Perspectives on the Sources of Heterogeneity in Indian Industry

This paper examines technical efficiency variation across four industrial sectors in India using a stochastic production frontier technique. The results obtained are comparable to technical efficiency distribution patterns obtained in other countries. Heterogeneity in firm-level efficiency is examined against internal, firm-level and external, industry and location characteristics. The results suggest that managerial effectiveness significantly influences efficiency and that there are considerable benefits deriving from location within established industrial clusters for particular industries. The methodology and findings indicate that the study of industry-specific technical efficiency patterns is a useful analytic tool for tracking firm response to ongoing liberalization.     

What's next in key account management research? Building the bridge between the academic literature and the practitioners' priorities

This research contrasts the academic literature on key account management (KAM) with the topics in this subject that are most critical to practitioners. Sixty four academic articles published in 17 journals, and ninety practitioners' articles appearing in the Velocity Magazine — published by the Strategic Account Management Association — were content analyzed and classified under ten ‘topic’ categories. Similarities and differences in the results for academics and practitioners are discussed. In addition, two specific topics were identified as being extremely important to managers but still under-researched by academics: the role of senior management in KAM, and the importance of internal alignment in determining KAM success.     

Influence of technological support,skills and competencies,and learning on corporate entrepreneurship in European technology firms

In the today′s changing environment, firms are hardly competing with each other to achieve a competitive advantage that can differentiate them from others and improve their organizational performance. In this sense, it is crucial to develop corporate entrepreneurship and promote strategic variables that foster it.The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of different technological variables (top management support to technology, technological skills and technological distinctive competencies) and organizational learning on corporate entrepreneurship, and thus analyze the influence of corporate entrepreneurship on organizational performance in the context of technology firms.A sample of 160 European technology firms was selected from the database Amadeus in 2009 with CEOs as our main informants. The hypotheses studied are empirically confirmed by using a hierarchical regression model.     

Socioeconomic Index for Income and Poverty Prediction: A Sufficient Dimension Reduction Approach

The present paper introduces a novel method for the construction of Socioeconomic Status (SES) indices that are specific to a target variable of interest. It is based on the Sufficient Dimension Reduction (SDR) paradigm and uses a factorized model-based approach to simultaneously deal with predictor variables of mixed nature (i.e. quantitative, binary, and ordinal), which are usual in microeconomic data. These SES indices also identify relevant predictor variables using a two-step regularized matrix factorization approach. Using data from household surveys for Argentina (Encuesta Permanente de Hogares-EPH), the proposed method is compared with other existing dimension reduction algorithms such as standard Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and its version for mixed variables, regression on the full set of variables and Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator regression (LASSO).     

Stock Market Anomalies: What Can We Learn from Repurchases and Insider Trading?

We examine whether managers’ trading decisions (both at a firm and personal level) are correlated with trading strategies suggested by the operating accruals and the post-earnings announcement drift (SUE) anomalies. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of the use of managerial trading activity to infer managers’ private valuation about their own securities. Our results provide corroborative evidence for the accruals anomaly, i.e., managers’ repurchase and insider trading behavior varies consistently with the information underlying the operating accruals trading strategy. On the other hand, we do not find corroborative evidence for the SUE anomaly.

Consistent strategy-proof assignment by hierarchical exchange

We characterize the family of efficient, consistent, and strategy-proof rules in house allocation problems. These rules follow an endowment inheritance and trade procedure as in Pápai’s hierarchical exchange rules (Pápai in Econometrica 68, 1403–1433, 2000) and closely resemble Ergin’s priority rules (Ergin in Econometrica 70, 2489–2497, 2002). We prove that if there are at least four objects, these are the only rules that are efficient in two-agent problems, $2$ -consistent, and strategy-proof. A corollary is that these three basic properties together imply the full requirements of efficiency, consistency, group strategy-proofness, and reallocation-proofness.     

Does it really pay to be good,everywhere? A first step to understand the corporate social and financial performance link in Latin American controversial industries

Most research studying the corporate social performance (CSP)–corporate financial performance (CFP) link has utilized developed country samples. Also, this literature has generally focused on a wide variety of industries, ignoring the fact that certain sectors – such as controversial industries – have graver social and environmental issues. Hence, a gap exists in this tradition when it comes to emerging markets and controversial industries. This paper attempts to fill this void by providing preliminary evidence and insight on the matter. Based on an exploration in six Latin American countries and five controversial industries, we find a negative bidirectional association (or a non‐significant one at best) between CSP and CFP. These results tend to contradict the mainstream conclusion of a positive bidirectional link, suggesting that institutional and market‐level forces play a major role in shaping this relationship.     

On Firms and the Next Generations: Difficulties and Possibilities for Business Ethics Inquiry

Despite the centrality of the topic for the debate on sustainability, future generations have largely been ignored by business ethics. This neglect is in part due to the enormous philosophical challenges posed by the concepts of future generations and intergenerational duties. This article reviews some of these difficulties and defends that much clarity would be gained from making a distinction between future generations and the next generations. It also argues that the concept of next generations offers a better starting point for business ethics to incorporate the topic in its research agenda. We then suggest four potential pathways to explore this territory. The four approaches build on the notion of organizations as communities with memory and vision, on the narrative shape of organizational life, on the affinity of stakeholders with the next generation, and on systems of indirect reciprocity. These first two approaches are connected to communitarian approaches to business ethics, and the last two engage in a dialog with contractarian views and stakeholder theory. The article ends with some implications for theory and practice.     

Impact of economic uncertainty in a small open economy: the case of Chile

We construct the first news-based economic uncertainty index for Chile, which allowed us to rebuild 23 years of the history of economic uncertainty in the country and quantify its impact on the economy. We find that an increase in economic uncertainty conveys a fall in GDP, investment, and employment, even after accounting for the small open economy nature of Chile. In contrast to previous studies for big and developed economies, we do not find evidence of an overshooting effect when uncertainty dissipates; therefore, increases in economic uncertainty have negative effects on the economy, even in the long-run. Our estimates suggest that these impacts range from 10% to 20% for aggregate investment, 2.5% to 5% for GDP, and 1.3% to 4.2% for employment. Extensions suggest that economic uncertainty affects both mining and non-mining investment, with the former showing a more pronounced decline. We also find that the bulk of effect of economic uncertainty on aggregate investment is via private investment, with some short-run impacts on public investment. Moreover, compared to the GDP response, aggregate consumption responds in almost the same way to an economic uncertainty shock.