Where do capabilities come from and how do they matter? A study in the software services industry

Recent years have witnessed a surge of interest in the notion of capabilities as an important source of competitive advantage. This recognition has, in turn, placed emphasis on the question of where and how these capabilities emerge and how they influence firm performance. The present paper is an attempt to address this question. Using a large sample of detailed project‐level data from a leading firm in the global software services industry, we attempt to empirically study the importance of capabilities. We find that two broad classes of capabilities are significant. The first class, which we label client‐specific capabilities, is a function of repeated interactions with clients over time and across different projects. This learning from repeated interactions with a given client reduces project execution costs and helps improve project contribution. The second class, termed project management capabilities, is acquired through deliberate and persistent investments in infrastructure and systems to improve the firm's software development process. Our empirical results suggest that the marginal returns to acquiring different capabilities may be different and an understanding of such trade‐offs can improve firm decisions to improve and/or acquire such capabilities. We discuss the key contributions of our paper and the implications for future research on capabilities. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Herding,momentum and investor over-reaction

In this paper we study the impact of noise or quality of prices on returns. The noise arises from herding by market participants beyond what is justified by information. We construct a firm-quarter-specific measure of speculative intensity (SPEC) based on autocorrelation in daily trading volume adjusted for the amount of information available, and find that speculative intensity has a significant positive impact on returns. Both cross-sectional and time series variation in SPEC are consistent with conventional wisdom, and with implications of theories of herding as in DeLong et al. (1990, J Political Econ 98(4):703–738). We find that high-SPEC firms drive the returns to momentum trading strategies and that investor over-reaction is significant only in the case of high-SPEC firms.

Inventory policy, accruals quality and information risk

This paper provides evidence consistent with firms with Last-in-first-out (LIFO) inventory policy being priced by the market as having lower information risk than First-in-first-out (FIFO) firms. Furthermore, the paper shows that this pricing differential is sustained after controlling for accruals quality, suggesting that the inventory policy signals some information risk characteristics that are not captured by accruals quality measure. We investigate the relation between inventory policy and accruals quality and find that accruals quality is systematically worse for FIFO firms than for LIFO firms after controlling for correlated omitted variables and known firm attributes. These findings complement the currently established relationship between the cost of capital, market pricing and accruals quality by focusing on the need for understanding the incremental effects of individual accounting policies.     

Personal Taxes and the underpricing of initial public offerings

The purpose of this paper is to propose an alternative explanation for the underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs). The first section reviews the empirical evidence on underpricing IPOs in support of various alternative hypotheses that have been put forth in the literature. This is followed by our model which examines the effect of personal taxes paid by entrepreneurs on the choice of the issue price. We show that, in the presence of taxes and for certain levels of ownership retained by the entrepreneur, it may be preferable to underprice the issue. This theoretical result is reinforced by both the simulation and empirical tests.     

Financial Distress Costs and Delayed Calls of Convertible Bonds: An Empirical Analysis

Theoretical analysis implies that optimal call policy would be to call the bonds as soon as the conversion value equals the call price. Empirical studies, however, report that firms appear to systematically delay the call and the difference between the conversion value and the call price is large at the time of the call. This study examines convertible bond calls between 1977 and 1993, with a view to explain the large difference between the conversion value and the call-price at the time of the call. A large majority of the firms calling the bonds have cash-flow incentive to call the bonds in that the after-tax interest payments are higher than the dividends on the converted shares. The large difference between the conversion value and the call price is positively related to the risk characteristics of the firm. Evidence seems to support the view that risk aversion and fear of potential financial distress may explain the large difference at the time of call between the conversion value and the call price.     

The impact of incentives on CEO compensation and firm performance

A significant component of a management control system is the incentive mechanism and motivational underpinning of compensation contracts. Most executives are rewarded in the form of cash and company stock. Our data indicate that over 82.5 percent of the observations include a bonus pay to CEOs and an even larger percentage, about 94.5 percent, have stock option grants. Our analyses indicate that the means of market-based returns are significantly larger for companies with no stock option incentives. However, the accounting-based returns do not appear to be significantly influenced by stock-based rewards. (JEL: J30, G30, L21)     

Measuring Sovereign Risk: Are CDS Spreads Better than Sovereign Credit Ratings?

Using data for 54 countries over a 12‐year period, we find that the variation in average sovereign ratings in a given year can be explained by average credit default swap (CDS) spreads over the previous three years. In a horse race between CDS spreads and sovereign ratings, we find that CDS spread changes can predict sovereign events, while rating changes cannot. The predictability of CDS spreads is greater when there is disagreement between Moody's and the S&P for a country's rating.     

The new meaning of quality in the information age

Software applications are now a mission-critical source of competitive advantage for most companies. They are also a source of great risk, as the Y2K bug has made clear. Yet many line managers still haven't confronted software issues--partly because they aren't sure how best to define the quality of the applications in their IT infrastructures. Some companies such as Wal-Mart and the Gap have successfully integrated the software in their networks, but most have accumulated an unwidely number of incompatible applications--all designed to perform the same tasks. The authors provide a framework for measuring the performance of software in a company's IT portfolio. Quality traditionally has been measured according to a product's ability to meet certain specifications; other views of quality have emerged that measure a product's adaptability to customers' needs and a product's ability to encourage innovation. To judge software quality properly, argue the authors, managers must measure applications against all three approaches. Understanding the domain of a software application is an important part of that process. The domain is the body of knowledge about a user's needs and expectations for a product. Software domains change frequently based on how a consumer chooses to use, for example, Microsoft Word or a spreadsheet application. The domain can also be influenced by general changes in technology, such as the development of a new software platform. Thus, applications can't be judged only according to whether they conform to specifications. The authors discuss how to identify domain characteristics and software risks and suggest ways to reduce the variability of software domains.     

Understanding spread in the electronic futures markets: financial crisis perspective

This article analyses bid–ask spreads in U.S. electronic futures markets around the recent financial crisis. We decompose the bid–ask spread into three components – order processing, inventory holding and adverse selection costs – and show that adverse selection costs increased the most during the crisis while order processing costs are the largest cost component. Volume significantly affects inventory holding and order processing costs, whereas volatility only influences inventory holding costs. The crisis period had a significant effect on these relations. This study extends the existing literature on liquidity in equity to futures markets.     

Nonconscious memory processes in marketing: A historical perspective and future directions

Nonconscious memory processes play a major role in influencing consumption, yet this topic is an understudied area within marketing. Within the general rubric of nonconscious processes recent marketing articles have focused on preconscious processing of advertising, implicit memory for brand names, and subliminal processing and choice. This article provides a historical overview of nonconsciousness by tracing its development in psychology and philosophy. Building on current work in this area, future research priorities are identified to enhance our understanding of this topic. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.