Collusive Bidding in Hostile Takeovers

Bidders in hostile takeovers have colluded in five separate instances. It is found that these collusive agreements did not affect the target's price significantly. A model is developed to explain this observation. A welfare analysis indicates that a positive probability of cartel formation can be socially beneficial and may or may not be beneficial to the target's shareholders, depending on the process generating takeover attempts. This sheds light on the existing policy debate concerning regulations of collusive agreements. An analysis of the existing case law is provided, which indicates that such collusive arrangements are legal at present.     

Non-pecuniary Advantages Versus Pecuniary Disadvantages; Job Satisfaction Among Male And Female Academics In Scottish Universities

This paper considers job satisfaction in the academic labour market drawing upon a particularly detailed data set of 900 academics from five traditional Scottish Universities. Recent studies have revealed that in the labour force as a whole women generally express themselves as more satisfied with their jobs than men. Our results show that reports of overall job satisfaction do not vary widely by gender. This result is explained through the nature of our dataset, limited as it is to a highly educated workforce, in which female workers are likely to have job expectations comparable to their male counterparts. Ordered probit analysis is used to analyse the determinants of an academic's overall satisfaction at work as well as satisfaction with promotion prospects, job security and salary. Comparison salary is found to be an important influence on academics' overall job satisfaction although evidence suggests that academics place a lower emphasis on pecuniary relative to non pecuniary aspects of work than other sectors of the workforce.     

Technologies, products and firms' strategies part 2-analysis of three cases

This article is in two parts, Part I having been published in an earlier issue of this journal. It examines the character. and significance of 'strategies' fomtulated within the R&D function of a business, and their relationship to the broader business strategy of the parent company. The discussion i n Part 1 formed a basis for the analysis of case-studies of three large UK companies, ,wh.ich are presented here as Part 2 of the article. Part 1 ident$ed the three foci of innovation studies: the innovations themselves; patterns of innovation within discrete industrial sectors, the in:novatingjmns and their strategies. In Part 2 the substance of the case studies are presented and the lessons which they reveal are reviewed. The case studies were conducted in three large UK companies, one in the automotive component industry, another in the precious metals industry, with special reference to ceramic colours and pigment blending, and the third in the chemical industry. Use of the analytical devices produces intrwrting case study material, and indications for future research. In particular the need to explore further the separation of technology and products as objects of R&D study; further exploration of Pavitt's 1984 taxonomy, and an improvement in the understanding of strategy fornulation using a processual and interpretivist framework.     

Service set similarities in patterns of consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction

Consumer problems with products and services may occur in identifiable patterns. By studying the patterns of consumer dissatisfaction across 22 services, a service set approach to satisfaction/dissatisfaction is developed. Through the use of principal components analysis, target analysis, and multiple regression analysis, two hypotheses are tested about service sets for a randomly selected sample of 922 Canadians, both French and English speaking. The results of this analysis suggest that consumer problems with services across time seem to be partially explained by individual differences - such as age, income. and education — and partially explained by characteristics of the services themselves. Together, these influences may provide a better theoretical explanation for consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction than do the more commonly used individual difference variables when taken alone.     

Zur Anwendung des Bühlmann / Straub-Verfahrens in der Außendienstentlohnung

The German insurance market is opened to a large part of insurance agents, who are payed proportionally to their turnover. This turnover orientation ignores that there may be differences in the risks loss distributions. Therefore a profit margin based compensation system should be preferable but implies the problem that the profit margin is a random variable. In this paper we use the credibility theory and the Buehlmann / Straub method to generate a profit margin based compensation system which balances the insurers and the insurance agents demands. The effects of this system are examined in the context of a simulation study.     

No Bosses Here: Management in Worker Co-operatives

No Bosses Here: Management in Worker Co-operatives examines the worker co-op structure as a workplace option for women. The appeal of the model for women is described in terms of the opportunity for skill development and control over workplace conditions. The structure also presents some unique challenges for training since all members participate in management functions. The author describes a six-month course, Co-operative Employment for Women which trained women in co-operative business development.Melanie Conn has worked extensively in the feminist movement since 1971 when she was a founding member of the Vancouver Women's Health Collective. She has also participated in a number of co-op sector activities including a women's contruction co-op. She currently works with WomenFutures, a Vancounver-based group that promotes women's participation in economic development.     

Stock market investors' use of stop losses and the disposition effect

The disposition effect is an investment bias where investors hold stocks at a loss longer than stocks at a gain. This bias is associated with poorer investment performance and exhibited to a greater extent by investors with less experience and less sophistication. A method of managing susceptibility to the bias is through use of stop losses. Using the trading records of UK stock market individual investors from 2006 to 2009, this paper shows that stop losses used as part of investment decisions are an effective tool for inoculating against the disposition effect. We also show that investors who use stop losses have less experience and that, when not using stop losses, these investors are more reluctant to realise losses than other investors.