Empirical Analysis of National Income and SO2 Emissions in Selected European Countries

The linkage between per capita GDP and sulfur emissions for 12 Western European countries was analyzed over a period of more than 150 years. The analysis also looked at the impact of air pollution regulations on the shape of the income–pollution relationship. At both the aggregate and country levels, we find an inverted U-shaped relationship and the estimated turning points of most countries are plausible. In addition, environmental regulations are found to lower the EKC and they can also shift the turning point of the curve. In some cases, the shift is to the left and in a few to the right.     

Making innovation happen in organizations: individual creativity mechanisms,organizational creativity mechanisms or both?

Marketing managers increasingly face a product innovation dilemma. Managers will have to sell more with fewer new products in an environment where new products are providing lower revenue yields. Therefore, understanding what drives successful innovation is of paramount importance. This paper examines the organizational innovation hypothesis that innovation is a function of individual efforts and organizational systems to facilitate creativity. Our model formulates creativity as a property of thought process that can be acquired and improved through instruction and practice. In this context, individual creativity mechanisms refer to activities undertaken by individual employees within an organization to enhance their capability for developing something, which is meaningful and novel within their work environment. Organizational creativity mechanisms refer to the extent to which the organization has instituted formal approaches and tools, and provided resources to encourage meaningfully novel behaviors within the organization. Using data collected from 634 organizations, we find support for this hypothesis. The results suggest that the presence of both individual and organizational creativity mechanisms led to the highest level of innovation performance. The results also suggest that high levels of organizational creativity mechanisms (even in the presence of low levels of individual creativity) led to significantly superior innovation performance than low levels of organizational and individual creativity mechanisms. The paper also presents managerial and academic implications. This study suggests that it is not enough for organizations to hire creative people and expect the innovation performance of the firm to be superior. Similarly, it is not enough for firms to emphasize management practices to enhance creativity and ignore individual mechanisms. Although it is true that doing either will improve innovation performance, doing both should lead to higher innovation levels. Our understanding of what and how creativity influences innovation performance can be greatly enhanced by additional research that integrates the intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of creativity. Research that examines the role of team creativity efforts in enhancing innovation performance is also vital to an overall improved understanding of creativity, learning, and innovation within organizations.     

The recruitment and selection of pension trustees: an integrative approach

The role of a pension trustee is significant, which makes the recruitment and selection of labour trustees an important issue. In this article, we examine and combine aspects of two approaches to recruitment and selection: the political nomination model and the more professional HRM approach. We argue that an integrative approach would acknowledge the political, regulatory and organisational context while incorporating valid selection criteria such as domain‐specific skills and performance on the job. Such an integrated process can help trade unions in filling labour trustee positions with talented individuals who are more likely to be effective in achieving labour's goals in pension governance.     

The Mediating Effect of Virtual Interactivity in Travel-Related Online Social Network Websites

ABSTRACT

This study develops and empirically tests a virtual interactivity (VI) framework in the context of travel-related online social network (OSN) websites. Data was collected from 236 respondents. The findings reveal that system quality, psychological benefits, brand awareness, and reward activities positively affect VI in OSN websites. In return, VI positively influences brand image, brand attachment, and brand evaluation. The results also indicate that brand image was positively related to both brand attachment and brand evaluation. This is one of the few studies in this area of research and results provide theoretical and practical implications in relation to building brand image, brand evaluation, and brand attachment for travel-related OSN websites.     

RISK AND RETURN ON NEWLY LISTED STOCKS: THE POST-LISTING EXPERIENCE

Researchers consistently find that newly listed stocks underperform in the post-listing period. It has been suggested that this anomalous finding may, in part, be explained away if the risk during this period is lower than at other times. Evidence is presented here that the riskiness of newly listed stocks undergoes a seasoning process. Instead of lower risk, riskiness is found to be greater immediately after listing than in later periods. This suggests that the post-listing anomaly is actually worse than has been previously recognized.     

Hierarchical reporting,aggregation, and information cascades

Aggregation is commonly associated with loss of information. In contrast, this paper shows that aggregation can actually enhance information down‐the‐road by deterring information cascades. In particular, when hierarchical tiers forward only aggregate recommendations rather than nitty‐gritty details, it increases the uncertainty faced by subsequent tiers. This makes individuals at higher levels more willing to rely on and convey their own views rather than simply rubber stamping suggestions from lower levels. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How To Choose a Capital Structure: Navigating the Debt-Equity Decision

In corporate offices as well as the classroom, there continues to be significant debate about the costs and benefits of debt financing. There is also considerable variation in corporate credit ratings, even among companies as large and successful as those that make up the S&P 500. Many companies have been reassessing how they manage their balance sheet and their rating agency relationships; and with the market's generally favorable response to recapitalizations and dividend increases, such financing issues are likely to receive even more attention.
Underlying the diversity of corporate credit ratings is widespread disagreement about the "right" credit rating—a matter that is complicated by the fact that the cost of debt varies widely among companies with the same rating. Although credit ratings are clearly tied to measures of indebtedness such as leverage and coverage ratios, the most important factor in most industries is a company's size. For many mid-sized companies, an investment-grade rating can be attained only by making a large, equity-financed acquisition—or by making minimal use of debt. In this sense, the corporate choice of credit rating can be as much a strategic issue as a financial decision.
Maintaining the right amount of financial fl exibility is a key consideration when determining the right credit rating for a given company (although what management views as value-preserving flexibility may be viewed by the market as value-reducing financial "slack"). A BBB rating will accommodate considerably more leverage (30–60%) in companies with fairly stable cash flows and limited investment requirements than in more cyclical or growth-oriented companies (10–20%). When contemplating taking on more leverage, companies should examine all major operating risks and view their capital structure in the context of an enterprisewide risk management framework.     

The role of budgeting in eliminating tacit collusion

While accounting textbooks emphasize the roles of budgeting in controlling and coordinating agents' activities, the principal-agent literature has focused primarily on the control aspect. Recent papers have studied the coordination aspect of budgeting in settings in which the agents are technologically dependent (sequential or joint production is considered). In this article, we develop a role for budgeting in coordination, despite the agents being technologically independent (individual production is considered). In our model, the principal uses relative performance evaluation to extract information rents from the agents. However, the use of relative performance evaluation results in a multiple equilibria (tacit collusion) problem. The value of budgeting procedures is derived from their ability to coordinate the agents to arrive at the right equilibrium.