UNIT MANAGEMENT BUYOUTS, STOCKHOLDER WEALTH, AND SELLING FIRMS' CHARACTERISTICS

Previous research on unit management buyouts, UMBs, has shown that selling firms benefit from the selloff transaction. The current research demonstrates that when the selling firm has either poor liquidity or poor earnings, selling firm shareholders do not benefit as much. We hypothesize that the unit managers have knowledge about the selling firm's difficulties so they do not pay as large a premium for the assets. Since the unit managers technically are employed by the selling firm shareholders, their bargaining to achieve a better price is an agency cost. Finally, selloff frequency does not affect seller abnormal returns.     

Common Stock Returns in Corporate Takeover Bids: The Case of Brokerage House Acquisitions

This paper examines the common stock returns of three groups of bidders that purchased brokerage houses. Only in the cases of horizontal mergers, one brokerage house purchasing another, are there abnormal returns associated with the purchase. Neither bank holding company bidders nor non-financial bidders gain significantly when purchasing a brokerage house. Bank holding company bidders face considerable regulatory delays, and these economic disturbances may eliminate their gains. Bank holding company expansion into these non-bank activities does not appear, at the time of announcement, to either hurt or benefit them; hence, this expansion does not appear to further the loss exposure of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.     

Voting Rights and Market Reaction to Dual Class Common Stock Issues

This paper examines the return of the original class of common stock around the announcement of the creation of a second class of stock. As in previous studies, this one finds a generally ambiguous market reaction on the first public announcement. However, this paper offers new evidence that both the voting rights and the compensation for loss of voting rights are important determinants of the market's reaction. Specifically, it demonstrates that a second class stock issue that contains no compensation for the lost voting rights results in negative returns. When the original stockholders are compensated for lost voting rights, they experience positive abnormal returns.     

Advertising,avoiding, disrupting,and tabooing: The discursive construction of diversity subjects in the Turkish context

This study investigates organizational diversity discourses in Turkey – a non-Western, politically relevant, yet underrepresented context. Using a Foucauldian perspective on power and discourse, we scrutinize how power relations in the Turkish context are (re)produced. Based on our analysis of company websites and semi-structured interviews with various actors (e.g., HR managers), we propose a conceptual framework of the discursive construction of diversity subjects at work along the dimensions of (1) visibility of organizational diversity discourses and (2) contestation of meaning within organizational diversity discourses. The combination of these dimensions yields four discursive dynamics as illustrated in our data (Advertising, Avoiding, Disrupting, Tabooing). This framework may inspire future context- and power-sensitive investigations on diversity discourses at the workplace.     

The future of bioregional planning in the Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere region

This paper assesses the current status and future prospects for bioregional planning in the Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere (SAMAB) region in the United States. The SAMAB region is one of the most biodiverse temperate regions in the world. The region's environment is threatened by development, air and water pollution, and invasive species. Numerous institutions in the region have some responsibility for protecting the region's environment, including the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, several states, hundreds of municipalities, and numerous active non-profit organizations. Twenty-seven people associated with bioregional planning were interviewed to gauge their opinions on the state of bioregional planning in the SAMAB region. Overall, the respondents do not believe that the totality of all those efforts comprises bioregional planning because the efforts are limited in scale and scope and somewhat uncoordinated. With respect to the future of the region, the respondents found it difficult to imagine the state of the region 50 and especially 200 years into the future. Additionally, almost all of their definitions of bioregional planning included a spatial dimension but none included a time dimension. Thus, one of our conclusions is that the future of bioregional planning in the region will be hampered by difficulties people responsible for environmental protection have in dealing with ‘the future’. Much effort needs to be expended to inculcate people in the region with the desire to anticipate problems long before they occur. Reactive responses, which characterize the majority of current efforts, are likely to be ‘too little, too late’.     

CMBS Subordination,Ratings Inflation,and Regulatory‐Capital Arbitrage

Using detailed origination and performance data on a comprehensive sample of commercial mortgage‐backed security (CMBS) deals, along with their underlying loans and a set of similarly rated residential mortgage‐backed securities (RMBS), we apply reduced‐form and structural modeling strategies to test for regulatory‐capital arbitrage and ratings inflation in the CMBS market. We find that the spread between CMBS and corporate‐bond yields fell significantly for ratings AA and AAA after a loosening of capital requirements for highly rated CMBS in 2002, whereas no comparable drop occurred for lower rated bonds (which experienced no similar regulatory change). We also find that CMBS rated below AA upgraded to AA or AAA significantly faster than comparable RMBS (for which there was no change in risk‐based capital requirements). We use a structural model to investigate these results in more detail and find that little else changed in the CMBS market over this period except for the rating agencies' persistent reductions in subordination levels between 1997 and late 2007. Indeed, had the 2005 vintage CMBS used the subordination levels from 2000, there would have been no losses to the senior bonds in most CMBS structures.     

Online customer experience in e-retailing: implications for web entrepreneurship

Providing consumers with unique experiences and immersing them in original contexts are the goals of web entrepreneurs. Researchers and web entrepreneurs have expressed a particular interest in the online customer experience, agreeing on its importance in creating satisfaction, revisiting intention, e-trust and e-loyalty. This paper explores customer experience in the online retail context. The online customer experience is central in forming customers’ perceptions of expectations of online retailers because this experience is highly personal. However, empirical research on the online customer experience remains scarce. The objectives of this unique study are twofold. The first is to compare the effect of online customer experience on the responses of Romanian and Tunisian customers. The comparative analysis is based on two dimensions of the online customer experience assessment tool. These dimensions are cognitive experiential state (flow) and affective experiential state. The second objective is to examine the contribution of each of these two dimensions in explaining overall perceived value, e-satisfaction, e-trust and repurchase intention in the online context, as well as their effects on web entrepreneurial initiatives. The findings reveal the impact of cultural influences on the constructs embedded in the research framework. The implications for practice relate to the increasing importance of online customer experience in tailoring online marketing campaigns. The implications for web entrepreneurship are clearly emphasised by the pathways from online customer experience to entrepreneurial initiatives. These pathways capture the value of customer-generated content in designing innovative business models.

     

Potential Impact of Climate Change and Armed Conflict on Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study investigates the potential impact of climate change and armed conflict on inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The system-GMM for a panel of 35 SSA countries is employed using annual data from 1997 to 2018. The empirical results indicate that armed conflict and climate are major drivers of inequality in SSA. The direct impact of the two determinants is more than the indirect impact. Also, the impact of armed conflict is more than the climate change. The coefficients of population growth, output growth, unemployment, natural rent, exchange rate and inflation rate are significant positive predictors of inequality in the SSA. The study advocates for a multidisciplinary inclusive growth strategy that prioritises the climate change reversal, de-escalation of armed conflict, population control, reduction of the unemployment rate and increasing informal sector productivity, to promote inclusive growth and reduce inequality. However, sequencing the policy targets relative to the magnitude of their impact on inequality is extremely crucial.     

Book reviews

Abstract

This article examines the cultural field of fitness as a network of producers, consumers, products and practices that has developed around the care of the body through physical exercise. Drawing on a thematic text analysis of US exercise manuals, the paper focuses on how the commercial fitness field naturalizes associations between physical exercise and leisure, and between leisure and self‐work. In particular, the analysis examines three themes and their relevance to our broader understanding of leisure in contemporary consumer society: the management of leisure time; the use of leisure for self‐investment strategies; and the promotion of consumption as the framework for leisure and an accompanying notion of pleasure. The fitness field casts light on how leisure more generally is constructed as a sphere of obligations to make productive use of one’s time, to improve one’s body and self, and to do so through the wares of the consumer marketplace. The cultural imaginary of leisure as a time of freedom from work and responsibility is thus recast, in an age of individualization, as a time of freedom to accomplish the work of self‐production.