Pig pandemic: Industrial hog farming in eastern Mexico

Industrial hog farming is an increasingly important land use in Mexico. Despite the known public health and environmental risks associated with this factory-style model of production, hog concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) remain unregulated. Legal standards regarding the establishment and operation of swine CAFOs are lacking at municipal, regional, and federal levels. There are currently no restrictions on the size, concentration, or geographic location of operations, and public notice to surrounding and downstream communities is generally not required. These lax environmental standards facilitate swine CAFO expansion in regions such as the Perote Valley, with potential for negative long-term impacts on public health, community well-being, water resources, ecosystems, and climate.     

The relationship between multinationality and performance: Knowledge-intensive vs. capital-intensive service micro-multinational enterprises

This research explores the relationship between multinationality and firm performance (M-P) in the context of micro-multinational enterprises (mMNEs) within the service sector. We examine the moderating effects of industry characteristics using a data set of 1082 Spanish service mMNEs over an eight-year period. The empirical results provide statistical evidence that knowledge-intensive service mMNEs exhibit an inverted U-shaped M-P relationship, while capital-intensive service mMNEs present a U-shaped relationship. Our findings demonstrate that knowledge-intensive service mMNEs increase their performance in the initial stage of multinationality, encounter a threshold of internationalization at relatively low levels of multinationality and have a propensity to over-internationalize. By comparison, capital-intensive service mMNEs experience negative performance effects at low levels of multinationality and positive ones as they further internationalize. Given that their operations are scale-sensitive, they tend to expand internationally by concentrating their operations in few foreign markets as a means to overcome the liabilities of internationalization and smallness. We contribute to the literatures on multinationality research in the service sector and on SME internationalization by showing that the effects of multinationality on the performance of mMNEs depend on industry characteristics and that such contextual factors provide a better understanding of the M-P relationship.     

THE EFFECTS OF MUTUAL FUNDS ON M&A COMPENSATION

Motivated by shareholders’ interest in combating executive wealth expropriation through the merger and acqusition (M&A) process, we study how mutual funds influence firm behavior around an acquisition through votes against management proposals. We find that mutual funds reduce the chief executive officer's ability to extract rents during the M&A process by voting against management‐sponsored compensation proposals after the acquisition, thus lowering both excess compensation and increasing pay‐for‐performance sensitivity. Furthermore, mutual fund voting magnifies the impact on negatively performing firms and firms with a larger amount of the mutual fund's holdings in the firm.     

Toward a Theory of Reinstatement: Seven Motivations for Reinstatement as Relationship Repair

There is a long, interdisciplinary tradition of examining why organizations remove privileges from members as a part of disciplinary action. In contrast, little is known about why organizations return privileges after disciplinary action has occurred. Nonetheless, such reinstatement is ubiquitous in organizations. This paper provides a starting point for a theory of reinstatement by using the emerging theoretical domain of relationship repair. Treating reinstatement as relationship repair highlights the importance of causal attribution, social equilibrium, relationship structure, and power as means of relationship repair. The paper uses these four bases of relationship repair to develop a series of specific motivations for why managers might reinstate privileges.     

Supply network capacity planning for semiconductor manufacturing with uncertain demand and correlation in demand considerations

A semiconductor supply network involves many expensive steps, which have to be executed to serve global markets. The complexity of global capacity planning combined with the large capital expenditures to increase factory capacity makes it important to incorporate optimization methodologies for cost reduction and long-term planning. The typical view of a semiconductor supply network consists of layers for wafer fab, sort, assembly, test and demand centers. We present a two-stage stochastic integer-programming formulation to model a semiconductor supply network. The model makes strategic capacity decisions, (i.e., build factories or outsource) while accounting for the uncertainties in demand for multiple products. We use the model not only to analyze how variability in demand affects the make/buy decisions but also to investigate how the correlation between demands of different products affects these strategic decisions. Finally, we demonstrate the value of incorporating demand uncertainty into a decision-making scheme.