Executive Stock Ownership After the Acquisition

How does a company, buying another company, replace the acquired company's executive stock options? This article details what companies are doing and examines the advantages and disadvantages of replacing these options. The authors propose that the success or failure of an acquisition can hinge on the resolution of these issues.     

Fiscal Coordination and Political Competition

This contribution investigates fiscal coordination in the framework of two countries asymmetric in respect of their capital–labor endowment. When tax policies are decided by majority voting inside each country, and they are not coordinated at a supranational level, factors of production are inefficiently allocated, at equilibrium. Our main result shows that fiscal coordination, via a minimum capital tax, does not always lead to a Pareto–improvement for the median voter's welfare, with respect to the noncooperative outcome.     

Integrating benefits decision making

Integrated employee benefit decision making helps employees use their benefits more wisely and identify opportunities to balance their immediate benefits needs (such as health care) and future benefits needs (such as retirement). This article discusses how employers can overcome employees' behavioral barriers to making integrated employee benefit decisions by changing the ways benefits are communicated and employees are presented with action decisions. Undertaking these steps allows employers to not only improve their employees' overall financial perspectives, but also furthers plan sponsors' goals of actively promoting personal responsibility with respect to retirement funding and changing employee behavior with respect to controlling health care costs.     

Keeping anger in check: The role of personal and organizational characteristics on behavioral outcomes

ABSTRACT

The food and beverage sector of the hospitality industry is known for being an emotionally labor-intensive environment. The events that transpire over the course of a shift lead to various emotions, which ultimately dictate the behaviors of the employees working in this industry. Of particular interest to this study was the interplay between environmental antecedents (power and distributive justice) and their influence on a negative emotion (anger) and a positive emotion (affective organizational commitment). Additionally, this study sought to understand how anger and affective organizational commitment influenced positive (organizational citizenship behavior) and negative (counterproductive work behavior) workplace behaviors using the lens of the affective events theory. The results of this study revealed that anger had the strongest effect on counterproductive work behavior and that all of the relationships were significant except from anger to affective organizational commitment and affective organizational commitment to counterproductive work behavior.     

Heading the Right Way? The Influence of Motion Direction in Advertising on Brand Trust

Integrating research on visual marketing, spatial associations, and brand inferences, the authors conduct four studies demonstrating that when consumers see an ad featuring an object moving in a left-to-right, rather than a right-to-left, direction, their trust toward the featured brand increases. This effect is mediated by an enhanced sense of “feeling right” resulting from the fit between how Western consumers are accustomed to envisioning action and information unfolding (from left to right), and the direction of implied motion in the ad. The authors identify stereotypical gender associations of the brand as a theoretically relevant moderator, such that the favorable influence of a left-to-right motion direction on brand trust is enhanced when the advertised product is strongly (versus weakly) associated with masculine characteristics.     

Rater source factors represent important subcomponents of the criterion construct space, not rater bias

We contrast normative accuracy and ecological perspectives on applications of the multitrait–multimethod methodology to multisource performance ratings and review existing research that provides critical tests of these perspectives. Existing research supports the ecological perspective which proposes that the rater source effects that are typically found in analysis of multisource performance ratings do not represent mere halo biases but alternative, perhaps equally valid perspectives on ratee performance. We suggest that future research view multifaceted research designs in the broader context of a prototype multidimensional data relational system such as that proposed by Lance, Baranik, Lau, and Scharlau (Lance, C. E., Baranik, L. E., Lau, A. R., & Scharlau, E. A. (in press). If it's not trait it must be method: (Mis)application of the multitrait–multimethod design in organizational research. In C. E. Lance & R. J. Vandenberg (Eds.), Statistical and methodological myths and urban legends: Received doctrine, verity, and fable in the organizational and social sciences. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum).     

Investor reactions to derivative use and outcomes

How do investors evaluate managers who choose whether or not to use derivatives once the outcomes of those decisions become known? Different theories offer different predictions, and we test these in three experiments. Results show that investors are more satisfied with firm managers and assign a higher value to firms when managers use derivatives (that address firm risks) than when they do not. This result occurs even though we hold constant the economic differences typically present when comparing derivative use versus non-use (that is, ex ante risk and ex post outcome), suggesting that investors reward firms that use derivatives. Additional tests reveal that investors believe that managers who use derivatives in these situations exhibit a higher level of decision-making care than those who do not use derivatives. We also document that these inferences about greater decision-making care do not apply to the speculative use of derivatives. Overall, our study adds to our understanding of how investors judge companies that use derivatives, given the resulting outcomes of such use.     

Strategic Staffing and Small‐Firm Performance

Although staffing can be a critical determinant of whether small businesses succeed or fail, there has been less research in this area than might be expected, given the large numbers of such firms. While there has been some research on specific recruiting and selection practices, there has been little attention to the strategic aspects of staffing. We investigated relationships between strategic approaches to staffing and small‐firm performance using lagged survey data from 139 founders and owners of small firms. Results indicate that recruiting approaches imitating the practices (processes) of larger businesses are positively related to a perceptual measure of firm performance. Selection approaches stressing a growth orientation are also positively related to firm performance. Finally, founders’ and owners’ perceptions of the strategic importance of human resources moderate the relationship of firm performance with imitative recruiting practices as well as with growth‐oriented selection practices. An important contribution of this article is that contextual knowledge facilitates our understanding of the performance implications of staffing practices in small firms. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Selecting a hotel and determining salient quality attributes: a preliminary study of mature british travellers

The paper presents the findings of a survey of 104 mature British travellers, who rated the importance of 38 hotel attributes when selecting a hotel or judging its quality, through a self‐administered questionnaire distributed at local branch meetings of societies for mature people. Respondents had high expectations of hotel service quality. They were a discerning group, placing greater emphasis on value for money than on actual price or discounting alone. The findings highlighted the importance placed on service staff attitude and behaviour. Leisure facilities were found to be relatively unimportant, but certain mature‐specific attributes pertaining to mobility limitations were found to be salient to an important proportion of respondents. Significant differences were identified according to gender, age and retirement status, indicating that the mature market is heterogeneous. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.