Succession in family firms from a multistaged perspective

Succession in family-owned businesses has been revealed to be a multi-staged phenomenon with trigger events distinguishing one stage from the other. Our aim is to apply change management theory to this process to improve our understanding and to identify the key factors that should be taken into account when implementing it. To achieve this goal, we will review the existing literature about organizational change and will adapt it to succession in family firms. We will end with a case study, concluding that a good succession process is not the one which avoids conflict, but the one which successfully manages it.

Comparison of Stochastic and Spline Models for Temperature‐based Derivatives in China

In this paper, we propose modelling the seasonal variation of temperature with a stochastic process to achieve normality of residuals. We conduct a heuristic comparison of the new stochastic seasonal variation model with three established empirical temperature and pricing models: the model of Alaton et al., the continuous autoregressive model and the spline model. The test criteria are residual normality, the Akaike information criterion, relative errors, and stability of price behaviour. The objective of the paper is to find the most suitable model for the application of temperature‐based derivatives in China. Therefore, 30 years of daily average temperature data from 12 cities in mainland China are applied. The results show that the stochastic seasonal variation model dominates the other three models by providing a more precise fitting of the temperature process. Furthermore, the spline model displays inconsistencies when it is applied to Chinese temperature data. This model has the smallest relative errors, but the worst results for normality of residuals.     

Effect of the Tax System ON R&D Intensity,Growth, Wages and Consumption Share

We propose a general equilibrium knowledge‐driven (semi‐)endogenous‐growth model with horizontal R&D, which is extended to consider two types of labour, skilled and unskilled, and exogenous government expenditure, financed through taxes on financial assets and on labour income, to analyse the implications of the tax system on R&D intensity, economic growth, wage inequality and consumption share in the output. In particular, we show that: (i) taxes have negative influence in the consumption share, being higher the marginal effect of the labour‐income tax; (ii) for any given government expenditure share, an increase (a decrease) in financial‐assets tax decreases (increases) the labour‐income tax; (iii) only the financial‐assets tax affects negatively the R&D intensity and the skill‐premium; thus, to reduce the skill‐premium the financial‐assets tax must increase; (iv) ignoring the effect on wage inequality and on R&D intensity, taxes are substitutes.     

Heterogenesis of ends: Herbert Spencer and the Italian economists

The influence of Spencer's ideas is now generating a good deal of analysis. The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of Spencer's work on economic thought. It also analyses the way in which this work was interpreted by the Italian economists. In particular, it investigates the influence of Spencer's theory of evolution on the thought of Pantaleoni (1857–1924) and Nitti (1868–1953). These two representative Italian scholars were on opposite sides for their economic methodology and the issue of government intervention in the economy. The paper clarifies whether their two divergent visions on social change could both be in accordance with Spencer ideas.     

SMEs international growth: The moderating role of experience on entrepreneurial and learning orientations

New and small firms operating in the high-tech environments need strong entrepreneurial (EO) and learning (LO) orientations to enhance international growth. Yet, the relationship between these two key strategic dimensions and foreign growth can be contingent to the entrepreneur’s individual characteristics. Bringing together elements from strategic management, organization and entrepreneurship literatures, we employ a dynamic temporal perspective considering two levels of analysis, the firm and the entrepreneur, and we apply a fixed effects pooled time-series regression on a sample of 170 firms in two periods of time (2005 and 2015). Our findings indicate that SMEs that possess greater EO and LO have higher international growth. However, previous entrepreneurial and industry-specific managerial experience of the founder/CEO positively exert their effect on these relationships. Our results have important theoretical and practical implications for entrepreneurs and policy makers operating in highly innovative sectors.     

What's the point of European Sectoral Social Dialogue? Effectiveness and polycontexturality in the hospital and metal sectors

Drawing on pragmatism and systems theory, this article analyses how participants in the European Sectoral Social Dialogue in the metal and hospital committees understand its effectiveness. We find that the participants have a broad understanding of effectiveness compared with the European Commission and existing research. Participants do not dismiss the importance of direct effects on working conditions in member states but downplay it in comparison with indirect effects from, and effectiveness in, European Sectoral Social Dialogue. That is, horizontal learning, knowledge sharing and pragmatic bottom-up work to reach consensus are emphasised as more prominent than top-down regulatory effectiveness.     

Bankers closing idiosyncratic deals: Implications for organisational cynicism

To better meet flexibility demands and increase person–job fit, organisations might offer their employees the opportunity to negotiate task‐related arrangements, namely, idiosyncratic deals, referred to as “i‐deals.” However, not every employee who requests an i‐deal is successful in their negotiations. Thus, this study aims to further the knowledge of potential shortcomings of task‐related i‐deals and the role of supervisors in determining them. Drawing on social exchange theory, we hypothesise that low‐quality supervisor–employee relationships (i.e., leader–member exchange) are more likely to result in unsuccessful task‐related i‐deal negotiations, which consequently might provoke increased organisational cynicism. We analysed three waves of data from 202 Swiss bankers who had requested task‐related i‐deals within the investigated business cycle. The results supported our hypothesis. Our findings highlight the role of supervisors in reducing the potential costs of using task‐related i‐deals as employee‐initiated job design practices.     

A bibliometric account of the evolution of EE in the last two decades: Is ecological economics (becoming) a post-normal science?

In ecological economics the debate on formalism and formalization has been addressed in the context of a lively discussion on ecological economics as a ‘post-normal’ (versus ‘normal’) science. Using ecological economics (EE) as a ‘seed’ journal and applying bibliometric techniques to all (2533) the articles published in EE from January 1989 to December 2009, we analyze the evolution of the field of ecological economics aiming to shed light on this debate. We observe the predominance (and increased relevance) of certain research topics: ‘Methodological issues’, ‘Policies, governance and institutions’ and ‘Valuation’. Moreover, ‘Collective action’, ‘Technical change and the environment’ and ‘Values’ stand as emergent themes of research. Finally, we note that ecological economics experienced an ‘empirical turn’ reflected in a shift away from exclusively formalized papers towards exclusively empirical and, to a larger extent, ‘formal and empirical’ ones. The combination of the prominent and emergent topics and the ‘empirical turn’ mirrors the increasing awareness among researchers in the field of the need to address a key specificity of ecological economics — the interdependence of the economic, biophysical and social spheres. On this basis, we argue that at least through the lens of EE, ecological economics has evolved towards a post-normal science.     

Telework, human resource flexibility and firm performance

The results of a survey of 156 Spanish firms indicate that HR development practices are positively associated to the intensity of telework adoption and they moderate the relationship between telework and firm performance. The positive moderator effect of HR development practices indicates that their implementation is necessary not only to facilitate telework adoption but also to enhance the otherwise marginal contribution of telework at organisational level.