perceptions of supply disruption risk. We also find that product and market situational factors impact perceptions of risk, but they are best understood through their impact on perceptions of probability and magnitude. Finally, we find that decisions are based on assessments of overall risk. These findings provide insight into the decision-making process and show that all three representations of risk are necessary for fully understanding risky decision-making with respect to supply disruptions.     

Images paired with concrete claims improve skeptical consumers’ responses to advertising promoting a firm’s good deeds

Previous research has focused attention on state skepticism over corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications, but little work has focused on how to override preexisting differences in consumer skepticism. To gain insight into this issue, the present studies explore whether company ads promoting a firm’s good deeds generate more positive responses when the ads contain concrete claims and/or images related to the firm’s corporate social responsibility claims, and how these elements of the CSR communication interact with individual differences in advertising skepticism. Results show that highly skeptical consumers (a) respond less favorably to ads than less skeptical consumers, overall; (b) respond more favorably to ads that contain a combination of concrete claims and images supporting those claims; and (c) respond as favorably as less skeptical consumers when ads feature concrete claims with supporting images. Additional results suggest that images are effective among highly skeptical consumers because skeptical consumers have a reduced ability to visualize advertising claims. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Linking international entrepreneurship to uncertainty,opportunity discovery,and cognition

In this paper, we suggest a model of international entrepreneurship that links cognition, noticing opportunities, absorbing uncertainty, and bearing uncertainty, to international entrepreneurial action, which is important because of the increased interest in international entrepreneurship. The ways in which cognition affects opportunity identification are discussed to show how international entrepreneurs’ cognitive processes work in terms of identifying opportunities. We also explore the role of cultural differences, with respect to tolerance for bearing uncertainty, on international entrepreneurship. Finally, the model is used to identify areas for future international entrepreneurship research.     

Attitudes of Malaysian Tourism and Hospitality Students' towards a Career in the Industry

This study explored Malaysian undergraduate tourism and hospitality students' views of the industry as a career choice. Four hundred and twenty-nine tourism and hospitality students, from three Malaysian institutions completed a questionnaire rating the importance of 20 factors in influencing their choice of career, and then the extent to which they believed tourism and hospitality as a career offers these factors. All of the 20 factors tested have been identified as being significantly different. From the results, it is clear that students generally do not believe that a career in tourism and hospitality will offer them the factors that they find important.     

Archetypes of governance for science and technology labs

While policy-makers understand the vast benefits of publicly funded and not-for-profit research, governance practitioners have the difficult task of defining processes that can best foster high performance for science and technology (S&T) labs not primarily driven by profits. This qualitative study develops a new taxonomy based on two dimensions, the nature of the funding relationship between the parent organisation and the S&T lab and the degree of interdependence between the lab's research units. We discuss the dynamics uncovered for each of the four archetypes with illustrative cases and argue that high-performance governance of S&T labs requires an internal coherence linking the processes of planning, funding and performance evaluation.     

Loan collateral and financial reporting conservatism: Chinese evidence

We examine the relation between the use of collateral and financial reporting conservatism for a sample of Chinese firms. In the absence of flexibility in risk pricing through interest rates and strong contract enforcement in China, we find that lenders reduce collateral requirements from more conservative borrowers and that this negative relation is significantly moderated by borrowers’ poor credit quality and low asset tangibility. Our finding that conservatism can result in a tangible benefit in the form of lower collateral requirements indicates that lenders value financial reporting conservatism. However, the benefit from financial reporting conservatism is muted as lenders become more concerned about borrowers’ default risk or ability to pledge tangible assets as collateral against loans.     

Bond Market Response to the Collapse of Prominent Investment Banks

We find that the Bear Stearns rescue in March 2008 elicited a neutral or moderately favorable impact on bond prices. Conversely, we find that the Lehman Brothers failure (combined with news about Merrill Lynch and American International Group) in September 2008 elicited a pronounced negative impact. Bond prices of financial firms suffered more than bonds of nonfinancial firms following the Lehman failure. Our multivariate analysis shows that bonds issued by financial institutions that were previously presumed to be protected (based on bond rating and firm size) suffered more pronounced losses in response to the Lehman failure.     

When do customers offer firms a “second chance” following a double deviation? The impact of inferred firm motives on customer revenge and reconciliation

The present research develops and tests a theory explaining how customers respond to failed service recoveries (i.e., double deviations). This work offers three novel and important conclusions. First, inferences about a firm's motive (negative vs. positive) mediate the impact of perceptions of the double deviation (i.e., severity, blame, and fairness) on resulting outcomes (i.e., customer anger, desire for revenge, and desire for reconciliation). Second, when inferred motive is positive, desire for reconciliation overwhelms desire for revenge, leading customers to choose more reparatory than retaliatory behaviors. Third, following a double deviation, firms that both compensate and apologize to customers can change customers’ inferred motives from negative to positive, leading customers to desire more reconciliation than revenge, and engage in more reparatory than retaliatory behaviors. These studies demonstrate that, contrary to common wisdom, customers do not always respond negatively to a double deviation, and firms still have a “second chance” following a failed recovery.     

Re-examination of industry effects due to withdrawn mergers

We find that the announcement of a merger withdrawal elicits negative industry effects on average, which reflect a partial reversal of the favorable industry effects that had previously occurred at the time of the merger proposal. The mean reversal is about 35% of the original favorable industry effect at the time of the merger announcement. This result for the mean effect is opposite of that found by Akhigbe et al. (2000). When we break our sample into sub-periods, we find that industry effects are substantially weaker in a more recent sub-period beyond the sample period used by Akhigbe et al. (2000). We also find that the industry effects are more negative when the share price response of the target at the time of the announced withdrawal is weaker. Whether the negative impact on the target is attributed to either a reduced likelihood of takeover or weaker industry prospects, it carries over to industry rivals.