The effect of management changes on winning in professional sports: Analysis using a dynamic lag adjustment model

This paper examines whether coaching and general manager (GM) changes among three professional sports leagues—the National Football League (NFL), the Major League Baseball (MLB), and the National Basketball Association (NBA)—effect on‐field performance. Our empirical methodology uses team‐level data by season and adapts a lag adjustment econometric approach designed to resolve several statistical challenges that arise both in general managerial settings and in sports settings. Our main finding is that coaching changes in the NFL boost the number of wins per season by between 0.5 and 1.2 in each of the first five seasons. Coaching changes have smaller, but still positive, impacts in the MLB and NBA. For all the three leagues, we find that GM changes have no discernable impact on performance. A separate cross‐sectional analysis suggests that those small impacts stem from coaches and GMs having extremely compressed talent distributions. The data indicate that coaches and GMs, en masse, are important, but changing the people who occupy those positions rarely seems to move teams to different locations on the performance distribution.     

The costs of hospital at home: the case of the New Brunswick extra-mural hospital

Policy markers in number of countries have become concerned in recent years about steadily rising costs of hospital treatment. One approach which has been proposed involves moving some treatment out of traditional hospitals by making greater use of clinics and home care. The New Brunswick Extra Mural Hospital is a province-wide system designed to treat certain classes of patient at home rather than in hospitals. Its decentralized sturucture raises questions about coordination and control, and whether a single cost function can be said to exist for the whole system. This paper estimates a cost function for the Extra Mural Hospital and tests for structural differences across geographically separated delivery units. The results indicate that the system has been successful in maintaining a common cost sturcture, supporting the view that a decentralized hospital-at-home system can be run efficiently.     

Determining Meaningful Sales Relational (Mix) Variances

Further separation of the volume variance component of a multi-product firm's revenue variance into mix and quantity variances is regularly advocated by management accounting educators. Techniques used to achieve this separation are generally an extension of the analytical techniques used in the traditional flexible budget step-down? approach to variance determination. The analysis in this paper suggests that such an extension in most multi-product situations is inappropriate and generates useless and misleading results. Specific situations in which relational (in lieu of mix) variances may be appropriate do exist and applicable techniques are developed.     

Empowering Engagement: Understanding Social Media User Sense of Influence

For all the hope and hype hailing the democratizing effect of social media, few studies have explained public influence as an element of social media engagement. Insight into how and why individuals attempt to exert influence over organizations online is particularly underdeveloped. This study takes the first step in understanding sense of influence online through in-depth interviews with social media users. Findings call into question assumptions in research about the motives and meanings underlying individual efforts to exert influence via social media. The data from 19 in-depth interviews with active social media users suggest that sense of influence is enacted for social relationships rather than to influence organizations or society, and information is the driving force of that effort. Findings also place the imperative on strategic communication to emphasize the value of the organization’s role on social interaction toward a fully functioning society.     

Subprime mortgage funding and liquidity risk

In this article, we use actuarial methods to solve a nonlinear stochastic optimal liquidity risk management problem for subprime originators with deposit inflow rates and marketable securities allocation as controls. The main objective is to minimize liquidity risk in the form of funding and credit crunch risk in an incomplete market. In order to accomplish this, we construct a stochastic model that incorporates originator mortgage and deposit reference processes. Finally, numerical examples that illustrate the main modeling and optimization features of the article are provided.     

Leadership through action learning: a bottom-up approach to ‘best practice’ in ‘infection prevention and control’ in a UK NHS trust

This article reports on the outcomes of an action learning leadership intervention in a National Health Service (NHS) acute trust in partnership with a UK business school. This contribution provides an empirical example of the potential benefits of non-hierarchical leadership. Over a three-year period, 45 nurses took part in an initiative designed to reduce the number of health care associated infections (HCAI) in a large NHS acute trust. By 2010, serious reportable infections were reduced by around 300, providing an efficiency benefit in the region of £3 million and improved patient safety. The turnaround is significant, and although not exclusively attributable to this initiative, the trust is convinced that the intervention has been pivotal.     

The Role of Market Information in New Product Success/Failure

Although no single variable holds the key to new product performance, many of the widely recognized success factors share a common thread: the processing of market information. Understanding customer wants and needs ultimately comes down to a company's capabilities for gathering and using market information. And another well-acknowledged success factor the integration of marketing, R&D, and manufacturing focuses on the sharing of information. In other words, a firm's effectiveness in market information processing—the gathering, sharing, and use of market information—plays a pivotal role in determining the success or failure of its new products. Brian D. Ottum and William L. Moore describe the results of a study that examines the relationship between market information processing and new product success. They also explore the organizational factors that facilitate successful processing of market information, and thus offer ideas for better managing the development of new products. The respondents—marketing, R&D, and manufacturing managers from Utah-based computer and medical device manufacturers—provided information about 58 new products, including equal numbers of successes and failures. The survey responses reveal strong relationships between product success and market information processing, with success most closely linked to information use. In other words, the gathering and sharing of information are important, but only if the information is used effectively. In 80 percent of the product successes studied, the respondents ultimately possessed and used a greater than average amount of market information. And in 75 percent of the failures, the respondents knew less than average about the market at project inception, and gathered or used less than the average amount of market information during the project. For the projects in this study, the integration of marketing, R&D, and manufacturing contributed not only to the sharing and use of information, but also to overall project success. However, the results of the study suggest that the way in which a project is organized plays only an indirect role in determining new product success—most likely by improving the processing of market information. From a managerial perspective, the most important variables identified in the study are market information shared, market information used, and financial success.