How do medical managers strategize? A strategy-as-practice perspective

ABSTRACT

Strategic planning (SP) is a widely-used practice within public sector organizations. However, SP does not only take place in strategy workshops and senior management levels. This paper explores how medical managers of English hospitals ‘do’ SP in their clinical directorates. The authors investigate the practices, the usage of strategy tools and the implications of medical managers’ strategizing. The paper argues that what makes financial sense to medical managers strategizing in the local circumstances of their directorates does not always equate to value for patients, the hospital or for the public sector as a whole.     

Shareholder coordination and stock price informativeness

We show that firm‐specific information is more likely to be incorporated into stock prices when firms have stronger shareholder coordination. The premise of our work is that geographic proximity reduces communication costs among shareholders, thereby leading to better coordination. The positive coordination‐informativeness relation is driven mainly by shareholder coordination among dedicated and independent institutions. We further show that the positive effect is more pronounced for firms with weaker governance mechanisms, suggesting that shareholder coordination could serve as a substitute conduit of price discovery. Lastly, we propose that shareholder coordination improves stock price informativeness through the channel of enhanced voluntary disclosure quality.     

Education and the minimum wage in the United States

This article shows that, across the US states, the level of education has a causal effect on the minimum wage. More specifically, it argues that a one-percentage point increase in the proportion of college graduates implies a 0.4–0.5% decrease in the real value of the minimum wage. This is the first article that uses System GMM in order to examine the effect of education on the minimum wage. Given the structure of the available data, this is the most appropriate econometric technique. System GMM not only controls for endogeneity and for fixed effects but also maximizes the precision of the estimates by using all the available variation in the data.     

An alternative approach for testing for linear association for two independent stationary AR(1) processes

Spurious correlations occur when two independent time series are found to be correlated according to the typical statistical procedure for testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation in the population. Using a Monte Carlo analysis, this study examines the spurious correlation phenomenon for two independent stationary AR(1) processes and it finds that if an alternative testing procedure is applied, spurious behaviour is eliminated using the variance of the sample correlation coefficient of these two series, suggested by Bartlett (1935).     

The Dynamic Links Between Exports,Foreign Direct Investment,and Economic Growth: Evidence from European Transition Economies

ABSTRACT

By applying time series and panel data cointegration analysis, this study investigates the causal relations between exports, inward FDI and GDP for fifteen European transition economies over the period 1995–2014. This study goes beyond previous empirical works by using two auxiliary variables in the aforementioned nexus: domestic investment and government spending. Empirical findings suggest that though the effect of openness is beneficial to all economies of the region, the presence of export-led growth and FDI-led growth hypotheses are validated mainly for the group of economies that entered the European Union in 2004. Conversely, for the remaining economies, the results confirm the prevalence of a culture for saving over spending, which eventually provokes the beneficial expansion of their local investment and export capacity.     

The balance between size and power in testing for linear association for two stationary AR(1) processes

The classical statistical procedure in testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation for two independent stationary AR(1) processes produces spurious correlations, contrast to the alternative testing approach that has been proposed by Agiakloglou and Tsimpanos (2012). This study examines the trade-offs between size distortions and power using both testing techniques, including the case where the true values of the autoregressive parameters are replaced by their estimates.     

Improved inference in the evaluation of mutual fund performance using panel bootstrap methods

Two new methodologies are introduced to improve inference in the evaluation of mutual fund performance against benchmarks. First, the benchmark models are estimated using panel methods with both fund and time effects. Second, the non-normality of individual mutual fund returns is accounted for by using panel bootstrap methods. We also augment the standard benchmark factors with fund-specific characteristics, such as fund size. Using a dataset of UK equity mutual fund returns, we find that fund size has a negative effect on the average fund manager’s benchmark-adjusted performance. Further, when we allow for time effects and the non-normality of fund returns, we find that there is no evidence that even the best performing fund managers can significantly out-perform the augmented benchmarks after fund management charges are taken into account.     

Replication of Grier,Henry, Olekalns and Shields (2004): the Asymmetric Effects of Uncertainty on Inflation and Output Growth

In their influential work Grier et al.(The asymmetric effects of uncertainty on inflation and output growth. Journal of Applied Econometrics 2004; 19 : 551–565) examine the effects of growth and inflation uncertainties on their average rates. The current study replicates their main results and performs a similar analysis on a more recent dataset. Their findings are confirmed to a large extent. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Environmentally Responsible and Conventional Market Indices’ Reaction to Natural and Anthropogenic Adversity: A Comparative Analysis

Using data collected at two phases, this study examines why and how ethical leadership behavior influences employees’ evaluations of organization-focused justice, i.e., procedural justice and distributive justice. By proposing ethical leaders as moral agents of the organization, we build up the linkage between ethical leadership behavior and the above two types of organization-focused justice. We further suggest trust in organization as a key mediating mechanism in the linkage. Our findings indicate that ethical leadership behavior engenders employees’ trust in their employing organization, which in turn promotes their justice perceptions toward the organization. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and some directions for future research are suggested.