Make your values mean something

Take a look at this list of corporate values: Communication. Respect. Integrity. Excellence. They sound pretty good, don't they? Maybe they even resemble your own company's values. If so, you should be nervous. These are the corporate values of Enron, as claimed in its 2000 annual report. And they're absolutely meaningless. Indeed, most values statements, says the author, are bland, toothless, or just plain dishonest. And far from being harmless, as some executives assume, they're often highly destructive. Empty values statements create cynical and dispirited employees and undermine managerial credibility. But coming up with strong values--and sticking to them--isn't easy. Organizations that want their values statements to really mean something should follow four imperatives. First, understand the different types of values: core, aspirational, permission-to-play, and accidental. Confusing them with one another can bewilder employees and make management seem out of touch. Second, be aggressively authentic. Too many companies view a values initiative in the same way they view a marketing launch: a onetime event measured by the initial attention it receives, not by its content. Third, own the process. Values initiatives are about imposing a set of fundamental, strategically sound beliefs on a broad group of people. That's why the best values efforts are driven by small teams. Finally, weave core values into everything. It's not enough to hang your values statement on the wall; it must be integrated into every employee-related process--hiring methods, performance management systems, even dismissal policies. Living by stated corporate values is difficult. But the benefits of doing so can be profound; so can the damage from adopting a hollow set of corporate values.     

Optimal employment subsidies and market structures in industries with unemployment

In this paper we analyze the issue of optimal employment subsidiesin imperfectly competitive industries in which a distortionin the labour market generates involuntary unemployment. Asa benchmark case, we focus on monopolies and duopolies and oncomplete information between firms and government. We characterizethe levels and creations of employment in the subsidized industryand we check when such employment policies are more favorableto the least productive firms.     

Corporate incentives for hedging and hedge accounting

This article explores the information effect of financial riskmanagement. Financial hedging improves the informativeness ofcorporate earnings as a signal of management ability and projectquality by eliminating extraneous noise. Managerial and shareholderincentives regarding information transmission may differ, however,leading to conflicts regarding an optimal hedging policy. Weshow that these incentives depend on the accounting informationmade available by the firm. Under some circumstances, if hedgetransactions are not disclosed (i.e., firms report only aggregateearnings), managers hedge to achieve greater risk reductionthan they would if full disclosure were required. In these cases,it is optimal for shareholders to request only aggregate accountingreports.