Effective leadership in unexpected places: A sociohistorical analysis of the Red Tops dance orchestra

The Red Tops, an African-American dance orchestra that performed in southern states during the period spanning two decades before and after the U.S. civil rights movement, might seem a rather unexpected source for the study of effective leadership. Nonetheless, Walter Osborne's management of the group provides an exceedingly appropriate case for just that. In this article, we examine the phenomenon of team leadership using a sociohistorical paradigm to identify and describe effective team leadership, draw lessons for organizational leaders, and demonstrate the power of sociohistorical analysis. In our endeavor, we used the framework proposed by Morgeson, Lindoerfer, and Loring to explain how the team needs of the Red Tops were met by the team leadership of Osborne, the band's elected manager. The main lesson for business team leaders is to ensure that every member feels free to express his or her own identity, while still preserving the shared identity of the team. The team's ability to function and remain intact over a long period of time is enhanced by the ability of the team leader to meet team needs—in terms of trust, fairness, and equality—such that each member may experience what it means to be a true part of the group.     

Lost and Found in Translation: How Firms Use Anisomorphism to Manage the Institutional Complexity of CSR

Prior research on the internationalization of firms from emerging countries has fruitfully invoked institutional theory to emphasize the legitimacy benefits that firms that obtain from showing isomorphism with international norms such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Without denying the intuitive appeal for these firms to communicate acceptance of CSR, we suggest that firms face a legitimacy trade-off, where the hoped-for legitimacy benefits of isomorphism must be weighed against other home-country institutional considerations. We advance and test this notion that firms will navigate this institutional complexity by engaging in anisomorphism, i.e., espousing general acceptance with international values but with selective ‘translation’ based on home country differences. We test our predictions by analysing firms' communication of CSR, using a unique dataset comprised of 245 firms observed over the period from 2000 to 2018. Consistent with our predictions, we find that firms from countries more reliant on natural resource extraction (e.g., mining and fossil fuel industries) de-emphasize the environmental component of CSR, and firms from more autocratic countries de-emphasize the human rights component of CSR. Additionally, and consistent with our presumption of firms' weighing the international versus home-country legitimacy trade-off, we find that these main effects are sensitive to changes in firms' levels of internationalization.     

Validity and reliability of contingent valuation and life satisfaction measures of welfare: An application to the value of national Olympic success

The contingent valuation method (CV) has long been used to estimate nonmarket values of environmental and other public goods and amenities. Recently, life satisfaction (LS) measures have been used to estimate nonmarket values. This article empirically compares CV and LS measures of welfare. We elicit willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates for medals won by Canadian athletes and LS measures using Canadian survey data collected before and after the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. These data permit comparative analyses of reliability and validity of CV and LS measures. Both exhibit econometric reliability. CV and LS WTP estimates for medals increase after the Olympics. CV measures of WTP exhibit temporal reliability but LS measures of welfare lack temporal reliability and are significantly greater than CV measures.     

Airport Regulation: Reflecting on the Lessons from BAA plc

This article discusses the implications of airport privatization and regulation with reference to the case of BAA plc. It concludes that regulation should be implemented in a coordinated manner which is consistent with wider policy goals and which respects the outcomes for all stakeholders. The need for countries to have a strategic airports policy to guide development towards national economic and environmental goals is highlighted. The implications of the regulation of BAA to protect public interest is both timely and topical given that the next government airports policy is due to be released in 2002 and current plans for the privatization of air traffic control. Regulation may be the only policy lever to shape a privatized and commercialised airport system and its role within a wider integrated transport strategy.     

The best of intentions

Cynthia Mitchell has finally gotten a plum management opportunity at AgFunds, a Houston-based company that provides financial services to farmers and farmer-owned cooperatives. Peter Jones, regional vice president, has recruited Cynthia to revive the Arkansas district, which has been losing customers for 15 years. The sales force there isn't bad; it's just been poorly managed by an indifferent boss for too long. Still, Cynthia knows she'll need at least one powerhouse sales rep to get things back on track. She thinks she's found that person in Steve Ripley, this year's top trainee at AgFunds, who is inexplicably available three months after the training period is over. In the interview, he proves to be ambitious, intelligent, and personable. But several of Cynthia's colleagues suggest that Steve might not be the best fit for the job: He's a black man in a company whose customer base is mostly conservative and white. Uncomfortably recalling her own experiences at AgFunds--she'd been rejected for a position in a territory that was deemed too unfriendly to female sales reps--Cynthia addresses the issue with Peter. The mostly white farmers in Cynthia's district just won't trust their books to a black professional, Peter explains. And other minority professionals at AgFunds have derailed their careers trying to make inroads in unfriendly districts. "Steve deserves to start out in a more hospitable district. Once the right opportunity opens up, he'll be hired, and he'll do brilliantly," Peter reassures Cynthia, but she's still uncertain. Should she ignore her customers' biases and hire Steve, possibly setting him up to fail? Or would it be better to let Steve wait for a friendlier opportunity? Four experts comment on this fictional case study.     

The potential impacts of the EU/US Open Sky Agreement: What will happen at Heathrow after spring 2008

The paper examines the impact of removing the restrictions remaining in EU/US bilateral air service agreements, the major one relating to the air services between the US and the UK. These are dismantled under Stage I of the EU/US Open Skies agreement, which will automatically fall unless progress is made on the Stage II issues, especially reform of the US ownership and control rules. Previous evaluations of the likely impact of lifting these restrictions are reviewed, especially in relation to passengers and fares between the US and London. Such evaluations look optimistic given preliminary plans for the first summer season. Reasons why airlines prefer Heathrow to Gatwick are discussed before comparing US/London air service capacity for June 2008 with the previous June, with indications for a 5% increase in overall seat capacity and an 8% increase in flights. A net increase of seven daily flights is planned from Heathrow and Gatwick, not far in excess of normal market growth and no new non-stop routes will be introduced that had not already been operated from either UK airport. These changes are analysed in terms of US and UK airline responses, taking into account slot availability and cost. The seat capacity share of US carriers from both Heathrow and Gatwick advances by just over 2 percentage points to 40%.     

Measuring risk in the mining sector with ARCH models with important observations on sample size

This paper uses the GARCH technique to estimate time-varying individual firm risk measures for the mining sector. In general, the mining industry is riskier than the market with estimated betas greater than one. The results also show that the level of risk in the industry is quite volatile and can be divided into three distinct time periods according to the magnitude and variability of the firm's betas. Additionally, the number of observations in a sample has a strong relationship to the detection and estimation of an ARCH effect in the data, which cannot be explained by firm financial size.     

Superstition and real estate prices: transaction-level evidence from the US housing market

We investigate the impact of superstition on prices paid by Chinese-American home buyers. Chinese consider 8 lucky and 4 unlucky. Lacking explicit buyer ethnicity identifiers, we develop a binomial name classifier, a machine learning approach applicable to any data set containing names, that allows for falsification tests using other ethnic groups, and mitigates ambiguity from the transliteration of Chinese characters into the Latin alphabet. Chinese buyers pay 1–2% premiums for addresses including an 8 and 1% discounts for addresses including a 4. These results are unrelated to unobserved property quality; no premium exists when Chinese sell to non-Chinese. The persistence of superstitions reflects the extent of cultural assimilation.