Building traits for organizational resilience through balancing organizational structures

This paper describes and explains how balancing organizational structures can build traits for organizational resilience. Organizational resilience is a holistic and complex concept. In this paper, we move beyond focusing on sudden and disruptive events in favour of anticipating the unexpected in daily organizing. Organizational resilience is understood here as building traits of risk awareness, preference for cooperation, agility and improvisation and is analysed by means of a longitudinal qualitative case study. The paper contributes to the field by showing how balancing organizational structures can foster organizational resilience traits. We show that power distribution and normative control can create preparedness for unexpected events and foster action orientation at the same time as supporting organizational alignment.     

Franchising in the Balkans: History,status, and challenges

Abstract

Since the Balkans have not been covered with regards to franchising in any comprehensive fashion in the past, this study represents a first look at the topic in this part of the world and contributes to the literature on franchising in emerging economies. This research contrasts the development of franchising in the ten Balkan countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia. A comprehensive overview of the franchise industry and its history is created for each country, integrating economic and franchise infrastructure development. The study reveals severe deficiencies in the region with regards to the availability of official data and a lack of specific legislation with regards to franchising and disclosure mandates, as well as education about franchising and a reliable legal environment. Implications for researchers and policy makers conclude the study.     

The anatomy of returns from moving average trading rules in the Russian stock market

This paper examines the profitability of index trading strategies that are based on dual moving average crossover (DMAC) rules in the Russian stock market over the 2003–2012 period. It contributes to the existing technical analysis (TA) literature by comparing for the first time in emerging markets the relative performance of individual stocks’ trading portfolios with that of trading strategies for the index that consists of the same stocks (i.e., the most liquid stocks of the Moscow Exchange). The results show that the best trading strategies of the in-sample period can outperform buy-and-hold strategy during the subsequent out-of-sample period, although with low statistical significance. In addition, we document the benefits of using DMAC combinations that are much longer than those employed in previous TA literature. Moreover, the decomposition of the full-sample-period performance into separate bull- and bear-period performances shows that the outperformance of the best past index trading strategies over is mostly attributable to the fact that they managed to stay mostly out of the stock market during a dramatic crash caused by the global financial crisis.     

Market share and risk taking: the role of collateral asset managers in the collapse of the arbitrage CDO market

Asset pricing theory predicts that if credit ratings do not reflect all relevant aspects of a CDO debt tranche’s risk profile (i.e., its total and systematic risk), then ratings-based tranche pricing by some naïve investors creates incentives for CDO arrangers to take excessive non-priced risk. CDO managers’ desire for repeat issuance makes them part of this risk taking strategy to exploit naïve investors. The implication is that the credit quality of CDOs run by large market share managers has a higher tendency to deteriorate in bad times. This paper finds empirical evidence for large market share manager’s conflicts of interest.     

Legal,Ethical, or Responsible Food

The article discusses the concepts of legal, ethical, and responsible food in international food business. Food rules are divided into 3 categories: rules you follow because you have to (law), rules you follow because it is right (ethics), and rules you follow because it gives you a competitive advantage (responsibility). Food issues that need to be addressed include consumer rights (safety, nutrition, marketing), environmental issues (climate, eutrophication, biodiversity), employee policies, animal welfare, and fair trade practices. The laws of various countries often leave room for ethics and responsibility. This room varies between countries and elements of responsibility. In the European Union, United States, and China, market focus is on somewhat different food issues. Retailers and consumers drive food companies toward change, and the level of effort required is defined through combining food company values and stakeholder views.     

Tax Responses at Low Taxable Incomes: Evidence from Germany*

The desirability of a particular tax system depends on how different taxpayers react to it. Exploiting the personal allowance threshold and detailed German tax administration data, this paper examines responses at low taxable incomes to extend previous findings. Taxpayers bunch at the allowance threshold, and more so with non-wage income. Unlike in other studies, wage earners also bunch, at least if they file a tax return, while incomes gross of deductions do not. Deductions account for a sizeable share of the sharp bunching mass of taxpayers with non-wage income. A machine learning analysis identifies which deduction items predict such sharp bunching. The pattern of results suggests that local intensive-margin real responses induce moderate deadweight loss.     

Environmental Policy in the Nordic Wood Product Industry: Insights Into Firms’ Strategies and Communication

The purpose of our study is to explore how companies operating in the Nordic wood products value chains currently use environmental performance measures in their environmental policy and communication with stakeholders. Apart from the regularly‐used environmental management certificates, the ability of wood material to store carbon and the use of sustainable forest management certificates open up interesting strategic options for firms in the implementation of their environmental policy. The primary was collected through thematic managerial interviews in 2011 from 37 companies in Finland, Sweden and Norway, of varying size, roles in the value chain, conditions for green business practices and exports. Forest certification and environmental management systems were frequently used, but managers did not always perceive them to be useful, particularly for raising environmental awareness at the final consumer level. Nevertheless, the general attitude towards using environmental performance measures was seen as positive. Companies with a business‐to‐business orientation were the most proactive in terms of environmental communication, whereas companies in consumer markets were more reactive. The key stakeholders targeted for environmental communication were value chain partners and the authorities, and only to a lesser degree employees and environmental non‐governmental organisations. The key strategic role of environmental management and communication appeared to be securing the firms against negative environmental claims. The Nordic wood industry could improve their communication if the strategic orientation is shifted from the forest certification to the use of generic eco‐labels, and most of all, to the adoption of quantitative measures like carbon footprints and environmental product declarations. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.