Understanding Responsible Leadership: Role Identity and Motivational Drivers

This article contributes to the emerging discussion on responsible leadership by providing an analysis of the inner theatre of a responsible leader. I use a narrative approach for analyzing the biography of Anita Roddick as a widely acknowledged prototype of a responsible leader. With clinical and normative lenses I explore the relationship between responsible leadership behavior and the underlying motivational systems. I begin the article with an introduction outlining the current state of responsible leadership research and explaining the kind of magnifying glasses used to examine the case. I continue with a brief summary of Anita Roddick’s development from childhood to adulthood, which provides the biographical background for exploring her motivational systems as a leader. Against this backdrop, I analyze the relationship between motivational drivers and a responsible leadership identity as revealed by Roddick in different behavioral leadership roles. I conclude the article by providing a number of lessons learned for responsible leadership and the development of future global leaders. Dr. Nicola M. Pless is a former Vice President of leadership development at a large financial services institution. Currently she is Reader in Responsible Leadership at the University of St. Gallen and Research Director of the HSG-INSEAD Initiative on Responsible Leadership. She holds a Ph.D. in organizational theory and social issues from the University of St. Gallen and a diploma in clinical organizational psychology from INSEAD where she is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow. She is editor of “Responsible Leadership”, published by Routledge in 2006.     

消费者心理研究在市场营销中的应用

我国已进入以消费者为中心的买方经济时代。这要求企业在营销过程中,要不断注意消费者潜在的心理因素的变化趋势,认真研究消费者心理的特点与规律,准确把握消费者心理,建立有效的市场营销策略,以便适应、引导、改善和优化消费行为,扩大企业经营规模,增加企业市场份额。     

Using social media to report financial results

The growing influence of social media on financial performance reporting creates opportunities and challenges for both executives and corporate communications teams. This Accounting Matters feature provides background on current business reporting practices (including new SEC regulations) and insights from recent research on communication of financial results. The conclusion discusses future trends and provides recommendations for executives to consider when designing, implementing, and evaluating media and investor relations communication initiatives.     

Investment decisions with financial constraints. Evidence from Spanish firms

This paper analyses to what extent the rejection of the investment dynamics implied by the Euler equation model with quadratic and symmetric adjustment costs can be attributed to the fact that the investment behavior of some firms in some periods is financially constrained by the availability of internal funds. I use a hierarchy of finance model which assumes that internally generated finance for investment is available at a lower cost than external finance, and implies the existence of distinct financial regimes depending on the firm’s financial policy. I estimate the empirical investment equation derived from the model using GMM, taking into account the endogeneity of the selection and allowing for debt finance, imperfect competition and the existence of a possible measurement error in the user cost of capital. The empirical results suggest that the Euler equation model is not seriously misspecified for a sub-sample of firms pursuing a particular financial policy.     

How does investor relations disclosure affect analysts' forecasts?

We study the relationship between investor relations disclosure and analyst forecast properties in Australian firms, a setting dominated by small firms with limited analyst coverage and requiring continuous disclosure of price sensitive information. We find increasing disclosure in the time period investigated is associated with greater accuracy in firms disclosing fewer items. Disclosure was unrelated to forecast dispersion, possibly due to the low analyst following. In periods of uncertainty, the investor relations awards effectively discriminated quality from quantity of disclosure. These findings highlight the importance of active communication with analysts, particularly in firms providing less disclosure and during periods of uncertainty.     

投资者情绪是导致我国投资者对市场信息出现反应偏差的原因吗：基于贝叶斯分位数回归模型的研究

本文使用贝叶斯分位数回归模型实证分析包含投资者情绪的投资者最优选择模型,结果表明：投资者情绪对于股票收益率存在非线性的正向影响,这是造成投资者对于市场信息出现反应偏差的一个重要原因.同时,市场信息和投资者情绪指标对于我国股票收益率都有着较大的影响作用;当股票出现不同涨跌幅时,市场信息对于股票收益率的影响有着较大的差异性.而考虑了投资者情绪指标之后,投资者对于市场信息的反应偏差明显减小,说明投资者情绪是造成我国投资者对于市场信息出现过度反应和反应不足的重要原因.我国投资者应该树立起良好的投资意识和心态,避免潜在的投资损失.     

Framing and the disposition effect: evidence from mutual fund investor redemption behaviour

Research on decision-making under uncertainty has highlighted that individuals often use simple heuristics and/or exhibit behavioural biases. Specifically, with respect to portfolio decisions, research has indicated that investors are subject to the disposition effect, i.e. they are reluctant to sell assets that have performed poorly (losers) and prone to sell assets that have performed well (winners). We find that the mutual fund investors in our sample are subject to the disposition effect when they withdraw the redemption proceeds from their account, but not when they reallocate the proceeds within the account. The evidence is consistent with Shefrin and Statman’s hypothesis that framing a transaction as a transfer as opposed to a sale mitigates the disposition effect.     

中国的机构投资者的预测能力研究

从2001年4月20日开始,中央电视台<中国证券>栏目每天早晨报道我国70家大券商关于当天股票市场涨跌情况的预测.通过对这些预测的研究,本文发现中国机构投资者的预测能力不强.他们的预测大都基于市场前一天的盈亏,近乎于正反馈反应.此外,本文还发现股市下跌对机构投资者的预测的影响比股市上涨大.本文认为,中国机构投资者预测能力不强的主要原因可能是缺乏经验.     

A cognition paradigm clash: Simon,situated cognition and the interpretation of bounded rationality

Simon’s notion of bounded rationality is deeply intertwined with his activity as a cognitive psychologist and founder of so-called cognitivism, a mainstream approach in cognitive psychology until the 1980s. Cognitivism, understood as ‘symbolic information processing,’ provided the first cognitive psychology foundation to bounded rationality. Has bounded rationality since then fully followed the development of cognitive psychology beyond symbolic information processing in the post-Simonian era? To answer this question, this paper focuses on Simon’s opposition during the 1990s to a new (paradigmatic) view of cognition called situated cognition, which has since put into question the entire view in cognitive psychology of humans as symbolic information processors. This paper then reads the cognitivism/situated cognition debate through the lens of current bounded rationality research in economics, in order (i) to inquire into whether it has tackled the issues in that controversy; (ii) to envisage possible new foundations for a cognitive psychology-based bounded rationality.     

Psychological Capital: Impacts on Asset Management

Drawing together the areas of behavioral finance and positive psychology, the present research sought to investigate whether the psychological capital of investment fund managers is associated with fund performance in a context of financial instability. The theoretical propositions were presented and evaluated empirically through primary data on investment fund manager profiles and secondary data on the cumulative stock fund returns. The results indicate that funds managed by managers with greater resilience and optimism obtained a higher return than the mean profitability in a period of market instability.