Controlling als Koordinationsfunktion? — Zehn Jahre nach Küpper/Weber/Zünd

Die koordinationsorientierten Auffassungen des Controlling lassen sich auf einen gemeinsamen Kern zurückführen. Die scheinbar so tiefen konzeptionellen Gr?ben in der Literatur sind überbrückbar.     

On the Hicks–Allen Definition of Complements and Substitutes with Discrete Changes in Prices

For discrete price changes, compensated cross‐price effects for two goods need not be equal if the household consumes three or more goods. In this paper I ask whether compensated cross‐price effects must have the same sign even if they differ in magnitude. I show that with three or more goods, the answer to this question is ‘no’. For discrete price changes, with more than two goods, the signs of the compensated cross‐price effects for two goods can differ depending on which price changes. Hence, the Hicks–Allen definition of complements and substitutes can also differ depending on which price changes.     

Exploring the Persuasiveness of Accounting Numbers in the Framing of ‘Performance’ – A Micro-Level Analysis of Performance Review Meetings

Based on a micro-level analysis of performance review meetings and drawing on an interactional framing perspective, this paper analyses the role of accounting numbers as ‘framing devices’ in discussions about performance. Analyzing interactions between superiors and subordinates, we examine how and why these two groups of actors mobilize different accounting numbers to make claims about performance and try to persuade the other party. Our interest is with the choice of accounting numbers and how they come to be seen as persuasive. The main theoretical argument developed in this paper is that whether a specific accounting number or indicator comes to be seen as persuasive or not in a particular situation is both a matter of how legitimate the underlying indicator is to the actors involved as well as whether they regard the signal it provides, i.e. the actual outcome on this particular indicator, as salient when compared to the actual outcomes on alternative indicators. Taken together, our findings suggest that persuasiveness is not an ‘objective’ quality of accounting numbers, but a situated achievement that results from interactive alignments between different actors with potentially competing interests.     

Waste reduction at Du Pont: Business opportunities

A Corporate Waste Minimization Committee at Du Pont has a charter to coordinate common concerns and solutions for reducing waste and to increase the awareness throughout the organization of the potential opportunities and economic benefits for minimizing waste.     

Assessing the “Tone at the Top”: The Moral Reasoning of CEOs in the Automobile Industry

Relying on an expanded view of leadership and the moral reasoning framework developed by Lawrence Kohlberg (1981), this study explores the moral reasoning of the chief executive officers at the 11 largest automobile manufacturers in the world. Using the CEOs’ letter to their stakeholders found in the organizations’ annual social responsibility reports, the CEOs’ moral reasoning is compared to other managers’ moral reasoning, and the moral reasoning exhibited within the CEO group is analyzed for differences due to regional location. Contrary to conventional understanding based on prior research, the CEOs in our sample did not exhibit moral reasoning at a higher level than a cross section of managers but there were differences within the sample of CEOs when looking at nationality. Implications of these results for CEOs, managers, academics, and others are explored.     

How does consumption change upon retirement?

In this paper, we investigate the way consumption changes around retirement in Italy. Using micro data covering the 1985–1996 period, we document the existence of a one-off drop in consumption at retirement of the household head, as in the UK and the US, but (at 5.44%) smaller in size, and show that consumption of work-related goods falls around retirement and home production of food and other goods increases.     

Option contracting in the California water market

Temporary water transfers, as achievable under option contracts, capture gains from trade that would go unrealized if only permanent transfers of water rights were possible. This paper develops a bilateral option contracting model for water which includes the possibility of conveyance losses and random delivery. Seller-optimal and socially optimal option contracts are characterized in terms of relevant base and strike prices, as well as contract volumes, from an ex-ante and an ex-post point of view. Lastly, welfare gains are estimated, and actual contract prices in California are compared to model-predicted prices.     

Lagrange Multipliers as Marginal Rates of Substitution in Multi‐Constraint Optimization Problems

This paper shows that, when a function is optimized subject to several binding constraints, some of the Lagrange multipliers in the dual problems can be interpreted as marginal rates of substitution among certain arguments in the generalized indirect objective function for the primal problem. It also shows how to calculate these Lagrange multipliers from observable price–quantity data. Three particular examples are discussed: a firm that minimizes costs subject to both fixed output and rationing constraints, a household that maximizes utility subject to both income and time constraints, and portfolio choice under uncertainty treated as a multiple constraint optimization problem.     

Costs and benefits of internal control audits: evidence from M&A transactions

To inform the debate on the merits of internal control audits, we examine managers’ decisions to temporarily exempt newly acquired businesses from Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We document that managers are more likely to elect the exemption when expected compliance costs are higher, such as when acquisitions are larger and occur later in the year. We find only modest evidence that managers use the exemption to avoid scrutiny of value-destroying deals. Exemption use, however, is associated with negative post-acquisition outcomes, including lower return-on-assets and higher likelihoods of goodwill impairments and financial statement restatements. These results comport with compliance providing benefits by facilitating timely identification and correction of control problems in the newly acquired business. Finally, we document negative abnormal stock returns at the time exemption use is announced and over the subsequent 3 years, suggesting that investors view exemption use negatively and that their initial price reactions are incomplete.     

Does human capital or physical capital constrain output in Japanese prefectures?

This paper develops a dynamic–network DEA (data envelopment analysis) model where total output is jointly produced from two sectors: a human capital sector and a physical capital sector. Each prefecture produces a final output and an intermediate product which is used to augment future physical capital. The optimization method allows future production possibilities to be enhanced if some final output in the current period is foregone so that larger amounts of the intermediate product can be produced. The goal is to choose the amounts of final output and intermediate product so as to maximize the size of the production possibility set. The method also allows identification of whether output is constrained by a lack of physical capital, a lack of human capital or a lack of both types of capital. We apply our method to 47 Japanese prefectures during the period 2007–2009. A key finding is that a lack of human capital is constraining potential output.