Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

What actions can be taken to increase whistle-blowing in the classroom?

This study surveyed undergraduate business students on various issues concerning the potential of students whistle-blowing when they observe other students cheating. Developing the courage of one's conviction in our accounting students is important to accounting educators as we are also emphasizing traits such as integrity, skepticism, and professionalism to our accounting students. As the data were gathered in the first introductory-accounting course, students’ cheating and whistle-blowing attitudes were already established. We found that, while students who had cheated in the past were more likely to suggest incentives and cash rewards, students who had never cheated were more concerned with increased confidentiality. Consequently, the need for assuring strict confidentiality is as important to our accounting students as it was to our former accounting clients in developing the trust necessary for the disclosure of sensitive information.     

What is a fair amount of executive compensation? Outrage potential of two key stakeholder groups

The public discussion of executive compensation often centres on ‘fair’ and ‘unfair’ amounts and the public outrage over compensation that is deemed too high. The academic literature states that such outrage can lead to outrage costs, pressuring firms to adjust compensation levels. However, it is unclear what a ‘fair’ compensation is for various stakeholders and how their fairness concerns relate to outrage constraints. Based on surveys among two key stakeholder groups (representative eligible voters and investment professionals), we provide evidence that fairness is an important criterion for both groups but that opinions on how large a fair compensation amount should be are widely dispersed. Moreover, personality traits systematically influence fairness opinions through self‐serving interpretations of distributive justice and personal risk attitudes, indicating that a ‘fair’ amount of executive compensation may strongly depend on the involved stakeholders. Investigating thresholds for outrage, i.e., amounts above which compensation is judged ‘unfairly’ high, we show that even though investment professionals care for fairness as well, ‘capital market outrage’ might not equate to ‘public outrage’. Our paper contributes to the literature on outrage constraints by linking individual fairness concerns to outrage potential and has implications for transparency of executive compensation and research on shareholder activism.     

The impact of firm prestige on executive compensation

We show that chief executive officers (CEOs) of prestigious firms earn less. Total compensation is on average 8% lower for firms listed in Fortune’s ranking of America’s most admired companies. We suggest that CEOs are willing to trade off status and career benefits from working for a publicly admired company against additional monetary compensation. Our identification strategy is based on matched sample analyses, difference-in-differences regressions, and a regression discontinuity design. We perform several robustness checks and exclude many alternative explanations, including that firm prestige just proxies for better corporate governance or for increased exposure of the pay-setting process to media attention.     

When Do Firms Adjust Bonus Targets Intrayear? Evidence from Sales Executives' Targets*

This study investigates when and why intrayear bonus target revisions occur. This is important as intrayear target revisions occur regularly in practice but are not well understood. Specifically, we analyze two potential drivers of intrayear bonus target revisions: reduced managerial incentives owing to managers dropping out of the incentive zone of their piecewise defined bonus function and potential spillovers from planning target revisions that reflect changes in performance expectations during the year. We also investigate the effects of organizational characteristics on intrayear bonus target revisions. Using data collected from sales executives via multiple waves of surveys, we find evidence for both predicted drivers. In addition, consistent with our predictions, we find that the levels of delegated decision authority, intrafirm interdependencies, and information asymmetry negatively moderate the positive association between reduced managerial incentives and revision likelihood. Our paper contributes to the target setting literature by being the first study to investigate intrayear bonus target revisions and shed light on when firms commit to not revising such targets intrayear.     

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: assessment of the humanitarian,economic, and financial impact in the short and medium term

What are the economic effects of the Ukraine war for Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of Europe? In this study, the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) sheds light on the immediate consequences on the one hand, but also on the medium-term structural changes caused by the largest armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered a humanitarian crisis. Pre-war, almost 19 m people lived in those regions that are currently directly affected. Refugee inflows to the rest of Europe are likely to be at least three times greater than in 2015/2016. As Black Sea ports come under Russian assault, Ukraine has lost its ability to sell more than half of its exports, primarily agricultural commodities and metals. Western financial support will become ever more important as the war continues. Turning to Russia, sanctions will have a very serious impact on that country’s economy and financial sector. Despite being partly hamstrung by the fact that a large proportion of Russian reserve assets are frozen in the EU and G7, the central bank managed to stabilise financial markets by a combination of confidence-building and hard-steering measures: capital controls, FX controls, regulatory easing for financial institutions, and a doubling of the key policy rate. The medium-term and long-term outlook is negative. As a result of the war and the sanctions, the rest of Europe faces a surge in already high inflation; this will weigh on real incomes and will depress economic growth. Many European countries rely heavily on Russia for oil and gas imports: import shares are over 75% in Czechia, Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria with respect to natural gas; Slovakia, Lithuania, Poland, and Finland with respect to oil and petroleum; and Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Denmark, Lithuania, Greece, and Bulgaria with respect to solid fuels. Aside from energy, the fallout via trade for the rest of Europe is likely to be small. Non-energy trade and investment links between Russia and many European countries have declined in importance since 2013. There are four main areas of structural change and lasting impact for the EU (and Europe more broadly) as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. First, the EU will get more serious about defence. Second, the green transition will gather pace. Third, broader Eurasian economic integration will be unwound. And fourth, the EU accession prospects for countries in Southeast Europe could (and should) improve.

     

Tracking farmland investment in Australia: Institutional finance and the politics of data mapping

Tracking farmland purchases is central to interpreting transnational finance's growing power in agrarian restructuring. Australia's public Register of foreign land ownership reveals little about agrarian change, however. In presenting the first comprehensive mapping of farmland purchases made between 2008 and 2020, this paper examines the ways that financial investments are altering farm ownership patterns in Australia. First, we show that most foreign owned land has been purchased by only 10 pastoral companies, which are implicated in speculative development activities. Second, foreign investment in cropping and horticulture is more significant than it appears in the Register, with investments in agricultural infrastructure increasingly driving land use change. Third, we illustrate the deepening entrenchment of institutional finance. By engaging with the findings from our dataset as well as with the politics of data that have shaped the availability of information, the paper progresses understandings of the financialization of farmland in both its material and ideational aspects.     

Inside the black box of high-growth firms in a crisis-hit economy: corporate strategy,employee human capital and R&D capabilities

In an attempt to open the black box of high-growth firms within turbulent economic environments, this paper explores the role of corporate strategy, employee human capital and R&D capabilities in achieving exceptional growth performance in a crisis-hit economy. Relative and absolute growth measures based on both employment and sales are computed utilizing survey data on 1500 firms in the midst of the Greek crisis. Our findings indicate that adopting a geographical diversification strategy significantly increases the likelihood of becoming a fast-growing firm, irrespective of the growth metric used. Entering in diverse product markets and taking advantage of R&D capabilities appear to additionally contribute to relative employment change in HGFs of smaller size. Based on the absolute employment growth indicator, we provide some evidence that HGFs of larger size are able to grow fast through product diversification, acquiring other firms or by investing on training low-skilled employees. Nevertheless, hiring already highly educated persons seems to matter only for sales HGFs, while research collaborations are found to negatively affect the probability of growing fast in terms of sales.

     

Editorial to the special issue “Structured Literature Reviews in Entrepreneurship Research-Taking Stock and Setting the Agenda”

Management Review Quarterly - Entrepreneurship as a phenomenon has changed a lot over the last years. At the same time entrepreneurship as an interdisciplinary research field has seen strong growth...