Brazilian management gurus as reflexive soft-HRM practitioners: an empirical study

This article is an empirical study of Brazilian management gurus, that is, Portuguese-speaking gurus who practise almost wholly in Brazil. It is based on secondary, and primary elite interview data, and finds that Brazilian gurus are reflexive, national-culturally congruent, soft-HRM practitioners, a collective institution working with companies on the implementation of soft-HRM initiatives. Identifying Brazilian gurus in this way is our first contribution. Our second contribution is to provide an empirical account of the very existence and work of these particular national gurus, distinguished from international gurus (like Tom Peters), and not otherwise mentioned in the literature on gurus or soft-HRM. Our third contribution is to present gurus' own understandings of their practice in this soft-HRM role. This they relate to the Brazilian cultural context, and distinguish from that of business schools and motivational speakers. They also identify personally unique characteristics. Our final contribution, taking these three together, is to explore their implications for understandings of HRM, in Brazil and internationally, particularly in relation to the role management gurus.     

Sales force automation systems: An analysis of factors underpinning the sophistication of deployed systems in the UK financial services industry

This study investigates organizational and strategic context variables that are linked to the sophistication of sales force automation systems in UK financial services firms. We find that increasing sophistication in SFA deployment, evaluated as a count of the number of types of results of sales campaigns that are measured, is driven directly by the information orientation of the host firm. We also find that the “sophistication” of deployed systems is, in fact, limited — the information held on the systems cannot underpin the strategic goals of the sales/marketing managers. We theorise that adoption of SFA systems is driven by managerial imperatives and that these have resulted in sales force resistance — shown by the paucity of information held on adopted SFA systems.     

An empirical investigation of organizational memetic variation

The potential of a theory based on organizational memes in coevolution with the environment has been postulated, but remains empirically under-developed. This study explores whether understanding organizational memetic variation is empirically possible and, if so, whether it might, with further development, provide managers with early indications of a misalignment between organizational action (operationalized as memetic variation) and strategic intent—the amount of memetic variation needed to stay aligned with the competitive environment. A method for empirically identifying knowledge-based memes in everyday practice is developed. It stems from modern advances in genetics allowing micro-level changes in genes to be linked to macro-environmental dynamics. Using the concept that memetic variation is caused by everyday, uncontrollable uncertainties of interpretation, memetic variation is reduced to seven categorical types. A highly exploratory quasi-experimental design allows a preliminary comparison of a would-be innovative ‘Portfolio Management Committee’ with self-organizing Internet chat-room settings that are representational of open-source innovation. Results are consistent with predictions showing that higher levels of variation are seen in the latter, despite the former’s strategic intent of innovating to stay aligned with a dynamic environment. Further work is needed, however, to test reliability and validity.      

Commonality in Codes of Ethics

We create a database of company codes of ethics from firms listed on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and, separately, a sample of small firms. The SEC believes that “ethics codes do, and should, vary from company to company.” Using textual analysis techniques, we measure the extent of commonality across the documents. We find substantial levels of common sentences used by the firms, including a few cases where the codes of ethics are essentially identical. We consider these results in the context of legal statements versus value statements. While legal writing often mandates duplication, we argue that value-based statements should be held to a higher standard of originality. Our evidence is consistent with isomorphic pressures on smaller firms to conform.     

Managerial effect or firm effect: Evidence from the private debt market

This paper provides evidence that the managerial effect is a key determinant of firms’ cost of capital, in the context of private debt contracting. Applying the novel empirical method developed by an earlier study to a large sample that tracks the job movement of top managers, we find that the managerial effect is a critical and significant factor that explains a large part of the variation in loan contract terms more accurately than firm fixed effects. Additional evidence shows that banks “follow” managers when they change jobs and offer loan contracts with preferential terms to their new firms.     

The Reverse Favourite–longshot Bias and Market Efficiency in Major League Baseball: An Update

Racetrack and sports betting markets have been researched extensively with respect to the question of market efficiency. In contrast to the consistently observed favourite–longshot bias found in racetrack betting markets, it has been shown that gamblers in the market for Major League Baseball games reveal the opposite behaviour. This paper updates the previous study with ten years of additional data for the 1990–99 seasons. The strength of the reverse favourite–longshot bias is virtually identical to the original paper. The result suggests that, contrary to most reported inefficiencies in gambling markets, this bias appears to be permanent.     

Thailand: The next NIC?

Some economists say that lkailand will be the next Asian country to acquire newly industrialized country status. What opportunities does it ofer your business?     

Abnormal real operations,real earnings management,and subsequent crashes in stock prices

We study the impact of firms’ abnormal business operations on their future crash risk in stock prices. Computed based on real earnings management (REM) models, firms’ deviation in real operations (DROs) from industry norms is shown to be positively associated with their future crash risk. This association is incremental to that between discretionary accruals (DAs) and crash risk found by prior studies. Moreover, after Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002, DRO’s predictive power for crash risk strengthens substantially, while DA’s predictive power essentially dissipates. These results are consistent with the prior finding that managers shift from accrual earnings management to REM after SOX. We further develop a suspect-firm approach to capture firms’ use of DRO for REM purposes. This analysis shows that REM-firms experience a significant increase in crash risk in the following year. These findings suggest that the impact of DRO on crash risk is at least partially through REM.     

Motivating high‐impact innovation: Evidence from managerial compensation contracts

We investigate the relationship between Chief Executive Officer (CEO) compensation and firm innovation and find that long‐term incentives in the form of options, especially unvested options, and protection from managerial termination in the form of golden parachutes are positively related to corporate innovation, and particularly to high‐impact, exploratory (new knowledge creation) invention. Conversely, non‐equity pay has a detrimental effect on the input, output and impact of innovation. Tests using the passage of an option expensing regulation (FAS 123R) as an exogenous shock to option compensation suggest a causal interpretation for the link between long‐term pay incentives, patents and citations. Furthermore, we find that the decline in option pay following the implementation of FAS 123R has led to a significant reduction in exploratory innovation and therefore had a detrimental effect on innovation output. Overall, our findings support the idea that compensation contracts that protect from early project failure and incentivize long‐term commitment are more suitable for inducing high‐impact corporate innovation.