The Value of Corporate Philanthropy During Times of Crisis: The Sensegiving Effect of Employee Involvement

Recent research suggests that philanthropy’s value to the firm is largely mediated by contextual factors such as managers’ assumed motives for charity. Our article extends this contingency perspective using a “sensegiving” lens, by which external actors’ interpretations of organizational actions may be influenced by the way in which the organization communicates about those actions. We consider how sensegiving features in philanthropy-related press releases affect whether investors value those donation decisions. For the empirical investigation in this study, we analyze abnormal returns to announcements by U.S. Fortune 500 firms documenting their donations to Hurricane Katrina disaster relief in 2005. We expect that in general, donation decisions would be controversial given the uncertainty surrounding the hurricane’s economic effects at the time. However, we also propose that announcements emphasizing employee involvement in the donation send investors positive signals about the firm’s ability to bounce back from the disaster’s adverse effects. We find empirical support for the proposed hypotheses, and discuss the implications for theory and practice.     

Weakening the glass ceiling: does organizational growth reduce gender segregation in the upper tiers of Danish local government?

ABSTRACT

The theory of representative bureaucracy highlights gender segregation in the public sector and its detrimental implications for public policy outcomes. Focusing attention on organisational responses to this protracted problem, we supply evidence on whether organizational growth provides potential for change in the upper echelons of the public sector. An evaluation of the relationship between new hires and gender representation within the management tiers of Danish local government reveals an association between the recruitment of additional employees and improved gender integration. This is particularly pronounced for public organizations that employ fewer women. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Stocks and the weather: An exercise in data mining or yet another capital market anomaly?

Empirical Economics - We try to replicate the findings in Saunders (1993) that stock prices are “systematically affected by local weather”. Using German data, we find that whether or...     

European raw materials policy — past and current development

In world-wide negotiations and agreements on raw material problems the Community is either taking part as such or represented by the member state providing the Chairman of the Council. Admittedly it has often been difficult to work out the required common position for the member states, and only insofar as a consensus has been reached between them can therefore be talked of a European Raw Material Policy.     

Die Kapitalzinstheorie Böhm-Bawerks

Ohne ZusammenfassungDer im Jahre 1905 in der Nationaløkonomisk Tidsskrift erschienene Aufsatz des Verfassers Böhm-Bawerks Kapitalrenteteori enthalt einige interessante Einwendungen gegen die Böhm-Bawerksche Theorie des Produktivzinses, die erst in der jüngsten Literatur über das Zinsproblem Beachtung gefunden haben (vgl. die Artikel von R. van Genechten, A. Mahr und E. van Dorp in Bd. III. und IV. dieser Zeitschrift). Durch die nachstehende Übersetzung sollen die betreffenden Ausführungen Lindbergs einem weiteren Kreis von Nationalökonomen zugänglich gemacht werden.Aus dem Dänischen übersetzt von Alexander Mahr.     

Abgabenlast — Dem Durchschnittsverdiener verbleibt gerade einmal die Hälfte

Bei der Abgabenbelastung der Arbeitnehmereinkommen erreicht Deutschland im OECD-Vergleich eine Spitzenposition. Der Autor referiert die Ergebnisse einer aktuellen OECD-Studie und stellt die Problematik aus Sicht der Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverb?nde (BDA) dar.     

Stochastic properties of german stock returns

We investigate various distributional properties of German stock returns, like serial correlation, the existence of higher moments and calendar effects, with a focus on the robustness of various empirical measures to a nonstandard distribution of the returns. We exhibit the well known Monday effect also for German stocks, and show that its significance, like that of tests for serial correlation, depends on distributional assumptions which are often overlooked.