The CEO and the external environment

This study confirms other studies and public choice microeconomic theory: CEOs spend more time on issues external to their firms in today's volatile business environment.     

Living Decently

One of the reasons why poverty lines became popular at the turn of the century was their promise of a scientific technique that would dispense with moralising about poverty. We argue that a price paid in this quest has been an impoverishment of the richness of the notion of 'a decent life', the moral concept underlying poverty. In addition, poverty lines have in practice been more to do with inequality at the bottom end of the income distribution than with poverty. The purpose of this article is to rehabilitate the measurement of poverty, and to make it credible. We set out our preferred method of poverty measurement, and illustrate it using data from the Australian Standard of Living Study. A feature of our approach is to distinguish clearly between issues of inequality and issues of poverty. Questions such as who is on the bottom of the income distribution, whether this has changed over time, and how income levels of the worst off compare with the mean, are questions of inequality. As such, the answers tell us nothing at all about how the worst off are actually living. To answer that question, we require direct measures of consumption and of social participation. These measures are not as simple, but they provide us with knowledge about poverty that poverty lines have promised, but have not delivered in a credible fashion.     

The impact of prior firm financial performance on subsequent corporate reputation

This study links corporate reputation, as measured byFortune magazine's Most Admired list, with firm financial performance. Seven measures of financial risk and return were collected for a sample of 149 firms from two time periods, 1981 and 1986. The mean score of four attributes from the 1993Fortune Most Admired list for the sample was then analyzed with the financial data through regression analysis. Two financial variables, Standard Deviation of the Market Return of the Firm and Return on Sales, explained between 0.12 and 0.14 of subsequent reputation. The implication for management is that they can affect a firm's subsequent reputation by lowering financial risk and controlling costs.Sue Annis Hammond is an Organizational Development Consultant based in Dallas, Texas. She has over ten years of internal consulting experience from her work at Meredith Corporation and Principal Financial Group. After taking time off from paid employment to complete a Masters of Organizational Development, she founded Kodiak Consulting, which specializes in the area of corporate culture change.John W. Slocum, Jr. holds the O. Paul Corley Chair in Management at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. He has received the Nicholas Salgo Distinguished Teaching and the Rotunda Outstanding Faculty Awards while on the faculty of SMU. He serves as a consultant to numerous organizations in the area of human resources management.     

Operating cash flow asymmetric timeliness in Australia

Operating cash flow (CFO) asymmetric timeliness occurs when CFO reflects bad news more quickly than good news. We examine the presence and determinants of CFO asymmetric timeliness in Australia, where substantial differences in reporting requirements of cash flow components, in characteristics of listed companies and in the degree of conservative financial reporting produce contrasting findings to those in the United States. We find supportive evidence for the novel ‘sticky cost behaviour’ explanation and also the product-pricing strategy, but not the life cycle hypothesis. These findings are useful for investors and analysts concerned with forecasting the future values of companies.     

Human Capital Factors Affecting Human Resource (HR) Managers' Commitment to HR and the Mediating Role of Perceived Organizational Value on HR

Human resource (HR) managers’ commitment to their occupation (HR) leads to the proper delivery and implementation of HR practices and, therefore, is deemed as a critical factor for the success of HR practices. Based on sociocognitive, human capital, and signaling theories, this study examines: (a) HR managers’ own and their chief HR officer's (CHRO) HR‐specific human capital as antecedents of their commitment to HR, and (b) the mediating mechanism through which the CHRO’s HR‐specific human capital positively influences HR managers’ commitment to HR. Based on 146 HR managers from 146 organizations in South Korea, the findings of the current study suggest that HR managers with higher levels of HR‐specific human capital and those working with CHROs with higher levels of HR‐specific human capital tend to have higher levels of commitment to HR. In addition, CHROs with higher levels of HR‐specific human capital positively influence HR managers’ commitment to HR by signaling to them that HR and its function are valued and cared about by their organizations. Theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed along with study limitations and further research directions. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Outdoor management development: the mediating effect of the client organisation

This article reports on a study comparing the impact of an outdoor management development (OMD) programme on delegates from two different client organisations. By keeping the provider constant it is possible to assess how organisational factors mediate the transfer of learning from a development event back to the workplace. The results show that, while the programme had a very positive immediate impact on the delegates from both companies—they felt they had learnt a lot and that they were working better as a team—in only one of the companies was this change sustained back in the work-place. Follow-up interviews with delegates, four months after the event, highlighted that in the company where transfer was not evident, there were considerable organisational barriers. In this instance at least, it was not the OMD programme that was ‘at fault’ but the organisation climate or culture which impeded any transfer of learning.     

Leadership Styles and CSR Practice: An Examination of Sensemaking,Institutional Drivers and CSR Leadership

This article examines the explicit and implicit corporate social responsibility (CSR) framework and its implications for leadership style, in a major banking institution. Evidence for existence of the framework’s key concepts in relation to leadership styles was explored through the self-reported sensemaking of leaders charged with CSR programme introduction. Qualitative data analysis indicated that explicit CSR is linked to an autocratic leadership style, whereas implicit CSR is more closely aligned with emergent and authentic styles. Although our results reinforced key aspects of the explicit and implicit CSR framework, they demonstrated conflicting systems of both CSR and leadership within our case organisation and highlighted the difficulty in categorising such a complex concept as CSR according to specific frameworks. Overall, our data suggest that the leadership styles, needed to successfully implement explicit and implicit CSR programmes, are in conflict. Given our finding that these CSR systems can coincide within one organisation, we suggest that the debating style of transformational leadership may be the required linchpin.     

Indeterminacy and the Regulation of Task Allocation: The Shape of Support Roles in Healthcare

Drawing upon Marsden's typology of employment systems, this article explores how the indeterminacy of the employment relationship is enacted and resolved in relation to the healthcare assistant (HCA), a key work role in the delivery of nursing care in a hospital setting. It suggests that the regulation of task allocation within nursing assumes a hybrid form, requiring further analysis of the influences shaping the HCA role. Based on multi‐method hospital case studies, the article distinguishes different types of HCA, explaining their emergence by reference to the interaction between organizational structure and personal agency. The article illustrates the value of Marsden's framework, and by addressing its limits in a healthcare setting seeks to develop a deeper understanding of task allocation in different workplace employment systems.     

Demand Control: The Case for Demarketing as a Visitor and Environmental Management Tool

Little has been written in tourism on what happens once sustainable limits have been set and met. This paper introduces 'demarketing' as a policy option and management tool, outlining the literature in this field. First coined by Kotler in the early 1970s, it was presented as an aspect of the marketing mix. Demarketing has been applied successfully (if somewhat controversially) in the health sector as a means for reducing smoking and inappropriate health careconsumption. However, the strategy itself can be taken beyond health and marketing and applied to tourist management and planning. The implications for the tourism industry are enormous, providing fresh ways to consider the management of mass tourism and the environment and culture on which it relies. While aspects of demarketing have been used unconsciously in tourism operations such as man-made attractions and national park management systems, this paper looks at demarketing's potential as a conscious policy tool within the built and natural environmental management spheres, specifically in relation to visitor management and tourism. Studies of the planning and management of selected tourism environments in Australia and North America demonstrate the potential of demarketing as a management tool.