“My Country’s Future”: A Culture-Centered Interrogation of Corporate Social Responsibility in India

Companies operating and located in emerging economy nations routinely couch their corporate social responsibility (CSR) work in nation-building terms. In this article, I focus on the Indian context and critically examine mainstream CSR discourse from the perspective of the culture-centered approach (CCA). Accordingly, five main themes of CSR stand out: nation-building facade, underlying neoliberal logics, CSR as voluntary, CSR as synergetic, and a clear urban bias. Next, I outline a CCA-inspired CSR framework that allows corporate responsibility to be re-claimed and re-framed by subaltern communities of interest. I identify such resistive openings via interrogations of culture (I focus on oft-cited Gandhian ethics here), structure (State policy, organizational strategy, and global/local flows), and agency (subaltern reframing of institutional responsibility, engagement with alternative modes of agency, and deconstructive vigilance).     

Investigating the consequences of word of mouth from a WOM sender’s perspective in the services context

Abstract

Employing scenario-based experiments, this paper examines the effect of word of mouth (WOM) on the sender’s intention to give future WOM about the focal service provider and the self-enhancement derived from articulating WOM. Extant WOM literature considers self-enhancement as a key driver of positive WOM. This paper provides empirical evidence that a reverse effect exists and that self-enhancement is also an outcome of WOM behaviour. Results indicate that the impact of WOM on self-enhancement has substantive significance and holds for both positive and negative WOM. The effect of WOM on intentions is only partially supported. Finally, tie strength between the WOM participants partially moderates the relationship between the variables. Importantly, the impact of negative WOM is stronger than that of positive WOM.     

DEVELOPMENTS IN PUBLIC SECTOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT: A PROJECT ON PRODUCING RETURN ON INVESTMENT METRICS FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT

This paper reports on a project concerned with developing a return on investment (ROI) performance metric for a law enforcement organisation. The paper's contributions are twofold. First, it addresses concerns in the literature about how different stakeholder interests are balanced in the development of performance measures. Second, it helps to remedy an oversight in the literature regarding the hybridisation of accounting and economic expertise, whereby cost benefit techniques and ROI combine to produce a metric of public sector achievements. By virtue of its law enforcement context the paper also discusses a further hybridisation where accounting, economics and criminology/law enforcement intersect.     

Earnings Retention as a Specification Mechanism in Logistic Bankruptcy Models: A Test of the Free Cash Flow Theory

This paper explores the applicability of as a specification mechanism to improve forecasting methods in corporate bankruptcy. The study combines lessons from Jensen's Free Cash Flow Theory with a logisitic model of bankruptcy to improve forecasting accuracy. The model uses data from the Indian textile industry to show that data classification based on investment opportunities is yet another way of improving precision. The study also re-examines the Free Cash Flow Theory and concludes that in applying it to a bankruptcy scenario, its initial findings regarding retention policy hold true; that is, low growth firms should retain less of their earnings than their high growth counterparts.     

The organizational antecedents of a firm’s supply chain agility for risk mitigation and response

Today’s marketplace is characterized by intense competitive pressures as well as high levels of turbulence and uncertainty. Organizations require agility in their supply chains to provide superior value as well as to manage disruption risks and ensure uninterrupted service to customers. Thus the cultivation of agility is approached as a risk management initiative that enables a firm to respond rapidly to marketplace changes, as well as anticipated and actual disruptions in the supply chain. Agility is of value for both risk mitigation and response.     

Managing information sharing and stewardship for public-sector collaboration: a management control approach

Information sharing is essential for public-sector collaboration but needs to be balanced with information stewardship obligations. There is little research on how public-sector managers can influence the attitudes and behaviours of their employees to achieve these competing objectives. To investigate this, the study applies a management control framework to a case study of a law enforcement organization attempting to improve its information sharing and stewardship. The study extends prior literature by providing insights into the specific effects that different management controls have for the information sharing and stewardship behaviours of employees involved in public-sector collaboration.     

Accrual quality,skill, and the cross-section of mutual fund returns

We use returns of actively managed mutual funds to document the link between accrual quality (AQ) and systematic (priced) risk. Despite compelling theoretical arguments, prior research finds no evidence that poor AQ commands a risk premium in the cross-section of realized stock returns. We argue that the previously obtained premium estimates are biased downward because, for a large portion of poor AQ stocks, higher expected returns are offset by the news of deteriorating fundamentals. We suggest that skilled mutual fund managers should be able to either avoid investing in stocks with deteriorating fundamentals or assign them lower portfolio weights. As a consequence, returns on their portfolios should better reflect the expected AQ risk premium. Our empirical evidence is consistent with these predictions.     

Misalignment of the Baht and its Trade Balance Consequences for Thailand in the 1980s and 1990s

This paper examines Thailand's pre‐crisis exchange rate policy, focusing on the degree of the country's real exchange rate misalignment pre‐crisis and its consequent effects on Thailand's trade balance with its two large trading partners, the US and Japan, in the 1980s and 1990s. Defining misalignment as the difference between actual and ‘equilibrium’ exchange rates, we estimate three key ‘equilibrium’ exchange rates of the Thai baht: (a) the real effective equilibrium exchange rate of the Thai baht against its twenty‐two major trading partners; (b) the bilateral real equilibrium exchange rates of the baht against the US dollar; and (c) the bilateral real equilibrium exchange rate of the baht against the Japanese yen.     

Is Financial Flexibility a Priced Factor in the Stock Market?

This paper develops a factor analysis–based measure for shifts in corporate financial flexibility (FFLEX) that can be observed from public accounting information. Companies that experience positive shifts in FFLEX are associated with higher future investment growth opportunities. We show that FFLEX is a robust determinant of future stock returns. Firms that have increased their financial flexibility are associated with lower stock returns in the subsequent period. A zero‐cost return portfolio produces a significant positive monthly premium of 0.69%, which is driven by covariance (risk). Risk inherent in the flexibility factor is not explained away by either prominent pricing characteristics or factors.     

Capabilities,technologies, and firm exit during industry shakeout: Evidence from the global solar photovoltaic industry

Research Summary: Explanations of entrants’ survival in an emerging industry are premised on pre‐entry capabilities or technology entry choices prior to the emergence of the dominant design. We consider how these drivers interact to strengthen or nullify firms’ pre‐entry advantage, and facilitate adaptation as the industry evolves. We also expand the treatment of exit by separating dissolution from acquisition, in which firms’ capabilities continue to be utilized in the industry. Studying a recent shakeout in the global solar photovoltaic industry, we find that pre‐entry capabilities and technology choices act in a complementary manner for some firms, thereby enhancing survival, and as buffers against exit for others. Nearly half of exits were via acquisitions, and technology choice at entry played an important role in determining how firms exited. Managerial Summary: New industries are often characterized by intense technology competition that culminates in a dominant technology followed by industry shakeout. Although prior research underscores the central role of technology choice and firm capabilities to survival, we do not actually know how firms with different capabilities and who have made competing technology choices survive an industry shakeout. In this article, we show how entrants’ capabilities and technology choices can act in a complementary manner for some firms, enhancing their chance of survival, and as buffers against failure for others. Moreover, we explain why some firms that do exit are acquired, when others are dissolved.