Global talent management and global talent challenges: Strategic opportunities for IHRM

The need for multinational firms to be as competitive in the global marketplace as possible has increased dramatically over the past twenty years. For international human resource management this has meant many strategic opportunities to international human resource management. An excellent example of such an opportunity is that which exists regarding the management of talent. This opportunity began to develop in the late 1990s with the advent of the challenge of “global talent management.” During the past few years this opportunity has expanded to include challenges dealing with talent shortages, talent surpluses, locating and relocating talent, and compensation levels of talent. Together, these conditions are all “global talent challenges”. In this article we describe these several global talent challenges and the strategic opportunities they present to firms and propose the implications of these for firms and for the field of international human resource management.     

Pricing options with Green's functions when volatility,interest rate and barriers depend on time

We derive the Green's function for the Black–Scholes partial differential equation with time-varying coefficients and time-dependent boundary conditions. We provide a thorough discussion of its implementation within a pricing algorithm that also accommodates American style options. Greeks can be computed as derivatives of the Green's function. Generic handling of arbitrary time-dependent boundary conditions suggests our approach to be used with the pricing of (American) barrier options, although options without barriers can be priced equally well. Numerical results indicate that knowledge of the structure of the Green's function together with the well-developed tools of numerical integration make our approach fast and numerically stable.     

When does ownership matter? Board characteristics and behavior

We develop a contingency approach to explain how firm ownership influences the monitoring function of the board—measured as the magnitude of external audit fees contracted by the board—by extending agency theory to incorporate the resource dependence notion that boards have distinct incentives and abilities to monitor management. Analyses of data on Continental European companies reveal that while board independence and audit services are complementary when ownership is dispersed, this is not the case when ownership is concentrated—suggesting that ownership concentration and board composition become substitutes in terms of monitoring management. Additional analysis shows that the relationship between board composition and external audit fees is also contingent upon the type of the controlling shareholder. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Upward and downward complementarity: the meso core of evolutionary growth theory

We propose that the concept of complementarity can take two distinct meanings in evolutionary economics: one referring to Adam Smith’s notion of increasing specialization and the division of labour, which we denote ‘downward complementarity’ (wholes into new parts); and a second type that refers to the discovery of emergent complementarity between extant or new components and products, which we call ‘upward complementarity’ (parts into new wholes). We outline this new conception and explore some of its analytic and theoretic implications.     

A clash of governance logics: Foreign ownership and board monitoring

We ask whether and when shareholder‐oriented foreign owners are likely to change corporate governance logics in a stakeholder‐oriented setting by introducing shareholder‐oriented governance practices. We focus on board monitoring and claim that because the bundle of practices used in a stakeholder context does not protect shareholder‐oriented foreign owners' interests, they seek to introduce their own practices. Our results suggest that board monitoring is only activated when shareholder‐oriented foreign ownership is high and that the influence of foreign ownership is especially strong in firms without large domestic owners, with high levels of risk and poor performance. Our findings uncover the possibility of the co‐existence of different corporate governance logics within a given country, shaped by the nature and weight of foreign owners Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Obesity and compensatory consumption: Evidence from jewelry shopping

This article examines the link between obesity and compensatory consumption in the context of jewelry shopping. Study 1 finds that participants with higher body mass indices are willing to pay more for a jewelry item. Study 2 generalizes this finding by documenting that jewelry store sales are higher in places with greater obesity rates. Using Google Trends data, Study 3 shows that the search interest for jewelry stores increases with the obesity rate and that this relationship is mediated by people's dissatisfaction with their current weight as revealed by their search activity. Finally, supporting the self-discrepancy account, Study 4 shows that the use of self-related and discrepancy words together in jewelry-related tweets is more pronounced in places with greater obesity rates. These findings collectively help enhance the field's understanding of the consumption behavior of people who are part of a large stigmatized group.     

How do low-income enrollees in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces respond to cost-sharing?

The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to offer cost-sharing reductions (CSRs) to low-income consumers on the marketplaces. We link 2013–2015 All-Payer Claims Data to 2004–2013 administrative hospital discharge data from Utah and exploit policy-driven differences in the actuarial value of CSR plans that are solely determined by income. This allows us to examine the effect of cost-sharing on medical spending among low-income individuals. We find that enrollees facing lower levels of cost-sharing have higher levels of healthcare spending, controlling for past healthcare use. We estimate demand elasticities of total health care spending among this low-income population of approximately −0.12, suggesting that demand-side price mechanisms in health insurance design work similarly for low-income and higher-income individuals. We also find that cost-sharing subsidies substantially lower out-of-pocket medical care spending, showing that the CSR program is a key mechanism for making health care affordable to low-income individuals.     

The nonlinear effect of financial literacy on wealth: evidence from Germany

Empirica - This paper investigates the nonlinearity in the relationship of financial literacy and wealth and addresses the potentially inadequate measurement of financial literacy. Using data from...