The anxiety of learning. Interview by Diane L. Coutu

Despite all the time, money, and energy that executives pour into corporate change programs, the stark reality is that few companies ever succeed in genuinely reinventing themselves. That's because the people at those companies rarely master the art of transformational learning--that is, eagerly challenging deeply held assumptions about a company's processes and, in response, altering their thoughts and actions. Instead, most people just end up doing the same old things in superficially tweaked ways. Why is transformational learning so hard to achieve? HBR senior editor Diane Coutu explores this question with psychologist and MIT professor Edgar Schein, a world-renowned expert on organizational development. In sharp contrast to the optimistic rhetoric that permeates the debate on corporate learning and change, Schein is cautious about what companies can and cannot accomplish. Corporate culture can change, he says, but this kind of learning takes time, and it isn't fun. Learning is a coercive process, Schein argues, that requires blood, sweat, tears, and a certain level of anxiety to achieve the desired effect. In this article, he describes two basic types of anxiety--learning anxiety and survival anxiety--that drive radical relearning in organizations. Schein's theories spring from his early research on how American prisoners of war in Korea had been brainwashed by their captors. He cites the parallels between the "coercive persuasion" tactics the Chinese communists used to control their prisoners (isolating powerful ones and overseeing all communications) and the corporate boot camps that American companies use to indoctrinate their managers. Indeed, heavy socialization is back in style in U.S. corporations today, Schein says, even if no one is calling it that.     

What's wrong with executive compensation? A roundtable moderated by Charles Elson

The value that many superpaid CEO superstars supposedly created has largely disappeared, and the likelihood that it will be recovered anytime soon seems remote. On top of that, a good number of top executives treated their companies like ATMs, awarding themselves millions of dollars in corporate perks. It's hard to dispute the idea that executives were corrupted by the sums of money dangled in front of them. What's wrong with executive compensation, and what can we do about it? HBR and the University of Delaware's Center for Corporate Governance convened a round-table of compensation experts last October on the university's campus in Newark, Delaware. The 12 panelists, from CEOs to investors, from the professionals who advise them to a chief justice who rules on their disputes, provided an extraordinary diversity of viewpoints. The panelist began by debating ways to align the interests of the senior executives with the long-term interests of the company-weighing the relative benefits of stock options versus stock grants, for instance. But the discussion expanded to cover broader questions of corporate governance and company values. "The main reason compensation increases every year is that most boards want their CEO to be in the top half of the CEO peer group," said Ed Woolard,Jr., a former CEO of DuPont. And compensation lawyer Joe Bachelder pointed out the danger of structuring pay in such a way that it dampens risk taking among executives. It was a lively and wide-ranging discussion of one business's most pressing issues.     

IX. Geld und kapital

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Suppressing Insider Trading

Writing in Economic Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 5, Hugh High, Professor of Accounting and Finance at Massey University, New Zealand, argued that attempts to suppress insider trading would both impede the workings of the market and trample basic individual liberties. Edgar Palamountain, Director of the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust, takes issue with Hugh High: insider trading, he claims, is not victimless and should be outlawed by statutory sanction. Hugh High defends his corner.     

Similarities and differences in small and large corporation beliefs about capital structure policy

Theoretical researchers posit many factors that affect a firm's capital structure decisions. Theory also suggests that these influences will have different impacts on small and large firms. However, empiricists face difficulties in testing these hypotheses due to problems of quantifying the motivations, expectations, and preferences prevalent in the various theories.To test some of the strands of theory and to determine differences between small and large corporation capital structure beliefs, a survey was sent to financial managers of 405 small corporations; 27% of the surveys were completed and returned. By comparing the results of this survey to those of previously published large corporation surveys, similarities (e.g., belief in a financing pecking order, little belief in the importance of bankruptcy costs, agency costs, and information asymmetries) and differences (e.g., less reliance by small firms on target debt ratios, greater preference for zero debt by the small firms) were identified.     

Holm's probability-paper tests in relation to the Kolmogorov—Smirnov one-sample test

Abstract

In [5] S. Holm proposed teststatistics for testing simple hypotheses by means of the probability paper for distribution functions (d.f.) of the form F ₀(x) = Φ[(x - μ₀)/σ₀], where μ₀ is location parameter, σ₀ scale parameter, and Φ is an absolutely continuous distribution function with Φ(0) = 1/2. If μ₀ and (σ₀ are known, the hypothesis H ₀ is:

• H ₀: H(x) = F ₀(x) = Φ[(x?μ₀)/σ₀],

while the three possible alternatives are

• H ₁: H(x) > F ₀(x)

• H ₂: H(x) < F ₀(x)

• H ₃: H(x) ≠ F ₀(x).