The effect of CEOs on firm performance

The extent to which CEOs influence firm performance is fundamental to scholarly understanding of how organizations work; yet, this linkage is poorly understood. Previous empirical efforts to examine the link between CEOs and firm performance using variance decomposition, while provocative, nevertheless suffer from methodological problems that systematically understate the relative impact of CEOs on firm performance compared to industry and firm effects. This study addresses these methodological problems and reexamines the percentage of the variance in firm performance explained by heterogeneity in CEOs. The results of this study suggest that in certain settings the ‘CEO effect’ on corporate‐parent performance is substantially more important than that of industry and firm effects, but only moderately more important than industry and firm effects on business‐segment performance. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hospitality studies and hospitality management: A symbiotic relationship

The key contribution of this paper is to critically analyse advances made since the introduction of hospitality as a higher education subject, to capture contemporary thinking, and to support the recognition of the intellectual benefits for hospitality management theory and practices of a curriculum informed from a social science-based studies perspective. The benefits of this inter-relationship are demonstrated through the inclusion of an illustration informed by historical means of enquiry, which applies hermeneutical analysis and interpretation of St. Benedict's Rule (c. 530 A.D.). This serves to tangibly demonstrate the academic rigour, value, and educational gains achievable through a symbiotic relationship between hospitality studies and hospitality management.     

Consumer perceptions of higher and lower-level designed store environments

The role and influence of esthetics in the consumption of store environments remains poorly understood. Little is known about how esthetics propose substantial or adjunctive roles in consumers’ store experiences. The aim of this paper is to examine consumer perceptions of store design-architecture in high and low-level design contexts. Building on the esthetics, and environmental psychology literatures, our findings confirm consumers’ determinations of perceptual differences in the esthetic content contained in presented store environmental stimuli. Latent means comparisons confirm consumers’ perceptions of the presence of a high-level design in one fast-fashion store with a low-level design of a second store of the same retailer using a Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The results demonstrate the reliability and validity of the proposed constructs in confirming the presence of higher and low-levels of design. This research, thus, expands on the extant number of store specification and response constructs and prospectively opens up new lines of store environments research.     

A Ranking of the Most Productive Business Ethics Scholars: A Five-Year Study

This paper presents the results of a study that counted articles and the number of pages written on business ethics and published during the five-year period 1995–1999. Individual scholars were ranked on the basis of total articles and total pages published. Institutions were also ranked based on the number of pages and articles their scholars published in selected business ethics journals. This article is the first one to rank schools and individual scholars on the basis of research productivity in business ethics.     

On the shape of the single-country and world commodity-substitution and factor-substitution surfaces under conditions of joint production

In recent years trade theorists have completed the task of specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for the single-country and world transformation surfaces to be locally of any assigned degree of flatness. However those conditions are relevant only if the technology is of the no-joint-products type. In the present note we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the single-country and world transformation surfaces to be of any assigned degree of flatness under conditions of joint production; and we also obtain, as a by-product, necessary and sufficient conditions for the single-country and world equal-product surfaces to be of any assigned degree of flatness.     

The Morality of “new” CEO Activism

Journal of Business Ethics - CEOs’ social and environmental activism attracts significant public and research interest. Positioned as an expression of personal morality, such activism is...