The harder they fall,the faster they rise: Approach and avoidance focus in narcissistic CEOs

Drawing on theoretical underpinnings of approach‐avoidance motivation and CEO narcissism, we provide a framework examining stronger approach focus (motivation towards desirable outcomes) and weaker avoidance focus (motivation away from undesirable outcomes) in narcissistic CEOs using a quasi‐natural experimental setting—the economic crisis beginning in 2007. Because highly narcissistic CEOs possess lower avoidance motivation in the precrisis period, their firms face greater declines in the onset of the crisis. However, their greater tendency towards approach motivation enables narcissistic CEOs to increase firm performance in the postcrisis period. While narcissistic CEOs are less likely to protect against potential shocks, they are adept at helping firms recover from such shocks. Using a sample of 392 CEOs representing 2,352 CEO firm‐years, we find support for the proposed framework. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Regular Effective Demand Systems (REDS)

Empirical demand analysis is usually conducted on the basis of either ‘regularity’ or ‘flexibility’. This paper takes a middle ground between ‘regularity’ and ‘flexibility’, offering a compromise in the form of a new specification termed ‘REDS’.     

Dynamic labor demand in China: public and private objectives

This article studies dynamic labor demand by private and public manufacturing plants in China. The analysis uncovers the objectives of public and private enterprises and estimates labor adjustment costs by ownership. Public plants maximize the discounted present value of profits without a soft budget constraint. There is strong evidence of quadratic and linear firing costs at the plant level. The higher quadratic adjustment costs of the public plants may reflect their internalization of social costs of employment adjustment. Domestic private plants and collective plants have about the same discount factor, much lower than state‐controlled plants.     

Corporate Culture and Greed — The Case of the Australian Wheat Board

Between 1999 and 2002, the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) was involved in an elaborate bribery, or ‘kickback’, scheme involving the illicit payment of A$300 million to the Iraq government for supposed ‘transportation fees’ that were funnelled to the Saddam Hussein regime. This was clearly in breach of the United Nations trade sanctions and was apparently perpetrated by the AWB to secure continued sales with the lucrative Iraqi market. This paper aims to gain further insight into how a corporate culture can lead to greed, corruption and deception. Specifically, this study aims to add to the literature by analysing, using Schein's (1997, 2004) theoretical framework, a case on the development of a corrupt corporate culture. Content analysis of official investigative reports and other published documents is used to determine the extent to which the AWB's corporate culture and leadership may have influenced the behaviour of senior managers. The findings indicate that the culture within the AWB fostered an environment in which senior managers placed sales and profits above the sanctions clearly enunciated by the United Nations.     

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People in the Accounting Profession – An Exploratory Study

The aim of this article is to explore the role that accounting skills and accounting qualifications may play in entering fields that have been virtually closed to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) 1 people. It is acknowledged in the literature that accounting processes and accountants have historically had a domineering and detrimental impact on marginalised groups, such as ATSI peoples. However, we propose an alternative viewpoint using a Bourdieun perspective and theorise that accounting skills and accounting qualifications (capital) can open doors to powerful organisations and institutions (fields). As this is an exploratory study, we have limited our analysis to one key aspect of the Bourdieun framework, namely that of field. To that end, we examine accounting and other organisations that have traditionally closed their doors to marginalised groups in society. Interviews were conducted with ATSI people who have successfully gained entry into the field of the accounting profession, in an effort to understand the experiences and barriers they faced and to investigate the role that accounting skills plays in enabling ATSI people access to fields and decision‐making positions that have traditionally been inaccessible to them.     

The Highly Troubled Ethical Environment of the Life Insurance Industry: Has it Changed Significantly from the Last Decade and if so, why?

This paper presents the findings of two surveys conducted in April 2003 of Chartered Life Underwriters (CLUs) and Chartered Financial Consultants (ChFCs) who are members of the Society of Financial Service Professionals. The first survey of 3000 CLUs and ChFCs – the life insurance industry’s most highly regarded professionals – was aimed at identifying the key ethical issues faced by professionals working in the life insurance industry today. A comparison of these findings with those of earlier studies conducted in 1990 and 1995 suggests that while the key ethical issues facing those working in the life insurance business today are essentially the same as those encountered during industry’s highly troubled ethical environment of the early 1990s, these issues are perceived as presenting somewhat less serious problems than in the past. The second survey of 3000 CLUs and ChFCs was aimed at determining the extent to which these professionals perceive the industry created Insurance Marketplace Standards Association (IMSA) as having contributed to any change in the ethical environment that has taken place. The findings suggest that IMSA has played an important role in influencing senior managers to more strongly encourage and support ethical market conduct, a critical step in improving the industry’s ethical environment.     

Ethical Challenges in the Two Main Segments of the Insurance Industry: Key Considerations in the Evolving Financial Services Marketplace

Based on the findings of several research studies of professionals in both the property-liability insurance industry and the life insurance industry, the paper makes and supports several important points. First, ethical challenges in the insurance industry involve not only a series of ethical dilemmas frequently faced by those working in the business, but also a variety of factors that hinder those working in the industry as they seek to resolve the ethical dilemmas encountered in the course of their work. Both of these two components of ethical challenges must be understood by those in the financial services industry who will deal with insurance operations in the future. Second, whereas the life insurance business and the property-liability insurance business have traditionally been viewed as being quite different from one another and still are in terms of operations and regulation, the research findings show that they are no longer very different in terms of the key ethical challenges faced by those working in the two segments of the industry. The paper shows how during the past decade the ethical challenges in the property-liability insurance industry have become quite similar to those in the more troubled life insurance industry.     

Customer Relationship Management: A Comparative Analysis of Family and Nonfamily Business Practices*

It has been reported that family businesses perceive excellent customer service as critical to the future of their businesses. However, little research into the customer relationship management (CRM) practices of family businesses has been performed. In this study, we examine CRM implementation among 82 family and 370 nonfamily firms. Family and nonfamily businesses report similar attitudes toward the importance of CRM, their knowledge of CRM, and their success when they do implement it. However, using a logit regression model, we find that the actual implementation strategies of family businesses are significantly different from those of nonfamily businesses. These results remain constant when controlling for size and industry sector.     

Inferring Market Structure from Customer Response to Competing and Complementary Products

We consider customer influences on market structure, arguing that market structure should explain the extent to which any given set of market offerings are substitutes or complements. We describe recent additions to the market structure analysis literature and identify promising directions for new research in market structure analysis. Impressive advances in data collection, statistical methodology and information technology provide unique opportunities for researchers to build market structure tools that can assist real-time marketing decision-making.     

Exploring goal‐setting as a tool for leadership development

Goal‐setting theory is based on the premise that conscious goals affect action and is supported by four decades of research and more than 1,000 scholarly publications. Although the theory has been widely applied in management settings, it is an underused framework in the broader field of leadership development. This study considers the effects of goal‐setting as applied in a leadership program conducted for local board members in a nonprofit membership organization, the Florida Farm Bureau Federation. A final reduced regression model explains about 25% of the variance in individual performance by considering goal specificity, goal difficulty, education level, and gender. This study has implications for professional development programming and its application of goal‐setting theory. Additional research is needed to explore further the application of goal‐setting theory in programming for volunteer leaders.